How the music industry has fooled us for 50 years

Throughout history we've seen and read about celebrated musical artists who have poured their life's work into creating masterpieces, like Beethoven (seen to the left signing a contract with Sony) or Mozart, for example. While other songwriters have gotten lucky, picking that one golden apple from their own stale and limp creative tree of which the world then fawns over for a moment, like Aha, for example. But over the past 50 years or so the nature of mainstream music has become progressively more cautious, caught in its own net of covering the costs of having a record label while being tentative to take a chance on anything that isn't going to be a surefire hit. The label execs, producers and artists who want to keep their jobs are then stuck meticulously crafting products (or advertisements) rather than art. Let me qualify my post here firstly by saying that I write this as someone who has over 15 years experience in the music industry as a promoter, songwriter, hired gun and performer. I'm happy to say that I got out alive.

Because of this music as competition or music as contact sport culture the artist has been taken out of the equation at the big money level, today more than ever, and has been replaced by a workhorse. Sure you need an "artist" but the parameters in which they can creatively work are very narrow, but it was also like this in the 1950s when studios had cubicles full of songwriters crafting the next Buddy Holly-esque hit. For half a century the music industry has been making us think that advertisements, misogynistic, sexually charged, aggressive, or immature advertisements are masterpieces. And we continue to somehow believe that these people throughout modern history are talented, the most talented people that record labels could find in fact. They are the new Mozarts. We've gone from Carmen, Faust, Salome, (none of them by Mozart of Beethoven, but by other true master artists) and from music that questioned the moral and metaphysical fiber of our human existence to Can call all you want but there's no one home and you're not gonna reach my telephone! Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh Stop telephonin' me! Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh I'm busy! A True wordsmith Lady Gaga is. Rich insight into the human situation now in the 21st century.

Just to contrast this for a moment, independent music has perhaps never been more vibrant and active, creative and exploratory, because this is truly where the art of music is being made in my opinion. The art of sound engineering is the only thing truly being challenged in Mainstream music. With lyrics that account for little more than a perverted nursary rhyme. But let's get back to our artists for a minute. Those celebrated musicians and talented singers we've all been amazed by for so long...they were just average (and often times very messed up) people who somehow made it through the cheese grater of a music industry we've come to know and trust. Few people make it through the grater, and they are no more talented than the large bulk of the ones who don't. Enter Lin Yu Chun.

Remember when you thought Whitney Houston's angelic voice was the apex of human talent, trying not to cry at your grade 9 dance as that cute boy danced awkwardly with you side to side. Well, it could have just as easily been a fat Taiwanese boy singing that song, because the wealth of human "talent" grows ever greater as our population increases. And as entertainment technology proliferates, and millions of more people living sedentary lifestyles have few things better to do than play Rock Band or go to Karaoke bars, a new Whitney is born every minute and sometimes they're a chubby Taiwanese guy. The fact that the music industry has stooped to this level to find its stars is an example of just how cash strapped it must be.

The overhead on a creative artist (or God forbid, a band) is HUGE, because they're using technology, other musicians and talented engineers, computer geeks, symphonies, world's best triangle quartet and most valuable of all TIME to craft the most amazingly exploratory sounds and songs that they can muster. The ROI or profit margin on that kind of music is disasterous! But some fat kid from Taipei or some unassuming maid from Scotland, competing in an open mic contest to see who can sound exactly like a star from 20 years ago....well your ROI just shot up huge. Because the kind of people who love these stories, these America's Got Talent, diamond in the rough, underdog stories, are the same kind of people that still buy CDs at Walmart- which sadly remains a large proportion of the population. That's how labels still make money, because they haven't figured out how to use the internet yet, and maybe never will. It's why just behind Taylor Swift (another "Artist" who won on a music as competition pageant show) Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream was the second top selling album of 2009 with just over 3 million copies. I can't remember the last time I bought a CD. 15 bucks for a Scottish Middle aged woman singing songs that were popular 20, 30, 40 years ago? This is the music industry? Beethoven and Mozart's coffins must be filling with vomit as they thrash wildly. Now some chubby karaoke idiot savant is going to be celebrated as the next musical sensation? I don't know how they'll market his debut album- listen to the most beautiful female vocal performances of the past 30 years, as performed by a fat 23 year old Taiwanese guy? But this is exactly how Boyle's album is described by CD Universe:

