Kanye West

Fox News

Erykah Badu

Facebook

Wang Weilin

Virgin Airlines

George Bush

Nelson Mandela

Iranian Voters

Joaquin Phoenix

Rosa Parks

Love them or hate them there is only one word that describes everyone on this list.

(hint: it starts with an f)

“People don’t know what’s going to happen next. My readers are not sure. Could I embarrass them? Maybe. Could I inspire them? Maybe. They don’t know. That’s very important, because when you become a comfortable, reliable friend, I’m not sure that’s the place for great blogging.” –Prince Campbell (chartreuse)

chartreu.se

Digg getting into the toolbar business: Smart

Rihanna going back to Chris Brown: Dumb

Adam Corrolla taking his show online: Smart

Andrew Baron‘s analysis of why TV Studios will die : Smart

Money’s diminishing returns : True

We need more ass wiping businesses : True

Obama’s budget is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds. : False

Violence will start being directed at corporations: maybe

No Line On The Horizon better than Achtung Baby :  yeah…

Dear favorite ex-wife who spends her time trying to change the world:

No matter what happens in our next 50 years, you know no will love you more than me. And I respect more than anyone the things you are trying to do.

If it wasn’t for people like you the world would never have the opportunity to be as great as it could be.

But I want to be sure you know what’s really going on.

And how the world really works.

We all know the world is now forever flat.

We all know more opportunities abound.

Some kid with a idea is almost as powerful as a CEO of a major corporation.

That the most important thing is ideas.

But you have to be realistic.
You have to pay attention.
And know no one makes it alone.

What do you think all these social networks are for?

We are in an age of great change. And the world of our grandkids is going to be almost unrecognizable.

But nothing disappears.

The world isn’t a pendulum which swings back and forth between conservatism and liberalism.

It’s not a place that goes from one extreme to the other.

Change is more like a spiral staircase.

We take pieces of the past and carry some of it with us.

We never go back. Never.

But neither do we ever really forget.

It would be good if the extreme greed of the past century was to disappear.

That we would do nothing but create sustainable living places from now on. Get rid of all racism and provide everyone with opportunities.

It would be great if all the future models were a more realistic representation of reality.

But the truth is, mass excesses and greed isn’t going to disappear. It’s going to morph into the times. And reappear as something a bit different.

The good (hopefully) will become the norm but the evil will still hang around.

You don’t have to live a life of power and wealth.
You don’t have to be beautiful.
But it helps.

It always has.
Call me whenever.
My donation is in the mail.

-prince

On February 6, 2007 Steve Jobs wrote his “Thoughts On Music” on the Apple website.

He explained Apple’s need to ‘license rights to distribute music from others,’ mentioning Universal and the other large record companies.

This ubiquitous statement may now be the death nell for already struggling record companies.

Why?

Because Eminem read Steve Jobs ‘thoughts’, that line in particular and got pissed.

You see, the major labels equates digital downloads to the sale of music in other forms. Meaning they treat it like a CD. The artist only gets a small percentage of the sale.

Licensing agreements are different.

According to most licencing agreements the money is split 50/50 with the artists.

So are digital sales (i.e. ringtones and downloads) actual music sales (like CDs) or licencing agreements between record labels and other companies?

Well a jury will be deciding that this week.

If they are licensing agreements then record labels owe a lot of money, which, let’s face it, they can’t really afford.

Though there are other things going on in the world of music, the labels are bringing their A-game. Taking the stand will be record company legends and even Steve Jobs (via video).

The ramifications are that important to the labels.

Which just means they expect to lose.

Everyone’s talking about money these days so when a family member sent me a link to a tv show featuring my cousin and how he made his money I was shocked but decided to watch.

My first cousin, now known to everyone, ran one of the most notorious gangs in northern California. He ended up doing 10 years in federal prison for his exploits.

Now most of the stuff on this tv show I already knew. J-Diggs and I are the same age and our families are close.

What surprised me was the fact that my cousin and other family members were willing to get on tv and talk about it.

It’s amazing to me what people will do and say in front of tv camera.

Now I tell a lot of my personal business on this blog.

Regular readers know about my ex-wives, some of my failures, some of my triumphs, and my fetish for good music. I’ve even spoken about my cousin on this blog.

But people who know me know this blog is not me.

Just like you are not your myspace page.

Or your Flickr pictures, or your Facebook profile.

You are not even your innane twitter postings.

They are just a snapshot. A peice of  a map.

And the map is not the territory.

One of the cliches of modern media is some harried woman on an exploitive tv show screaming back at a booing audience “You don’t know me! You don’t know me!” seconds after we learn she has slept with her sister’s husband.

One of the problems with modern media, in all it’s forms, is that the viewer thinks it’s getting the whole story.

We make snap judgments based on a 7 minute Maury interview, an inane twitter comment, an angry blog post, or a picture of some dude smoking with a bong.

Soon we will get to the point that people will look at all this new media with the same skepticism we look at politicians and used car salesman.

Until then the problem isn’t everyone knowing your secrets.

But the fact we keep looking at maps and think we’ve seen the world.

One of the more interesting stories in the history of music is the one about the Guns & Roses album, ‘Chinese Democracy’. It took almost 20 years to create. In between most of the band members quit.

The band signed a deal with Best Buy to be the only distributor of the album. Best Buy expected to sell 1.2 million. It has barely sold 500,000 worldwide.

