Mediocrity Is the Catch of the Day

I don't spell good when I write an email
But I'm no dropout, got a shiny degree
Majored in bong hits at the University
Now I work in a cube and my dealer's in jail

Don't see the point of lots of punctuation
An ellipsis, what's that? Just some dots on the run
Commas or a dash don't make no difference at all
Slows me down to write 'em on the bathroom stall

I wrote this song, and it's sort of OK
But I left it like this 'cause the gig don't pay
So sing along with me, just do what I say
Mediocrity is the catch of the day

I take a long lunch while I surf for some porn
Don't look so disgusted when you know it's the norm
This job pays good so I can go to the bar
Drink ten beers and then find my new car

We had a cool band and we used to rehearse
Then someone brought the bong and man, that was a curse
One guy made it, yeah he made it big time
He plays drumset and makes big money in crime

I wrote this song, and it's sort of OK
But I left it like this 'cause the gig don't pay
So sing along with me, just do what I say
Mediocrity is the catch of the day

(c) 2007 by Alexa Weber Morales

Things That Irk Me

1. Cynicism.
2. Bad email etiquette in all its forms.
3. Meetings in which people surprise other people with the agenda.
4. Meetings in which people gang up on other people in arguments.
5. Meetings that probably signify I'm about to lose a lucrative gig for no real reason other than mismanagement.
6. Improper use of the brainstorming technique. (You're not supposed to analyze, just throw out ideas. And no, if you go home and do it by yourself, that's not brainstorming. It's actually better done in a group.)
7. People lacking management experience coming into a leadership position with no understanding that they could learn appropriate skills through training and reading.
8. Always being polite and nice and having my suggestions ignored or being laid off as a result.
9. Dealing with harmful idiots, as opposed to harmless idiots, whom I rather like.
10. People who are leaders in title only.
11. Creative people who don't understand business skills.
12. Business people who discount great ideas couched in creative language.
13. Life.
14. Being a bad parent and not knowing how to improve despite feverish Googling. That's sad.
15. Mediocrity and its excuses.
16. Paternalism.
17. Anger management.
18. War.
19. The Internal Revenue Service. It took anger management just to write those three words without any adjectives.
20. War.
21. People who are irrational or mercurial in their beliefs.
22. People who harass other members of a democracy about their politics rather than engaging in reasonable debate.
23. That no matter how hard I work to get everything under control and out of crisis mode it's not.
24. Having to be mature and realize that blabbing about your problems gets you nowhere in this world.
25. That as soon we evolve past one set of socially discriminatory beliefs we develop a new set that is even harder to detect than the previous one.
26. That being a woman working with male software developers or musicians means you're constantly battling a stereotype that they're smarter than you are.
27. Wondering if they are indeed smarter or just have expertise in areas I don't.
28. Wondering if I will ever feel smarter than anyone.
29. Worrying that my boys will not grow up to be good people.
30. Insomnia.
31. People who present false fronts of humility, environmentalism or clean living while acting in cruel and unpious ways within a business.
32. Liars who lie all the time about everything. I prefer a big lie over many small ones. Depending on the lie, I guess.
33. Wars and the idiots who start them.
34. Wars and the difficulty of stopping them.
35. The business of war and how it pervades our culture.
36. Nihilism in popular culture.
37. Screamo music. Ooh, an oxymoron! It is funny music, though. I give it that.
38. The fact that I do not have a personal librarian who appears at my side in times of need and says "Read this, you'll love it" and as a result causes me to absorb great thoughts rather than every drab word written by the Associated Press and various fashion magazines.
39. The new tyranny of beauty forced on women, involving ever more heroic amounts of plastic surgery.
40. The fact that young women today feel obligated to look attractive now in a million new ways, not least of which is their weight, and that for every intelligent female role model there are ten famous strippers.
41. Hair extension abuse.
42. Clothes with logos.
43. Butt implants. You have to sit on them?
44. The fact that an angel investor is not funding my music career as I "take it to the next level."
45. Unscrupulous music bookers who'll give you the gig if you let them play in your band.
46. Bad gigs.
47. Coming home after a bad gig and finding chaos that needs immediate fixing.
48. General yuckiness.
49. Poopy gloppiness.
50. Slithy grak.