"a large part of Boyle's appeal is that she's a middle-aged woman recalling a bygone era when there were singers that appealed to an adult audience by offering soft, stately versions of pop hits and standards. That time was the late `60s and early `70s, and apart from a rather faithful version of Madonna's "You'll See," I Dreamed a Dream could very well have been released all those years ago, as it mixes up the show tunes, gospel, and Christmas carols with covers of Skeeter Davis' "The End of the World," the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses," and a version of "Daydream Believer" that is easily the slowest on record"

There's no denying it, it's rehashed gospel and Christmas songs and hits of the 70s sung by a homely middle aged Scottish woman. Now here's the greatest secret of the music industry. It's that the most talented people are really a dime a dozen, and it comes down to who they pick and how well they market it. "Talent" is everywhere, and the more people we have on the planet the more it suffers from diminishing returns. Creativity however is a different thing, but creativity, sadly, is unwildly and hard to manage. Creativity can get expensive, whereas a workhorse to help move merchandise, that's far more manageable.

The fact that the industry has been reduced to scouring the countryside for underdog archetypes proves this more than anything. They have stopped looking for the talent, because the real talent is largely an illusion. For every 1% of songwriters, singers or bands that "make it" another 30-50% of songwriters, singers and bands that don't have just as much talent. Creativity though, well that's another thing altogether. They could've been picking anyone these past 50 years...Buddy Holly could've been Bradly Jolly, The Monkees could've been any other 4 cute boys. But they were who they were, and Lady Ga Ga is who she is, when in fact any blonde club tramp could sing about not answering her cell phone because she's dancing like a whore. Any one.

Where Beethoven would learn the craft of music and take years to finish a piece, some producers now pay some "songwriters" to whip together a few tunes using formulaic arrangements and current sounds and then the high profit margin, high ROI, low risk "artist" who beat the odds and represents the underdog in all of us is thrown in the mix. Or in GaGa's case someone who's shocking. For Boyle's album they did even better and bypassed the songwriting aspect by rehashing several songs from the past 30 years into even shorter versions than before and somehow convinced over 3 million people into buying them? Now that's an investment. 10 thousand years of human civilization and this is where the industry of our culture, of our music, is at right now. We've replaced the craftsmen with beasts of the field. Boyle, Swift, Gaga, and other workhorses. If we are to believe that art still mimics life and life still mimics art we are in a very bad place right now.

If this shit is considered art, what do we consider life? Or more accurately what do the record labels consider life?

The next Susan Boyle they say.

I say asteroid now.

Refuting Chavez's HAARP-Earthquake Conspiracy (A letter to an inquisitive mind)

This is from an e-mail I wrote in response to an inquiry about a post I did on Senses for Thirdi. It's from, what I assume is a younger man, by the name of Sam who was studying whether or not HAARP caused the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. I love a good conspiracy theory but at the end of the day I'm far less likely to believe any of them than I am a good article from a credible source. Not that I'm that credible source, but I thought I'd share some of the reasons why I think this conspiracy (which has been circulating a lot thanks to Hugo Chavez) is highly unlikely. Plus any opportunity I get to use my Geography degree for something actually geography related always excites me.

Hi Sam,

I think it's great to think critically and to be imaginative when researching anything and I commend you for looking into what I think are two very interesting things- HAARP and geophysics. The notion that these earthquakes were caused by HAARP is a stretch though in my opinion. Firstly, these two areas (Haiti and Chile) are both in highly active tectonic areas. Several plates converge in the caribbean, near Haiti:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Caribbean_plate_tectonics-en.png

And Chile is one of the most earthquake prone areas in south America

http://www.geo.arizona.edu/~thomson/SampleMap.jpg

So spending a lot of time trying to connect scientific experiments in radio wave aural resonance to places that naturally experience earthquakes is not the most efficient use of scientific deduction in my opinion. It may end up being a frustrating research experience. That being said, I think it's great to think critically about any cutting edge scientific experiments both civilian and military, and what the implications may be. It's not so much a matter that you "don't know what you're talking about" because the fact of the matter is that very few people understand the scientific principles behind the experiments at HAARP. I would wager that the vast majority of people who aren't involved in HAARP don't know what they're talking about- and I willingly admit that. Perhaps it is scientifically possible that HAARP could induce a quake, but because something may be possible doesn't mean it's likely.

