The RIAA has never answered questions about the numbers it used to pervert the judicial process and file suits against individuals. This story, written by former colleague Erin James, still holds value today, even though the iTunes Music Store wasn’t launched until June, 2003.

I have a love-hate relationship with syndication. On the one hand, common newspaper columns and TV shows provide even faraway people with something to discuss over a virtual water cooler. On the other hand, it is killing commercial radio, leaving hordes of on-air talent to scavenge for voiceover work as the content increasingly originates from stations in other cities.

When John Hughes died suddenly last week, it seemed most news outlets carried their own tributes, which seems only fair. The sheer diversity of our country’s media critics — ordinarily a good thing — also revealed some problems in columns that rehashed the same IMDB factoids or were just plain boring. Roger Ebert’s writing is syndicated to over 200 newspapers in the country. A.O. Scott writes for the New York Times and is well-spread in his own right. Both writers excel because their work and wordplay is simply fun to read, even if one has no intention of seeing a particular film or talking about a certain director. Both wrote well crafted Hughes tributes, though Scott touchingly proved that he “got it,” and reminded us that some people just don’t.

None of that matters now. The most important tribute to date came from way outside the media system, which makes me wonder what kind of future media, information and entertainment have. This is the only John Hughes tribute you need to read. Its facts did not come from a hasty IMDB search, they came from someone who knew him. It is just as well written as what came from the big hitters. It should have appeared in every newspaper in the country.

Got something to say? Say it here or send a message to theyellowmenace1@gmail.com

Thank you to New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow for his piece on the self-destruction of the record industry. It’s quite possibly one of the most truthful assessments to come out. It’s fairly well thought-out, and simply put, although he gets one thing wrong and skips one important point.

Piracy’s impact has been fairly minor. The RIAA’s numbers for Napster — the basis for this whole frothy kerfuffle — only applied to brick and mortar album sales, and actually mathematically correspond with the adherence to Amazon. Napster’s user base was too small at the beginning of 1999 to have made a serious dent unless sneaky little college kids somehow made their tiny apartments into mass distros.

The RIAA, as a group. has been so focused on enforcing what’s legal based on 1998 standards that streaming and podcasting from sites other than Last.fm, Radio Paradise, Pandora, etc. have become popular forms of music consumption in lieu of purchasing it on CD. We appear headed, as a world, toward a business model of mostly renting our media — an effort spearheaded by large industry lobbies, including the Authors’ Guild, the Motion Picture Association of America and, you guessed it, the RIAA.

Paying money to bring a CD to the CD player of your choice only grants you the right to play the music and possess the disc it’s stored on; you don’t actually own anything. That’s why I am struggling to find sympathy for the record industry because now, other forms of music rental, like listening on a band’s MySpace page, which the RIAA pushed for, have taken hold. There’s just not a lot of money in it, because this system of info rental is now dependent on dwindling online ad sales. Instead of developing other business models, the book, movie and record industries have tried to force us to comply with a clunky ball and chain that doesn’t make sense in the current decade.

I do think there is cause for some sympathy, though. If our information and entertainment industries tanked, I’m not sure we as a society would take it very well. Imagine a handful of years where very little comes out other than syndicated re-runs and only the top of the pops (I’m looking at you, Britney) hit the airwaves. Many of us would collapse into the insular worlds provided by static playlists on our iPods which, even with 23 days’ worth of tracks, still get old after awhile.

Got something to say? Say it here or shoot a message to theyellowmenace1@gmail.com

The worst has come to pass. We voted down everything. Our state began issuing promissory notes yesterday. Those who don’t think very hard about it blame “the legislators.” Really, though, it’s everyone’s fault, the state legislature, the governor and their constituents — us.

I say we call a legislative convention. Here’s how my fantasy works:

(Quietly, no publicity)
1. Redraw the state’s legislative districts into 40 and 20 districts equal by population, no funny shapes except as dictated by topography.

2. Repeal the 1933 two-thirds rule for passing state budgets, and the language from Propositions 13 and 98, all of which strangle our ability to make revenues balance out costs.

(As much publicity as possible now)
3. Either a cage match or a battle royal between legislators. The order of entrance to the ring would be determined either by random number generator or by drawing straws. The last person standing gets to be the Governor. This is to be broadcast on California’s PBS affiliates.

4. Have a statewide election for the new districts.

If only.

Have a happy Independence Day weekend, everyone!

In my old neighborhood, I used to have to watch my step or risk stepping on one of the used hypodermic needles found next to the high school or one of the used condoms on Broadway, usually closer to Myrtle. I went on a walk the other morning near my parents’ house and spotted this.

