Mixed Media

morn

 

 

 

A ray of hope cracks the dawn

By mid-morning daggers are drawn

Parry and thrust, bring on the night

A battle of two seemingly irreconcilable rights

 

Exhausted, love withers

Morn

 

Laissez Ain't So Fair After All

Over the past two weeks the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen to mid-80's levels: during the past two decades there have been peaks and troughs and booms and busts in which money was made by a few, but the Many (the 50% of all U.S. households that own stocks, either directly or in a mutual fund or retirement plan) would have been better off buying art, wine, raw materials, bonds, leaving their money in Money Market accounts (even after accounting for inflation), or stuffing shoe-boxes with bills, than investing in the stock of public companies. 

The phenomenon is even more pronounced in the US where a the dollar, ravaged by deficits - the product of war, over-consumption and fossil fuel addiction - has devalued investments in US equities relative to those of our competitors, and our relative wealth.

The recent sell-off has been so virulent that it is tempting to wonder if stocks are now cheap.  It more probable that we are seeing a fundamental reappraisal of the value and utility of equities, and that stocks and stock markets will never regain their former place as the prime enablers of capital.

Over the past two decades public corporations have become empire-sized and their executives became despots, less and less answerable to their shareholders. The consequence of this lack of oversight is that much of the value that had previously flowed to corporations balance sheets, has been transferred to a new executive ruling class as “results based” compensation, or lassoed by financial engineers as a reward for inventing sophisticated off-balance sheet financial instruments that created the perception of profit and further enhanced executive class compensation at the Many's expense.

The reality is that the ordinary shareholder is now so far from the trough that investing in stocks has, for the Many, become a mugs game. Certainly the wealthy ran from owning ordinary shares (and funds invested in ordinary shares) many years ago, choosing instead to invest in hedge-funds, or opportunistic Buffetian purchases of preferred stocks with that further distance ordinary shareholders from return on their investments.

From their media exposure to greed orgies lat Enron, Computer Associates, Sunbeam, WorldCom, Adelphia and Tyco, the Many knew that they were getting the crumbs, but persevered because a 401k promised a better return than a Money Market fund and seemed safe enough.

The lesson learned is that there is nothing safe or free about a barely regulated market except that the influencers of the market are free to take whatever return they can justify to themselves.  Lehman boss Dick Fuld snatched  $485m in salary, bonuses and options between 2000 and 2007. Last year Merrill Lynch chairman Stan O'Neal retired after announcing losses of $8bn, grabbing  $161m as he walked out the door.  This year bankers at Wall Street's top 6 firms will (unless we protest loudly) receive pay and bonuses worth more than $70bn,despite their starring role in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The illusion of safety destroyed; and having seen their life savings decimated (along with their hopes that their children and their children’s children will live richer more prosperous lives than they) by events way beyond their control, the Many are heading for the exits - shareholders took $43.5 billion from stock funds last month and an additional $49.3 billion last week.  Severely bitten, and in spite of the occasional mammoth upside leap, they will not easily come back.

The irony of the economic meltdown is that the US government, having created a trillion dollar Sovereign Triage Fund, is now scrambling to buy the very stocks that the Many off-loaded: deliriously inverting the Sovereign Wealth model where cash-rich developing nations such as Singapore and China purchase (supposedly) high-quality global assets for the benefit of their citizens, and creating ever greater jeopardy by nationalizing the market's failures in the hope that this will save the whole.

The socialization of risk can only work if it is accompanied by offsetting regulation and socialization of reward; otherwise the unfortunate result will be a Soviet-style model that benefits only government bureaucrats (Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson’s swapping two years of service for a $200 Million tax break on selling his Goldman stock being a particularly egregious leap in the wrong direction). Essential steps to a fair and efficient market are:

• Limiting executive compensation to X [say the salary of the President] plus a percentage of annual profits
• Restricting public companies to one class of stock
• Setting statutory debt/capital ratios that apply beyond banking and finance to every public enterprise
• Finite limits on investment fund leverage [to prevent deleveraging disasters such as the one we are experiencing now]
  
• Encouraging savings through tax relief on interest earned on incremental deposits
• Restricting the marketing or sale of any debt or equity instrument for which there is no established exchange or market [designed to foster liquidity and the development of new markets rather than discourage innovation]
• Taxing retained wealth through higher taxes on property, dividends etc., to offset the inequitable distribution of the past two decades
• Securities regulation and oversight of all major financial institutions by a Global Authority [simply recognizing the reality that finance is now and forever more a globally interconnected business].
  