What HAARP (according to its own website) intends to do is to better understand the properties of our ionosphere (a layer of our atmosphere with charged particles that make radio and cellular technologies possible, that protects us from solar radiation and numerous other natural services) It's main focus is both communications (making clearer, more efficient transmissions possible) and looking at ways to defend against solar flares disrupting our global communications infrastructure. Solar activity could be a major threat to modern civilization if it were to wipe out our electronics- this is a remote but frightening possibility. I believe that the HAARP team is more likely set to work on these kinds of things rather than trying to send beams of radiowaves off the ionosphere and down into tectonically sensitive areas. Two scientific reasons why this is unlikely are:

-The amount of energy needed to cause a disruption in the plates would be massive and would cook and sear living things in its path if it were focused in a nature where it could cause stone and magma to react, causing a similar kind of burn from atomic radiation. Things like this would have been reported in those areas if this were the case.

-If such a blast of radiation came from Alaska and was focused on those areas, it would also destroy if not debilitate airplanes and disrupt signals from other electronics trying to communicate, causing global disruptions.

Two qualitative reasons it is unlikely:

- Earthquakes are part of a constantly moving and adapting system of faults and plates. An earthquake in Chile can trigger movement up the Pacific and eventually contribute to activity in the United States and Canada. A quake in the Caribbean can be even more concerning as it's closer. While I'm rarely surprised at how aggressive and careless US foreign policy and militarism can be, this is a highly unlikely use of capital and money. The potential for unknown consequences that can be just as damaging to American assets in areas near active faults makes this an unattractive experiment.

- It's more profitable and useful for the United States to develop a better understanding of the ionosphere for communications purposes and to defend against solar disruptions than to cause earthquakes in impoverished or developing countries. (the conspiracy theorists of course state that this is an experiment leading up to an earthquake induced invasion of Iran, which is also currently improbable as I've pointed out in my blog post)

The reason for the lengthiness of this response is threefold. Firstly I applaud you for being a skeptic, for being interested in what I consider a very fascinating topic, and secondly I was inspired to blog about it. So this response (without naming you directly) is going to be another post on a different site. Thirdly, I believe (from your style of writing) that you might be younger? (as in 20s) and I hope I'm not being presumptuous in thinking that. I used to read a lot of conspiracy literature, to the point where it made me so paranoid that I was unable to make quality decisions and take proactive actions in my life. The HAARP/Haiti conspiracy is one in a number of theories that may have a grain of truth in them- but that grain of truth is completely overshadowed by the rest of the assumptions made. The grain of truth being that America has often meddled in international affairs and it spends a lot of money on crazy insane military technologies. Yes these are goepolitical truisms to most people. And are valid topics to concern ones self with, these should be the point rather than the hypothetical capabilities of HAARP.

Remain skeptical, use your imagination, think critically about these things- and by all means don't be afraid to venture out to the fringes Samir! But take it from one who spent many years on the fringe, the world is already a complex and crazy place- many of these conspiracy theories amplify that craziness to an absurd and paranoid point. Many of the theorists claim that THEY know what's going on. THEY have it all figured out. I think the world is far too complex for any one person to think they have it all figured out. Nevertheless I think it's a valid use of time, life should be a constant pursuit of knowledge and experience. Anyhow, now I'm rambling.

While the US (and all self interested countries with a military) are doing some scary things with technology (particularly with focused or directed energy weapons) I find HAARP causing earthquakes to be quite a stretch. I hope my reasons for that don't seem naive or elementary to you.

Best of luck in all your studies,

Wes

Why won't Sarah Palin just go away!!?? Just go away! Please!

I've added a disclaimer to this post. I LOVE DEMONIZING ALBERTA. It gives me such great pleasure to just rip into it like a hungry wolf into the ribs of a deer. Oh it's a rush. That being said, I don't feel all Calgarians, or all Albertans are complete morons, or even Sarah Palin supporting conservatives. But I do believe that there is a higher concentration of them in this province than in others, perhaps all others. And as the Wild Rose party continues to win support out there I think it demonstrates that this province is becoming a political monoculture.

