All About Tom: The Blog

Vorsprung durch Technik

2009-06-08T15:10:00.002-05:00

Someone set us up the social bookmarking. For great SEO justice.

Don't bass on my shoe and tell me it's raining.

2009-06-08T11:10:00.005-05:00

New Bass Day x 2!

Höfner H5001-CT

Hagstrom HB-8

Shared via AddThis

2009-05-10T17:58:00.001-05:00

You Can Be In My Dream

2009-04-23T22:37:00.002-05:00

Thanks for the help when we needed it, chums.

2009-03-26T19:07:00.003-05:00

From the time I was very young, my father drilled a phrase into my memory that always serves well in times when progress is at a standstill. You've probably heard it before: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way." If there's one sentiment I would like to share with Republican party leaders today, that would be it.

Today, Ohio Representative John Boehner introduced the public to the Republican party's counter-proposal for a national budget, an eighteen page pamphlet that contains no actual numbers. This move has all the tell-tale signs of a joke, but the punchline just isn't funny. This isn't leading, this is trying to be an albatross around President Obama's neck. And their political strategy is obvious: do whatever it takes to help Obama to fail, by whatever means necessary, so that 'Pubs running for office in 2010 can appear to be a favorable alternative. Well that's great for your careers, guys, but for the rest of us average joes...not so much. I would like to believe that the Republican "strategery" is too transparent to go unnoticed by the general public, but I'm not that naiive. After all, this is still the same country that elected a mentally disabled drug addict and religious zealot to office...twice.

One would think that the United States' (and by extension, the world's) financial crisis would be obvious to any politician, no matter their party affiliation. If continued employment is the Republican party's goal, then they should first see to it that their employer...in this case, the American people...stays in business. Instead, they're doing the equivalent of spending every hour of every work day updating their resumés and padding their portfolios. For all the talk of this idea that politicians work for the people, our impotence in terminating their employment is disappointing to say the least.

I am quickly becoming less and less impressed with Obama's efforts to reach across the aisle for Republican support. That strategy also has obvious political motivations, and it's equally unhelpful in this situation. The minority party's political mission right now is to be completely unhelpful, and I question why Democrats continue to hope for cooperation from Republicans when they consistently have no intention of leading, following, or getting out of the way. Democrats have a majority in both houses, and the advantage should be put to use. If Republicans won't make themselves useful, then to Hell with them.

We Drink and Drink and Drink and Drink and Fight and Fight and Fight and Fight

2009-03-17T09:37:00.002-05:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day from my bowl of Apple Jacks to you.

Rock & Roll Will Never Die

2009-03-10T12:04:00.000-05:00

Click here for my new recording project website.

Spam Eggs Bacon and Spam

2009-03-09T09:32:00.004-05:00

Let us fight for a world of Reason

2009-03-03T15:56:00.002-06:00

Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others

2009-02-21T02:57:00.004-06:00

Dear Jessica Simpson,

I don't know you. I have never followed your career and I have never bought any of your records, so I don't know if one could even call me a fan. But I want to write to you just on the level of one human being speaking to another. I don't know if you will ever actually see this, but I hope that you will. I know when you're famous it can be hard to know who's really saying what they think and who's just trying to get on your good side and ride the gravy train. I have no invested interest in saying what I'm going to say, except to bring back a little human decency into our world.

What the public has been saying about your figure lately is sickening to me. Even people who try to publicly support you don't seem to really get it right. I watched Dolly Parton talk to Larry King tonight and I think she wasted an opportunity to really support you and women in general. The way the media and the public have been judging you goes far beyond being "not very nice," as she put it. Some of your fans are trying to say nice things to support you, but I think most of them are only getting it half right.

As I said before, I don't know you. I haven't followed your career, at least not deliberately. But the fame you've achieved means that the details of your life are broadcast everywhere to the point that it's inescapable. I don't really believe that we have any business knowing who's sleeping with whom, who's got a baby bump, or who's gained ten pounds. That kind of thing isn't entertainment, it's just gossip, and gossip has always been a part of the worst of human nature.