Even then, investment in stocks and stock markets will never be predictable or safe and the Many should be discouraged from placing their retirement and life savings in the markets directly. They should instead be offered government debt promising a predictable return

This will inevitably lead to a smaller public equity sector and an enormous pool of state capital (the sum total of our retirement and savings), that must then be invested by the best asset managers almost infinite money can buy, in industries of strategic importance to the Many (infrastructure, sustainable energy, healthcare, and food production); investments without which we will surely lose our prosperity and our beneficial place in the world

Beyond Oblivion

Until recently I was the Chief Executive Officer of Urban Box Office. Inc., [“UBO”], a record label that vigorously stirred the melting-pot and ruffled George W. Bush’s feathers, when, in April of 2006 it released “Nuestro Himno”, an all-star recording of the Star Spangled Banner, in Spanish, and in solidarity with undocumented immigrants. Prior to founding UBO, I produced records, managed artists, supervised movie scores, executive-produced movie soundtracks, and worked as a bouncer at punk concerts, having started out making tea for pop-stars at a recording studio in central London.

Obscured by the hysteria accompanying Nuestro Himno’s release was that UBO had become a successful independent record label, with a unique business model, which was described by Ethan Smith in the Wall Street Journal as follows:

"UBO, as the label is known, relies on low prices, direct contact with potential customers and an ad-hoc distribution network reaching thousands of neighborhood stores -- including bodegas, gas stations and hair salons -- that many music companies either ignore or cede to middlemen"

Music retailers’ response to our effort to reduce the price of CDs was to gouge. We often found our CDs (which wholesaled at $6.00 in the expectation they would be sold for under $10) on their shelves priced at $12.99, $15.99, even $20 or more. The gouging jeopardized our business model and our relationships with artists who complained that we were subsidizing retailers, by reducing value of their share of net revenues.

Worse, we discovered that some retailers were bootlegging our products – a practice prevalent in Latin music retail that rips off record companies, consumers and artists for the sole benefit of the retailers, for whom each sale becomes an untaxed pure profit event.

Ripping-off artists has always been absurdly easy in the record business, as artists are reluctant to offend the grand egos they hope will market them to superstardom, and are invariably represented by managers, agents and attorney’s that are too indebted to the great egos to put up much more than the semblance of a fight, and whose concept of a Chinese wall is an entree at Mr. Chows.

Without oversight, successive generations of executives have over-marketed albums to gain market share, chart success, and personal glory (as did I), and then so under-priced those assets in their dealings with other media that they have not been left with sufficient capital leverage their content themselves.

Among the more delirious examples of record business largesse are; three decades of giving music videos away to broadcasters like MTV and BET, without sharing in the revenues from advertising inserted into the videos, channel subscriber fees, or taking an equity stake in the channels themselves; and enabling Apple to monopolize the digital distribution of music so completely that it determines pricing, availability, and the extent of its own competition.

A back-of-a-cracked-jewel-pack calculation of the transference of wealth from the major labels to Steve Jobs, Sumner Redstone and all that sail with them, looks like this:

On April 25th, 2007 Apple reported record quarterly profits of $770 Million, driven by sales of 10.5 million iPods. 15.6% of Apple’s $85 Billion market cap is derived from iTunes, 22.8% from the iPod, worth a combined $35 Billion; Viacom’s music channels contribute half of MTV Networks free cash flow and are worth another $10 Billion or so.  Given Warner Music Group’s 13% global market share and  $2.55 Billion market cap, the current value of the global record business is less than $20 Billion – less than half that of the Apple and Viacom music interests, built leveraging its content.

Compounding the industry’s problems is that music is not as essential it was. In London, in the late 70’s, it was the primary expression of our tribal and life-style affiliations. ‘Soul boys’ listened to R&B, ‘skinheads’ to ska, ‘punks’ to near-music, ‘metal-heads’ to hard rock, and every weekend I would hang out at import shops listening to the latest reggae pre-release, before taking the best home and spinning them in solitude, in Hi-Fi, on my stereo system!

I don’t know anybody who listens to music like that anymore, certainly not my daughters or their friends, who graze it while eating, reading and banging out blogs. Music, once a recreational activity, has become the soundtrack to our lives, and the consequence of its new role is that we are never going to pay premium for it again.

So what to do?

The first step is to stop selling pre-recorded music CDs; they are absurdly expensive and taxing on the environment to manufacture and distribute, may be returned without penalty, contain ‘filler’ to justify their unjustifiable (in a digital world) price, and are for retailers, mobsters, street-entrepreneurs and consumers alike, the perfect bootlegging device.