There is a place where America's most conservative politicians, its failed leaders and its most ignorant and misinformed political warthogs can be welcomed like heroes, and that place is Alberta. The first speaking engagement that George W. Bush was whisked away to, immediately upon escaping impeachment for 8 years of outrageously bad decision making, was Calgary Alberta. After handing the company car over to Obama, upholstery stained, axle bent, engine sputtering and muffler dragging from 8 years of reckless driving, the first people who wanted to hear how he did it all were the proud business leaders of the Wild Rose province. Oil oozing from their saliva glands, ten gallon hats bobbing in agreement as he imparted his wisdom, a rare kind of wisdom that divides nations, destroys economies, and fills hearts with paranoia and fear.

Yes many Albertans couldn't wait to hear how he took a surplus budget and turned it into record deficits, or how he pushed forward an education plan that punishes the communities that need help the most. The crowd in Calgary hung on his every word as he detailed just how important they, and their Alberta oil was to the future of this continent. The Albertans and George were truly good friends. Because they shared values, folksy old time values.

If you're an Albertan, I encourage you to question just how much more conservative you're willing to let your province become.

Fast forward to present day.

Sarah Palin, failed Republican vice-presidential candidate and resigned Alaskan senator turned self-promoting Fox News personality, recently filled Albertan's hearts with joy- perhaps as they recalled memories of that fantastic evening with Bush. Palin showered the crowd with praise and familial encouragement "We have that independent, pioneering spirit, still, just coursing through the veins of the people who choose to live here, and who choose to live in Alaska."

She must be referring to that poineering spirit of old time traditional values. Or that pioneering spirit that people who can't handle being a part of a progressive pluralistic society i.e. "the city", posses. They pioneer their way deeper and deeper into the unsustainable suburban wasteland, finding comfort in their uniform and unchallenged values.

That independent pioneering spirit that inspires Alberta's oil companies to use all the province's pure water to get all its oil (er...tar) out of the sand. It's that folksy pioneering spirit that inspires oil companies, the engine of Alberta's wealth, to leave black toxic tailing ponds lying around for birds to land in because they failed to pioneer a system to clean it up. That pioneering spirit that says all our problems can be solved if we only "Drill baby drill!"instead of taking the time to innovate, adapt, change and lead.

Yes, Alberta really bothers me. And that's a shame because my family comes from there and many of my aunts, uncles and cousins and friends (whom I love and respect) live there, but any place that enthusiastically embraces the idiocy AKA the "folksy values"and the achievements AKA "failures" of people like Sarah Palin and G.W. Bush is a place that clearly has a lot of people with their heads up their asses. And a friend of mine pointed out that in fact the response to these two visits was not all cheers and rose pedal welcomes, but most articles I looked at seemed to indicate a pretty enthusiastic welcome for Palin.

One young girl at the Calgary Palin event summed it up nicely in the National Post:

"I just think she's great, I don't have cable, I like her values"
Let me just use Google Translate tools so we can translate that to modern English...(give me a sec here)

OK

Translate text, webpages and documents

Enter text or a webpage URL, or upload a document.

Enter text or a webpage URL, or upload a document.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I just think she's great, I don't have cable, I like her values"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Translate From: English (Rural Conservative Inbred Dialect)
Tranlsate To: English (Modern)

English(Modern)

"I think she's great, I live in darkness and ignorance, good people with values are always only religious people who like oil"

WOW Google Translate is amazing! The grammar and sentence structure is a little wonky but it's very intutitive. I'd love using it to translate talking points from people like Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, or general morons who make it on TV. Usually I can't understand the comments these people make, but Google Translate adds some context and reads between the lines so we can understand the thinking behind it all.

I'll have to incorporate it more often in the Asteroid now blog...

Alberta, please don't make Palin or Bush fly over our British Columbia airspace or travel across our beautiful province to come enlighten you again. If you need to hear their pearls of wisdom you can save some money and get it here or here.

Asteroid now

Externalities in a corporate-military world

A paper from scientists at the University of Washington and Simon Fraser University confirms that childhood Leukemia rates in the Iraqi province of Basra have more than doubled in the past 15 years. According to the senior author of the paper Tim Takaro of SFU “We hope our calculations pave the way for investigating why the rates have climbed so high. We also need to know why they are higher than the rates found in Kuwait, the European Union or the United States.” Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm more of a qualitative researcher than quantitative one but I'd wager that these childhood Leukemia rates can be tied to a few other things going on in Iraq over the past two decades. I'd bet that uranium depleted bombs, chromium poisoned dust and mountains of toxic burning garbage might also factor in. If you thought externalities were bad in the corporate world, you should see the corporate-military world.