I Keep Pulling at the Crabgrass and It Keeps Coming Back

I keep pulling at the crabgrass and it keeps coming back
Thought I'd tackle the patio today so I pried up a strangled brick
The sun was baking everything below the smoggy blue
"Hat be damned" I thought, I'll just yank a few

There's nothing so seductive as a half-discovered root
The sand was cool below the brick as my fingers found a tangle
It tensed a moment and then let go and I shook it in the air
The shoots were palid, succulent, jauntily alive
"Gotcha!" I said and threw them in the corner to dry out

A broken crabgrass segment peeked below the next-door brick
I got the shovel and wedged it in and worked it like a lever
My eyes were blurry but I could feel the weed hiding underneath
I pulled up the brick and there it spread in sand-eating glory
"No more!" I cried, annoyed by its spawning indifference

"Perhaps it's my fault. I laid this patio here," I thought, widening the hole
Now twenty bricks were scattered along with the satisfying clumps
I was making progress, sifting through the sand for remnants
A single cell can regrow the entire unit, that's what happens all the time

My hands are sore and my nails are dirty but I did good work today
I just kept going for six or seven hours and now that grass is gone
They say nothing matches its tenacity, nothing thrives better with neglect
I'll put the patio back in soon. I'll buy clean sand tomorrow.

I keep pulling at the crabgrass and it keeps coming back
I can match your energy, bud, I too thrive on drought alone
I don't know which crack will green up next.
But I've got a shovel and I'll be here my whole life long.

(c) 2007 by Alexandra L. Weber Morales

I Am Writer, Hear Me Roar!

In the last 8.5 hours I interviewed three people, wrote two articles totalling 3,200 words (including revisions for one), sent one piece to the publisher (one day ahead of deadline) and sent the other for review by the interviewees. Yeahhh!! If only I were this productive all the time...

Boy do my butt and back hurt.

When Louis Armstrong Spoke His Mind

Now this is a story! Here's how an intrepid young reporter got a beloved jazz icon to open up about politics--and how the world reacted to the article:

Mr. Lubenow was first told he couldn’t talk to Mr. Armstrong until after the concert. That wouldn’t do. With the connivance of the bell captain, he snuck into Mr. Armstrong’s suite with a room service lobster dinner. And Mr. Armstrong, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, agreed to talk. Mr. Lubenow stuck initially to his editor’s script, asking Mr. Armstrong to name his favorite musician. (Bing Crosby, it turned out.) But soon he brought up Little Rock, and he could not believe what he heard. “It’s getting almost so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country,” a furious Mr. Armstrong told him. President Eisenhower, he charged, was “two faced,” and had “no guts.” For Governor Faubus, he used a double-barreled hyphenated expletive, utterly unfit for print. The two settled on something safer: “uneducated plow boy.” The euphemism, Mr. Lubenow says, was far more his than Mr. Armstrong’s.

Mr. Armstrong bitterly recounted some of his experiences touring in the Jim Crow South. He then sang the opening bar of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” inserting obscenities into the lyrics and prompting Velma Middleton, the vocalist who toured with Mr. Armstrong and who had joined them in the room, to hush him up.

Mr. Armstrong had been contemplating a good-will tour to the Soviet Union for the State Department. “They ain’t so cold but what we couldn’t bruise them with happy music,” he had said. Now, though, he confessed to having second thoughts. “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell,” he said, offering further choice words about the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. “The people over there ask me what’s wrong with my country. What am I supposed to say?”

Patois Records Promo Pic

This is for promotion of our upcoming Patois Records showcase concert at the Little Fox Theater in Redwood City on Sunday, October 21 at 8 pm.

