MUSIC GEEKISM

1950-1959 (a reasonable attempt, anyway):

1. Cyril Jackson - Afro Drums
2. Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
3. Miles Davis - Bag's Groove/Milestones
4. Bo Diddley - Go Bo Diddley!
5. Ken Nordine - Word Jazz
6. v/a - Calypso Kings and Pink Gin
7. Perez Prado - The Voodoo Suite
8. Art Farmer - The Aztec Suite
9. Thelonius Monk - Brilliant Corners
10. v/a - Anthology of American Folk Music

1960-1964:

1. Max Roach - We Insist: Freedom Now! Suite
2. Dean Elliott - Zounds! What Sounds!
3. John Coltrane - Africa/Brass
4. Cecil Taylor - Jazz Advance/Love For Sale
5. Howlin' Wolf - Moanin' in the Moonlight
6. The Yardbirds - Five Live Yardbirds
7. Oliver Nelson - Afro-American Sketches
8. Sun Ra - Interstellar Low Ways
9. Duke Ellington - Money Jungle
10. Lenny Bruce - The Midnight Concert

1965-1969:

1. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced?/Electric Ladyland
2. The Velvet Underground - s/t (third LP)
3. Pink Floyd - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
4. Mothers of Invention - Absolutely Free
5. Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
6. The Beatles - s/t ("The White Album")
7. MC5 - Kick Out the Jams
8. Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica
9. The Sonics - Here Are the Sonics
10. Van Morrison - Astral Weeks

1970-1974:

1. The Stooges - Funhouse
2. Miles Davis - Get Up With It
3. Rolling Stones - Exile on Mainstreet
4. Sly and the Family Stone - There's a Riot Going On
5. Black Sabbath - Paranoid
6. Mungo Jerry - s/t
7. Charles Mingus - Let My Children Hear Music
8. Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
9. Mothers of Invention - Filmore East, June 1971
10. Alice Cooper - Killer

1975-1979 (this was the hardest one!)

0. KISS - Alive!/Alive! II
1. The Ramones - Rocket to Russia
2. The Residents - Third Reich n Roll
3. Chrome - Half Machine Lip Moves/Alien Soundtracks
4. Van Halen - s/t/Women and Children First
5. Funkadelic - Let's Take it to the Stage
6. The B-52's - s/t
7. Jonathan Richman - Back in Your Life
8. The Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady
9. The Germs - (GI)
10. The Soft Boys - A Can of Bees

1980-1984 (I gave myself 15 slots for this, since it's roughly the years of my early adolescence):

1. Butthole Surfers - Psychic...Powerless...Another Man's Sack
2. Meat Puppets - II
3. Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rottin' Vegetables/Plastic Surgery Disasters
4. The Cramps - Songs Our Lord Taught Us/Bad Music for Bad People
5. v/a - Rodney on the ROQ, Vol. II/Posh Hits
6. Angry Samoans - Back From Samoa
7. Bad Brains - Rock For Light
8. Black Flag - Damaged
9. R.E.M. - Chronic Town
10. Violent Femmes - s/t

11. Husker Du - Zen Arcade
12. Geza X - You Goddamn Kids!
13. The Go-Go's - Beauty and the Beat
14. Iron Maiden - Killers
15. Prince - Purple Rain

1985-1989:

1. Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
2. Fishbone - s/t
3. Pussy Galore - Dial "M" for Motherfucker
4. Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising
5. Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
6. De La Soul - Three Feet High and Rising
7. Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back
8. They Might Be Giants - Lincoln
9. Fugazi - Margin Walker
10. The Pixies - Surfer Rosa

Alternate choice for those last two spots:

9. Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking
10. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Uplift Mofo Party Plan

1990-1994:

1. Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
2. Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
3. Digable Planets - Blowout Comb
4. A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory
5. Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
6. Ice Cube - Predator
7. Jungle Brothers - Done by the Forces of Nature/Jay Beez Wit tha Remedeez
8. R.E.M. - Automatic for the People
9. Guided By Voices - Propellor/Bee Thousand
10. Redd Kross - Third Eye