What we tend to forget is that even us average folks are often ruthlessly judged by each other, and for very stupid reasons. In my time, I've known lots of tall people and short people, big people and thin people, and one thing I have learned is this: A non-celebrity who happens to be extremely thin doesn't deserve to be judged as "anorexic" any more than a celebrity deserves to be called "fat" for filling out a figure that's actually much more average than the fickle public will admit. The truth is, that's just the way they are, and people should have every right to be what they really are, whether they're famous or not.

We are living in an age when the Internet grants us all anonymity and every celebrity in Hollywood and Nashville are examined with the scrutiny of a police stake out. As a culture, we have denied celebrities their human right to dignity, and in doing so we are learning to deny it to ourselves. We are fast forgetting (or abandoning) our own humanity. We watch each other, we interact with each other, but we don't really care about each other.

When we place no worth on another person's dignity, life itself begins to lose its worth. Is it any wonder, in this culture, that we have such a high murder rate? Is it any wonder why people like Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon and Heath Ledger aren't still with us? Is it any wonder why people would leak a picture of Michael Phelps smoking a bong at the expense of his reputation as the greatest Olympian in American history; or a picture of Rihanna's bruises at the expense of bringing her attacker to justice...all just to make a quick buck?

My father once said to me, "Nothing else matters so long as you're happy." It took me a few years to figure out what that meant. I used to think that looking out for one's own happiness was just being selfish, but I know now that it's the only way to preserve your own sense of self worth and dignity. As one human being to another, Jessica, I would hope that you would not be the next person to be chewed up by the monster that is Fame, to meet a similar fate as John Lennon or Marilyn Monroe. You don't owe it to anybody to lose twenty pounds in eight weeks. If you want my opinion, I've always thought you were beautiful no matter what size you are, and any man in his right mind (of which, admittedly, there are few) should feel lucky to be by your side. You only owe it to yourself to find happiness. If you're happy being the shape that you are, then so be it and to hell with everybody else, me included. If you're happy working in the entertainment industry, then go on working. But if not, it's okay to give it up. It's okay to admit to yourself that you don't want to put up with the scrutiny anymore. Not everyone can be Dolly Parton. You have to be yourself, whatever that may be. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to tell you you should quit. I'm just saying you've got to pursue your happiness, whether that means working or retiring, gaining weight or losing it. Nothing else matters so long as you're happy. Just blaze your own path and don't apologize to anybody. I think that's what Dolly would do, wouldn't she?

And to the rest of you out there reading this, let's do our part to put a stop to the gossip. Stop reading Us Weekly and People. Stop watching Hollywood Tonight. Stop feeding the paparazzi.

Here's to happiness. May we all find it together.

with love,
Tom

Reunite the red white and blue before it turns to stone

2009-02-04T17:52:00.006-06:00

It’s been three months since Barack Obama won the election, and almost two weeks since he took office. Obviously, I’m happy about how the election turned out, but it hasn’t come without its share of disappointment. Like many people, I was shocked and disgusted that California voters took two political steps forward and one step back by electing Obama and passing Proposition 8 on the same night. But on a personal level, it’s going to be a long four years in terms of getting along with my Republican mother. I love my mother to bits. I pretty much have to. Unlike my brother, I’ve accepted the fact that a person only gets one family and he can’t pick who they’ll be. But she is a complete flake, and getting flakier with every passing year.

As soon after the election as Thanksgiving, when I came home for the holiday dinner, my mother made sure to ruin the evening by yelling in my face all night long about how America is doomed because people like me elected a black Muslim, and that we’re living in the “End Times,” or some such bullshit. Of course, she would never admit responsibility for ruining Thanksgiving. I never uttered a single word about politics that night. I didn’t even respond to her raving. I just sat still and allowed her to make an ass of herself in front of the rest of the family. In spite of all that, she characteristically defied all conventional logic and blamed it all on me because I walked in the door still wearing my Obama campaign button. I’ll be honest: My happiness with the election’s outcome may have something to do with it, but mostly I’ve just been too lazy to bother taking it off. But that explanation just wouldn’t be sufficient when dealing with someone in the throes of lunacy.