Photo: David Belove
Left to right: Wayne Wallace, Alexa Weber Morales, Kat Parra

Last Night's Gig and a Mean Old Man

Last night's gig in Sacramento got better as the night progressed. Restaurant gigs are always tricky because you're playing background music. While the owners were asking me to turn down my vocals, various listeners were asking me to turn up, or turn down the piano, etc. One person even wrote me this morning to complain the drummer was too loud, although I find that hard to believe, having stood out in the audience to gauge the balance and finding the drummer to be the quietest of the trio! What can I say? When I make it big, I can have a sound engineer travel with me and we can play only listening rooms.

The good: Various audience members came up to say they'd heard me on NPR on Wednesday (not entirely accurate--I was on an NPR station but the interview show was local as far as I know)! I had requests to sing I Think of You, which I had done on the air, and Les Moulins de Mon Coeur, which I had sung a capella. I didn't do the latter as I couldn't find the lyrics.

The bad: I got there at about 4:30 pm to set up, having timed the long Friday afternoon drive to avoid traffic. I backed my car up and parked in front of the restaurant. As I was walking to the restaurant a cigar-smoking 70-year-old man in a fedora and snazzy suit said something to me about having lunch with Hillary Clinton. "Why are you telling me that?" I asked. "I saw the sticker on your car. I'm going to tell Hillary how to be a real girl." He claimed to have consulted for Bush. For some stupid reason I stood there and started talking vaguely about politics with him, although I avoided any detail and just engaged in friendly banter (his solutions to the world's problems, immigration, health, parenting etc. all involved atomic bombs and hanging). Why? Because horrible people like that sometimes draw you in with their duplicitous smile and you think perhaps they're joking. And I like to practice diplomacy in such situations, both to see what the other side thinks and to see if I can score some minor points. It's like a challenge--can I come out of a conversation with an offensive person like this unscathed? The answer is no. I finally told him I had to go because I was performing that night at the restaurant. "Oh? Did you bring your pole? Are you going to strip for us?" I was so disgusted. I said I was a mother of two children and walked off.

Later, as I was loading my gear in, I told the hostess what had happened and said I didn't want this jerk hanging around after I finished the gig. "Oh, he's harmless, but he's very offensive. We all have to deal with him every day. I'm so sorry he said that to you." "What, does he own the place?" "No, but he's very rich and he thinks everyone should know who he is. The women especially, they flock to him, because, well, you know." "What, because he's rich?" "Yeah." I shivered.

I made the mistake of telling my brother and husband and now they plan to go teach this guy a lesson. Of course, they can't hit a 70-year-old ...

Thank You Jeffrey Callison and Company!

The interview on KXJZ Capital Public Radio in Sacramento was really great. I played my keyboard, no small feat! I must confess that ever since my traumatic childhood recitals in which I would make every error that was combinatorially possible, performing on piano is extremely nerve-racking for me. But I did it! You can hear the archive here. I played Ave Rara and my original tune I Think of You. I also sang, a capella, a French tune I'm learning. The interview was enjoyable as well. Callison obviously does his homework. The folks at KXJZ have it made. The studio is quite snazzy, and only three years old. The show is produced very well--you can hear from the archive that they know what they're doing!

There was a nice man in the green room who says he's a bishop in the Knights Templar. He was to follow me as a guest on the show. We had an interesting conversation, and I ended up trading my CD for his book, though actually I did not want to do that (I have trouble saying no). I hope the book provides me with $15 worth of insights and/or enjoyment. No offense to the author, but I've always been burned on trades. People offer to trade CDs, and you take theirs home and realize it's a CD-ROM of bad MP3s with a color copy for a label and no liner notes. Or simply a so-so production without an arranger, engineer, quality players, etc. Or it's a self-published book that no one copy-edited. Or a weird macrame experiment that their sister-in-law rejected. Makes you want to say, ahem, I spent what some might blow on a kitchen remodel or a luxury car making this CD, and you made your offering in your spare time with sitcoms running in the background. Money, of course, is not the measure of quality, but in a world where everyone makes CDs at home it's not a bad place to start! Rant finished.

The Gray Lady is Free Again!

Here's a topic I debated endlessly during my 10 years as a magazine editor at a publishing company: whether or not to charge for online access to current and archived materials. Apparently, the New York Times has seen the light and ended its two-year experiment in restricting access to Op-Ed and other sections of the online edition to paying subscribers. Finally, I can read Bob Herbert again.