The second step is to push all music online without copy protection having forced Apple (as a proxy for all of the manufacturers of digital players and keepers of proprietary online digital music stores) to:

• License iTunes (on a similar royalty basis to that paid the inventors of the CD) to anyone wanting to open a digital music store, encouraging real world competition on price, service, selection, and user experience, and interfacing with a vast range of newly compatible devices. 
• Pay a royalty on every iPod sold. Currently, only 20 or so of the 400 songs on an average iPod are purchased, the rest are ripped (mostly from CDs).   If each iPod were sold with the expectation that 600 songs would be ripped onto it in its lifetime, and a 10 cent royalty paid on each, the 40 ++ million MP3 players projected to ship in 2007 would generate $2 Billion plus, attributable almost directly to the bottom line  - more than the 2006 profits of all the record companies combined. A $20 per unit payment in respect of the 100 million plus iPods already sold should generate an additional $2 Billion. (An iPod royalty is already paid by Apple in France and by Microsoft in respect to the Zune)

It will be argued that my proposal is too extreme, that CD sales, though declining, are still 90% of revenues and that as these revenues cannot possibly be replaced day one, the industry will be worse rather than better off without them. I counter by pointing out that CD sales (already barely profitable due to the high cost of manufacture and physical distribution) are declining precipitously, and no longer support specialist music retail, leaving the industry at the mercy of Wal-Mart loss leading and a spiraling downward trend; and that Apple will agree these terms, because without access to premium content, iTunes is Mp3.com with a few bells and whistles.

we buy used Russian washing machines in bad condition

Havana, Cuba 9-7-2006/9-10- 2006

This, my second visit to Havana was more illustrative and unsettling than the first, a vacation with my daughters in 2004; perhaps because the city was on ‘lockdown’ in preparation for the meeting of the 116 members of the Non-Aligned Movement; an organization that lobbies for freer and more equitable world trade, and includes such exemplary free-thinking ‘independent’ states as Zimbabwe, Congo, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea; perhaps because I was traveling with a Superstar Reggaeton DJ, whose perceptions and observations were constructed upon the firm foundation of an understanding both language and the culture; and certainly because Fidel Castro has become little more than a delusional tyrant who betrays the intelligence, ingenuity, pride, hope and dreams of his people 24/7/365

Our first experience of ‘lockdown‘ came minutes after we touched down on Cuban soil, when agents of the Interior Ministry, armed with Russian guns and power by proxy, approached us the customs area, separated us from the masses and then each other, and then played 20-questions. How and why had I accumulated so many stamps in my passport in such a short time? What was the purpose of my various visits to Turkey, Singapore, and in particular Israel? Why was I carrying so much cash (try using a credit card drawn on a US bank in Cuba)? They seemed to have half a notion that we were enemy agents with plans to embarrass Castro in front of his global cronies - as if any help were needed.

I told the first agent, and then a second, and then another more senior, plain-clothed big-dog that our visit was to celebrate the Superstar Reggaeton DJ’s birthday as well as experience Reggaeton, Cuban style. It took repetition for my shtick to stick; the big-dog just couldn’t quite belive that we could be interested in a street culture that the state, clinging to antiquity as if it were precious rather than dusty and irrelevant, forces underground.

By the time the big-dog handed us back our passports, apparently now comfortable that we offered no clear, or present, or rational danger to the glorious republic, the youngest of the agents, a baby-faced thug with huge damp patches under his armpits and over his chest, had engaged the superstar Reggaeton DJ in passionate cultural conversation – how did we think the local favorites Gente d’ Zona, stacked up against Reggaeton superstars like, Don Omar, Tego Calderon, Daddy Yankee, Wisn y Yandel and Ivy Queen?

The road from the airport to Havana is pot-holed and bellied, badly lit, and eerily devoid of commercial outdoors advertising. However, posters of Fidel and Che Guevara – the only pop star of revolution with truly global reach – abound. At major intersections, the headlights of matchbox-sized Soviet-era cop cars, peered inquisitively into a night otherwise backlit by a braggadocios, two-dimensional, golden, full moon. A light rain wandered onto the windshield where it was smeared by worn wiper blades, partially obscuring the psychedelic horizon and a pyrotechnic electrical storm.

Closing in on the city centre, we were flagged to a stop by a gaggle of cops with thick ticket-pads and sneering lop-sided snarls. Their contempt is inbred; like many absolute monarchs, Castro employs the sons and daughters of impoverished peasants to keep the lid on his cities, which they do enthusiastically, having no vested interest in the welfare of the people they police. According to the cops our driver had turned left without indicating. The cabbie explained that the bulb in the indicator light had blown and the dealer had not had a replacement part in stock. The cop shrugged his indifference to the cabbie and his excuse and wrote the ticket regardless, demanding that the $30 fine be paid on the spot.

The cabbie became dangerously indignant, pointing out loudly/virulently that many of the historic whips for which Havana is famous, pre-date indicators or require bulbs that are no longer manufactured or imported. We settled the matter by donating the fine, which seemed only fair, as a cabbie working for the state earns rice, beans, chicken, pork (no beef) milk, healthcare (provided by Venezuelans as the more experienced Cuban doctors are pimped to richer nations for hard currency, abroad), an education, housing of sorts, and around $7 bucks a week.