1995-1999:

1. Beck - Odelay
2. Cornelius - Fantasma
3. Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out!
4. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Orange
5. The Buena Vista Social Club - s/t
6. Bjork - Post
7. bis - Social Dancing
8. Mike Watt - Ball Hog or Tug Boat?
9. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
10. Gza - Liquid Swords

2000-2004:

1. The Drive-By Truckers - The Dirty South
2. The Coup - Steal This Album
3. The People Under The Stairs - OST: Original Sound Tracks
4. Radiohead - Kid A
5. The Fiery Furnaces - Gallowsbird's Bark
6. Amon Tobin - Supermodified
7. Deerhoof - Milk Man
8. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
9. Kanye West - The College Dropout
10. Mastodon - Leviathan

2005-2009:

1. Beck - Guero
2. Gogol Bordello - Gypsy Punks
3. Madvillain - Madvillainy
4. Deerhoof - Offend Maggie
5. The Fiery Furnaces - Widow City
6. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
7. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
8. The Dresden Dolls - Yes, Virginia
9. Acid Mothers Temple - SWR
10. The Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark

2010-2014 (so far):

1. tUnEyArDs - w h o k i l l
2. Neneh Cherry and the Thing - The Cherry Thing
3. The Liars - Sisterworld
4. Kanye West - My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy/
    Jay-Z and Kanye West - Watch the Throne
5. Jack White - Blunderbuss
6. Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music

Bonus Round:

Bonus Round:
Late 60's: Dr. John - Gris Gris
Early 70's: Can - Tago Mago (or maybe Gong - Angel's Egg)
Late 70's: The Congos - Heart of the Congos (I could think of dozens of albums to use, but since I don't have any reggae on my list...)
Early 80's: The Birthday Party - Junkyard (or maybe The Bangles - All Over the Place)
Late 80's: Dukes of the Stratosphear - 25 O'Clock
Early 90's: Hole - Live Through This
Late 90's: Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space
Early 00's: The Polysics - Polysics or Die!
Late 00's: Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights

Free Advice For Obama And The Democrats

Here's a good example of why so many people are so cynical about politics.  Back in 2011, the FDA looked at the research and concluded that there was no reason not to make the birth control drug known as "Plan B" or "The Morning After Pill" accessible to the general public as an over-the-counter product, not requiring a prescription.  This was contrary to earlier decisions, and was based on a body of empirical research on the subject.  Then, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius overrode the FDA's decision, a move that, as far as anyone can tell, was based entirely on politics and fear. 

Last week, a federal judge overruled the HHS's authority to make that decision, making Plan B available OTC to anyone over 17.  The FDA lowered this number to 15.  This, an observer would assume, gives the Obama administration cover with the anti-contraception crowd: "Hey, we tried."  But--and this is where it gets really depressing--the Obama administration is taking it to court to appeal the ruling.  I mean, what do they even have to gain from appealing this?  (Here's Wil Wilkerson's attempt to answer that question, but it seems deeply unsatisfying.)  Allowing OTC Plan B sales is not only a nice, simple solution to a problem, it would, if enacted, be one of the most significant accomplishments of the Obama administration, one that would (at least potentially) reduce teen pregnancy AND abortion without even involving much exercise of government power.  It's hard to imagine getting more bang for your buck in reducing human misery.

Which sets me up to talk about something I've been meaning to get to for a while now, starting with the last State of the Union Address, where Obama brought up just about every liberal cause in the book in one speech.  My advice, or my preference, for Obama (and congressional Democrats, while we're at it) would be to just keep things simple.  Focus on a few things, and get them done.  Things that are important, things that can have a huge impact on our country.  We don't know what will happen in 2016 (or even 2014), so let's concentrate on getting a few things so done that they can't be undone.  Specifically, my feeling is that the administration should forget about guns, Head Start, Plan B and all this other silliness, and focus with laser intensity on four things:

1. Get ALL of our troops out of Afghanistan as soon as humanly possible.
2. Resolve the debt crisis while preserving (as much as possible) our social safety net.
3. Institute the Affordable Care Act.  Put maximum effort into getting it as right as possible.
4. Pass comprehensive immigration reform.