Californians: We have an election coming up in one week. Don’t know much about what’s up for grabs? Then grab a cup of coffee, settle in and relax, for I have read the fine print for you. Have extra information? Comment here or send it to theyellowmenace1@gmail.com. These opinions are subject to change, pending the discovery of heretofore unforeseen facts or mood swings.

Yes on 1A

Our spending woes come from Proposition 13, which hurt our elected officials’ ability to pay for things on two fronts: Locally, it reduced the amount we can collect in taxes from residential properties. As a result, we’ve seen the metastatic growth of strip malls and big box centers because that remains the only way cities can collect property tax, and we’ve seen huge surges in sales taxes, our other attempt to make up for what we couldn’t collect. Our schools primarily depended on property taxes to fund their operation, and we went from near the top of the nation in per-student spending and achievement to near the bottom, even after we passed Prop. 98, which guaranteed 40 percent of the state budget to public education. Prop. 13’s other hand made it near impossible for the state to raise taxes by requiring a two-thirds majority in both houses. We’ve had more ballot propositions demanding funding since Prop. 13 passed in 1978 than in the 128 prior years of our statehood. That should tell you something.

Prop. 1A doesn’t fix the double whammy. It takes our emergency pittances in sales and vehicle taxes and keeps them in place until 2011 to fill the gaping hole we have in the state budget, as long as we establish a savings account we can’t draw from unless we can’t raise enough in revenues.

It does, though, plug a big chunk of the budget gap we now face, which is why we have to vote for it. Inaction only forces the state to reduce our services even more and begin laying people off. Remember, the money to run our state has to come from somewhere. You only get what you pay for.

No 1B

I am not going to badmouth spending on public education. I attended public schools for all but the very beginning of my education. I just can’t support incredibly large payments to the school system when Prop. 1A revenues are set to end because it seems obvious that the state wouldn’t be able to keep that promise. This ballot measure also furthers the guilty tradition of voting more shackles onto our budgetary process, which will make it even less likely that we’ll be able to handle funding crises in the future.

Yes on 1C

California’s addiction to borrowing against the future is dangerous. You can’t really argue with it, except that a lot of it is the voters’ faults with the incessant bond measures approved in the post-Prop. 13 era. If we don’t approve this measure, our budget deficit goes from $8 billion to $13 billion simply because we want to remain one of the only state lotteries to never have been re-written since 1984. A lot has changed since then, and so should the way we use the proceeds from our gambling habits.

Yes on 1D

In 1998, Rob Reiner helped convince us to approve Prop. 10, which approved a 50-cent tax on tobacco products to help fund First 5 programs. Marvelous, except those pre-school programs haven’t even been spending what they’ve got. Prop. 1D doesn’t take any services away, it takes unspent money and uses it to plug our current budget holes — which prevents further cuts.

Yes on 1E

In 2004, Darrell Steinberg persuaded us to approve Prop. 63, which is basically Prop. 10’s kid brother. The measure slightly increased the income tax on the state’s top earners and allocated those funds for mental health programs. I think it’s telling that the former Assemblyman (now State Senate majority leader) is asking us to approve 1E, which does the same thing as 1D: It takes unspent money and plugs up the hole in our budget, and even Steinberg says this is a matter of being able to support current services before implementing ones that aren’t even ready yet.

Yes on 1F

The literature against Prop. 1F says it’s cynical and doesn’t accomplish anything to change the behavior of our legislators. True enough, but there’s no disadvantage to approving it, either. All it does is appoints a budget director to determine whether we’re operating at a deficit or not. If we are, government officials can’t get pay raises. Seeing as how the rest of us endure pay freezes during hard times, I don’t see why public officials should be any different.

Trutanich for Los Angeles City Attorney

The campaign has centered around how both of these guys are supposedly tough prosecutors, which is really lame considering that’s only one part of what city attorneys do. They also interpret the local charter. They’re the city’s main legal representative. They oversee hundreds of legal staff. All that is why we should be suspicious of both Trutanich and Weiss.

Trutanich has represented the interests of environmental polluters and was Rocky Delgadillo’s own attorney, so if anyone despised Delgadillo, there’s his new head. Weiss quickly gained a reputation for kowtowing to real estate developers during his time on City Council. Neither candidate sounds like they have my interests in mind, but at least Trutanich is a practicing courtroom attorney, which will make him markedly more effective at the job than Weiss.

Community College Districts: Incumbents Pearlman and Reddock

Nancy Pearlman and Angela Reddock are the only candidates in this race with enough of an understanding of the community college district to have a platform. Robert Nakahiro and Tina Park haven’t seemed to say much of anything except that Park wants the financial process improved. That sounds good until Reddock presents her efforts to get strict on course quality and transfer rates to four-year schools.

Now get out there and vote!

Not too long ago, one of my friends was complaining to me about how a lot of his friends are constantly asking him what he thinks.

“What do you think of this sweater?”