The next morning, in wet 33 degree heat, I led the Superstar Reggaeton DJ up El Malecon, a magnificent thoroughfare that skirts the Atlantic Ocean, from historic Havana (a massive restoration project waiting on regime change to gain real momentum) to Miramar, a wealthy, could be anywhere, enclave where Castro’s cronies live in Robb Report luxury, and fun loving foreigners with $250,000 or more burning a hole in their pockets, buy condos and over-populate near-chic restaurants and bars, where they ponder the miniscule differences between privilege in Cuba and privilege back home.

Wandering back to nowhere in particular and in absolutely no hurry at all, we window-shopped barren stores and gangster-posed next to a fabulous dark green Packard Super 8 in the late stages of a loving restoration. The Superstar Reggaeton DJ made much of being humbled; he had so much (we are talking S65AMG’s, Breitlings, and all things bling) and was unquestionably on the fast track to more, while they had so little – materially speaking. One could tell that the observation made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside, as one does when one has the protection of privilege against the ravages of the cruel world.

At one of many stands selling crude bootleg CDs, DVDs and games, I bought a Don Omar’s ‘King of Kings’ CD for $2. My plan was to bring it back to the RIAA as further proof that the global battle against piracy is lost, but as luck would have it we found ourselves walking in-step with 3 pretty, friendly, Don Omar fans who had more use for the CD than I.

We spent the rest of a glorious day with those girls in their world, drinking gently-mixed (rum, mint, lime, and sugar) Mojitos in a thin passageway decorated with magnificent if aging graffiti art, eating in Paladar, an illicit, unmarked, Casablanca styled and themed restaurant with Bogart-pics on the walls, where Cuban’s with black-market cash to spend may sample the 4-forbidden pleasures – lobster, beef, shrimp and privacy. 3 hours of rum and fun later, they took us home,

Home was on the fourth and top floor of a nondescript too-much-sand-in-the-mix, concrete building, sandwiched in between two glorious colonial buildings in sad disrepair. A tiny living room, furnished with a sagging twin bed and a worn couch, and decorated with offerings to various Santerian saints, led to a microscopic bedroom with fungus blackened damp concrete walls and a tiny picture window bragging a perfect view of the Malecon and the ocean beyond. To left of the bedroom was the only kitchen/bathroom combo I have ever seen anywhere. On the stove was a Castro pressure cooker; one of 100,000 distributed to Cubans every month, essential weapons in Castro's latest battle to reassert control over the nation's economy.

The distribution was designed to "do away with the rustic kitchen," Castro had told the Federation of Cuban Women, boasting that the new cookers would use half the energy of the homemade ones they’d replaced, thereby helping to lessen Cuba’s dependence on foreign oil. It went unsaid that the distribution would destroy the thriving business of manufacturing the cookers from imported molds, one of Cuba’s few successful and legal private enterprises.

Two of the three girls, Jessie, the pretty twin of a rare Eastern Panther, and Glevis lived in that apartment with their grandmother and a scrawny cat. The third, Uleisi, ‘the quiet one’ lived a couple of doors down.

The most important thing in the apartment, apart from these extraordinarily women, was the TV, which was hooked up to an illegal dish on the roof, and broadcast our news, our shows, our gossip, our commercials; our material dreams, in real time. And the girls were smitten, salivating to taste Sonic burgers, to try Big Macs, to ride Batman & Robin, to fall into the Gap, to wear Chanel, paint their nails and the town with Revlon, and listen to Reggaeton, the urban Latin soundtrack to post hip hop consumption.

Once upon a time, in states such the old Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa, the government did a pretty good job of isolating the people from the world. This is not the case in Cuba. Cubans see us and they see themselves through our eyes, and they cannot believe that we are so unsophisticated that we cannot understand that it is possible for them to be proud of their country and yet want to experience our material good fortune -without becoming obese (phat not fat). And while they do desperately want Castro to go, they aren’t quite ready to push him because they do still respect and revere his contribution to their unique identity and their pride, and because they have been babied to the point they are scared to face our seemingly unfreindly world without him.

The evening came and the boardwalk that runs along the Malecon, lit as it was by a full omnipresent moon, beckoned. I crossed the road first, then the Superstar Reggaeton DJ. The girls did not follow, instead they huddled together on the city-side of the road, Confused, I waved them over, hoping that we could all kick-it perched on the sea wall, but they stayed put, waving us to come back.

A few increasingly desperate gestures later, we jaywalked back across the Malecon, but they walked quickly away. We followed them for a few hundred yards, without making an impression on their lead. Finally, they turned right into dark a side street, stopped, and waited. As we approached we saw that worry had replaced joy on their faces, and that they looked a decade older. Jessie explained that it was dangerous for them to be seen in the street with us after dark, as they might be arrested as whores (for fraternizing with the enemy, perhaps). At that very moment a leering cop with black beads for eyes strode up to Jessie, demanding to see her papers… She flicked a warning gaze at us, to move us on, and on we went, disprited, the bitter after-taste of apartheid fizzing on our lips.

