Never Let Your Meat Loaf

Sadly, Marvin Aday, also known by his stage name “Meat Loaf,” just passed away. I always admired his bat-out-of-hell chutzpah and stood in absolute awe of his enormous brass balls (even If I hadn’t exactly been a rabid fan of the music). Truth be known, my musical tastes run more to Progressive Rock and Jazz Fusion, so I never really listened  to his music. As I recall, Mr. Loaf was often overlooked by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Nominating Committee (Meat Loaf was never nominated for an Oscar for his cameo performances in films). Was this merely a Hollywood snub of an industry outsider, or was his over-the-top style simply too large to fit into the small, mean box of an award category?

For Meat Loaf, music and acting were the twin pile drivers of his life in the arts, so he may not have seen coaching children’s baseball or professional Fantasy Baseball on the career horizon any more than I did (my objects were definitely not larger than they appeared in the rear view mirror). My only bone to pick with Meat Loaf is this:

In his 1993 hit song I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That), Mr. Loaf sang the lyric “I would do anything for love …but I won’t do that” without ever saying exactly what “that” was. It could be that “that” involved some kind of risky behavior, like exposure to HPV or Butt-Herpes, or maybe “that” involved something really, really serious, like French-kissing someone’s sphincter or loaning a co-worker money. Now that he’s gone, I guess we’ll never know for sure, though we just may be indebted to the man for sparing us the potentially disgusting details; however, my specific complaint is only with the song title itself. Truth in advertising demands something more like “I Would Do Almost Anything For Love (Except For Muff Diving, Rim Jobs, or Contracting Anal Herpes),” or “I Would Do Almost Anything For Love Except the Dirty Sanchez.” It is entirely plausible that, in fact, Meat Loaf did try to use such a title (I really don’t know) …but I do know corporate executives and the way boardroom conversations tend to play out: “GREAT JOB, Mike! The Marketing boys thought a couple of the titles were a little too long for the liner notes, so we made a few minor changes but, overall, Hey, Dude! GREAT JOB!.”

Anyway, I say we give him a pass on the title.

Merrick Garland: Muellered Again!

The reason the Republicans never strenuously objected to the appointment of Republican Robert S. Mueller as Special Prosecutor in the impeachment investigation of Donald Trump was that the outcome of his investigation was known to them before Mr. Mueller had been appointed. I don’t mean to say Mr. Mueller was “in the bag” in the sense that he was bought, but I am saying that he was in the bag of the conservative Republican establishment. As Special Prosecutor, he was paid in the coin of that realm: The currency of smug self-satisfaction at having faithfully served his conservative ideological masters like a breathless Labrador. Also note that Robert Mueller is an institutional creature in exactly the same way that Joe Biden is an institutional creature; that is, they are both staunch defenders of the “status quo” …yes, that very same status quo that many Americans were revolting against when they threw their hands up in the air in exasperation and voted for Donald Trump. When restless colonials elected George Washington, they got the “Father of His Country” …with Trump, they got the “Millstone of His Country.” Would you really be surprised to find out that Merrick Garland was picked to lead our “Justice” Department precisely because his outcomes are already a known quantity to the defenders of the status quo? Spoiler alert: He won’t bring the real perpetrators of the January 6th coup to justice, but he will prosecute a few of the knuckleheads that stormed the building in shaman hats,

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