On The Road With Al and Ivy: Blog

"Please understand that a Homeric song is sung to the lyre, and therefore intended for entertainment, no more and no less." - Robert Graves (Homer's Daughter ) Finding good music used to be a simple matter; you liked who or what the media told you to like (and buy).  The power to make or break an artist or record was jealously guarded by gatekeepers because with payola, the promotion business could be as profitable as a casino. The internet gave a voice to millions of people whose opinions and tastes had been muted by gateways such as letters to the editor sections or radio request lines (which waited till somebody asked for a number on the playlist. The social networks (and Google) have created a situation that's turned many media outlets into clickbait farms or Amazon partners working on commission. To be fair, the media still has some power. These new networks aren't to blame. The labels and movie studios want to reach actual customers, and while getting the o...

"With an old and tried swordsman like myself, knowledge of the use of his weapon is everything; but with a young Hotspur of your temper, strength and energy go for much." - Arthur Conan Doyle (Micah Clarke) Internet experts state that in the early prehistoric days of mankind, when men were men, and women could have as many boyfriends as they felt like having, climate change created an extinction event that wiped out all of the man eating dinosaurs and saber tooth tigers, who in their hungry heyday made sure that no human being lived longer than, say, ten years. This removed one of the biggest reasons that cavemen and cavewomen didn’t last very long; leaving only disease, starvation, minor injuries, warfare, and marriage. The longer life spans created new social phenomena, such as villages, condos, Kings and Emperors, celebrities famous for being famous, organized warfare, government, poor people, and of course, reality shows.  However, the most pervasive sociological innovat...

"…I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future..." - Jack Kerouac (On The Road, The Original Scroll) "It was my last observation that it was the custom of every man to call every other man a madman. The truth, in my judgement, they were all mad." - Jack London (The Jacket, aka The Star Rover 1915) Jack London is known (these days) as an adventure writer whose most famous books, Call Of The Wild and White Fang, are considered children or young adult classics (at least in abridged editions). He was quite popular in his time, and wrote several books that are considered classic. His real life became legendary and many works like On The Road, a book about hobos, came from experiencing, and not just visiting, that life. London treated writing as a discipline, and part of that involved churning out 1500 words a day. That resulted in a body of work that included short stories, ...