{"id":2779,"date":"2012-06-02T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2012-06-02T05:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2779"},"modified":"2014-09-06T15:06:27","modified_gmt":"2014-09-06T20:06:27","slug":"lights-going-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2779","title":{"rendered":"Lights Going Out?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two thoughts for tonight, neither seem very substantial at first glance. I composed these thoughts on the first hot day of the summer season here in NJ, and my mind was not running on all 8 cylinders at the time. But let’s have a look, nonetheless . . . <\/p>\n

I was listening to the radio the other day and had it tuned to a classic rock station. That was just for a few minutes while my main station, WDHA, was going thru its 12 minute cycle of uninterrupted commercials. WDHA fashions itself as a new rock station, but it still plays plenty of Zeppelin and Van Halen, with Kiss and Dio thrown in the stew. That’s what the DHA people now think that rock really was in the old days. Rock revisionism, you could say.<\/p>\n

Anyway, after zooming over to a station that takes a broader view of what \u2018rock n roll\u2019 once was, I heard a tune that hasn\u2019t been on the airwaves in the New York metro area in a long time: Billy Joel\u2019s \u201cMiami 2017\u201d<\/a>, better known as \u201cSeen The Lights Go Out on Broadway\u201d. The story line of this song has to do with an evil governmental force that destroys Manhattan, along with Brooklyn and the Bronx (they said that Queens could stay, according to the lyrics; and Staten Island wasn\u2019t even mentioned by Mr. Joel).<\/p>\n

This was the first time I\u2019d heard that song since 9-11-01. Even though Mr. Joel was not thinking about Islamist terrorism back in 1976 when he wrote \u201cMiami \/ Seen The Lights\u201d, the song could obviously stir painful emotions amongst the families and friends of the 2,750 people killed at the World Trade Center site. But more than a decade has passed and nothing so terrible has happened in New York since then (knock on wood). Hopefully, playing this song once more is a sign of healing and normalcy, at least on the social level; the emotional wounds that family and friends suffer will never completely fade.<\/p>\n

Mr. Joel was probably thinking more of the US government when he wrote \u201cSeen The Lights\u201d, which in 1975 had decided against giving financial aid to New York City. New York was then having its own sovereign debt crisis, not entirely unlike what is going on today in Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc. You could say that Germany is now playing the role that the Ford Administration played with New York back in the 70\u2019s. (Recall the famous headline from the Oct. 30, 1975 edition of the New York Daily News: \u201cFord to City: Drop Dead\u201d.) Wonder if Mr. Joel is pondering a new version of his song, e.g. \u201cThey Killed the Lights At The Agora\u201d?<\/p>\n

Next topic, mostly unconnected with Billy Joel, or Islamic terrorism or the financial crisis: I read an interesting article<\/a> in the May, 2012 Atlantic Magazine about a comic who calls himself Louis C.K. Although I stay up with rock music, I\u2019ve mostly lost my interest in modern comedy. I used to like George Carlin, but lost my interest when Andrew Dice Clay raised (or lowered) the standards of comic obscenity and sexual depravity amidst the \u2018stylists of verbal humor\u2019. Carlin certainly could get dirty, and generations of Borsch Belt \u201cblue men\u201d fought for attention with bawdy jokes and explicit anatomical references. Yes, there is the occasional \u201cclean guy\u201d like Seinfeld, but for the most part, the jokes were all sounding alike to me; nobody was really saying anything in their monologues. <\/p>\n

Should a comedian say \u201csay something significant” in her or his work, something of social consequence? Or is it better to \u201cjust laugh, don\u2019t think\u201d? Well, James Parker (author of the Atlantic article) has picked Louis C.K. out for attention just because he IS saying something. Or seems to be, anyway. Louis has kept up in the obscenity arms race (masturbation seems to be his specialty, according to Mr. Parker); but his monologues and television appearances seem to broach deeper questions regarding human relationships and the meaning of life.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t really comment on that; I had never heard of Louis C.K. prior to reading this article, and I don\u2019t plan to wade through all of his gross-out performances waiting for a ray of enlightenment to appear. But Mr. Parker\u2019s article asks an interesting question, one worth pondering: are the filthy comedians putting themselves out of business by tearing down all the taboos and de-sensitizing everyone, such that there could be no more guilty snickers about forbidden subjects? <\/p>\n

Here are a few well written lines from Mr. Parker about that: \u201cBut how long can we continue to be offended? Won\u2019t we soon be numb . . . This is\u2014if you\u2019ll pardon the glibness of the formulation\u2014the tragedy of comedy . . . In a world desacralized from top to bottom, there\u2019s no profanity, no obscenity\u2014no material, for God\u2019s sake.\u201d Are the filthy com medians burning themselves out? <\/p>\n

Mr. Parker concludes that \u201cwe\u2019re not there yet.\u201d Why not? Parker doesn\u2019t analyze that, and I probably shouldn\u2019t either (although he does give an unintended hint by mentioning “God”). Nonetheless, I will guess that there are two factors that will keep jokes and stories about sexual excess and indignity from growing old. Both have to do with immaturity. Due to hormone levels in adolescent brains, plus lack of effective social guidance and disregard for ancient sources of wisdom in modern society, humans will always have dirty minds. Sex will remain an obsession, and such obsession is not easily burned out in most people, despite the various processes of maturity and wisdom accumulation. Our modern world is not known for fostering the latter two forces. <\/p>\n

A second factor that will save the dirty joke is religious immaturity, which seems to be going strong in both our modern post-industrial society and in the hinterlands beyond its reach. There yet exists a strong reactionary response to \u201cwestern decadence\u201d, both from within and from without. Ironically, a prime example of fanatic religious over-reaction to our own \u201cwisdom immaturity\u201d was mentioned above, i.e. the 9-11 terror attack. Billy Joel couldn\u2019t be heard on the New York airwaves for a decade because some minority factions in far-off lands thought that the old taboos and spiritual totems should be defended, with blood. <\/p>\n

Louis C.K. might have an interesting idea; our country can\u2019t do away with its pit of sexual immaturity, so why not try to find a ladder from within it; find an absurdist plot line that unexpectedly seeks the truest human inspirations, those that have been twisted and perverted in the fanatic defense of taboos and \u201cAngry Daddy\u201d gods more than any filthy comedian has done? What became of the wisdom of those like Aristotle who once taught in that now-bankrupt Agora, espousing the virtues of “the golden mean”?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to watch Louis’s show, but I do wish him luck! (Assuming that Mr. Parker wasn’t taken in by some meta-joke on LCK’s part.)<\/p>\n

PS — As to the May issue of The Atlantic: the editors were really digging for enlightenment amidst the landfill sites; in addition to the Louis C.K. article, another article focused on an intellectual video game producer who is trying to create artful games, games that communicate “a deeply authentic vision of the meaning of human existence”. OK, the article is about Jon Blow and his Braid and Witness games.<\/p>\n

And a footnote about Billy Joel: ironically, his Miami 2017 lyrics seem to have foreshadowed the situation in Mexico today much more accurately than anything regarding New York. I.e., the line “before the Mafia took over Mexico”. Just substitute “drug cartels” . . . which is pretty much what the Mafia was. The new incarnations south of the border truly do seem to be taking over that poor nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two thoughts for tonight, neither seem very substantial at first glance. I composed these thoughts on the first hot day of the summer season here in NJ, and my mind was not running on all 8 cylinders at the time. But let’s have a look, nonetheless . . . I was listening to the radio […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2779"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4559,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779\/revisions\/4559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}