Racy Subject Matter is Tamed Down in the Much Overratted Novel "The Great Gatsby."

The 88 year-old novel "The Great Gatsby" was a great bore and an extremely overrated piece of literature.

Fortunately the book was only a 180 pages which still did not detour its torturous read, yielding a one star rating. Bear in mind I have not seen any of “The Great Gatsby" movies including the latest release starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's third 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby" harnessed all the elements for a superlative story about the roaring 20s, complete with excessive drinking, lavish parties, fornication, adultery, romance and crime.

F. Scott Fitzgerald managed to create two wild and sexy women and insert them into a chasm of nothingness. I'm referring to the two main women in the novel, Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker. Buchanan is married to Tom Buchanan and the Great Gatsby's love interest.

Daisy takes advantage of her youth and beauty by not staying faithful to her adulterous and white supremacist husband yet won't divorce him because of her catholic beliefs. Fitzgerald sets the stage for Daisy to blossom into an adventurous, alluring and riveting character and fails to open the curtain so to speak. Her athletically slender babe of friend, Jordan is equally amidst a delicious recipe for excitement and splendor, yet is never cooked.

Tom, Daisy's muscular husband and former football player from Yale complete with the 'cooler than thou' attitude still didn't set forth any malcontent or like for the guy, due the bad story writing.

The narrator of "The Great Gatsby," Nick Carraway is equally as uninteresting as all of the other characters.

As short as this novel is, it's way too slow in forming any conflict. The first 90 or so pages are just a bunch of people having fun at Gatsby's house, and when the conflicts finally do arrive, there're not tense, nor interesting because of the hapless character development.

Even when one of the above four characters kills a pedestrian in a hit and run car accident, there is no edginess, nor decent resolution. The theme of the novel is an ancient one. If health, wealth, emotional and physical love are captured, then what? How do you live your live and what is true happiness?

How this story is considered an American classic novel is beyond me, then again I liked the Beavis and Butt Head book; "This Book Sucks" released in November 1993. 

The Two Wolves by ?

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
"My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all" he said.

One is evil...it is anger eny,, jealousy, sorrow regret, greed, arrogancd self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiotity, lies, false pride superiority and ego.

The other is good... it is joy peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence,empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

The young grandson thought about it for a minute, and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?" (this battle)

The old Cherokee simply replied: "The one you feed."

                                                                                                              Writer, unknown

The Short Novel "Angel Baby" is a Fast Enticing Read.

"Angel baby" is a heavenly read which sends the senses into a state of fear, anger, love, lust and greed harboring a four star rating.

At a mere 288 pages this heartfelt gangster novel is a fast and highly gripping read. Award winning author Richard Lange immediately arouses the reader’s curiosity and doesn't put it to rest until the very last page. Right from the start, Luz, the main character in the May release of "Angel Baby" try’s fleeing from her husband Rolando on foot in Tijuana, Mexico half naked and beaten.

Luz's attempt is futile. Rolando, known as El Principe is a major player in a drug cartel who rapes and beats her. Luz simply wants to escape from El Principe, flee to the United States and get back to her preschool aged daughter Isabel.

Luz meticulously plots an elaborate escape from El Principe for a year, and when she is rid of her sadistic husband more conflicts arise, especially when El Principe finds out that Luz has a daughter from her first husband.

 Even more tension mount when El Principe hires Jeronimo to find Luz and bring her back to him.

Jeronimo has been a gang banger all his life, in and out of prison and wants out of the gang life for good, and live with his wife Irma and their two children in San Diego or Los Angeles. El Principe motivates Jeronimo to find Luz by kidnaping Irma and their two children. Jeronimo's only way to save his wife and kids is to ruin Luz's life forever.

The start of the stories climax begins when Jeronimo and a thug named Hacker kidnap 4-year-old Isabel, Luz's daughter, so they can lure Luz to them.

"Angel Baby" latches onto the reader’s consciousness and doesn't release it until the very last sentence.  

 

Today's Mainstream Music Lacks Soul

Thus far in this young century mainstream music has a dearth of soul.

By soul, I mean music that is cerebrally sentient with the heart, which captivates our emotions and spirals them into a sense of exploration, opinion and feeling.

"Today's music ain't got the same soul."  Bob Seger's words in "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll", still ring true to this day.   