“What do you think of my new boyfriend?”

“What do you think of the restraining order?”

He and I can talk about such things because he knows I often don’t care what he thinks. In fact, we disagree pretty often. Last year, he told me he was planning on moving to Paris and then maybe going for another graduate degree after that. I told him I didn’t think he’d actually do it and he told me to shut up.

The next time he called me on the phone, I said, “Ooh, are you at the airport? What’s the weather like? God, you’re up early!”

I did this for about six months and, since then, he hasn’t mentioned anything requiring a passport, much less Europe.

When he moaned about all his friends asking for his opinion, I asked him if his friends had any opinions at all. He laughed and said he didn’t know, but then he realized that they aren’t just asking for his opinion, they’re asking for his approval.

“It’s like they want me to approve or deny everything in their lives,” he said.

“How are you friends with so many weak-minded people?” I said. “Will they suddenly change their minds if you tell them you don’t like something? I mean, that’s a lot of power to wield.”

Maybe a week later, he found me online on a chat program and told me his coworkers had been asking his opinion on something.

“Oh, but get this,” he said. “I love it how certain people ask for your opinion and then get mad at you when you don’t like something! It’s like they want to know my opinion as long as it’s the same as theirs!”

I thought about this for the next week and couldn’t figure out why this happens. How is “What do you think?” such a loaded question? I mean, at face value, shouldn’t it just be an inquiry about what the other person thinks?

I found the answer in the unlikeliest of places: Reality TV — on The Food Network, to be exact. When I was lording over the household of a sick relative, doing the cooking, cleaning, shopping and driving to doctor’s appointments, I called myself “Fairy Poppins.” To be fair, I stole that from a David Sedaris story I read somewhere. I used to keep The Food Network on during the day for background noise, almost to keep me company. At night, it became my go-to channel when I didn’t like anything else on TV during a particular time slot. I used to sit on the couch and watch it with a tiny plate of crackers and cheese and a few splashes of Two Buck Chuck.

Two years later, and I had long grown tired of shows like “The Food Network Challenge” and “Ultimate Recipe Showdown,” where no-name cooks would compete for cash prizes before a panel of celebrity chefs and food critics. These people are hardly ever the stay-at-home amateurs the shows would have you believe, like some sort of Betty Crocker Cookoff, but often own their own food-related businesses like specialty stores, catering services and restaurants. It’s likely that these people are famous or at least popular in their hometowns or unincorporated county lands. The problem with these shows is that the format never changes so, once you’ve seen a handful of them, you feel like you’ve seen them all. You know that someone is going to drop their food while trying to plate it. You know that one of the appendages on the cake will be too heavy and will collapse on itself. The artificial drama, inserted by way of fast-paced music, quick cuts between cameras, and well-timed commercial breaks, always seems to happen at the same time in each episode.

I found myself flipping through the channels one night and came upon a burger-themed episode of “The Food Network Challenge.” I happened upon the show after most of the introductions and cooking were already over, and we were just about to hear what the judges had to say.

One by one, the judges displayed how unimpressed they were, and one by one, the camera cut to the cooks, each one even more disappointed than the judges. Cat Cora said she would have liked a citrus of some sort to brighten the flavor of one sandwich. Cut to a pretty woman with dark hair, maybe 40 years old, crestfallen. “My family and friends love that recipe,” she said, in a later interview. I expected this kind of reaction.

While tasting the next recipe, another judge shook his head like a see-saw and said, flat-out, “This just didn’t come together.”

Cut to another woman but, this time the cook was shooting lightning and poison-tipped darts from her eyes, and I didn’t expect that.

Of course, there’s no reason I shouldn’t have expected her to be angry. You can see angry faces directed at people like Simon Cowell every week. It seems like reality TV is full of people who have either been told they’re special or have just come to believe it in some other way so, when they do something that’s not so hot, they simply can’t stand to have it called to their attention. It’s a little clearer to see on “Kitchen Nightmares” when Gordon Ramsay, brusque as he may be, tells chefs that their ego is clouding their judgment, and that microwaves and Hershey’s syrup are not good culinary shortcuts.

When someone is crushed by a judge telling them that the fruits of their labor weren’t very good, it’s because their whole world-view is being called into question. It’s because, whatever they did, they thought it was good — really good. Having it labeled as something else means they now have to ask themselves: If I thought that was good and they thought that was bad, what else that I think is good is actually bad?

Sometimes this thought process is just too much, and that’s when otherwise rational people get angry and defensive, and why shouldn’t they? Being told your efforts aren’t good enough is an assault on your sensibilities. Maybe it’s your mother’s recipe — that’s how we’ve always done it — or maybe it was your favorite song, the one that got you a standing ovation at karaoke. Now, thanks to “American Idol,” people put out in such a way have taken to responding to criticism with, “I made it my own.” The sad part is that when the rest of us hear someone say that, it means it wasn’t as good as the original, whether it was your mama’s or Otis Redding’s. You might get invited to the next dinner party or get approached by people at Whisky Richard’s Tavern, but you might not be selling a million cookbooks or albums. Just sayin’.