And, you know, if a bill legalizing gay marriage should pass your desk, sign it.  And I'm conceding a lot of ground in this.  I know that Obama isn't going to take the lead in ending the drug war, and he's certainly not on the side of the good guys when it comes to civil liberties and the execution of the war on terror.  But let me elaborate on these things a bit.

Getting out of Afghanistan (and credit to the President, he got us completely out of Iraq, and looks well on track to get us completely out of Afghanistan as well): This come first, because it's the thing he was elected to do in the first place.  We've extended our military to the breaking point.  The V/A system is completely broken, because it's impossible for it to deal with the results of a decade-plus-long war.  We can't fix our budget because of the cost of the war.  We need to get the fuck out of there NOW.  And it would have the bonus feature of making us slightly less likely to get involved in every other problem in that region.

The debt crisis: Let's start by acknowledging that it actually exists.  Sooner or later, we are going to have to balance the budget and stop hemorrhaging money.  And raising taxes simply won't be enough.  Deep cuts have to come, and there's really no place big enough to cut besides Defense, Social Security, Medicare and maybe Medicaid.  I don't WANT to see entitlements cut, but it's going to have to happen at some point.  If we take care of it now, we can do it on our terms (heavy on defense cuts, light on entitlement cuts, augmented by some tax increases and cuts in discretionary spending on things like corporate subsidies), or at least a compromise.  If we don't do it now, it will be done on the Republican's terms in the future, which will likely mean a deep gutting not only of SS/Medicare/Medicaid, but of all the other programs that help the poor: Unemployment, Food Stamps, WIC, CHIP, and on and on.

Obamacare: This is huge.  We have laid the final brick in The Liberal Project.  But the Executive Branch still needs to, you know, execute.  There are a million details that could go right or wrong.  And there's still a Republican Party that would like to make repealing the law a central part of their agenda.  If Obama leaves office in 2017 with a functioning healthcare system in place, it's a big victory.  If it remains vulnerable, we've got a lot to worry about.  I have no illusions that it's going to be an unqualified success.  I generally expect it to leave the healthcare system slightly better than it was before.  But it leaves us with a framework to improve upon.  Plus, it could give just enough cover to make some cuts to Medicare and Medicaid that could keep the government solvent.

Immigration reform: The momentum this cause seemed to have coming off of the election is draining quickly, but I expect the demographics make it doable-to-inevitable.  This would be a huge victory in protecting the poorest and least powerful members of our society, while also ending an idiotic waste of our resources hunting down people who have committed no crime but simply trying to work in this country.

Add all that together, and note that we're pretty much on course to total victory on gay marriage, and that at least marijuana legalization is progressing state by state, no thanks to the administration, and the FDA allowing OTC Plan B, and these measures would leave us in a strong, solid position with permanent benefits.  Compare this to passing a bunch of laws that won't do anything to keep guns out of the hands of people who want them, or developing a national preschool program with no proven results, and I think you'll agree that this simple agenda does the most to reduce human misery for the least cost.

Update!

Here's my most recent 5 minutes.  I'm not going to keep this whole routine.  For one thing, it's too similar to a Louis CK bit from a few years ago.  But I am keeping the whole bit about the woman in the hospital and the car crash and all that.  Possibly also the brief bit about donuts. 