There is an immaturity to war, in fact it might be the most immature of human habits. Of course it would be naive of me to leave it at that. War is also the manipulation of large groups of people and capital on the opinion of a few and for the benefit of even fewer.

A recent LA Times article looked at the practice of burn pits in Iraq, which private military contractor Kellog Brown and Root (KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton) used as an ad hoc waste management strategy, when one has to assume, inept planning, loss of profitability or complete lack of morals left them with few other options. Supposed to be a stopgap measure, the burning has continued on unchecked. Many soldiers and contractors now suffer from a vast array of health problems ranging from leukemia, lymphoma, congestive heart problems, neurological conditions, bronchitis, skin rashes and sleep disorders. Legal action has been taken, including nine class action lawsuits which have been filed against KBR, but as always it looks like the moral and ethical victory will take a long and arduous uphill battle.

As quoted in the LA Times, John Wilson of the advocacy group Disabled American Veterans states "The military needs to step up and address this problem...the fumes emanating from the pits could become the Agent Orange of the current war zone."

Words like that, recalling the last public relations nightmare caused by a toxic externality, signal that the PR dueling has ramped up. Agent Orange was of course the chemical weapon (dioxin laden herbicide) that helped kill half a million people in the Vietnam war and disfigured thousands more. Despite the horrific damage done by Agent Orange several class action lawsuits against the US military were all dismissed. Chemical giants Monsanto and Dow, who created the toxic herbicide, were successfully sued in different lawsuits but it ended up being a negligible amount when awarded to some sick veterans, considering the slow chronically painful deaths they experience. It appears the courts have already begun the tossing and dismissing of veteran and civilian health concerns as an Indiana Judge threw out a recent case against KBR involving a chromium dust filled plant that American contractors were uninformed was a toxic work environment. One positive development (perhaps) is that a health panel has begun looking into the issues around the recent Iraq operations, overseen by the Department of Veteran Affairs. Will it be another 911 Commission though? But back to KBR's burn pits and the children of Iraq.

Items burned in the pits have included medical waste, plastics, computer parts, oil, lubricants, paint, tires and foam cups, according to soldiers and contractors. Some say amputated body parts from Iraqi patients were burned in Balad, site of a large U.S. military hospital. The pit in Balad was a full 10-acres. 1o acres of toxic burning shit. And all around these pits for years now, cancerous uranium depleted shells have been raining down on these children and American military personnel. The military leaders fought hard to make sure they could use these uranium depleted bombs which supposedly gave them an advantage the first time they pulverized southern Iraq in the early 1990s. We can be sure all that depleted uranium just went through the ecosystem, blew away in the wind or was rinsed off by the rain though, right? I mean those kids with Leukemia were born a full ten years after the first uranium shower, and I don't know what the half-life of weapons grade uranium is but it can't be that long.

So while I congratulate researchers at SFU and U of W for their quantitative discovery, I believe that when looking qualitatively at the insane toxic war that has been waged in Iraq it becomes obvious that man made lakes of burning garbage, millions of uranium soaked shells and heavy metal particulates wafting in the air will certainly cause serious health problems in children. And in soldiers, military contractors, animals, water and crops too for that matter. Maybe it should just stop? Maybe they should clean it up, properly.

While the decision makers who send soldiers to these hellish landscapes might be clinical and deliberate in their thinking, there is a hysteria in war that seems to cloud reason, distort logic, and suffocate human progress. Maybe the Bush Administration and their royal, religious and corporate friends knew full well the hell that would be loosed with any invasion. So before it begins some colonel stands in front of the media demonstrating the moral and ethical accuracy of smart bombs, convincing us the face of war is becoming more humanitarian, more compassionate and precise. The charm offensive, it really is offensive isn't it? 8 years later soldiers are coming home half rotten with disease, child cancer rates have doubled and a whole generation of Arabic youth is growing up with more hatred of the west than ever before. How could we let this happen? How were we duped once again? We said no, emphatically. Millions and millions of people in 800 cities around the world protested the invasion and yet it still happened. Our ethics were obvious but our power was illusory. We thought they would listen, the "leaders". So where is our power? And how can we assert it? (for another post I suppose)

