Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   globalizing the American Dream
Tuesday, February 17 2009
Hearing that one old Journey song ("Stone in Love") the other day sent me on a nostalgic YouTube tour of other songs by the band. Over time, Journey's enormous success and sold-out arenas have proven to be more of a liability than an asset, but that doesn't take anything away from the music. While it hasn't stood the test of time, that's more of an indictment of fashion than it is of the musicians or their music. This doesn't mean the songs don't have their dopey moments (there are, for example, plenty of fire/desire rhymes), but there's lots of good stuff in there too, like that line in "Don't Stop Believing" that goes, "The movie never ends, it goes on and on and on and on."
Last night I got sidetracked by Journey's second act with its new singer, Arnel Pineda. A little backstory: Journey experienced renewed interest after The Sopranos ended in June of 2007 to "Don't Stop Believing," though the band had been limping along on inadequate vocalists since their classic-period vocalist, Steve Perry, left the band. In mid-2007, Journey's guitarist Neal Schon stumbled across YouTube videos of a Filipino band doing amazing covers of classic Journey songs and contacted the band's lead singer. By the end of the year, that singer, Arnel Pineda, had been hired as the lead singer of Journey.
At this point there are plenty of videos on YouTube of Pineda performing with Journey. His voice bears an uncanny similarity to that of Steve Perry, and while Pineda lacks parts of Perry's highest range, he makes up for it in richness in the other notes. He also has a bit more stage charisma (Steve Perry tended to shuffle around the stage like Ozzy Osbourne). Pineda has only been in the band a year and it shows; he has a look of surprise permanently etched on his face.
And well he should; Arnel Pineda is one lucky dude. He grew up in the Philippines in the sort of poverty Americans don't know all that much about. Over time, he was able to achieve some musical success on his own (and with that voice, how could he not?). But being plucked from across the world and asked to front an internationally-famous and wildly-successful rock band? He owes that to YouTube. For him, YouTube effectively globalized the American Dream. It allows a true meritocracy for things like rock vocalist, and in a true meritocracy, the chance of a Filipino having what it takes is higher than you might think. After all, the Phillipines is a country where English is an official language and its population is nearly a third of that of the United States. Yes, this modest-sized archipelagic nation, a bit smaller than Italy, is home to 92 million people.
Watching these videos of Arnel Pineda singing, I'm moved in a way that I can't quite pinpoint, although I suspect it has something to do with the amazing human capacity for survival. Here is a washed up old rock and roll band sudden re-invigorated with a relatively young singer who functions like a drop-in replacement for Steve Perry. In the old days a band like Journey, finding itself without its "one in a million" vocalist, would simply curl up and die, but these days the internet allows a band to track down a perfect replacement for a missing member, much as it allows me to track down a perfect replacement for my boiler's malfunctioning fuel pump. The band lives on! Hell, if this is possible, a rock and roll band could theoretically live forever. The only thing sad in this story is that Journey, like most bands of its vintage, is mostly just a cover band of its former self.

Down in the greenhouse, I've continued to enjoy the spectacle of fresh clean flood water flowing over its bedrock floors. The freshness and cleanliness seemed like ideals to be pursued further, particularly if I want to continue patching up the few questionable places where the masonry walls attach to the bedrock floor. It would be best if the bedrock were scrubbed as clean as possible of all residual clay. So whenever I venture down to the greenhouse, I use a large brush (the kind used with a dustpan) to brush the rock (both back and forth and in circles). I concentrate the mostly on any cracks in the shale or on joints with the masonry, stirring up hazy cappuccino-colored clouds in the water as the clay comes loose.
By today, the water table had sunk below the ability of the greenhouse drain to carry it away. So any water I muddied had to be bailed out manually. This served to focus my attention on the muddiest places, and as I bailed away the muddy water, fresh clear new spring water percolated up from below to replace it. It didn't take much work to essentially purge the last of the clay from the greenhouse, leaving its floor and walls a sterile expanse of stone and Portland cement. It was beautiful.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?090217

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