The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said.

The Times’s site has about 13 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, far more than any other newspaper site.

Time To Do Up What Summer's Undone

The bite in the air, the slant of the sun
intoxicating autumn has come
With foolish hope, a chance to vote
and tinker with how the world is run
Starchy school clothes and chic new shoes
time to do up what summer's undone

By Alexa Weber Morales (c) 2007

Latin Beat Review!

"As an appropriate follow-up to her acclaimed debut (Jazzmérica, Crazy Monkey 2004), the Berkeley-born thirty-something and quadrilingual (she delivers her vibrant lead vocals in Spanish, Portuguese, English and French) singer/songwriter Alexa Weber Morales offers--in close alliance with the trombonist/arranger/co-producer Wayne Wallace--a soulful Pan-American brew comprised mostly of well-known but significantly transformed pieces, in which she injects her exciting multi-octave range, from the opening French vocals and pilón-pregón adjustment of Habanera (the famous aria from Bizet's 'Carmen') to the compelling 6/8 gospel focus of Angelitos Negros to the poignant adaptation of the samba-canção Ave Rara. With the outstanding support of of some of San Francisco's top musicians (John Santos, Michael Spiro, David Belove, etc.), Alexa and Wayne have produced one of the greatest Bay Area recordings in recent times."
--Luis Tamargo, Latin Beat magazine, September 2007

(The cover above is actually of August, as September's cover wasn't available online yet.)

Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality

This is related to an article I am writing. I swear. Or it had better be! It's from http://www.philosophersnet.com/magazine/pirsig_transcript.htm

I remember hearing many years ago how a professor of art, Jerry Liebling, was outraged when he heard that an Art Historian told one of his students that he should give up painting because it was obvious the student would never equal the great masters. At the time I didn't see what Liebling was so upset about but as the years have gone by I understand it better. Liebling loathed this attitude of Art Historians because, while they thought they were preserving the standards of art, they were in fact destroying them. Art is not just the static achievements of the masters of the past. Art is the creative Dynamic Quality of the artist of the present. Neither is philosophy just the static achievements of the masters of the past. Philosophy is the creative Dynamic Quality of the philosopher of the present.

Department of Procrastination

Kids dropped off? Done
Dishwasher? Emptied
Oakland Tribune cover to cover? Read
Third coffee? Drunk
New York Times online most e-mailed articles? Clicked through
Unnecessary blog? Posted
How-to-potty-train website? Perused one year early
Least-pressing email? Replied
Website activity stats? Checked
Training for a triathlon you will never compete in? Contemplated
Amazon search for book you will not purchase although you will read all its reviews? Done
Second unnecessary blog? Posted

OK folks, I have three articles to write. It's feast or famine around here...

Department of Pranks

Man, some people really know how to get press (see this guy, who created MarryOurDaughter.com). What kind of gag could I come up with to get covered in the New York Times?

The site has gotten 20 million page views in the last two weeks and now elicits around a thousand, mostly angry, emails a day. In the last few days, the site’s “publicity director” has also appeared on at least half a dozen talk radio shows around the country, including on Las Vegas (MIX-FM), Houston (KRBE-FM) and Philadelphia (WYSP-FM) and mixed it up with belligerent on-air-personalities and hostile listeners, whom he neglected to let in on the ruse.

“People get angry so fast they don’t stop to question whether its real,” says the creator of MarryOurDaughter.com, John Ordover, who masqueraded as the site’s fictional publicity director, the unlikely surnamed Roger Mandervan.

Mr. Ordover is a science-fiction editor with a prankish history and an interest in urban nudism.

NYT on Literary Rejection

The classic feeling of "I told you so" makes these accounts of famous authors and their rejections so delightful. We've all heard such stories--this is the proof that you need to persist, persist, persist! And it's something to re-read when someone says your songwriting is so-so...