The culture of war is a hysterical reactionary stupor utilizing unparalleled logistical management to create sickness, death and destruction on both the "winning" and losing sides. If we as a civilization are in our adolescence, then we're at that dangerous and destructive point where an adolescent should probably reach out for help; but we have no one to help us, we only have ourselves. We have to learn responsibility, for this planet, for the living creatures and systems at work, and for our own kind. KBR managing waste through burn pits is akin to a teenager stuffing all their filthy clothes, pizza boxes and dirty plates under their bed. Actually it's more like a teenager, instead of cleaning their bedroom at all, just burning everything in a pile. Fumes from smoldering plastic and garbage filling their room with a choking haze, with a strong chance of burning the rest of the house down too. The careless immaturity of war once again. Externalities, in all their forms, represent a complete lack of responsibility or accountability. Like an apathetic child who can't comprehend the damage from their actions, these PMCs like KBR, have made so many mistakes and so many poor decisions with horrific consequences. So many children, soldiers and innocent civilians have been sickened, disfigured and maimed by the immaturity and indecency of war- and its many vendors. We need to question how any leaders eager for war can be considered moral or ethical. And how can it ever be in the interest of the people when the masses always suffer it, every last one of us. The ones that fight, the ones who pay, and the ones who bury their friends and family.

War is what happens when thinking stops, when we are prevented from coming to a reasonable solution for any problem based on our capacity for compromise, creativity and innovation. And leaders make that choice for us, despite our protest. I love Michael Bakunin's sentiment that the most powerful assets we posses as humans are the power to reason and the desire to rebel. Of course in order to have a healthy functioning society we also have to have a power to reason and desire to co-operate. Either by hysteria or by manipulation, when it comes to war too many of us are prevented from being rational about its reasons and rebelling when we know its consequences. We should be more aggressive, more forceful, and more frightening the next time our leaders try to pull the wool over us. We can't settle for war, we can't accept it. It is an insult to our intelligence and disrespects the value of our lives.

In the 21st century we have the technological knowledge of how to create vast quantities of energy and food. We can reclaim water, we can build better cities, we can provide for every person on this planet if we really wanted to. Imagine what we could do if we put the trillions of dollars and the impressive logistical know-how that it takes to operate this war into making the world a better more livable and equitable place? Food security, water security, education, disease research, energy production, climate change, imagine if we put a trillion dollars and the man hours that have gone into making Iraq a toxic wasteland into any one of these pressing issues. Instead, we'll likely just have another war down the road. At this point I remain pessimistic that our swords will be transformed into plowshares. Too many leaders and thinkers insist on keeping us in the Hobbesian world. The voice of Benjamin Franklin echoing in the halls of power that "Those who beat their swords into plowshares will end up plowing for those who did not." And while at the time American leaders like Franklin were fighting to end the tyranny of royal rule and build a democratic utopia, today we stand with our toes patriotically curled over the edge of hell because this moral militarism.

Eight thousand years of human civilization and you'd think we would be close to overcoming the animal-human, the one hoarding food and craving territory, the one that justifies murders based on fairy tales written a millennium ago, the animal-human that flings its own shit and beats its babies to death, drunk with ignorance. One would think that given this much time we would be able to back away from the cliff but no, here we stand, the flames baking our toenails.

Like cave-men invading camps for fire, the US banged its chest in primitive rage and unleashed a toxic circus on the people of Iraq and its own soldiers, and for what? Oil? Strategic control of geography?Retribution for 9/11? Does anyone even remember what the hell they said they were going into Iraq for? Yellowcake from Nigeria? Well they never found a single weapon of mass destruction, and no yellowcake, but it took mass destruction for them to do it. If there wasn't enough weapons grade uranium to make a bomb before the US invaded Iraq there probably is today. The only problem is that it's now stuck in all those children.


Asteroid now.

Failed movie pitches, a best of collection

In the several years I spent both in Hollywood and in Vancouver, adapting and writing screenplays, pitching to numerous producers, and crafting what I believed were destined to be blockbusters, I have come to know rejection intimately. I've seen less talented and passionate writers be rewarded for mediocre scripts while my cinematic genius languished, as narrow minded producers sunk millions into mindless drivel. Below are the best pitches I ever made in my opinion, all of them rejected. I'm still open to making these films come alive if any producer reads this and is interested.