My mother demanded to know why I was still wearing the button. I had a rare moment of inspiration, and with a smirk I answered, “Because I’m a patriot. I love America and I support our President. After all, isn’t that the precedent that the last guy set?” Then, as I sat grinning smugly while my Uncle Bill softly chuckled, I thought silently to myself, in the parlance of our times, “Pwned.”

I still haven’t removed the button.

Imagine all the people living life in peace.

2009-01-20T10:01:00.003-06:00

Clair de Lune

2008-12-27T20:41:00.007-06:00

Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune sounds to me like the five stages of grief set to music.

That's one more kid that'll never get to be cool.

2008-12-16T17:42:00.007-06:00

The Pennsylvania We Never Found

2008-12-10T19:33:00.006-06:00

Now that the election is over, and the good guys have won, I'm going to take a moment to validate something that Barack Obama “got caught thinking” during the campaign:

“So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre… I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work—don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s… There were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today—kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.
“Here’s how it is: In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by… It’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.
“But… So the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is—so, we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing—close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide health care for every American. So we’ll go down a series of talking points.
“But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
“Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background—there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.”

First of all, I find it interesting that, even with the references to xenophobia and world trade, the media and the public in general focused their attention on Obama's references to guns and religion. I think that indicates that either this country generally feels that those remarks were indefensible, or it feels that they're irrefutable.

But the main point that I want to make is that this comment about rural communities clinging to guns and religion, that had so much of the country in an uproar, is absolutely correct. I've kept silent on this issue until now because I felt there may be a political risk (however small and unlikely) that some right-winger could tune into my blog and hold up my comments as evidence that all of us dirty liberals are nothing but snotty elitists—not that I have any delusions as to the proliferation of this blog.

There is a paranoia inherent in the rural parts of America that is part and parcel of both the American religious experience and America's formative years in history, and that paranoia draws the unthinking mind ever closer to the concepts of mortal defense and divine intervention. (If you think my opinion on this matter makes me an “intellectual elitist,” then bear in mind that I grew up in the rural Midwest; contrary to the folksy conservative fear-monger's belief, intellectualism is not exclusive to urban life.)

Finally, to follow up my oh-so horribly elitist musings on rural life, here is a similar quote:

“The more harsh the circumstances of daily life, the more potent are the simple and universal emotional themes of struggle, sin, repentance, forgiveness and redemption that form the core of evangelical fundamentalist religion.”
— Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason

Danke schon, darling.

2008-11-27T16:41:00.002-06:00

VOTE TODAY

2008-11-04T10:17:00.002-06:00

Let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised.

2008-10-08T15:24:00.006-05:00

It's official. This is what a $700 billion bailout plan will get you, provided that you are not among the destitute, foreclosed, unwashed masses who actually could make good use of it. Was this trip really necessary?

Bush spokeswoman ‘outraged’ by AIG junket
WASHINGTON (AFP) — President George W. Bush's chief spokeswoman expressed outrage Wednesday at reports that AIG executives spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a spa retreat after the US government rescued the firm.
“I understand why the American people would be outraged. I am. It's pretty despicable,” Dana Perino told reporters.
She spoke after US lawmakers were told that AIG spent more than 440,000 dollars for an executive getaway at a California beach resort just days after the insurance giant was rescued by an 85-billion-dollar US government loan.
Bush lobbied for a 700-billion-dollar bailout package to help the US public, said Perino, who stressed: “He did not do that to help top executives and certainly not to help executives go to a spa.”
The US Federal Reserve stepped in to save American International Group from imminent collapse on September 16, with a loan that gave the US government a stake of 79.9 percent in the insurance behemoth in the deal.
“Less than one week later, AIG held a week-long retreat for company executives at the exclusive St. Regis resort in Monarch Beach, California,” Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Tuesday.
Invoices showed that AIG paid the Pacific Ocean getaway resort more than 440,000 dollars, Waxman told the committee on its second day of hearings on the Wall Street economic crisis.
The charges included close to 200,000 dollars for rooms—which cost between 425 and 1,200 dollars per night—over 150,000 for meals and 23,000 in spa charges, he said.