We’d walked about a mile when we stumbled a dusty store crammed with pre-owned washing machines and a mountain of their spare parts. A sign above the store read:

“We buy used Russian washing machines in bad condition.”

We turned to each other and swapped the sardonic smiles of two people sharing the exact same irony; Castro had bought into some old discredited Soviet shit, repaired it, modified it, and improved on it with donated spare parts, such as buses from China, computers from France, power plants from Spain, and munitions from Russia. Only, it's lemon, it really doesn't work.

free tempo

Earlier this year, Urban Box Office, Inc., [“UBO”] the company of which I am CEO, signed David Sanchez Badillo, AKA “Tempo”, the most iconic figure in the young history of urban Latin music, to a long-term recording contract.

Tempo was and is imprisoned in the Colman Medium Security Federal Penitentiary, a few miles and a world away from Orlando, Florida. He was arrested in 2002; charged and later convicted on purely circumstantial and particularly flimsy evidence of shitting on his own doorstep - conspiracy to distribute of an ungodly and totally preposterous amount of hard drugs (30-something kilos of heroin) from the Lirios del Sur housing-project in Ponce, Puerto Rico, where he was born and raised.

Tempo was grabbed along with his oversized and egoed manager, Francisco Muriel Castillo AKA Buda and over 70 others. Buda and Tempo faced similar evidence/facts (the bulk of which seeped from 3 fantasizing, skin-saving, triple-dealing, snitches). Their evidence was that Buddha led the gang and that Tempo managed the spot, and that together they participated in all aspects of the distribution of drugs.

Tragically, Buda persuaded Tempo to let him ‘finance’ and ‘handle’ his defense at trial. The net-net being that Buda walked having proven or at least convinced the jury that he traveled far too much and was far too successful a legitimate businessman to be a Don, which left Tempo holding the 30-kilos and an obscene 292-month sentence. To add egregious insult to injury, Buda also walked from his promise to pay Tempo’s legal bills, which gathered interest until Daddy Yankee and UBO paid them.

On January 17th, 2006 UBO along with Tempo’s family, fans and friends launched the Free Tempo campaign with a hugely successful press conference in San Juan, PR. At the conference a platoon of urban stars signed the Free Tempo petition, and Daddy Yankee, flanked by Tego and Hector “The Father” read a letter from Tempo to the world. In the letter Tempo thanked us all for their support and forcefully and convincingly protested his innocence…

On Labor Day morning I went to visit Tempo in jail, not for the first time, and almost certainly not for the last, as the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is not scheduled to decide Tempo’s fate for many months.

I arrived at the penitentiary at 8.30 am, in time to see the sun burning a smoky haze off the rolling coils of barbed wire that add menace to the penitentiary’s perimeter fence, and a Hawk swoop on a kitten sized rat.

The waiting room was teaming with out-of-school kids. One of them; a pre-teen diva, was boasting loudly to a dark skinned cluster that her visit was going to be short as she had to go with her mom to go visit another brother at another jail later that afternoon. Apparently her situation was neither extraordinary or unique, as she was quickly joined conversation by a hard driving Ms Daisy with two sons, two grandsons, a granddaughter and a long list of more distant relatives boarding at various jails across the state, and a Harley driving ex-Angel, whose father was in Colman, whose stepfather resided in a Southern California jail, and whose brother and sister were imprisoned in a Texas,

45-minutes passed before a billy-goateed, gruff, warden escort called me and a handful of other adults to come forward, reciting our names, with some difficulty, from our driving licenses and passports. I quickly sterilized my hands with a clorox wipe, before traipsing off to the welcome lobby followed by the others and a gaggle of their excited kids.

More often than not, the wardens take one or more visitors aside to test their heads, shoulders, hands, knees and soles for the residue of narcotics. Thankfully today was not one of those days, as it is easy to fail the test (even if you've never handled dope in your life), because more than 80% of US banknotes in circulation bear traces of one narcotic or another (hence the Clorox wipes), and you can catch dope residue from door handles, toilet seats, a kiss, or a puddle. Instead, we were herded straight to a prehistoric metal detector; so primitive that it trips up on bra-wire every time.

Today was to be no exception, and a short, sharp, bitter-chocolate, big breasted, lady-girl, triggered the alarm time after time after time. After refusing to take the bra off, she abandoned her mission, insisting, much to the gallery’s amusement that her: "… Titties need support…" And that she had no intention of:“… taking my (her) shit off…” Before accusing the Warden: “… I reckon you’re just a pervert that likes to see ‘em jiggle.” Needless to say her visiting privileges were revoked.