Today's FM music, no matter what the genre is, latches on to one sound and motions it into a monotonous mirage of lameness. The artists of today cling to the catchy tunes and stick to one style. Take away the vocals in today's hit music and it all sounds the same.

Whether I'm listening to 70s rock, blues, country or even 70s disco, my perception of earnestly is fulfilled. Each band had a distinct sound back then.

The 90s were the last decade in which mainstream  bands had their own sound. What does this have to do with soul? Bear with me if you are still reading. Grunge and alternative were synonymous with FM music for much of the 90s. Grunge bands in the 90s such as Soundgarden, Nirvana and Alice in Chains each had a signature sound. Despite playing the same genre of music, within seconds of hearing any song by these three bands you knew the name of the band. Alternative 90s bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Depeche Mode or The Breeders had their own sound even though it was the same category of music.

The same can be said about country music. Hank Williams III does not sound like his dad or his grandfather. Willie Nelson does not sound like the Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline or Waylon Jennings.

Today's FM music is cookie cutter noise processed for the sole intention of making money and nothing more.

Ian Davenport, a 2010 sophomore from Dixie State College in St. George, Utah said:

"No matter what the genre of today's music is, every band tries to fill the shoes of whatever is the most popular. The feel behind today's music is how much money are we going to make?"

Soul is about individuality and art. Does this mean the old school bands and solo artists were not interested in money? Of course not, but the mainstream artists of the past cared about their art.

What happened to the days when a group of people fresh out of high school or even younger filled a van with music gear, hit the road and wrote songs and lyrics that wound up on vinyl, FM radio, DVD and now itunes.

These types of bands are still around, but you won't hear them on the radio. Personally I recommend getting into the Dusty 45s or Reverend Horton Heat. These two bands are classic examples of how they did it back in the day. 

What is the percentage of today's biggest music stars who actually formed themselves and wrote their own material? I do not have the patience to research this one. What I do know is that rich white old men formed many of today's biggest music stars. These men recruit some cute people with some singing and dancing skills for mass production to be put on VH1 and the radio.

I'll bet dollars to donuts some big name artists from the 90s on down were also formed the same way as today’s mainstream noise, but it was a lot less back then and their music was still much more soulful.

To write this article, I subjected myself to hours of listening to KXBN-FM, 92.1, a  station that played the latest synthetic hits while I was writing for the Dixie Sun in St. George, Utah in 2010-2011. 

During the two hours of listening to 92.1, I contemplated things that would have been much more pleasant. Being chained inside a filthy Porta Potty and thrown off a cliff was one thing that came to mind.

As I subjected myself to the mental torment of listening to 92.1, I noticed the disc jockeys do not say the names of the songs or the artists. Personally I think it is because this abysmal noise all sounds the same.

"Newer stuff is less soulful," said Ryan Chollett, a 2010 DSC sophomore from St. George, Utah. "It's repetitive and catchy."

I asked more than four dozen students the burning question. Does today's mainstream music have more or less soul than older music? Not one student said today's main stream music has more. I would like to submit this as evidence your honor!

While the shallow sounds of 92.1 were coming through my speakers, I noticed the two main themes of popular lyrics are sex and money. 

To be honest, even old school music is not practically known for its lyrical prowess. If you want soulful and insightful lyrics, Rush is second to none in the rock ‘n' roll category, if not the universe.

Listening to today’s hit music is like drinking sandy water amidst an oil spilled beach front overlooking dead bodies. Listening to real music is like sipping the finest nectar of the gods amid an astonishing waterfall viewing nature at its best.

"So much style without substance, so much stuff without style. So much poison in power, the principles get left out. So much mind on the matter, the spirit gets forgotten about," from "Grand Designs" by Rush in 1985.

The first sentence of those lyrics fits today's pop to a tee. The music is secondary to the image.

Nearly a Trillion Reasons to Hate War

At a glance I've come up with a low estimate of 7, 282,000,000 reasons to despise war and the money spent on it.

A flag draped over a coffin, another soldier is dead...We've got our marching orders...We've crossed too many borders, military suicide...War killing sons and daughters, another failed attack...Politicians confuse me, I watch the body count rise, why are the children all marching into the desert to die?

Those are singer Ozzy Osbourne's lyrics from his song "Black Rain" released in May, 2007.