Nothing embarrasses a publisher more than the public knowledge that a literary classic or a mega best seller has somehow slipped away. One of them turned down Pearl Buck’s novel “The Good Earth” on the grounds that Americans were “not interested in anything on China.” Another passed on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” explaining it was “impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.” (It’s not only publishers: Tony Hillerman was dumped by an agent who urged him to “get rid of all that Indian stuff.”)

For almost a century, Knopf has been the gold standard in the book trade, publishing the works of 17 Nobel Prize-winning authors as well as 47 Pulitzer Prize-winning volumes of fiction, nonfiction, biography and history. Recently, however, scholars trolling through the Knopf archive have been struck by the number of reader’s reports that badly missed the mark, especially where new talent was concerned. The rejection files, which run from the 1940s through the 1970s, include dismissive verdicts on the likes of Jorge Luis Borges (“utterly untranslatable”), Isaac Bashevis Singer (“It’s Poland and the rich Jews again”), Anaïs Nin (“There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic”), Sylvia Plath (“There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice”) and Jack Kerouac (“His frenetic and scrambling prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so”). In a two-year stretch beginning in 1955, Knopf turned down manuscripts by Jean-Paul Sartre, Mordecai Richler, and the historians A. J. P. Taylor and Barbara Tuchman, not to mention Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” (too racy) and James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” (“hopelessly bad”).

Outdoors Indoors: Cat Crap Drama

Why is it that the cat rewards me for feeding her canned food by leaving the gloppiest shit possible in an astonishingly large pile in the middle of a new white down comforter on our bed? Does she think I'll be impressed? Is she angry? How could that much crap come out of one small cat? I'm just looking for answers. At least I know the culprit. I believe she's been pulling this kind of stunt for years (phantom shitting) and I've blamed it on the dogs.

The Layoff: This is How It Happens

Late 2005: New VP takes over the department where I've worked for 10 years as editor in chief of a magazine. We meet and he says my award-winning staff and I do a great job and have nothing to worry about but he is going to "knock some heads together" and it will be uncomfortable. Would I like to help envision the new changes? At first day of the confab to discuss changes in group, I alone am blindsided by draconian proposals. Things go very badly and by the end of it it looks like my job is on the line. I rally back after the meetings and fight to keep the magazine alive but am laid off with another editor on Christmas. Six months later the VP has lost interest in the group and withdraws from communication. An exodus of talented staff ensues over the next year.

Early 2007: New manager takes over large church where I've worked for 5 years as a soloist. I'm told I do a great job and have "a gift for music ministry" but they are going to do some new things. Would I like to help envision the changes? At the meeting, I alone am blindsided by proposals to use middle eastern trance music, electronica, drumming, chanting and recorded music to attract "young people" to the service. "Jazz [which is not what I sing at the service] makes people go inward. We want music that makes people turn outward," they say. Other interesting tidbits from the nonmusician participants include a prejudice against the organ as "an instrument of oppression" (Who knew? I thought Christianity had plenty of other oppressive aspects--being a patron of the arts has always been one of its more laudable qualities) and a visceral hatred of the tambourine (which is not played at the service). By the end of it, it looks like my job is on the line. I rally back for a few months with positive thinking and a low profile after the meeting but ... well, the rest is obvious.

Why am I writing about this? Because I see myself in someone else. At my gym, one of the instructors--the best one, hands down--seems to be out of phase with her organization. She does an amazing job. Her quiet voice and sweet manner are perfect for inspiring and leading classes, her movements are beautiful, her body is slammin' and a source of envy for women and men alike. But the management wants change, and is juggling her classes around the schedule, causing attendance to fall, and then threatening cancellation because of modest turnout. Her loyal students have rallied and spoken to the owner in support of her. But today she said something I could totally relate to: "I've been here for 7 years. There's been so much change, but I'm the kind of person who doesn't leave. If I like a situation, I'm there as long as I can be." I'm the same way. I don't leave. My family members have moved from city to city and are even begging us to move to Sacramento. But I don't leave. I've been in a relationship longer than anyone I know my age (17 years). I've held jobs longer than most, and I've only lost two in my life--as described above. I weather organizational change well, until it knocks on my door with a moving box and a pink slip. I don't hold grudges, I don't look back too much, and I don't leave.