Were the Wild Things Were.


A story about a capricious young boy who's sent to bed without supper. While playing in his wolf costume alone in his bedroom, his imagination creates a whole new wonderful world of lush forest and expansive desert; filled with the remnants of amazing adventures that would appear to have just been had by wild and fascinating creatures. Everywhere he goes it looks like something amazing and fun just happened but he's always one step behind where the wild things were (seen in photo above unsuccessfully trying to chase down one of the Wild Things). Eventually after wandering around for a few hours, unable to catch up to the action, he gets so dejected and frustrated that he snaps out of it to find the last lukewarm scraps of what was meant to be his supper waiting for him in his bedroom.

Gay and Gayer, a remake of the lovable cult classic Dumb and Dumber


Lloyd Christmas is an outrageously gay limousine driver in Providence, Rhode Island, who becomes infatuated with his passenger, Mark Swanson, as he drives him to the airport. Mark is heading home to his family in Asspen, Colorado but leaves a briefcase at the airport. Lloyd notices, and retrieves the briefcase before a pair of thugs arrive to pick it up, dashing ahead of them to snag the briefcase. Lloyd is unable to catch Mark in time, and is left on the ramp of the airport with briefcase in hand. Harry Dune, Lloyd's roommate, is in the pet grooming business, and has recently spent his life savings converting his van (a 1984 Ford Econoline) into a sheepdog. *(seen above with a reverse dog boner as the two go racing as fast as they can to Colorado) They are in a race against the thugs to get the briefcase to Asspen and back in the hands of Mark Swanson, as the audience is treated to the gayest comedic romp they've ever seen. Leaving them wondering, who is gayer?

2012, 2

In 2009, American geologist Adrian Delmsley learns from a colleague, Dr. Satnam Tsurtuami, at an underground copper mine in India that neutrinos from a massive solar flare are acting as microwave radiation, causing the temperature of the Earth's core to increase rapidly. At the G8 summit in 2010, heads of state are made aware of the situation, which was prophesized by the Ancient Mayans to culminate on the 21st of December, 2012. They begin a massive, secret project intended to ensure the survival of humanity. But before they can even begin it's discovered that ANOTHER cataclysmic disaster is about to wipe out humanity just a few months before the date of December 21st 2012, predicted by the ancient Mayans. This new disaster was predicted by the Ancient Aztecs and is even worse! In 2012, Jackson Turtis is a writer in Los Angeles who works part-time as a limousine driver for Russian billionaire and amature pilot Yuri Parpoff. After being told about the Mayan prophecy he starts to get ready to save his family and survive the apocalyptic destruction. But right in the middle of it he's made aware of the Aztec prophecy, which happens a full two months earlier than the Mayan one! Now with even less time the world and Jackson have to clamor even more quickly to survive. AND if they survive the first world ending Aztec prophesized cataclysm they're fucked because of the second Mayan one.


While I have several other scripts and adaptations that I've pitched to closed-minded studio execs and producers with no vision, these are my favorites. I felt it necessary to get it off my chest how frustrated I've been that these brilliant ideas have not been made into films, and perhaps more sadly never will. If you are a producer, with vision, and you want to make the world a richer and more colourful place, please help me make any one of these visionary scripts come to life.

Sincerely,
Wes Regan

Asteroid Later- I believe there's still a chance these films can be made.

Top Douchebags of the month

I'm introducing a little monthly installment on the Asteroid Now blog called "Douchebag of the Month" in recognition of the slimiest most arrogant pricks I come across in the media. I'll make it brief so as not to dignify them with a concerted effort but I do feel they should be recognized for their abject douchiness. Starting from least to greatest.

Alaskrafts, a company in Alaska kills small furry animals and makes them into ugly bikinis that make you, your girlfriend or wife, look like a cast member from Quest for Fire. And while in a way that's awesome, in another way it's really lame. What's also confusing about this site is the amount of crazy evangelical sentences like "I repent of these actions and with your help I will change and not repeat them again" along the side of the website. I wonder if they're referring to killing small animals so that they can objectify women and dress them up like stone aged sex-slaves? If you scroll all the way down to the bottom right this is what you'll read: "I know that I am not worthy; but, I willingly accept You as my Lord and my Savior, and I thank You for Your blessings over my family and me. If interested in buying pelts please contact Mr. Cutler, NY City, (Manhattan) Phone:+1 (347) 484 1670, Tell him Steve Fields sent you." Well, Steve Might not be the slimiest and most arrogant prick but killing small animals to dress up women like cave-man sex slaves, and begging Jesus for mercy while repenting for his sins on his fur bikin website is just enough to land him a spot on this month's list.

