NOTES ON PODCASTS

I'm watching the American Experience documentary on Orson Welles' legendary "War Of The Worlds" radio broadcast. It's fashionable these days to laugh about how gullible the American public was to think that an alien invasion was actually occurring...

In this day and age, where the criterion for what is and isn't fake news has yet to be defined (and indeed may never be fully), it's almost comforting to know that this isn't a new thing. It's not an issue that is hitherto unforseen in American discourse. The technology may be different but the cycle is the same: we are testing the parameters and boundaries of new mediums, and there will be casualties, as we've seen already in everything from the recent election to Pizzagate.

Now that I have jumped into the podcast foray, these ideas are fresh in my mind. Although my podcast is more musical and not political in any real sense, the thought of keeping things "authentic" and "real" is not lost on me. There is an element of drama even as I am simply conducting interviews and playing music. It's not a live podcast, so I can edit and arrange the format any way I choose... and how I execute this is highly important to the way I express myself.

So check out my podcast, entitled "Mixtape Preservation Society" and is available on iTunes. The second broadcast is coming later this week.

THE DYSPEPTIC GENERATION

It's just a commercial. Wipe your ass with it already.

Of course I'm talking about a Pepsi ad that I haven't even seen. And I am PROUD of the fact that I haven't even seen it. I keep hearing people say it's the most "tone-deaf" thing they have ever seen... apparently all other commercial ads in all other forms of media are suddenly tolerable because of their pitch-perfect attention to the zeitgeist.

I just don't get why people are now up in arms about a corporate entity co-opting revolutionary rhetoric and/or imagery for profit. I mean, how many variations on the Shepard Fairey "HOPE" poster have we seen since 2008? Remember when Nike used The Beatles' "Revolution" in an ad for their shoes? How about Madonna using the faces of iconic rebels in history to promote her last album?

Speaking of Madge (as she is known these days) she made some sort of statement against Pepsi by being photographed with a Coca-Cola recently. The headlines say she was "throwing shade". I don't understand why she would, seeing as she profited off the controversy generated by the "Like A Prayer" video... which was different from the actual "Make A Wish" Pepsi ad that only aired once during a broadcast of The Cosby Show and had no provocative imagery or message.

Is this what we've been reduced to, people? Has Trumpp's reign been so dispiriting that we've resorted to fetishizing and celebrating this type of bullshit?

At least Steve Bannon has been removed from the National Security Council, a position he weaseled his way into. And the Russia stuff is gaining steam, despite the GOP's best efforts to pin it all on Susan Rice. But if this is how low it's going to get, then I fear for us all.

I read an article that talks about how the Kendall Jenner commercial takes an image from the Black Lives Matter protests and runs with it, but really this is an image as old as the Flower Power picture of a hippie putting daisies in the rifles of military police, which is certainly older than the famous Tienanmen Square image from the late '80s. The trope of the naive innocent (if Kendall can be called that) confronting the monster of oppression may even be as ancient as the biblical story of David and Goliath. It is nothing new, definitely nothing sacred, and if Pepsi wants to exploit that image then people should really stop acting outraged and shocked, because it's a drop in the bucket compared to what else they have exploited... and will exploit in the future.

As a person who loathes commercials in any form (because they have a short shelf life and are ultimately disposable... and therefore worthless in my estimation) I really do not understand why anyone would be upset about this. If you're just arriving to that outrage party, then you're late and you have no excuse. Your time would be better served making sure that Trumpp's agenda gets no further than his executive order desk. Hell, your time would be better served by not watching commercials ever again, for that matter. But in this day and age, where armchair activists pat themselves on the back for knowing who Bernie Sanders is, that may be too much to ask.

PAYBACK WILL BE A MOFO

I don't want to talk about "fake news".

The reason I refuse to discuss it is because, mainly, no one agrees on what it actually is. The new President seems to think it comes from specific news organizations, while many of his opponents feel that the White House itself is the source of much of it.

I define it as the Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" segment that Norm MacDonald used to do. Remember how he'd introduce himself and then say "Here's the fake news"?

So, yeah, I'm not gonna talk about it... because Norm hasn't been on SNL in nearly two decades.


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I'm going to do something I have never, ever done before, and probably will never do again: I'm going to defend Trumpp in regards to the press.

I remember a humor magazine in the '90s called Spy. It was based out of New York City and it was pretty funny, sort of a National Lampoon for Generation X. Predating the rise of the Internet, one of Spy's main targets was none other than The Donald. They went after him with such vitriol, and I loved it. Alongside celebrities like Madonna, Courtney Love, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and the Clintons, Spy roasted Trumpp on a regular basis. For a while, it seemed like they would win the cultural battle being fought in the media.

But they didn't. Spy went under around 1998... and meanwhile, Trumpp is currently the President of the United States.

Of course, Spy was just one of many magazines, newspapers, and periodicals that were taking potshots at Trumpp. So this man has actually taken a lot of shit, for much longer than any sitting modern President, from the Fourth Estate. He has had tabloid press up his ass, as well as "respectable" beacons of journalism like the New York Times... you know, the publication that outed a CIA operative during George W. Nixon's reign?

Now, I don't like the man AT ALL... but if I were him, I'd do the same thing to the press. It wouldn't be ethical, morally right, or even constitutional... but I'd do it. Then I'd have the good grace to step down from my position of authority.

Or maybe I wouldn't step down. To paraphrase the late great Rick James: power is a helluva drug. And for a petty man like Trumpp, payback is a motherfucker.


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Okay, so I'm done defending the man. But I'm not done taking shots at his enemies. At least that's what they call themselves... the White House refers to them as the Opposition Party, and that's actually a compliment. Because when your main plan of action against a man like Trumpp is to invoke Bernie Sanders for the umpteenth time, or your best strategy is to call upon witches and pagans to cast a spell on the President... well, you don't need a blogger of my esteem to tell you how boneheaded that all is. The label of "Opposition Party" is a gift from the White House and the likes of Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon. It legitimizes the people who hate Trumpp's guts. And that's good, but it's also bad... because it means that the GOP is controlling the narrative even for their enemies.

