December 6, 2004
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The Daily News
1 Life ain't easy.
2 Yesterday morning I reported to Mr. Rocha that I would have to step down as the advisor to the Class of '05. I then informed Ms. Conrotto. Following that, I talked with Thuy Ann, our PREZ, and it just wasn't easy.
3 For the first time in many years, I broke down in a class. Nobody in class saw me, but they did see Thuy Ann, who broke apart, right before my heavy, sad eyes. We moved swiftly to the Theatre, where we talked and talked and talked.
4 I have a treatable medical condition that needs good exercise, a good diet, and a lot less stress. But I need to step back and take stock in what is important. My mother and father both need me right now, so as of now, I can no longer continue on. For now, it all needs to come to a halt. I'm tired, exhausted as I form these words, so I'll just turn it over to something I wrote yesterday. This stuff has been terribly draining, as you might well imagine, so here ya go with the yesterday's news. Happy trails.
5 Oops. Here's a number five, just so I won't have to re-number this entire piece.
6 I see that Rolling Stone Magazine listed the 500 greatest songs of all time recently. Number one? Like a Rolling Stone, by Bob Dylan. Tony Hicks of Knight Ridder fed some further information: Number two was the song Satisfaction, by...The Rolling Stones. Hmm.
7 It's really something that any time someone decides to make a list like that, it's always OLD bands that get the nod. Who chooses this stuff anyway? Hicks wrote an article that was highly critical of the choices, which would be a natural thing for any writer to do, given that broad of a topic. Is there ANYBODY who is going to agree to a list like that? In these days when The Who can be heard as background to JC Penny commercials, and Lennon's Across the
seems to be hawking digital cameras, it's really difficult to look at something list like that as anything more than the collective ramblings of a bunch of elderly rockers.
8 I did this around 20 years ago, when it MAY have been a bit more relevant. I asked faculty members what the greatest rock song of all time was. The result? Stairway to Heaven was far and away number one. Layla was number 2. Neither of these made RS's top ten.
9 About the most interesting thing about Hicks' article was his observation of bands that were completely omitted: Van Halen, The Grateful Dead, Chicago, Coldplay, Roxy Music, and on and on and on...
10 What a romp. Who cares? It's my assertion that rock, as we know it, is essentially dead. Oh, there are the new sounds and the new songs, but most people are pretty indifferent to this trickle that was, once upon a time, a major cultural force.
11 Sellouts, no doubt. All of 'em.
12 I saw Bob Dylan on 60 Minutes last night...he was being interviewed by Ed Bradley, and frankly, it looked like maybe the two of them should have been on 30 Minutes, because neither looked like he could LAST 60!
13 Dylan was actually pretty cool...at one point, when asked about all his early fame and fortune, Dylan said he felt like a character in an Edgar Allen Poe story, unreal, like the guy they were talking about and all was the guy looking through his eyes and walking about.
14 I totally understand.
15 I totally understand.
17 Peace.
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