Posting has been light lately, to say the least.  I've had a lot going on.  Mainly, we opened our studio.  The space is called Tao Comedy Studio, the name taken from Bobbie's book The Tao of Comedy, which she has finished, and copies of which should be available in a month or two.  It's at 7466 Beverly Blvd, Studio 201, on the corner of Beverly and Gardner.  Really cool little space.  Bobbie and John Fontaine have been teaching their classes there, and we've had shows and open mics there, including a great show coming up this Friday.  Here's the flyer.

And the following week, my improv troupe (which is to say, the people taking John Fontaine's improv class) will be performing there.

There are some more cool things in the works that I hope to be able to share soon.  In the meantime, here are the two flyers for shows that have already happened, just because I want to share them cuz they look cool.

Psychedelicatessen Radio, Episode 3.12: Women in Comedy Roundtable

Download it here (or find it on iTunes), or watch it below.

One final podcast from our 2012 season.  From the 2012 Eagle Rock Comedy Festival, a roundtable discussion moderated by Bobbie Oliver, with Kelly Carlin, Beth Lapides, Randi Siegel, Barbara Holiday, Barb North, Doreen Spicer-Dannelly, Kailey Marsh, Laura Hayden and Rosie Tran.  I posted this on YouTube, but some people told me that they'd rather have it as a podcast, so here it is.

Saving Face (Pilot Episode)

Well, here it is, at long last, my directorial debut.  This is a 30-minute sitcom starring Bobbie Oliver and Sally Mullins.  Hilarious and trashy.  Production values could be better, of course.  Keep in mind that we were literally learning how to do everything while we were filming this, down to even basic stuff like "Oh, I guess we should turn off the air conditioner and fans before we start shooting."  Anyway, if you like what you see, but would like to see some better production values for Episode 2, please donate to our Kickstarter and help us upgrade to some better equipment.

Best Old Movies I Saw For The First Time in 2012

I'm going to give myself another week or so before I make my 2012 movies list.  I want to catch a few more titles first.  So I should be writing my 2012 TV roundup, but I find myself very uninterested in compiling all my random thoughts on Breaking Bad and Girls, so let's move on to something more fun.

1. The Clock (Vincente Minelli, 1945)

My curiosity about this movie was awakened by a post on the TCM blog, which I have spent the last half hour trying unsuccessfully to find.  The quote that got me interested was something like "Vincente Minelli choreographed this movie as painstakingly as he did his musicals," or something like that.  It had me imagining some kind of early version of Tati's Playtime.  At any rate, when I saw it listed on TCM, I TiVo'd it, and I'm so glad I did.

The Clock is a simple film about a soldier (Robert Walker) spending a few days in New York City before shipping off to Europe.  As soon as he gets off the subway, he meets cute with Judy Garland, they go on a date, fall very quickly in love, miss their connection and think they'll never see each other again, are reunited, resolve to get married before he ships off, encounter a host of obstacles to that goal, and so on.  Classic romantic comedy stuff.  The thing is, there's not really an air of comedy to this.  Instead, there's this atmosphere of foreboding weighing down on the whole thing.  This is 1945.  The war that he's about to go fight is a real thing, happening right now.  He could very well be dead in a few weeks.  When they are separated, and fear that they'll never see each other again, it feels like a deadly serious situation.  And in the final scene, when she sees him off at the docks, the camera pulls back and reveals scores of other couples saying tearful goodbyes.  It's a heavy movie.

It's also one of the all-time great New York movies.  The photography of WWII-era New York is fantastic, and fetishizes bits of the city that are hidden from view.  In my favorite sequence, the lovers somehow end up on a milk truck, and we follow them to the dairy where the trucks are loaded up for their daily deliveries at something like 4:00 in the morning.  It's a beautiful sequence, and I love how you see the guts of the city, guts of a system that doesn't exactly exist anymore.  

The other really remarkable sequence begins when they try to get married, and have to go through a nightmarish bureaucratic maze to get it done before the end of the business day.  It's like an early version of Brazil!

2. Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942)

This British film, also produced during the height of WWII, is fascinating in its glimpse of small-town British life during the War.  It's also, occasionally, shockingly violent.  A group of Nazi agents are trying to take over the town and establish a sort of beachhead for a German invasion.  The townsfolk get wise, and set about stopping them.  For the most part, this is standard thriller stuff, but there are some shocking scenes, like an nice old lady murdering a Nazi with a hatchet over tea. Again, you see a different tone than you would in a movie that wasn't made in the middle of a war, because its a movie for an audience who's living through the horrors every day.

3. Design For Living (Ernst Lubitsch, 1933)

Lubitsch's adaptation of Noel Coward's play about two guys (Gary Cooper and Fredrich March) and a girl (Miriam Hopkins) engaged in (as the promotional material associated with the new Criterion disc puts it) a menage a trois.  Now, that word apparently didn't have quite the same definition in 1933 as it does now.  It's about two guys dating the same girl, but not, you know, all at the same time.  (Actually, it's more innocent than that: they will live platonically together, despite the triangle of sexual tension, or at least that's the plan.)  But watch the pictures without minding the dialogue, and the story seems a bit more explicit.  Lubitsch sets up plenty of masterfully framed shots of Hopkins framed by the two actors in vaguely suggestive poses, as if he's telling a different story with the pictures that he can't get away with telling in his exquisite dialogue.

4. The Miracle Woman (Frank Capra, 1931)

This one has been on my list for a long time.  Barbara Stanwyck plays a faith healer, a character supposedly based on Aimee Semple McPherson.  In a way, I had some disappointment with this, as the only real resemblance to McPherson, as far as I can tell, is that Stanwyck is playing a female preacher, but the movie is still more than worth seeking out.  It begins with Stanwyck giving a barnburner of a sermon against her father's congregation, who have recently fired him to replace him with a younger pastor.  From there, we see her getting into the flim flam side of the religion biz.  I would have preferred a much more cynical take--it ain't exactly Nightmare Alley--but without bitching about it not being a different movie, I loved the movie it was.

5. World's Greatest Dad (Bobcat Goldthwait, 2009)

I came away from hearing Bobcat on Marc Maron's podcast interested in the guy's body of work, including his movies.  I watched Shakes the Clown, and while I didn't like it much, it was way better than the movie I had been imagining all these years.  Encouraged, I proceeded to World's Greatest Dad, and was shocked to find that, a decade or so after Shakes, Bobcat had produced a dark comic masterpiece about a teen suicide who is subsequently transformed in everyone's mind from a nasty jerk to some kind of deep, misunderstood philosopher.  Robin Williams, whose presence in a film is most often a giant red flag for me, does amazing work here.  90% of the time, he's my least favorite actor in the world, but when a director understands how to use him, you remember how damned talented he is.  His great setpiece here is a talkshow appearance near the end, where he talks about his son's death, and the mask of dishonesty he's been holding over his face the whole time begins to slip off.  He begins laughing, but manages to pass it off as crying.  This is an old improv exercise that Robin probably had nailed down in the early 70's, and that skill pays off in one of the most brilliant comedy scenes in recent memory.  By the end of the film, when we see Williams' character literally letting go of all of his baggage, this dark comedy turns out to actually be something of a feel-good movie.

6. Sleep Dealer (Alex Rivera, 2008)

This Mexican scifi film was barely noticed when it came out, which is a shame.  It deals with crucial, ripped-from-the-headlines issues like immigration, water rights, internet communication, government monitoring, and drone warfare, all in the course of a fun adventure.

7. My Dinner With Andre (Louis Malle, 1981)

Obviously, I've heard about this movie for a long time, but didn't really know much about it, other than (a) it starred that guy from The Princess Bride that also guested on every sitcom at least once in the 70's and 80's, and (b) it's title is pretty much used as shorthand for "arthouse."  Actually, I guess I was vaguely aware that the whole movie was just a dinner conversation between these two guys, but it turns out to be a fascinating conversation, so much so that I actually made my wife (who has perhaps less patience for this kind of film than even the average moviegoer) watch about half of it, and even SHE found it fascinating (it kind of went along with a lot of what she's writing in her book).  Plus, I really like all the business going on in the background with the staff of the restaurant. It's like they have their own separate movie that we can glimpse in the corner of our movie.