I mean, Steve Bannon says not to underestimate the Left during his CPAC speech. Funny, I've been underestimating them since the end of the primaries, and I wasn't wrong... He also claimed to be a Leninist whose goal is to destroy all existing political structure. When I hear these words, I have to ask: "Is this guy really a Republican?" I expect to hear this from the types of people who call each other 'comrade' and talk shit about capitalism while they work 9-to-5 gigs soliciting money for credit companies. He's talking a meaner game than most Leftists I know. And at the same time, he's building them up better than Bernie Sanders ever has. It's almost as if Bannon is trying to help the Left to gain their footing because otherwise his victory would seem hollow. He's a political Mr. Glass trying to find his Unbreakable counterpoint.

I see no plan going on, other than the kind of pointless sloganeering that made "Feel The Bern" so satisfying to repeat after Bernie had the keys to the $600,000 mansion in his hand. I am almost inclined to agree with all the MAGATS who refer to Trumpp haters as "special snowflakes" and "crybabies"... if it weren't for the fact that they are turning out to be bigger whiners than their political nemeses.

The only political message I see that has any potency coming from the Left these days is the one that can be summed up in three simple words: "But her e-mails..." 

Y'all really should have thought this whole scenario through before you decided that voting for Hillary Clinton would be as evil as voting for the Trumpp/Pence ticket. The ones calling you snowflakes right now would be stewing in an inarticulate rage, rending their clothes and lying prostate in ashes while dressed in sackloth... but NOOOOOOOOOO, you listened to all that fake news about how corrupt Hillary was, and in the end you're actually no different from the idiot who shot up a pizza parlor thinking there was pedophilia going on.

Which leads me to my last major talking point, and that will include some major Trumpp supporter bashing. Consider yourself triggered, MAGATS.


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I don't think the problem these days is fake news. I think the problem these days is reading comprehension.

I think people are too quick to re-post memes and links without bothering to read them first. I myself am guilty of this... which is why I don't link anything on my blogs anymore. Plus I read somewhere that the more links an article has, the less a reader will actually comprehend what has been written.

I think that people (and they tend to be Trumpp supporters) misread and misinterpret a great deal of what they read. They are taking after their leader, who seems to rely on a peripheral understanding of the news when he opens up his big blabberhole and starts ranting in press conferences about Sweden while his advisors mention a massacre at Bowling Green that never happened...

I think people are too quick to listen to their megachurches and their talk radio show hosts and the Alex Jones' of the world to take a few minutes to verify some of the downright stupid echo-chamber statements they make.

I think that anyone who doesn't try to get facts from at least five totally different news sources is doing themselves a disservice by re-posting links to sites whose content might have been completely fabricated by a Macedonian teenager who makes the cash register sound every time an American ad dollar shows up in whatever he's using to store his bitcoins...

Trumpp and his supporters have legitimate beefs against the mainstream press. Whether it's Dan Rather or Brian Williams or Jayson Blair or Judith Miller or Julian Assange or whoever the contemptuous Asshole of the Month (Press Division) happens to be, they have a right to be angry about the seeming bias against them.

But they DON'T have a right to be angry when they get called out on their lying bullshit. They forfeit the self-righteous indignation position when they support a man with no principals, a two-bit con man who would've been run out of any self-respecting nation long ago, but who happened to know how to game the system... and now he's the fucking President of the United States.

Trumpp supporters and MAGATS, you have to go down with the ship when it starts to sink. Right now this administration is barely treading water. I can't call when it's gonna sink, because it may never happen. Trumpp may make it to a second term. He may even get Congress or whomever is responsible for such decisions to somehow get term limits extended and then we'd have him for 12 years! All I know is, when that ship starts to sink, you have to pull out those violins and play that sad song while the rest of get life jackets and grab all the lifeboats to the tune of "I told you so".

And judging from how long Trumpp has avoided his impending karma, payback will be a motherfucker.

Methinks I Doth Protest Too Little

Protests. They're in the news a lot these days. Some people feel like they do nothing. Some people feel like they do something. But mostly, I would wager that a good number of people out there in this great nation of ours have never been to one. They see them on the TV news, online, in the paper... and they make snap judgments about everything related to the protest: the police, the people, he causes. But it's not that simple. It never is.

I went to my first protest in high school. After putting out issues of our underground 'zine, FUCK OFF!, one day I was approached by a fellow student who asked if I'd ever actually been to a protest. When I replied in the negative, she insisted that my criticisms of protesters held no sway because I had not experienced any myself.

So contributing writer Fast Eddie and I decided to go to the next protest we could get information about, and it happened to be in front of the McDonald's down the street from the Northridge Mall. Back then, without the Internet or cell phones in abundance, it was kind of difficult to get our peers to give us the 411 on a protest, seeing as we spent many issues of our 'zine ridiculing said peers. But once we explained that we were doing it so that we could put our money where our mouths were, our peers were more than happy to clue us in.

We made signs and stood on the corner of Tampa & Nordhoff, raising awareness of meat industry shenanigans and the global corporate interests of McDonald's worldwide. I was not a vegan or a vegetarian, but I could see that some of the issues were valid complaints: stop doing business with corporations that continue to support apartheid in South Africa; post nutritional content for customers in order to make them conscious of what they eat; curtail the barbaric slaughterhouse practices that dominate the fast food industry as a whole.

Even some of our teachers were there. And afterward, when it was time to call it a day and the group was going to meet at the Falafel Palace down the street, they invited me to come along. And I said:

"You mean you're going to protest them too?"

The teacher looked at me funny, like he thought I was joking. I was not. I suddenly realized that they were not going to protest the Falafel Palace; they wanted to get a bite to eat.

At the end of the day, the protest educated me on a whole slew of concerns. It did not change my attitude towards eating meat, but it did make me question why I automatically gave McDonald's my money with unblinking loyalty. And I gained a great deal of respect for the protesters, because they were very responsible in their actions.

Of course, not every demonstration is going to go over that well. Some erupt into chaos. I have been to my fair share of protests since that day in high school, and I've seen a variety of different scenarios. I am by no means a professional activist. However, I have seen enough action to know that you CANNOT trust the media to report about most rallies and demonstrations fairly.

Let me repeat:YOU CANNOT TRUST THE MEDIA TO REPORT ON DEMONSTRATIONS AND PROTESTS FAIRLY.

The following is from a website I used to contribute to in the late 90s/early 2000s. It was called AmeriCON and it was run by a college kid whom I'd never met in person. It exists no more, but at the time I stumbled upon the site while surfing the Web and I liked their style. I asked them if I could be their L.A. correspondent (I believe they were situated somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, if I remember correctly) and they said "Knock yourself out."