The warden escort then branded backs of our left hands with an ink that is only visible under certain fluorescent lights, before marching us up the concrete path to the cell block in single-file. On the way the kids became subdued – Disneyland was 50 miles and a dream away.

The infernal din of conversation, amplified by concrete walls and highly-polished floors lay in wait for us in the visiting room. I adjusted my eyes to the stark florescent lighting. More than twenty inmates bottled in green threads, the exact hue, reflecting the number of vigorous washes survived and therefore time served, as surely as the rings on a tree, were inter-dispersed between groups of visitors.

It is tempting to look into the inmate’s faces, as one might the faces of madmen and speculate as to their crimes. I won’t lie; I have indulged in such speculation on occasion. The conclusion I’ve come to, which like every generalization demands to be immediately discounted, is that most of the men were to some degree guilty by way of greed and that in some but by no means all cases their greed might be mitigated by need. The strange thing is that the more you stare the less you care because you become drawn to smoldering bottled-in pain… the odd weep as a kid bounces off a lap, or a girlfriend whispers something naughty or nice.

It usually takes a while for prisoners to be ‘brought down’ from the cells and today was to be no exception. In limbo, restless, I vended myself a lunch of microwaveable BBQ chicken wings and microwaveable fries, which I swilled down with a Coke, and topped off with a microwaveable apple crumb pie. Sitting down to feast from my lap, I bemoaned the removal of the ‘patio’ style tables and chairs, which had been introduced shortly before my previous visit, before being suddenly withdrawn. Apparently the above-the-groin shield that the solid plastic tabletops afforded had encouraged an epidemic of hand jobs, blowjobs and other illicit sexual favors and just deserts. “Give the bastard’s an inch… “ A cowboy-styled Warden cautioned me “… and they’ll take a fucking mile. Give them more than that and they’ll stab you with it.”

Still no Tempo!

At the table to the right of me a pregnant lady in a black dress and dark demeanor was negotiating with her young son to pull his pants up and re-loop his belt, Her carrot being that ‘this time’ she wouldn’t belt him with it. The kid seemed inclined not to trust her as he fled to the prison-playroom, jeans hanging midway down his ass. To the left of me two little girls had just received their icy Pops – the youngest serenading him with tears, and the other with an icy glare that over-matched his. On a previous visit an inmate had explained the reaction of his two kids to his incarceration like this…

“The younger one, is just sad I’m not around, the older one blames me for every hardship. Every day she blames me more and we drift further apart. The fucked up thing is that there is nothing I or anyone else can do about it.”

At 11 am the duty warden announces the ‘count’ over an underpowered and staticy PA system, as one might a fight, and the green bottles line up against the cinderblock wall of the adjacent outdoor extension, to be hand-counted.

A commotion! Apparently they are one bottle short… After a short but tense delay, a young Rasta strides back into the visiting room from the holding area; nonchalantly, blissfully unaware of the near panic his escorted, but apparently, unrecorded visit to the restroom had caused.

As the inmates filed back in the din-volume increased to its former glory. I swung my gaze around the room - to the far corner, where a clebrated narcotics ‘entrepreneur’ was playing Monopoly with his fine lady and kids – a holiday perk. His son was winning, beating him so baldly as to be disrespectful. The entrepreneur taught the kid a life lesson in humility by brushing the pieces off the board.

Finally, at 11.50 am, Tempo shuffled in. apologizing for his tardiness and unkempt appearance. Explaining that though the guards had informed him he had a visitor, the rules forbade them from telling him exactly who. Regretably, I had only fifteen minutes of visit left, as my flight was scheduled to leave from Orlando International at 1.27 pm. So we talked fast and furiously, the intensity of our conversation cutting out the chaos around us.

Waiting, waiting, waiting to be escorted out, I overheard a Latino sister scolding her brother – “Bored! You come here once every three months, and you can’t even fake it that you’re interested in him. I come here ever week come rain or shine. When he needs a smile I give him one. If he needs a hand to hold, there is mine. You can’t even listen. What he did, he did for us, whether he was right or wrong – he had that reason.”

The brother is not interested in the weights and measures of commitment and shrugs "… If he’d asked I’d have told him not to bother. ‘Cause I don’t need nothing’ from him. I can get all that I need on my own.” She snarls: “Gangster” right back at him and looks away. Perhaps wondering how long it’ll be before she’s visiting him

The escort warden unbolts the door. I look back to Tempo for an instant, waving a best-I-can-do-but-I-am-aware-its-pathetic, clenched fist to express my 'solidarity' and resolve to help. Tempo, waves the fist back, looking away, bottling his emotion in his greens. I left him alone – one green bottle standing by the wall, paying penance for all of our sins – the contrast between his and my circumstance staggering.