My thoughts and condolences go out the family and friends of the more than 6,700 U.S. soldiers that have lost their lives since the Afghan and Iraq, wars began in 2001 and 2003. The website icausaties.org confirms these sad facts.

Certain billionaires are profiting from war, business as usual. When you have no soul, conscience and are driven purely on greed and power, the deaths of tens of thousands of young men and women vastly aged between 19 and 24-years-old mean absolutely nothing. After all, these business demons are not entering combat themselves and are not sending their own children to die while making huge amounts of money in the war business.  

 In 2010 the U.S. spent nearly $700 billion on its military. Journalist Howard Steven Friedman's November, 2011 article "Five Countries With the Highest Military Expenditure" on the web; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-steven-friedman/military-spending-united-states_b_1118851.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-steven-friedman/military-spending-united-states_b_1118851.html clarifies these facts.

Friedman's article states that the U.S. spends more money on its military than China, the U.K., France and Russia combined. Incidentally these four countries rank 2-5 in military spending retrospectively and the U.S. spent six times the amount on its military then number two China. President Donald Trump still wants to increase our military, it's ludricrious. 

With the money spent on war, a low estimate of 21 million Americans could have graduated four year colleges for free. Obviously no government believes that 'knowledge is power.'

In all my reference checks between 50,000 and more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers died in the Vietnam War and at least two-million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians including women and children died while American soldiers were there. Some politicians to this day call that war, the Vietnam Conflict. Wow, my idea of a conflict is when a man's wife wants to see "Machete Kills Again" and the man wants to see "Love Begets Flowers" while standing in a box office line.

How about war crimes that result in brutal raping, pillaging and murder of civilians that get washed away in red tape? The few war crimes that get reported seem to yield very little or no punishment for those involved. The very day I turned 4-years-old in March of 1968, U.S. soldiers under the order of Lt. William L. Calley Jr massacred an estimated 500 unarmed men, women and children in the town of My Lai, South Vietnam.

 The New York Times nearly 50 year-old article; "U.S. Soldiers Massacre Vietnamese Civilians at My Lai" on the web; http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/march-16-1968-u-s-soldiers-massacre-vietnamese-civilians-at-my-lai/ states bodies were mutilated and young women raped. Calley Jr was sentenced to just three and a half years of house arrest for these horrific crimes and no one else involved received any punishment.

Currently in Operation Dessert Freedom (war), many middle eastern civilians are being killed for no reason other than the fact some U.S soldiers are ruthless murderers.

Drop Weapons are something mainstream news remains hush about.

Drop Weapons in a nutshell are a legal way for U.S. soldiers to kill unarmed middle eastern civilians. The article "Soldiers Discuss Using Drop Weapons To Cover Up Killing Innocent Iraqi Civilians" details how some U.S. military personal carry spare weapons for the sole purpose of planting them near Iraqi and Afghan civilians once they have murdered them. This article can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/02/soldiers-discuss-using-dr_n_104682.html.

While I'm on the subject of civilian war casualties, there is of course the ending of World War II in which the U.S. government decimated at least 220,000 people, (mostly civilians) in a three day span with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

Now the big concern, at least in many of today's headlines; North Korea and the countries quest for weapons of mass destruction. I personally am not concerned about North Korea, or its leader Kim Wong Un.

I adhere to what Bill Maher recently said on one of this year’s programs, "Real Time with Bill Maher.” Maher claims Jong Un is 28-years-old and has two children with two different women. Maher's point of Jong Un not wanting to world to end is a good one.

I'd like to add that Jong Un like his deceased father was is an avid NBA fan. The NBA finals don't start until June 6 and won’t end until June 13 or 20. Then the 2013-2014 NBA season starts in November. Unless there is an indefinite NBA strike, I say North Korea is not a threat.

Kooks with nukes in the middle east? Now I have at least 7, 282,000,001 reasons to hate war.

"The Hangover Part III" Holds it's Own"

"The Hangover Part III" starts out fast with the laughs, slows in the middle and concludes on a raucously humorous note, so don't stop watching when the first series of credits starts rolling.

The storyline is completely different from the first two "Hangover" films. No wedding or bachelor party to attend in the beginning and the screen writers Todd Phillips and Craig Mazin got much too serious at times.