I'm not going to edit it. I am going to post it as is and let you, the Reader, decide what to make of it. But keep in mind: this was the year 2000. George W. Bush was running against Vice President Al Gore. I was supporting Ralph Nader, a decision I do not regret. I was not married, or a parent, and I didn't live in the Midwest. Obama was eight years away from happening, and the idea that one day a man like Donald Trumpp could actually become the leader of the free world was laughable at best.

Let's travel back into time, then, and take a look at life pre-9/11... a simpler time... a magical time... oh, who am I kidding? Not much has changed.                      

ANARCHY ON THE FENCE

A fuzzy recollection by James Ledesma

August 14^th, 2000.

So there we were, a group of us, en route to the Staples Center via the newly-constructed Metro Rail that joins North Hollywood with Downtown Los Angeles. It was myself, my longtime friend and partner-in-crime Sharky, his girlfriend Brenda, a co-worker of mine named Carlito and his younger brother Mitch.

            The event? The Democratic National Convention for the year 2000. All week long there were protests going on. This night in particular held a personal interest for the five of us: Rage Against The Machine was scheduled to play a live set, right outside the Staples Center.

            Riots were expected.

            All of us in our little group were voting Green that year. We all felt, to varying degrees, that the Democrats had let the Left down in many ways. Al Gore was not our man, not any more than George W. Bush was. Ralph Nader was our man. Sharky and I had voted for Clinton in ’92, but by ’96 we were voting for Nader—I mean, did anyone really believe that Bob Dole was going to take it in ’96? I don’t even think Bob Dole himself felt like he had a chance.

            We took the underground rail because no one wanted to navigate traffic in an event of this magnitude. At the time, the Metro was brand spankin’ new, clean and efficient, although there were still some last-minute finishing touches being applied to the station terminals.

            The five of us sat on the rail, talking about what would happen to the rail if an earthquake hit (seeing that California is infamous for its shakers, it was a valid point to discuss); we also talked about seeing the East L.A. band Ozomatli play at the DNC rally, after Rage’s set was done; and we all talked about why we were willing to risk inadvertently electing George W. by voting for Nader.

            The general consensus among us was that the right to vote is not based on the desire to be on a “winning team”, but rather on the belief that each individual voice in a democracy counts. Therefore, it pays to vote for what you believe is right, not for whoever is leading in the polls. Our votes were protests votes. We’d all heard the same rap during 1996: “Don’t vote for Nader—what if Dole wins?”

            When you vote for the lesser of two evils, it doesn’t matter which candidate gets elected— evil still wins, even if it’s at a lesser degree. I try my hardest not to directly support evil. Since the 2000 election, of course, everyone who voted for Al Gore likes to mention that, thanks to me and my Green friends, Bush is in power. To which I reply, “Oh, I guess the 51% of the population that DIDN’T vote is exempt from all judgement then, eh?”

            In 2000, we didn’t feel the need to elect Gore to the highest office in the land—Gore, who has ties to all the big oil companies that don’t have the Bush family in their pockets; Gore, the man whose wife wanted to censor music; Gore, a man who ran on a platform that included targeting Hollywood for brainwashing our youth.

            On the rail, I made a comment to Sharky: “ You know, this year the election may as well be conducted like a Pepsi Challenge. Remember those ads for Pepsi? Where they blindfolded people and asked them to drink a Coke and a Pepsi? And they asked them which one they preferred?”

            Sharky laughed. “Or like that Ray Charles commercial—‘OK, who’s the joker who switched Bush with Gore?’”

            Brenda chimed in: “If only they’d let Nader in the debates. He’d blow both of them away. He’s so smart, and well-read…”

            “And fearless,” I added.

            Sharky made another joke. “Yeah, fuck Bush & Gore—I mean, their names alone ensure that they won’t be getting my vote. It sounds like the title of a snuff movie.”

            Carlito laughed. “Right on, man…” Carlito wasn’t particularly political, but he was a definite Rage fan, and admired them for doing what they did. I have always had reservations about them—musically, they were great; in interviews and press releases, they seemed to truly believe in what they were advocating and were very informed on current events. But the fact that they worked for a corporation which distributed their CDs all over the world… I never could reconcile that one. I’ve heard the argument that states that one can manipulate the system to suit their own needs, and one can argue that Rage did this, but ultimately it never rang 100% true with me.

            Yes, I am a skeptic. But wait, there’s more.

            We reached our destination: Olympic and Figueroa, the “designated protest area”, where thousands of people were filling the streets, walking, talking, holding signs, selling T-shirts at makeshift vending booths. There was music, both live and recorded, coming from everywhere and nowhere. In the distance, the Staples Center loomed large. We could see the tents where the Shadow Convention was being held—conspiracy nuts, extreme Leftists, Communists, UFO lovers, and all sorts of loveable political junkies were congregating in every conceivable spot on the map. But there were also serious activist groups such as the Animal defense League, and Citizens Against Human experimentation on hand. Lawyer’s Guild representatives were everywhere, holding clipboards and wearing fluorescent yellow hats to make them stand out. They were on hand to make sure the cops didn’t violate anyone’s civil rights.

            Carlito’s younger brother Mitch, who hailed from Sacramento, was wide-eyed. Evidently, there was nothing like this going on up north. He remained quiet and observant throughout the entire evening. It’s possible that he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

            I was reminded of the events that took place earlier that year: the Lakers winning the championship, and the riots that followed. Cop cars were burned and vandalized; fans ran amok and fights broke out; the police did very little in the way of preventing these rioters from wreaking havoc. Part of me thinks that it’s because the majority of people in the streets celebrating the victory were sports fans; more importantly, they were people who had paid good money to see the Lakers win, at a stadium that was built with the intention of housing a Championship team. (I’ve heard it said that the Staples’ ‘A’ Team is the Kings, and that the Lakers are actually the ‘B’ Team, but until the Kings do as good as the Lakers have, I’m going to assume that Staples was built for the Lakers)…

            Who wants to go see a team play the next season, after they’ve been beaten down by cops in riot gear? The fear of alienating the fans was too great. It seemed to me that the city handlers’ logic went as follows: Let them celebrate, just as long as they don’t do any damage to the Staples Center itself… the revenue from ticket sales next season will more than make up for the inconvenience of rioting and looting… Tell the cops not to go crazy either— these aren’t Raiders fans we’re dealing with, they don’t need to be handled like brutes…

            And here we were, exercising our rights to free speech and our rights to assemble peacefully, facing the prospect of dealing with the LAPD, an organization that wouldn’t look the other way when it came to protesters. Sports fans going wild? Aw, they’re just happy their team won… Protesters? What a bunch of ingrates… 

            How dare we speak our mind!

