My reputation as someone who isn’t shy about his opinions, especially about music, is well known amongst my friends. My dismissal of so much music and passionate discourse on what I don’t like and why have earned me the moniker “Hater Jack,” often shortened to simply “Hater.”

Initially, the name came about because of my absolute loathing of the Los Angeles Lakers, a deep hatred I have a difficult time explaining. I have no allegiance to any particular NBA team. I just want to see the Lakers lose and so I’m a fan of anyone playing against them. The odd part is I really have no clue as to why it even matters to me. In the least. All I know is it drives me insane to watch a Lakers basketball game.

But I digress.

The Hater tag’s stuck. So much so that when I got my Dodge Magnum pimped out, dropped on 22” custom rims and blacked out windows, my friends wanted to get me vanity plates that read “H8R JACK”

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A friend just told me her son has decided to quit college and join the army. She is, as I imagine most mothers to be in this situation, distraught. The question she asks repeatedly and can’t seem to get answered by the young man is, why?

What drives a young man with his entire future in front of him, to enlist? To purposefully put himself in harm’s way? To risk his life in a war based on lies & deceit? Is it answering a noble cause? Or another brainwashing by the marketing of war as video game? A need for structure and discipline? Some primal male instinct to be tested, to face the ultimate challenge?

I understand this is part of the bargain we make for living in this country…but there is little say, as we’ve seen time and again, in who, where, when and for what “cause” our children are sent to fight. My generation was taught that we fight to preserve our freedoms and those who would seek to oppress those freedoms. The Patriots of the Revolutionary War fought, so we were told, to end the oppression of the British, stop the crushing taxation, establish a country free of limitations because of class, religion or race, of equal justice for all and guaranteed basic freedoms. Continue reading

Been spending a lot of time thinking, chatting and arguing about The Who’s performance at the Super Bowl. Doesn’t seem to be much middle ground in the reaction at all. Most folks who weighed  in either loved it or hated it. Some really hated it. I was too excited just to see Townshend up there that I hardly paid attention to what it actually sounded like.

My brain just automatically fills in what may not have been there. The Who – and Pete specifically – was such a huge influence on me and my approach to music and I spent so many hours listening to Live at Leeds that just seeing Pete on stage sends me back in time to laying on the living room floor in the dark, my parents out of the house, the big console stereo fucking cranked to window rattling levels…completely and utterly happy.

Happy Jack.

So now he’s old. So am I. Neither one of us planned or hoped for anything other than dying before this happened. But we didn’t. We’re here. As are all of you.

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