The album came out in November of 2008.Parts of the album was leaked as far back as 2003 .

The band refused to put out videos for the album.

The leader of the band, Axl Rose, refused to do interviews and hasn’t done one in 9 years.

Until now.

And seeing that he got the questions in advance, it’s a doozy.

The rapper 50 cent made more money than any other artist last year. He had a TV show on MTV. He owns a piece of Vitamin Water. He put out an album that didn’t do well. His followup is a very public, very ridiculous beef with another rapper, Rick Ro$$.

I can’t really tell you what they are beefing about, but 50 has taken it to a new level.

His attack is a multimedia campaign including youtube clips of  50 buying Ross’ ‘baby momma’ clothes to him releasing Ross’ financial records during radio interviews and creating a special website dissing the rapper.

Ross, obviously not as multimedia savvy, has been just releasing diss songs. How old school!

But it’s not just rappers who beef.

The legendary Etta James went on a rant (hear it here) about how much she dislikes Beyonce and President Obama. The 71 yo woman was pissed about Beyonce singing “At Last” at an inauguration ball.   She, this week, apologized. Probably because she sounded so …bitter.

While Etta James had modest success with the song in 1961, it was first performed in 1942 by Glenn Miller and his orchestra in the film “Orchestra Wives” and became a hit record for the band leader.

The notion that a performer has a proprietary right to a song or role is absurd.

And what of all the singers who sang “At Last” in the two decades before Etta James did? Indeed, four years before her recording, Nat King Cole included the tune on his No. 1 album “Love Is the Thing.”

Bitter is so not a good look.

Anyway, enjoy the Grammys!

Back when I was in the record business one of my bosses would always say you can find the future by looking at the edges.

Well he didn’t say that exactly but he would always go first to the gay clubs and see what they was listening to now because he claimed, by next year, everyone would be listening to it.

Some things don’t change.

Last year while visiting friends in Detroit a faghag friend of mine told me after a heated discussion, to “kick rocks!“

Being a 40 year old man not up on the latest slang I had no idea what that meant.

But since I dig clever I asked.

“It’s like when a kid leaves upset with his head down and he kicks the first thing he sees. It’s gay slang for ‘fuck off!’.”

Flash forward.

A quick twitter search for “kick rocks” shows that a phrase  found in the gay slang dictionary has now moved to teenagers and rappers who probably have no idea where it came from. It won’t be long till it’s used in a New York Times opinion piece.

It’s been co-opted, remixed, or whatever else you want to call the way things move through culture today.

Which brings us to the current controversy concering Obama, the AP and artist Shepard Fairey.

Fairey created the now iconic Hope poster of President Obama based on a little known AP picture.

Now that that it has become so popular the AP wants credit and a cut.

Now this won’t be the case that frees remixes, mashups and other cool stuff from legal limbo. (It involves the President so it will be quietly resolved.)

But it makes it abundantly clear that the rules we created in the 20th Century are now practically archaic. And when you attempt to use them on 21st Century situations they sound ridiculous to current sensibilities.

Everything introduced to the public will be remixed and used in purposes that is only limited by imagination.

It’s the age we live in.

You have to accept that you never know where things will end up.

For the past week I have been in battle with the 70 year old lady that lives next door.

She’s nosy. She wakes me up at 7:30 every morning and called the city on me for mythical violations.

Trying to avoid an all out war with the lady I went to talk to her yesterday evening.

I explained my case and asked her to start being reasonable.

She told me, no lie, to “kick rocks”.

It’s not the best of times for Kings.

From Wall Street titans like Dick Fuld to Main Street titans like Howard Schultz the future looks difficult.

Even the kings of the blogging world are beginning to whine.

On the same day that Mike Arrington announced a vacation from blogging and blamed other bloggers for threats on his life, his friend Jason Calacanis released a 10,000 word (at least) opus on how technology has pretty much fucked up his head and that we need “change”.

Of course I’m all for change, especially since it’s pretty much inevitable. But whining only when the arrows come at you doesn’t taste right. And anyway, what I am even more interested in is the timing of both of these screeds and what’s happening underneath and below the noise.

Let’s be real.

Arrington is a brilliant entreprenuer and what he has done with Techcrunch over the years is nothing short of amazing. His chutzpah, timing and ruthless focus makes him an internet legend.

But let’s also be honest, Techcrunch’s future ain’t exactly bright.

With the economy tanking (and all the smart guys betting it’s going to get worse) a website that makes it’s money from folks who get their money from VCs doesn’t seem like a growth industry, at least for the next couple years.

I might be a little stressed too, thinking about how to keep the cash rolling in during the next two years of lower revenue and increased competition.

A sabatical might be just what I need.

“…revolutionaries wait for my head on a silver plate…”-vida la viva

You know how to spot a revolution?

By looking at the kings who litter the floor.

People get hurt in revolutions.

Some may be innocent bystanders but most victims are supporters and emissaries of who or what it is that’s changing. Today our government is trying to save industries that came to life around the last great depression. But all the government help in the world couldn’t save the horse and buggy.

That’s just the way revolutions work.

Not everyone gets out alive.

What does that mean for our blogging kings?

Well maybe instead of trying to change the public they might want to look at themselves.

Not because nutjobs who spit on people have a point, but because if your gut says something needs to change, it’s probably right.

And all change starts from within.

It’s also probably time for some Denton-like creative self-destruction

or bullet-proof vests.