            The crowd was not, as one might expect, a group of long-haired drug users in their early twenties, although there was a fair share of those type of people as well. There were many adults in their thirties and forties—some of them with their kids in tow—mixed in with the inevitable Seattle anarchists, clad in their black bandanas; kids with dreadlocks and Mexican ponchos; teens in Rage T-shirts and young college-aged adults in flannels. Everyone was gathered around the stage where Rage was performing. As we neared the stage, “Killing In The Name Of” was being played by the band.

            “Aw man,” Carlito said, somewhat disappointed. “They’re already playing! I hope they’re not almost done…”

            As I looked around and surveyed the scene, a few things caught my attention: First, there was no mosh pit near the front of the stage; Second, there were plenty of signs and placards on display that stated the political intentions of this assembly, a point that I would make later when speaking to people about how today’s protesters have no unifying cause; Third, the vibe was friendly and warm—there was no tension, no crowds surging back and forth like at a concert, and since it was outdoors the cool evening air made the sweat of thousands of bodies in close proximity a bit tolerable.

            The sound system was lackluster, so Rage’s set sounded a bit subdued. Little did I know that another video was being shot, for the song “Testify”, by Michael Moore, the man who shot the “Sleep Now In The Fire” video on Wall Street. As Rage played “Killing”, I anticipated my favorite part—when Zack de la Rocha tells the whole crowd to sing, “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!” No offense to the Rage boys (who have since disbanded), but my burning sense of the absurd leaves no target untouched. The irony is base and simple, but not lost on a skeptic like myself.

            Rage did some more songs, and then left. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s face appeared on the huge outdoor monitor as she addressed the DNC audience inside the Staples Center. Boos from the outside protesters rose and died. Then, mysteriously, the monitor went black just as Bill Clinton approached the podium to speak.

            I looked over to Carlito and wondered, “What, are they afraid that Clinton’s identity by itself will cause violence?”

            “He’s a gangster,” was Carlito’s amused reply. He was too busy keeping an eye on his younger brother, who was amazed at the goings-on, to really give me a thoughtful answer. “Clinton’s a pimp, y’know?”

            “Yeah, I know… all too well…” I sighed and lit a cigarette.

            For the next half an hour, various speakers came to the stage and talked about the same unifying causes that detractors claim we were lacking. One woman spoke about globalization, and how the international trends towards trade entities like NAFTA and the WTO were spelling doom for ordinary blue-collar people who make honest livings. Another person spoke out against Al Gore, emphasizing his ties to Occidental Petroleum and “Big Tobacco”.  There were placards in the crowd that denounced Citibank, WTO and the G-8. Activists working on behalf of imprisoned radicals like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal beseeched the unwashed masses to sign petitions to get their decisions and sentences overturned. There were some lobbyists pushing for medicinal marijuana legalization and calling to attention the fallout from the failed War On Drugs. Others decried our dependence on foreign oil, and promoted the preservation of the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve. People passed out flyers that detailed how our warped foreign policies are forcing Third World countries deeper into debt. Yet another young, articulate person spoke from the stage about the need for real campaign finance reform and universal health care, while attacking corporate welfare programs and policies that endanger the environment (logging, deforestation, developing over wetlands, etc).

            These are all real issues, and anyone who thinks that all Greens are just tree-huggers or that there is no “unifying cause” between the various and far-flung factions of the left has not been paying attention to anything other than their own contempt for both the youth and the desire to change the world around them. Is it no surprise that our very own parents and the people of their generation scoff at us in our attempts to finish what they boldly started? They are old and ineffective, and sold out so long ago that even they wonder if they were ever a part of the counterculture. And now that they are comfortable in their lounge recliners, sipping Frappachinos and driving SUVs, they have the gall to observe our actions and declare, from the safety of their own fat and filth, that we have no reason to protest.

            There was a very real feeling in the air that, by being a thorn in Gore’s side, by showing hostility to the Democrats, we were taking the real risk. It’s easy to blame the Republicans for everything evil in this country, because they usually are the ones to blame. However, the Democrats have committed a far worse crime: misrepresenting the interests of the people in their party. Liberals nowadays resemble the conservatives of two decades ago, and today’s conservatives are either downright fascistic or surprisingly moderate. Of course, we all knew at the time that Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” was really just another version of Clinton’s “moderate liberalism”… but never in my personal memory have two candidates been so undistinguishable. Later on in the election year, when the debates were televised, I was appalled at the fact that the Lincoln-Douglas format, a traditional mode of debate, was nowhere to be seen. Gore ripped Bush a new one on TV, and then he balked when his stupid PR people told him to go easy on poor little W.

            I took debate in high school, and I’d like to know: SINCE WHEN DO OPPONENTS ‘GO EASY ON’ EACH OTHER IN A DEBATE? Isn’t the concept of a debate similar to the concept of a trial by jury? If so, THEN WHAT THE HELL KIND OF DEBATES WERE WE WATCHING IN 2000?

            Bush came off like a used car salesman, while Gore came off like one of those ambulance-chasing lawyers on daytime TV: “I’ll fight for you!”

            My thoughts at the time: “We seem to be doing to the concept of Democracy what the Greek males, who originated the idea, did to each other: screwing it up the ass.” Ralph Nader tried to attend one of the debates, and when he was discovered to be sitting in the audience he was asked to leave. His identity by itself was cause for concern among both the Democrats and Republicans—Reform Party members had their own problems to worry about.

Okay, so now I’m back in front of Staples, with revolutionary thoughts in my head and a political axe to grind. Ozomatli took the stage as the sun started to fade off into the horizon, and we were happy. If there is anyone not familiar with Ozomatli, let me describe the band as best as I can.

The group is large—ten or eleven members, I believe—and made up of a true melting pot of ethnicities: black, white, Jewish, Mexican, Asian… The band has a brass section, as well as the standard bass-drums-guitar combo, plus a slew of percussionists, a DJ, an MC, and multiple vocalists. They play any style they can: salsa, ska, funk, hip-hop, rock, banda or mariachi, you name it. They take the stage by entering through the crowd, carrying their instruments and drumming as they storm through the rowdy throngs. It is their signature entrance and exit—sometimes, after a show, they will stay in the crowd and improvise a drum circle for as long as they can.