Walking down the concrete path back to the lobby the escort barks at one of the kids “In single file”. The kid’s steps back into his mothers shadow muttering:

“Ma, this place is worse than nursery school. They’ve got rules for walking talking, eating, shitting, sleeping. It’s like they think that just because someone made a mistake they’re stupid. Well, everybody makes mistakes – so everybody must be stupid.”

fear of a latino planet

I’ve become indelibly associated with, “Nuestro Himno”, a gorgeous and respectful recording of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, performed by an array of all-stars, like Wycleff, Pitbull, Reik, Kalimba, Patrulla 81, Olga Tanon, Voz a Voz, P-Star and others [hear it at http://www.somos-americanos.com]

We recorded the anthem in Spanish to protest the inhumane and counter-economic route that the immigrant haters such as the pompous buffoon, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., are taking, and to expose their blind bigotry. Our recording, though respectful and patriotic, is as much a protest song as “Give Peace a Chance”.

What is most ludicrous to me about the debate is that immigration is demand driven – cheap, unprotected, easy-to-exploit labor, empowers our fabulous lives. Where would we be without south of the border friends who will cook, clean, trim, cure, nurse; in fact do anything for us as long as it turns their sweat into Pesos. In case you cannot hear me, I am insisting that the ‘undocumented immigrants’ have been invited to America to serve us, and that the border is porous only because we choose it to be so.

Nuestro Himno’s release touched raw, reactionary nerve and provoked a typically unthinking Bush response. Having wasted away his slender political capital on ill-considered foreign adventures, GW used a Rose Garden press conference to blabber on about how the Star Spangled Banner should always and forever be sung in English.

Minimal due diligence would have uncovered that the national anthem had been sung in Spanish at one or more of GW’s own Texas pep rallies, as the prospective Governor strove to ‘lasso’ in the Latino vote. Further furrowing may have discovered the four translations of the anthem into Spanish commissioned by the State Department, that are posted on the departments own website. Digging deeper still, Administration lackeys would have become aware of a 1919 Carnegie Hall performance of the anthem (in Italian) by the Sistine Singers that brought New York to its feet. Indeed, the anthem has been performed in French, Hebrew, German, Portuguese and Polish by previous generations of immigrants without any measurable harm to the body patriotic. As Secretary of State, Condoleezza “Blahnik” Rice said on CBS’ Face The Nation:

“I've heard the national anthem done in rap versions, country versions, classical versions. The individualization of the American national anthem is quite under way. From my point of view, people expressing themselves as wanting to be Americans is a good thing.”

A couple of weeks ago, a whole lot of media attention was given to Geno’s – a tacky Philadelphia landmark bragging signs that state that customers must order their world-famous cheese steaks in English, if they want to be served at all. News reports tended to focus on Gino himself, a bombastic, wickedly-ignorant, intolerance peddler with a slanted self-satisfied smile, who seems to believe that his Italian forefathers learned English on the boat, rather than slowly over many generations.

At the same time the Pennsylvania House of Representatives joined the “English is our Official Language” bandwagon, disrespecting the memory of the (immigrant) Founding Fathers who had come together in Philadelphia, a couple of centuries earlier, to declare America’s independence with the words:

“That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Needless to say, there was no gotta-speak-English qualifier.

Already disgusted by the torrent of abusive, threatening Emails we have gotten since the release of the Anthem (invariably written in English so poor you pity the author’s lack of elementary education), and provoked by Geno’s bigotry, we decided to protest Philadelphia’s descent from freedom loving radicalism to intolerance, by performing Nuestro Himno outside Geno’s on Independence Day.

I flew into Philadelphia International Airport from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on July 4th, by way of New York. A display tribute to the legendary Philadelphia International producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff along the concourse between the gates and the terminal building was a forceful reminder of the city’s extraordinarily musical heritage.

Ridiculous humidity, made more so by suffocating black clouds seemingly ready to burst without further provocation, added to the tension of the day. The Salvadorian cabbie that picked me up from the airport, had his radio tuned to Le Super 1360am, WNJC, our partner station, which was busy blasting news of our event, to be held at La Lupe, a Mexican restaurant adjacent to Geno’s on South 9th Street. Gabriel and Guadalupe Bravo, La Lupe’s very elegant ant cultured owners had gotten tired of Geno’s bellicose racism and were happy to support our modest counter-attack.

South 9th street was decked out for Independence Day in smart red, white, and blue threads. The Bands playing on the stage outside Geno’s reflected the - "lets freeze time before the 60’s ruined the universe" - attitude of the boss and his establishment - Rock Around The Clock was as cutting edge as the day’s entertainment got...

There was an uneasy tension between our performance and our audience and the rather geriatric affair taking place next door. It could have played out in many different ways. However, just as the snarl exchange between the two peoples threatened to become something more serious, the day took an extraordinary and hopeful turn; as the clouds finally dumped their heavy load, members of the sound crew working with Geno cameover to us to praise Voz a Voz (for their sweet harmonies and vocal prowess) making it absolutely clear that Geno did not reflect their attitudes or those of their community.