8. Yes, Madam (Corey Yuen Kwai, 1985)

Michelle Yeoh made her screen debut in this buddy cop film with Cynthia Rothrock.  This is the first Rothrock film I've seen (as far as I can recall), and goddamn, those high kicks!  Probably no need to talk much about this, just let the video speak for itself.

9. Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling (Richard Pryor, 1986)

This is more or less an autobiographical film, with fanciful touches a la All That Jazz, written, directed and starring Richard Pryor.  It bombed hard at the box office, and its easy to see why.  This isn't what anyone was interested in seeing from Pryor, and it ain't exactly a great film either.  But this is a good example of how perceptions of a movie can change over time.  Seeing it now as targeting a small, niche audience who are deeply interested in Pryor, it makes a lot more sense. Because you're really getting a glimpse into the man's mind here.  There's not a lot of comedy, but what there is is gold: witness Pryor's recreation of one of his earliest bits, a magnificent pantomime performance of a baby being born.

10. Ornette: Made in America (Shirley Clarke, 1984)

It's funny how little we really know about Ornette Coleman, the man.  I mean, do you even have an impression of him?  Not as a musician, but just as a personality?  Most of the giants of jazz are remembered as BIG personalities: mugging showman (Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Waller), dapper gentlemen (Duke Ellington), erratic headcases (Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Albert Ayler), badass motherfuckers (Miles Davis, Jellyroll Morton), doomed and damaged wrecks (Billie Holiday, Buddy Bolden), introspective spiritualists (John Coltrane, Charles Mingus).  But Ornette seems a near non-entity.  And as soon as you see him on camera, talking about his music, you begin to understand why.  This is not a charismatic man, nor a wild iconoclast.  This short guy with asymetrical features and a thin, reedy voice, is all intellect (to the point that he tried at one point to get a doctor to castrate him so as not to be distracted from his work by carnal urges--the doctor talked him out of it).  He's a strange guy, but not in any flashy sense.  He's almost the prototype of the black nerd, a "type" that's barely recognized in society even today.

So it's fascinating to see Ornette on camera talking about his music, something that I don't even recall occurring in Ken Burns' Jazz series (maybe it did, and he just made so little impression that I forgot it).  We discover that he had a life-changing experience hearing Bucky Fuller speak, which makes a lot of sense--the conventional wisdom on Ornette (and free jazz in general) is that he's just blowing whatever comes off the top of his head (probably due to the arguably inappropriate significance the album Free Jazz is given in his discography), but his compositions are created through a logic that may defy my ears, but is certainly ever present.  Also some great coverage of his visits to the Master Musicians of Jajouka with Robert Palmer, some great contemporary (ie, 80's era) live footage, and some rather amusing footage of the audience at a gala opening of his symphony, trying very hard to give off the impression that they enjoy the music.

Some others that could have made the list (and I'm sure there were more that I've forgotten): Songs From the Second Floor, Deep Blues, All the President's Men, Quadrophenia, This is the Life: How the West was Won

Guns!Guns!Guns! 2: The Sequel Post!

After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, I spent at least a week reconsidering my previous position on gun control.  Since we apparently now live in a world where school shootings are a regular occurrence, it seems reasonable to reconsider these things.  Ultimately, I come away from it unconvinced that stricter gun laws would have prevented this tragedy, or would do much to prevent future school shootings, and I don't see much point in passing laws that don't solve problems.