In addition to being socially conscious, Ozomatli is also community-conscious: they organize programs for inner-city youth in East L.A. to keep kids off the streets. They used to work with the late great jazz drummer Billy Higgins at his World Stage drum workshop; in fact, several of the members of Ozomatli were introduced to music through Higgins’ Leimert park-based activities.

Needless to say, this band is NOT about violent confrontation or negative energy, yet that’s what they came face to face with that night in front of the Staples Center.

It started when two guys were perched on the chain-link fence that surrounded the Staples Center. God forbid anyone should actually touch the side of the building that L.A. invested so much money to build, a building that seems more like a monument to spending and making cheese than anything else. They were throwing rocks and water bottles; the LAPD responded by spraying pepper spray into the crowd.

This episode was escalating in clear view of everyone in attendance. And here’s the interesting part: at one point, everyone in the crowd told the two bandana-wearing anarchists to get off the fence! You see, contrary to what political commentators and mainstream media editorialists want you to think, this crowd was aware of what kind of trouble was brewing. This crowd wanted a peaceful demonstration, not rubber bullets and tear gas. And the crowd collectively voiced its opinion as we chanted, “GET OFF THE FENCE! GET OFF THE FENCE!”

Ozomatli started playing, but by their second song the cops were threatening to pull the plug. When the anarchists did not stop their activities, the cops made good on their threat. The sound went dead, and some of the guys in the band were upset. They thought it was a sound guy’s goof. When they realized they were being shut down, they urged the crowd to demand the sound to be put back on. So we did.

Is that inciting to riot? I don’t think so, because none of the people in the crowd started to go nuts. We just wanted Ozomatli to finish their song. However, Cmdr. Kalish of the LAPD decided to declare the assembly unlawful, and he got on the PA speaker to announce it as such.

“You have fifteen minutes to disperse,” he spat.

People started to move. I was getting angry, and so was Carlito and Sharky. Brenda and Mitch were concerned—was a full-scale riot about to happen?

Carlito and I started singing the lyrics to “Fuck Tha Police” by NWA. As we did, a young woman came up to us and pleaded with us not to exacerbate the bad vibes.

“That’s just what the cops want, man,” she said. And she was right. So we stopped singing, and started trying to get the fuck out of Dodge in fifteen minutes.

As we walked back to the Metro rail station, we saw anarchists trying to overthrow mailboxes and trying to set fire to things. And we also saw groups of people rushing around the anarchists, telling them to stop. I overheard one guy say, “If you knock that trash can over, you’re going in it, pal!” The anarchists had no choice—they were outnumbered in every attempt to vandalize or create mayhem. I couldn’t believe it: the power of persuasion was working with these guys.

Now why couldn’t the LAPD do the same?

Ten minutes after Kalish told the demonstrators to leave, I heard rounds of rubber bullets cracking in the distance. People started running. Sharky, Carlito and I turned around to see a stampede of panicking people running towards us. We started to stand in peoples’ way, telling them, “Slow down! Don’t start a stampede!” Others followed suit; soon, the threat of getting stomped had lessened.

Walking down Figueroa, we saw the guys from Ozomatli, leading a parade of people away from the Staples Center. They were drumming on their drums, to call attention to themselves, hoping to get people in line behind them as opposed to scattered about on the street. It was a glorious sight to behold. The procession weaved in and out of the neighboring streets, making a detour onto 11^th Street when the LAPD posted a barricade.

People driving by in cars looked genuinely horrified, but as far as I can recall, no automobiles were set on fire. The mindset was miles apart from the mindset of happy, drunk Lakers fans—we had no intentions of being malicious. We all just wanted to get out of there without any incident.

Caught in the crowd, I told my friends, in case we all get separated, to meet back at the rail station. And it was right then that I got separated from the crew I was with. Awash in a sea of protestors, I tried to make my way back to the station.

A hippie in a parka standing next to me was smoking weed out of a glass pipe. “Here, man,” he said, offering me a hit. I was stunned, but I also thought it was the right thing to do for the moment. Looking around me, I snuck a quick hit, exhaled the smoke, and thanked my friendly neighbor for the toke. He said, “No prob,” and disappeared into the crowd.

In the midst of a gathering, I took the hit… and then moments later I took a different kind of hit!

I scanned high and low, looking for my friends. I stood on the corner of Figueroa and 9^th, trying to see if I could find  them, when all of a sudden the crowd parted like the Red Sea. Before I knew what was going on, a throng of riot gear-clad pigs were making their ways towards me. The head pig—the one in front of the line—had his baton out, and when he saw me standing by myself, he must’ve thought I posed some sort of threat.

“MOVE!” he yelled, and gruffly shoved me out of the way with his nightstick held in both of his hands. The blow hit me on the right shoulder. It wasn’t too hard of a blow, but it was enough to get my adrenaline racing. All I could do was say aloud, “What the fuck did I do?”

An ACLU rep was right next to me. “I saw what that cop did,” she said. Apparently the ACLU and other activist lawyers came down to the demonstration in case there was trouble. “Are you okay?” she asked, pulling out a clipboard and a ball-point pen.

“A little stunned,” I said. “But I’ll live.”

She got down my personal info and told me that she would contact me later on, when a class-action lawsuit was prepared against the city and the LAPD. I wished her good luck. Judging from the chaos that was occurring right in front of me, they had their work cut out for them. But I never went in to the lawyer’s office to follow up on the suit (mainly because my injuries were extremely minimal—just a slight bruise that lasted two days) and I never heard about any class-action lawsuit being brought against the cops.

Eventually I got to the station, and there was Sharky, Brenda, Carlito, and Mitch, waiting for me. I told them about getting crowned Rodney King-style, and they were shocked. We were all energized and upset about the whole situation, and on the rail ride home we spoke with others who had been at the demonstration. It seemed unreal, but at the same time it seemed too real.

Carlito’s car and Sharky’s car were parked at the North Hollywood station. Carlito and his brother went home, while the rest of us went back to my apartment. I wanted to see the news coverage.

Maybe I shouldn’t have. There was Cmdr. Kalish, on the local news, talking about the “unruly throng” and how they didn’t want a repeat of what happened when the Lakers won the championship. “We were caught unprepared that time,” he said, “but this time we had hundreds of rookies trained to deal with any problems. And I’m happy to say that we handled it well.”

I was livid. “They weren’t caught unprepared for the Laker riots—they just didn’t want to piss off sports fans who have season tickets!” I exclaimed, nursing my bruise with a cold pack.