Dutch long track Speed Skater Steve Kramer throws a hissy-fit after being disqualified from a race. Considered the best in the sport he abusively shoved a female volunteer on his way off the track from obvious disappointment, and perhaps an inherent douche streak. It was also alleged that he yelled " Is it not that you know who I am?! I'm the world's greatest long track speed skater in the history of the world of speed skating!" or something to that effect.

Chad Kroeger wants to shut down a Facebook fan page for a pickle that now officially has more fans than his Band Nickelback. The rock star, who many believe time traveled from 1994 to present day to pursue a classic rock career in the future, engaged in a heated debate with the young lady who started the fanpage as a joke. Now Chad is the bigger joke. Please travel back to Northern Alberta in the early 90s where you belong Kroeger. (seen in the photo above with his band...or is it to the right pointing like a total gaylord?)


And finally there's the Kenyan thugs who stole my friend Rob's money in Nairobi. These roving douches were created, or rather given vast douchey powers, after the bombing of the US Embassy in Kenya. They now comb the streets of Nairobi's central business district abusing locals and extorting foreigners. My friend Rob is on a humanitarian aid mission to help people in slums by improving sanitation and infrastructure. These "police" considered the most corrupt in East Africa took every last penny he had, save bus change to get home, after he gave a buck fifty to a beggar in the street. They win biggest douchebag of the month hands down.

Asteroid now (but only small ones, strategically landing wherever these douchebags might be)

The Gates of paradise

For years the converging of business and environmentalism has produced some innovative technologies, promising enterprise, and has reinvigorated both venture capitalists and stock markets eager for promising IPOs. Even despite a major economic crisis, greentech investments have fared better than expected. So when Bill Gates recently spoke at TED, he upped the ante to an already very busy, and very high stakes game. Speaking in front of a giant projection of our planet (due for an asteroid impact sometime) complimented by a big number 0, the message was clear. Reducing emissions should not be the goal, eliminating them should be.

Gates' vision of Earth circa 2050 is not fanciful utopian musings or idealistic wishful thinking, this is a man who has stated he is on a mission to stop global warming before it stops human civilization. The difference is that when some crazy red eyed hippie says the same thing we're quick to discount them, when someone like Gates says it, a man who has already helped to transform the world like few humans before him, heads turn.


With the incredible network of connections and massive capital at his disposal, having an icon like Gates join the green brigade has major implications. The dream of a healthier, greener, less polluted, more equitable future is no longer the dream of the flower children. it's no longer the PR efforts of a a green global conspiracy of over funded NGOs, funding-hungry alarmist scientists or of unrealistic left winged politicians who want to mire free enterprise in a bureaucratic eco-despotism. No, it's none of the things that many major corporations, energy companies most of all, and the politicians or media attack dogs who have been stuck in an antiquated status-quo have said it is. It is now front and centre, part of our mainstream culture, it has become the new way of doing things.

Regardless of the science behind climate change, for or against, a cleaner more equitable world is something worth striving for. The screaming and howling from those trying to squeeze every drop of oil out of the ground and into aerodynamically retarded vehicles, those who belch toxic gasses into the air we breathe and materials we surround ourselves with, has filled the media for years. A chorus of shrieking and finger pointing "experts" has gobbled down fists full of money from those who writhe in anguish at the thought of change, and made a noise pollution befitting of the very noxious culture they've been paid to downplay. Creating new, cleaner and better technologies, new cleaner and better jobs, new sciences, business practices and economics to meet the demands of a growing population that exerts a very real influence and toll on the planet, shouldn't be like pulling teeth. To me that sounds like progress, and too many people for far too long have been standing in the way of it. I hope Gates' bold presentation will, if even for a moment, silence the shrieking din of bullshit.

For more on Gates' presentation at TED go here.

I hope I'm able to enjoy being a healthy old man living in Gates' zero emission world, and therefore I say asteroid later.