I really don't want this fabulous woman at my gym to fall victim to the forces of change for change's sake. Is it possible? Could she weather this with a different attitude, words or actions? Or are these the final stages of an inevitable outcome?

Venezuelan Baby Names: Invention vs. Conformity

Cool story on the New York Times today:

"So long, Hengelberth, Maolenin, Kerbert Krishnamerk, Githanjaly, Yornaichel, Nixon and Yurbiladyberth. The prolifically inventive world of Venezuelan baby names may be coming to an end.

If electoral officials here get their way, a bill introduced last week would prohibit Venezuelan parents from bestowing those names — and many, many others — on their children."

Grandma's Words

As I continue with office cleaning I am finding more stuff I was meaning to post, such as this poem from my beloved Grandma Charlotte, who passed away this year at (almost) 90. I think of her often, and I contemplate the gift of knowing someone who is very old. The truism is that they are childlike in their dependency and physical limitations, but the more important similarity to children is their capacity for pure love. You can do the smallest thing for a very old person, and she will reward you with an abundance of love in return. The last thing I did for my grandma was read her a card she had received from her church "lunch bunch" here in the Bay Area (her eyesight was just beginning to fail, though her mind never did) and she was so pleased.

Friendship

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible
comfort of feeling safe with a person,
having neither to weigh thoughts
nor measure words,
but to pour them all out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together
knowing that a faithful hand
will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping, and then,
with the breath of kindness,
blow the rest away.
Thank you for being my friend.

--Charlotte Bowman Leigh-Taylor

Here are the principles Grandma continually stressed throughout the childhood of her three children:

Charlotte's Rules of Life

Love is the strongest force in the world. Power may sometimes win a battle, but Love rules the world.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Whenever you accept a gift, you pay for it in the gratitude you express to the donor. It is an extremely costly gift if you do not like the giver.

My bottom line in deciding whether I should do one thing or not, is, can I look at the face I see in the mirror after I have done the deed. If I can, there is no problem.

Just think of everyone you see as having a big ribbon across his/her chest which says "I WANT TO FEEL IMPORTANT." Treat them that way and you will reap untold benefits.

Read Ralph Waldo Emerson, especially his essays on "The Oversoul," "Self-Reliance," "Compensation," "Spiritual Laws," "Intellect," "Circles," "Friendship," "Love," "Experience" and "Character."

Another book I strongly recommend is "The Choice is Always Ours." These two books, plus the New Testament, Psalms and Isaiah in the Old Testament, are the most important guides I have needed during my lifetime. They are my fallback position and my best friends.

--Charlotte B. Leigh-Taylor, May 1989

The Love of God

I'm doing some office cleaning and found these lyrics scrawled on a paper. I know I had a simple chord structure borrowed from a Brazilian tune. I improvised the melody during a service at Grace Cathedral some time ago. I'll have to fix this up and publish it but for the moment this will keep it from getting too lost.

O Amor de Deus/The Love of God
By Alexandra L. Weber Morales (c) 2007

O Amor de Deus está aqui
Expandindo com a nossa luz
O amor dos irmãos e irmãs
E da terra e da Mãe de nós

The love of God is in here
I can feel it expand
The love of my brother and my sister and my father
and the Mother of the land

The love of God is aware
Can you let it expand
Beating seeing being
All beasts are held in her hand

Held in one hand

Oakland Art & Soul Festival Today and Tomorrow

This is just a note to say this wonderful festival in gorgeous downtown Oakland (right around the renovated city hall plaza) deserves your attention--check it out today and tomorrow. We went yesterday and saw an amazing array of artisans, performers, praise dancers, tap dancers, children's games, hard rockers, body builders, mascots, Jimi Hendrix imitators and more. Tonight Lucinda Williams headlines, but Avance plays at 1:45 (they are an awesome salsa band). There are stages with blues, dance, tropical latin and R&B. It closes early, at 6 pm, so don't wait too long. Great food & drink, too! Represent!