Kalish continued. “We gave the rioters twenty minutes to disperse. When compliance was not met, our men unleashed rubber bullets and pepper spray to facilitate the evacuation of the area…”

Now it was Brenda’s turn to be mad. “Bullshit! They gave us fifteen minutes, but really it was more like ten! Now they’re saying twenty? And what about that rush of people trying to get out of the line of fire? Those LAPD assholes almost caused a full-on stampede!”

We were all shaking our heads in disbelief.

The newscast made no mention of the fact that many members of the media, such as CNN cameramen, print photographers and a few journalists were actually hurt in the melee by the LAPD. The cops were very indiscriminate in their actions.

The newscaster went on to state, “The riot started when the anti-government rock group Rage Against the Machine took to the stage. Their fiery performance may have set the stage for an ugly confrontation… one that was thankfully put down by the city police.”

Sharky laughed. “What idiots! Rage were in their limos, driving to the next gig by the time this shit went down… and I’m even more pissed off because I wanted to see Ozomatli finish their set.”

But that wasn’t the most infuriating part. The most frustrating aspect of the whole DNC rally was the next day, when the newspapers continued to distort the picture of what really went down. The LA Times praised the police for their readiness—never mind that the LAPD were actually trying to start a riot as opposed to quelling an uprising.

I talked to co-workers about the incident. What did they have to say? “You shouldn’t have been down there in the first place,” one person said to me.

“We have a right to protest whatever the fuck we want to in this country,” I said, getting worked up.

“But not in a violent way,” the asshole continued.

“It wasn’t violent until the cops showed up, you stupid ignorant prick!” I have a reputation, at my work, for being argumentative and verbally abusive. Most of my co-workers are used to it, so they don’t flinch when I curse them out.

I couldn’t find anyone that day who was sympathetic to my cause. Except for Carlito, who was there, and one or two others who know how fucked up the cops in L.A. are, everyone put the blame on me, like I was the anarchist on the fence, heaving rocks and plastic Evian bottles at the Staples.

By the end of the day, I’d had it. Then, Sharky called me up and told me he and Brenda were going out to march again. There was a March Against Police Brutality scheduled for that day.

“You of all people should go,” he said, half-jokingly.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said wearily. My arm was still a bit sore, but I was more upset about how it got that way in the first place.

He also told me about Ted Hayes, the homeless advocate. He and his followers were marching the night before, in an unrelated demonstration to call attention to the homeless situation. His march ended up intersecting with the DNC crowd. The cops thought he was part of the alleged insurrection and shot him in the chest with a rubber bullet. He was in the hospital, in stable condition.

Hearing that made me feel a little depressed. I told Sharky that I was going to sit this one out. I didn’t feel like getting rapped in the head or smacked in the kisser, just for being somewhere that I’m lawfully allowed to be. He understood.

I went into my office, pulled out my CD case, selected a CD, placed it in the CD player, turned the knob the Track Two, and sat back, with my office door closed and the volume full blast:

Fuck the police comin’ straight from the underground

A young nigga got it bad ‘cause I’m brown

And for the other color so police think

They have the authority to kill a minority

Fuck that shit ‘cause I ain’t the one

For a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun

To be beatin’ on and thrown in jail

We can go toe to toe in the middle of the cell

Fuckin’ with me ‘cause I’m a teenager

With a little bit o’ gold and a pager

Searchin’ my car, lookin’ for the product

Thinkin’ every nigga is sellin’ narcotics

You’d rather see me sittin’ in the pen

Than me and Lorenzo coolin’ in a Benzo

Bend the police outta shape and when I’m

Finished, bring the yellow tape

To tape off the scene of the slaughter

Still getting’ swolled off bread and water

I don’t know if they fags or what

Search a nigga down and grabbin’ his nuts

And on the other hand without a gun they can’t get none

But don’t let it be a black and a white one

‘cause they’ll slam your ass on the roof top

Black police showin’ off for the white cop

Ice Cube will swarm

On any motherfucker in a blue uniform

Just ‘cause I’m from the CPT

Punk police are afraid of me—heh!

A young nigga on the warpath

And when I’m finished there’s gonna be a bloodbath

Of cops dying in L.A.

Yo Dre I got somethin’ to say…

FUCK THA POLICE!!

I agree with the girl who asked us not to sing those lyrics during the near-riot—I agree with her sentiments, and I agree with her reasoning behind it.

But I also agree with the lyrics themselves, and they make me feel a lot better when I can’t do anything about the situations I find myself in. Is it wrong to recite violent rap lyrics? No—we have freedom of speech. Even if the pigs make me move out of the way, they can’t shut me up. But ask me if I think it’s wrong to carry out violence for its own sake. You’ll get a completely different answer to that question.                

                                         

THE OLD ME (aka The Savage God)

Everybody is so political these days. 

It wasn't always like that, of course. Thanks to this new Information Age, anyone with an Internet connection and some free time can be an armchair pundit. I know how contemptuous I sound, but someone like myself cannot help but notice this paradigm shift. After years of hearing from people how they hate hearing me talk about politics, now all they want to do is bore me with their politics.

I realized that things reached a critical mass last year when my mother started posting political rants on Facebook. No offense to the woman who gave me life and raised me... but when even your own mom shows up at the party, it's safe to say the party is over.

Maybe it's my comeuppance for blasting my opinions so loudly. But then again, I don't know about that. Maybe it's the natural consequence of my opinion-blasting. Long before the concept of viral content became associated with the Worldwide Web, the notion that ideas were like viruses that can be spread and transmitted exponentially did exist. 

In the past I was definitely trying to get my ideas out there. Unfortunately, most of them were half-baked conspiracy screeds and juvenile attempts at shock and controversy... what we refer to these days as 'trolling'. Luckily, most of that happened when I was a teenager, so now I can look back at as adult and snicker at my sheer gall. 

Recently, however, I unearthed evidence of those ill-advised attempts. Back then, we didn't have no consarned Interwebs so we made Xerox copies of things and stapled them together and handed them out like flyers outside a nightclub. 

Yes, you guessed it: I found copies of the underground 'zine I made during high school.

There were cringe-worthy moments to be sure. Leafing through the pages, I found so many things to be embarrassed by: shock value for its own sake; pointless smut, particularly in the first issue; infantile attacks on other students, teachers, and administrators; and plenty of guileless profanity, none more pronounced than in the title of this angst-y wiseacre publication: "FUCK OFF!"