There's also a political consideration here.  Like I said before, I don't think Obama won this election because a majority of Americans are particularly liberal.  Part of why the Democrats are doing well these days is because of an implicit promise that we're over the whole gun control debate.  We won't fuck with your guns.  It's the one truce we've actually been able to call in the culture wars.  Since the Clinton administration, liberals have laid off the gun control, which I believe gives us a lot of wiggle room for solving real problems, because Americans Love Guns.  And look at the position we're in right now.  With another four years of Obama, we get the Affordable Care Act fully implemented and institutionalized, to the point where no future administration is going to try to repeal it.  We are currently being forced to deal with the budget crisis, and with Democrats holding the upper hand, we can assure that cuts to programs that benefit the poor will be balanced out with cuts to Defense spending and tax increases in the upper margins.  If this gets taken care of, the primary argument for gutting social programs is neutralized.  It's pretty much a sure thing that we get comprehensive immigration reform in the next four years.  Gay marriage is inevitable.  Marijuana legalization is moving along on a state level, no thanks to the Obama administration.  Not to brush over Obama's failures to end the wars, or his fascist policies on civil liberties, but this all puts us in a very good position.  Come 2016, there's a lot less to worry about.  I'd maybe even vote for a pro-choice, pro-gay Republican if one were to run, and could convince me they were the better candidate.

That's a great set up.  I can't imagine why we'd want to throw that all away to have an election about gun control, which doesn't solve anything and is massively divisive.

On the other hand, the pro-gun side are not exactly offering much in the way of alternatives.  That is to say, all the suggestions we hear about what we should be doing instead of banning guns are all even worse suggestions than banning guns, and all require even bigger, more intrusive government (which kind of undermines the "small government" pose they take).  A national database of the mentally ill?  Not only is that a huge government program, I've yet to hear any practical explanation of how this database is to be used to prevent mass shootings.  For one thing, we're talking about teenagers here (most shooters are males between the age of 11 and 21).  What symptoms are we looking for?  Depression?  Isolation?  Hostility?  We're going to end up with a pretty huge database here.  And what are we to do with all these surly teenagers?  Medicate them?  Institutionalize them? Does the State now have the power to take involuntary action against anyone deemed too difficult or non-conformist?

Another suggestion is to make schools even more closely resemble prisons.  Armed guards, metal detectors, armed teachers...none of this makes for a healthy learning environment.  I believe I saw someone suggest our schools should be more like our airports, with kids having to pass through checkpoints, which just sounds like a nightmarish existence.  Let's try to make America look a little less like a police state, OK?

(I'm not going to deal with suggestions that we would have less of a problem if more people were armed.  I dealt with that last time, and it's a set up for an easy punchline, not a real argument.)

I understand the reasoning behind these suggestions, though.  America is panicky right now, and if you're saying gun control isn't the answer, you want to be able to point to something else that is.  Understandable, but a bad strategy.  The gun folk just need to be honest and say, "There is no solution.  We live in a world where, every once in a while, a crazy person shoots a bunch of people, just like we live in a world where earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes happen."  As far as I can see, those are the only two solutions: do something about the guns, or admit that there's nothing that can be done.  Because guns ARE the problem.  You don't have guns, you don't have mass shootings.  That's the one factor that made a difference.

So OK, I don't believe we can do much to keep guns out of the hands of crazy people.  I don't have any solution based on government intervention.  But I do have a suggestion that could prove helpful: more sex.

Because looking at the people that commit these crimes (er, not to mention a rather large portion of the pro-gun advocates out there), they have some issues.  And the place to resolve those issues is in the bedroom.  I'm advocating that gun owners, and would-be gun owners, have more BDSM sex.  Put on the leather boots, pull out the whips and ball gags, and work those issues out in private.  I don't know how successful this campaign could be, but potentially it could prevent not only some mass shootings, but (maybe even more so) a lot of these overzealous "stand your ground" shootings, or civilians being gunned down by trigger-happy cops.  The solution isn't gun control, and it isn't more guns.  As always, the solution is more sex.