Meanwhile, I'm struggling to stay current with my student loan payments. Die in a fire, Wall Street.

The rich stay healthy, the sick stay poor.

2008-09-26T09:58:00.004-05:00

This bailout business is pants-shittingly infuriating. Let's call a spade a spade: the bailout is nothing but the latest event in you-scratch-my-back-I'll-pad-your-Swiss-account politics.

And the suspension of McCain's campaign is, in reality, part of his campaign. He doesn't understand the economy. He has nothing to say in the bailout meetings.

Be thankful they don't take it all.

2008-08-11T11:03:00.003-05:00

Translation: VOTE OBAMA.

Stand and Be Counted

2008-08-06T10:41:00.003-05:00

And the answers were depressing.

Do you like American music?

2008-08-02T18:21:00.011-05:00

Today I took my Gretsch 6120DSW Nashville to Gretsch Day at Cream City Music. My guitar had the honor of being signed by company president Fred Gretsch III, my ears had the honor of hearing some great Gretsch sounds played on a 1959 Country Gent by the ironically named Bobby Gibson, and I had the honor of having my meeting-a-pinup-girl cherry popped by Gretsch Girl Kim Falcon. Mr. Gretsch was an interesting chap. His silver ponytail took me by complete surprise. Ms. Falcon was very kind and gracious. She seemed like one of those girls who's completely at ease with freaks and geeks. Her boyfriend was on the scene, shooting photos of all the goings on. I invited them both to give me a call if they wanted to see downtown Milwaukee.

Actually, the coolest part of the event took place after almost everyone else had gone home. Local guitar hero Greg Koch dropped in. Evidently, he was supposed to have been Bobby Gibson's opening act of sorts, but circumstances prevented him from making a punctual arrival, so when he did eventually show up it seemed much more spontaneous. All the better for me and anyone else still hanging around by that time, because he grabbed a Reverend Horton Heat signature model 6120 and spent an hour or so jamming along with Mr. Gibson. But the jam session quickly morphed into a guitar lesson, and Bobby took Greg to school, showing him all kinds of interesting chord shapes with pleasantly dissonant overtones and three-finger rolls on two strings, all of which resolved neatly into the melodies of each song they played. They ran through "Mr. Sandman," "New York New York," "Caravan," and other classic instrumentals that I recognized at the time but can't remember now. And I watched it all while sitting right next to Fred Gretsch. To put it into perspective, it was rather like watching Jimi Hendrix get a guitar lesson while sitting next to Leo Fender. There were a few people snapping photos, and I know if I dig enough they'll probably turn up on the Internet somewhere, but it really seemed like the kind of memory that lingers more sweetly on the mind of the beholder without being spoiled by a recording. Of course, in a way I'm recording it right now...

Speaking of recordings, here's Bobby Gibson playing at the 2008 NAMM Festival dinner for Gretsch's 125th birthday:

And here's Kim Falcon doing her first photo shoot for Gretsch:

Why, that ain't even old-timey!

2008-07-30T21:58:00.002-05:00

Hey, check it out. New site design. Neat, huh? This time around, I was going for a sort of "Wild Wild West" look.

For those of you keeping score at home, this is Phase 7.

Baby, what you want me to do?

2008-02-29T18:26:00.007-06:00

The account managers here have a bad habit of excluding lots of crucial details from the tasks they give us. The other day, I was asked to design "an eye-catching Open Houses button." Just for fun, I gave them this:

Yes I Am Blind

2008-02-14T23:08:00.003-06:00