But I also laughed out loud, and I also realized that my friends and I (because there was no way I was going to do this alone) were smarter than I could ever give us credit for, and we were clearly having fun with it. It helps that, despite our willingness to be silly or vulgar or cynical, some of the articles had some depth. The opinions are dated and shrill, but you can see that we were willing to defend them to the death... of our social lives, which admittedly we neither possessed nor could afford.

However, it's not the articles and the rants that make me proud enough to take pictures of these pages with my phone and post them on a blog. It's the artwork.

I had just discovered Winston Smith, the man who designed many album covers and insert posters for the punk band Dead Kennedys. He specialized in topical montage art that had a style all its own. I co-opted that style for the look of FUCK OFF! and began to clip out magazine and newspaper photos, interesting tidbits of journalism, headlines in all sorts of fonts, and mounted them on notebook paper with a glue stick. Then I solicited a few friends for things to fill in the empty spaces: essays, articles, photos, cartoons, anything that would visually attract the attention of my peers.

To truly tell the tale of how I started doing this, I have to pick up where I left off in my last blog entry. In the wake of our confrontation with a Nazi skinhead crew on a city bus, I was suddenly infused with a self-righteous indignation that nobody could cool. Starting high school as a Sophomore, I was determined to strike out on my own and reinvent myself as some sort of journalistic provocateur, symbolized for me in my choice for a pseudonym: Hunter S. Thompson.

The two companions with whom I encountered the skinheads (whom I declined to name in the last post because I wasn't sure if they wanted me to) were very instrumental in turning me on to new ideas, both culturally and politically. My normal-looking friend who took an elbow to the face on the bus that day was, at the time, my best friend. He encouraged me to tell stories on the school bus every morning, and turned me on to music by bands like Led Zeppelin and the Stay Cats. He also had a liberal outlook on life, and it was at odds with my conservative-raised beliefs. We debated each other constantly, and after a while I began to see that his ideas actually did have more in common with how I really felt about things than anyone else in my life up to that point. I loved my family, but I also knew I was not the same as them; we did not see eye-to-eye on many issues. My best friend enabled me to find a way of expressing my concerns without being judged or ridiculed. 

Our mutual friend, the one in the Butthole Surfers T-shirt, was like no one I'd ever met: an accomplished artist even in grade school, with a mastery and skill I have rarely ever seen in my personal life; an avid punk rock fan who introduced me to bands like the aforementioned Dead Kennedys as well as The Vandals, The Descendents, The Germs, and X; also, he was a politically active member of a politically active family. Long before it became chic to buck the Establishment, the kid with the Butthole Surfers T-shirt and his parents and siblings were socially conscious and passionate about their commitment to the environment and to progressive causes.

And me? I was the writer, the storyteller. I had a way with words. I had the gift of gab. I also was shameless in my dealings with other people. I wasn't nervous in front of large crowds. I had balls. I think my friends thought I was a little crazy, but it only made them more curious as to how far I was willing to go.

In a way, you can say that these two associates of mine programmed me to be a political agitator. Certainly no one in my own family ever ingrained these ideas into my head. But they had to come from somewhere. And seeing as these guys were my best friends in the whole world during the elementary and middle school years, it makes sense (as I look back) to say that they poured their beliefs into me and I accepted it and ran with it.

What is sadly ironic is that it took the skinhead incident to catalyze this drive, this urge to make statements in a public/social arena. The irony stems from the fact that, as I noted in that blog entry, my friendship with these two friends deteriorated after we started attending high school. I felt like I had somehow outgrown them or that we didn't have the same level of commitment to things. Plainly speaking, I think they really did think I was completely nuts after almost getting us into a fight with some violent neo-Nazis. That summer before high school, I didn't really see or hear from them, which made the growing schism even wider. I had no classes with them, and I started to make other friends. These friends that I was making ended up being the people I recruited to help me with FUCK OFF!


I did the lion's share of the work but I handed the major writing assignments off to a person who chose the pseudonym "Fast" Eddie Peale. "Fast" Eddie had a style that took no punches: he went for the jugular, and I liked that. When he showed me his first articles, I declared them perfect. No need to edit, no need to tell him what or how to write... his contributions were ultimately what kept people's attention, after the visuals I cooked up lured them in. He targeted what he perceived as posturing and preening at our school: the little political groups devoted to ending South African apartheid that he (correctly) viewed as glamorized social clubs for those who weren't jocks or cheerleaders; the ways in which our musical choices determined cliques (perhaps the most controversial essay we ever published); and a list of reasons why killing a quarter of the world's population would be beneficial to society (an immature foray into satire via Jonathan Swift).

As sophomoric as this all was (and not because we were Sophomores, mind you) it also bears noting that this wasn't your average teenage whining. Far from it. FUCK OFF! was sort of mean-spirited and petty... and in comparison to what is going on right now as we speak online and in the world of politics, fairly prescient.

Many people assumed that I put "Fast" Eddie up to it when it came to things to write about, but the truth is that he was never told what to write or how to write it. Thus, when he targeted the kid in the Butthole Surfers T-shirt in an article about political consciousness in our school, many who knew me before high school assumed that I had commissioned a "hit piece" as retaliation for... for what, nobody ever explained. And it's just as well, because I suspect that if I had commissioned a hit piece (my God, just writing that sentence both makes me ill and makes me laugh) it would not have been as funny as what "Fast" Eddie turned in. 

Fortunately for everyone involved, I have not reprinted the articles for people to read. Some of the text can be seen in the pictures I have uploaded, but I made no effort to transcribe the content. Because frankly, it was high school writing at its best, and even if Mr. Peale were to sign off on it and agree to let me post his articles, I don't see how they would have any point other than to reflect upon ideas expressed over two decades ago, ideas that were funny back then but may have aged badly and might prove to be more embarrassing than we all would like to admit.

As it is, Peale doesn't even know I'm posting this. He's on my Facebook but I think he's too busy these days to log on. I might send this link to him to see if he might enjoy it, but I doubt he will. There's no bad blood between us-- I just have a feeling that (true to his ornery self) he would scoff at the notion that there's anything of value here.