"The Hangover 3" is not nearly as good or funny as the first one, but it warranted a solid three star rating from me. I was lost from time to time when the movie had flash backs from the first two "Hangover’s."  I completely understood the references to the first and fabulous "Hangover," but the part II flashbacks lost me. "The Hangover Part II," was arguably the worst comedy ever made, hence I quit watching it and found something much more entertaining to do such as counting dead leaves in pond water.  

Within the first few minute of part 3, Alan (Zach Galifianakis) accidently kills a giraffe on the freeway causing an automobile pile-up on and his father Sid (Jeffrey Tambor) dies of a heart attack soon after.

Alan is coaxed into attending an intervention clinic in Arizona if his comrade’s drive him there from southern California.  Along the road trip, Doug (Justin Bartha) is kidnapped and the trio from the first two "Hangover" movies have three days to find Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) who ripped off Marshal (John Goodman) and exchange Mr. Chow for Doug. If Alan, Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Stu (Ed Helms) fail to get Mr. Chow to Marshal, Doug will be shot by Marshal.

The middle of the movie has few laughs and Marshal is too serious of a character for the movie, but the laughs return and the bizarre dirty humor from the first "Hangover" is twistedly restored.
Unlike the second "Hangover" ("Lameover"), part 3 is originally entertaining, crass and funny. My advice is to hold from seeing it in the theaters and watch it at home, but check it out.

Insane Double Murderer is Legally Free in Santa Rosa

Double murderer Mathew Beck is back on the streets less than 15 years after viciously stabbing two women to death.

Paul Payne's article in Sonoma County's Press Democrat on Monday, "Slim Chance of Release With Insanity Defense" states Beck is currently living in Santa Rosa in a board and care facility. He takes medication, attends regular therapy sessions and participates in group meetings about his drug and alcohol addictions Payne's article claims. 

More than 13 years ago Beck stabbed 38-year-old Sandra Napier 28 times to death then brandished the same knife on her 63-year-mother Marcella Napier 12 or 17 times depending on which Payne article you read, killing her as well.

Payne wrote about Beck's possible release with minimal supervision in May, 2012 which details the murders. Last year's article "Family of Rohnert Park killer Upset About His Release" can be found on the following web site; http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20120523/ARTICLES/120529796?p=2&tc=pg    Monday's article and last year's claim Beck told his arresting officer that he was an angel of God and the mother and daughter he barbarously killed were evil spirits.

Just one conviction for driving under the influence and you're ineligible to be a bus driver for Laidlaw transit in Santa Rosa for 15 years. Viciously murder two people for an insane reason and you’re free in less time.

Beck's own family assert he is not ready for release and want nothing to do with him. Beck’s uncle was going to marry Sandra Napier according to Payne’s articles.

The obviously heinous crimes against the two Napier's should have warranted more justice for the victims as well as their family and friends. Beck is free to roam around unsupervised as long as he takes his medication and attends his therapy classes. 

I take medication for potent heartburn and esophagus problems. If I forget my pill one day, I may have a hard time swallowing food and get some rough heart burn. If Beck forgets his medication he might go on a killing spree. Payne’s article on Monday claims Beck is thinking of attending barber school.

Exactly what the world needs, a double murder that used a knife to kill his victims and have legal access to sharp objects such as a straight razor. If Beck becomes a barber, maybe I can grow a beard again and have him shave it off while I’m wearing an Iron Maiden number of the beast T-shirt.   

James Holmes, the man who gunned down dozens of people in Aurora, Colo. last year is going for the insanity plea as well. I'd bet the mortgage Holmes doesn't go free, but the right amount of money, a fantastic lawyer, and Holmes might one day roam the streets again.

How many sane people become angels of God and commit horrific crimes for their own delusions? How many sane people collect massive amounts of guns and ammunition to open fire on an unarmed crowd for nefarious pleasures?

The courts have made it clear that juking a bunch of young evil minds to randomly kill innocent people and cut a fetus out of an eight month pregnant women while she is still alive is an act of sanity. I'm referring to the Charles Manson murders of the 60s and what his demented crew did to Shannon Tate during that horrific period.

Manson is still in prison and none of his posse who were tried and sentenced has been release from jail. So please someone in the law with power please deem Beck to be of sound mind so he can be locked up.

How many more extremely dangerous criminals are lurking in the streets because the courts released them by reason of insanity? I hope Beck remembers to take his medicine.