It was one of those moments that instills belief in humanity and brings a quiet weep to one's eyes. I trotted down the block light footed. On the corner was a dilapidated convenience store. Attached to its door was a crude sign. The sign listed a bunch of things the owners didn’t want in his store – number 5 on the list was any question in Spanish.

In 1990, Public Enemy released the classic Album “Fear of a Black Planet”. Here in Philadelphia, on South 9th street, in what has become a border town, fear of a black planet has been replaced by a fear of a Latino America… The South 9th street I visited felt unpleasently like Johannesburg in the final years of apartheid.

That is a path we cannot allow any place to take.

2 Dopes with Pincushion Asses, 1 double standard

Barry Bonds, is among the most vilified sportsmen in history. Lance Armstrong, among the most revered.

Barry is on pace to break Hank Aaron’s home run record sometime in 2007; he has won the NL MVP Award a record 7 times. Lance is the most successful cyclist in history; in 2005 he won the Tour de France for a record 7th consecutive time.

Barry is thought to have started using steroids in 1998 to compete with lesser (but juiced) sluggers such as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. It is alleged that he "doped up" massively for at least the next 5 seasons. Lance is believed to have started using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs the same year, initially to rebuild strength following extensive chemotherapy (as he successfully battled cancer), eventually to win.

Since 1995, Lance has been associated with the controversial trainer, Michele Ferrari – nicknamed "Dr. Evil". On October 1, 2004, an Italian court convicted Ferrari of two doping-related offenses, sporting fraud and the unlawful distribution of medicines. Many of Lance’s colleagues have since accused him of doping, including 3-time Tour de France winner, fellow American Greg LeMond.

Since 1998, Barry has been associated with The BALCO labs and not one but two controversial trainers, Greg Anderson and Victor Conte. On September 3, 2003, Federal officials raided BALCO's offices in Burlingame. CA. Conte has since cooperated with Federal agents by implicating 27 star athletes, including Bonds, as having received performance-enhancing drugs.

In 2004, reporters David Walsh and Pierre Ballester published LA Confidential, a well-documented retrospective book detailing Lance’s doping regime. Lance is alleged to have injected the steroids in his ass.

In 2006, two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams published Game of Shadows, a well-documented retrospective book detailing Barry’s doping regime. Like Lance, Barry is alleged to have injected the steroids in his ass.

Steroids are a Category III controlled substance under federal law. But while federal law outlaws the possession, manufacture, and distribution of steroids, it does not outlaw their use.

Until the end of the 2002 season, steroids were not tested for or subject to punishment under the rules of Major League Baseball or the Basic Agreement between the league and the Major League Baseball Players' Association.

Though steroids were outlawed, and tested for, in other sports, including professional football, cycling, and in the Olympic Games, baseball had not yet taken those steps. In fact before 2006, a Major League Baseball player could not be permanently banned for steroid use.

If guilty, Lance was breaking all of the laws of his sport…

If guilty, Barry was breaking none of the laws of his sport…

AND YET:

Though, steroids do not guide a bat to the ball… Barry, the greatest slugger of his and perhaps any generation, is loathed and resented. Though, steroids do propel cyclists up mountains more quickly... Lance, a journeyman, allegedly transformed by dope into a superstar, is given every conceivable benefit of the doubts that have swirled aroung his heroic feats for years, and just this week recieved his 4th straight ESPY as [would you belive it] "Male Athlete of The Year", trading barbs about urine tests with Will Ferrell. As of yet there is no movement to qualify (or disqualify) Lance’s achievements with an asterisk, as seems to be the will of the sheep when it comes to Bonds.

WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD?

While, Lance (who in retirement makes $16.5 million a year from Coca-Cola, Subaru, Nike and Bristol Meyers) was patriotically destroying foreign competition, Barry, who seldom smiles for the camera, or plays nice with the fans or pundits (and as a result has little to endorse but his own talent) was unapologetically usurping an American icon - Babe Ruth.

Perhaps protesting the absence of the requisite Gump-grin, sportswriters, sportscasters, and sports-legends have anointed Barry 'surly' en-mass, and fan-fanatics pound sports-talk radio stretching 'surly' via 'cheat' to 'Judas' and beyond.

Recently, a Dodgers-capped-cabbie with powder-puff white skin, spat a vicious sermon on Barry at me through random teeth, crawling from Hollywood to LAX. His parting barrage was: “Bonds, is an uppity Nigger that don't belong anywhere near Cooperstown [Site of the Baseball Hall of Fame] or the Babe"

To the cabbie and a multitude of bigots, it's not about the dope... It's a given that athletes, moguls, and presidents cheat... It's about race and knowing your place.

Apparently, and thankfully, Barry does not know his.