As for me, I see the value (as I stated earlier) in the artwork. There are several elements that, even as they are of their time, are actually ahead of their time. For example, in the top left corner of the image above this paragraph, there is a picture of Donald Trumpp with a caption over his head reading "The Great Satan". I can't think of anything that encapsulates what a large number of people all over the world are feeling right now more than that. It has many layers to it, the biggest being the proposed anti-Muslim registry our new President wants to implement. "The Great Satan" of course is the nickname that Arab nations have given to the United States as the Western superpower it has been ever since the end of WWII. 

I created that small fraction of an image, one that was a small part of a larger tapestry, almost as na afterthought. The caption could've gone over the heads of any number of political figures of the time: Bush 41, Clinton, Yasser Arafat, Jerry Falwell, even someone like Luther Campbell from 2 Live Crew, who was embroiled in a First Amendment fight over his song lyrics. But it ended up on Trumpp, and seeing that small fragment as I rifled through these pages prompted me to get out the camera, take pics, upload them to the PC, and begin writing this out. 

In my mind, there is hope that some teenager out there is doing exactly what we did back then, but this time on their Tumblr, or on Twitter, or Snapchat or Instagram. 

After a few issues and a dwindling attention span for our brand of agitprop, "Fast" Eddie officially retired from FUCK OFF! My interest in the 'zine at this point was strictly editorial, which means nothing when you consider that I published nearly everything I was handed. More contributors began to submit artwork and articles, but as one friend of mine put it, the 'zine became more of a thing for the writers and artists than any readers. I think we even printed a contribution from someone's mom, under the name Suzy Creamcheese. As cool as it was for her to support our 'zine, remember what I wrote earlier about the party being over when the moms show up. 

We never got into any real trouble for our efforts, which disappointed me a bit. I totally imagined an entire scenario in my head whereupon the principal finds an issue of the 'zine and can barely contain his unfettered rage, his hands shaking the pages loose as he fumes with wrath. I could hear my name being growled as he pages his secretary, ordering her to "find out who is putting out this scandalous filth" and bring them to his office.

The fantasy falls apart when I recall that (1) our principal was a woman, and (2) there actually was an "official" underground newspaper called The Forum at our school. It started when a student created it, got in trouble, and some of the teachers defended the work and volunteered to supervise its publication so as not to stifle the creativity and expression at hand. This appalled me to no end, even though I submitted a piece or two that made it to publication. I had created FUCK OFF! as some sort of antidote to the notion of an official underground press, but when the most offensive piece we ever published was a Peale article that pigeonholed everyone in our class according to their taste in pop music, that should've been the sign that we weren't going to really get far with the whole -let's-piss-people-off thing.

I must say, my high school was extremely tolerant. Either that, or people today are just offended far easier than thy ever were.

There was one essay that I penned shortly before I stopped putting these things out for good. I was going to reprint it but decided against it, even though I am really proud of what it had to say.

I decided not to reprint it because I don't want to seem like I am living in the past. It's bad enough that I am celebrating something I did in high school. I feel justified in that only be cause it is the logical extension from my blog post about the skinhead incident, which was inspired by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer getting smacked upside his head.

But the other reason why  I didn't reprint that one article that made me proud is because, sadly, it is still relevant. When I wrote it in 1991, I was hoping for a better future. I was hoping that people would have evolved. In many ways, civilization has evolved since those days. But right now, we're seeing it devolve, going backwards. It is such a stark contrast to what I wrote back then.

My article's premise was that, if we wanted a better future for our kids, we had to start by reaching out to our peers before they go off to college, become cogs in the Establishment, and churn out babies, all the while passing on the bad habits and prejudices of the past. The future judges, leaders, police, and soldiers need to be programmed, like me, by people with optimism and love in their hearts before the world pummels them down and crushes their spirits. Only in this way, I surmised, can the human race rise above the muck and the mire.

Looking around these days, I don't see it happening any time soon. But at least I have a kid of my own, and I'm doing everything I can to make sure he gets it before he grows old. I'm doing my part, in other words.

Eventually, the demise of FUCK OFF! came right after Clinton became President. I can only imagine, had I failed to graduate in 1992 and didn't finally make it out until the end of his two-term presidency (or, in a less backwards manner, the underclassmen had taken up the mantle and continued publishing FUCK OFF! in my absence) what the 'zine would've done with material like the Monica Lewinsky scandal. By the time that thing hit the news, I was already busy being a cog in the machine after pursuing a record contract with a hip-hop group and then (when that failed) getting hired on at a radio network that eventually got bought out by Clear Channel.

My one real regret while working for Clear Channel was that I never took over the streaming satellite feed during a Rush Limbaugh show to broadcast Bill Hicks' stand-up bit about Bush, Reagan, and Rush doing nasty things with Barbara Bush in a bathtub. I had the idea, and I know how I would've carried it out. Sure, I would've been fired, fined by the FCC, and received death threats from Dittoheads the world over... but the Old Me would've done it with no compunction.

Eventually, they laid me off after almost eight years of service. How appropriate. 

I discovered the virtues of blogging and trolling in late 2002, around the same time I got the boot from Clear Channel. I began to follow current events again, and at one point I had as many as five blogs (one being expressly political) as well as being as contributor to a few college websites that did the underground press thing much better than I ever did in high school. I battled with Internet trolls and argued profusely with complete strangers, some of whom I might have been friends with had I met them in person IRL.

And now, here we are, in the Trumpp Age. The New Dark Ages. The Era Of The Great Satan. And here I am, wallowing in past pseudo-victories, laughing to myself as people debate concepts such as "alternative facts" and "fake news", marveling at how many people I used to know who hated it when I talked about politics now think they have an opinion just because they own a smart phone.

I'm over it. And yet, I'm not. Because it's all coming full circle. Like I said, somewhere out there, a bunch of smart-ass kids are getting their crazy anything-for-a-laugh friend to do something wild and nutty. And then that kid is going to have an epiphany one day, and he (or she... gotta be gender neutral) is going to go out and make bold, grand declarations. 

And I hope they get further with it then I ever did.

One last thing:

The poet W.B. Yeats attended Alfred Jarry's debut performance of his play Ubu Roi back in 1896. The character of Pere Ubu is a buffoonish, vulgar caricature who somehow becomes the ruler of the nation and proceeds to "dis-embrain" his political foes before he and his manipulative wife are driven out of Poland and into exile. The play ended when the lead actor playing Pere Ubu uttered the play's first word, "Merdre," and caused an infamous riot.

Later on, Yeats was quoted as saying, in response to both the play and the riot, "After our own verse, after all our subtle colour and nervous rhythm... what more is possible? After us the Savage God."