So when people ask for your opinion about something, they might not actually be looking for your opinion, they could be looking for you to validate their opinions. Maybe it’s to let them know that they’re not alone in their sensibilities, maybe they’re feeling insecure and their ego needs a little stroke.

Since they’re not going to tell you the reason they’re asking, it can’t hurt to buy yourself some time by telling them, “Well, I don’t know. What do you think?”

One of the best things about growing up in L.A. during April was being able to trade with other kids at lunch so you could have a haroset-topped matzo in one hand, a hard-boiled egg with lots of salt and pepper in the other, and a chocolate egg filled with caramel for dessert.

Critics and fans alike have long awaited K’naan’s sophomore album. He brings it with all its unpaved street cred on Troubadour, his major label debut. I never thought I’d say this, but the majors have so far been good to him.

K’naan hails from the exotic shores of Toronto by way of Mogadishu, a city most Americans haven’t considered since the failed U.N. peacekeeping mission during the start of the Clinton administration. Taking the last commercial flight from Somalia, he’s come all this way to inject new blood into the rap world. Even the game’s own giants have pronounced hip hop dead, or rather, that it’s become a cannibalistic shell made of clichés of bitches and bling with all the style and grace of a Swarovski-encrusted iPod. K’naan’s different, he says, because the streets of Mogadishu are far more dangerous than anything in the inner city, and that seems key to his posture as an MC.

On his debut album, 2005’s The Dusty Foot Philosopher, K’naan’s material and delivery couldn’t always come together long enough to sustain a whole song, much less a whole album. This time, he’s sharpened his skills and actually delivers that lyrical one-two punch, aided in no small part by some gussied-up studio production. Take breakout single “If Rap Gets Jealous” for example. In its original form, the words and delivery seemed to putter out of steam by the end of each line. This time, they’ve been simplified to gain focus and pop accessibility, and the result is proof that Kirk Hammett is the only remaining member of Metallica who doesn’t suck. At his best, K’naan spins a vivid yarn, as on “Fatima,” a wistful tale of the crumpled dreams of lovers separated by war, and on “ABCs,” an upbeat but unsweetened glimpse of institutionalized poverty in the city.

Perhaps best of all, Troubadour manages to infuse the scene with new sounds without screaming about how different it is. Just as tacky gadgetheads would waste good crystal on a portable device, the last decade of hip hop has traded ethnic samples as accessories, even flashing American soul as some sort of novelty. Troubadour’s production provides rich understatement — just enough to make you take notice and wonder where these sounds came from, but not enough to bait the ethnic music hipster nazis whose insistence on consuming foreignness plays itself as ironically closed-minded.

Not all of it works, though. His collabo with Maroon 5 front man Adam Levine — seriously? — and its stiffly lilting rock beat sounds eerily like “Livin’ La Vida Loca” until the bridge, when the background vocals take on wider range, giving them a faint trace of Gnarls Barkley. Even the ambitiously named “America,” featuring Mos Def and Chali 2na doesn’t sustain the energy of the decidedly more downtempo but evocatively melodic “Wavin’ Flag” and “Somalia.” Even though K’naan’s sing-songy tracks have a definite adult contemporary feel to them, that can only serve to widen his audience in this post-Kelly Clarkson world we live in.

That’s Iowa’s state motto and it seems apt in light of today’s events.

The Hawkeye State’s Supreme Court upheld a 2007 Polk County ruling which essentially said that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution. When that ruling was handed down, Iowans had less than a day of legal same-sex marriage because the county appealed the decision to the highest court in the state, and the judge postponed any further marriage licenses until that court could rule on the matter. I briefly touched on this when it happened and I mentioned that only one couple, Tim McQuillan and Sean Fritz, came back with a completed marriage license within the 22-hour deadline. No major news outlets and only one blog has bothered talking to them since.

In its unanimous opinion, the court explicitly pointed at the arguments against same-sex marriage rooted in religious tradition and stated that the state government cannot have any religious views of its own. If recent bans on same-sex marriage (including California’s) are any indicator, religious conservative groups will continue to motivate action on this issue using religious dogma but will either veil that language or remove it from their final actions. We, as a country, still have little recourse for half-truths.

Republican State Senator Paul McKinley issued a statement to the Des Moines Register saying that he thinks all Iowans should have a voice on the matter, so the state’s legislature should immediately pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a bond between one man and one woman. In other words, he thinks everyone should have a voice — as long as it’s his.

You can read the Iowa Supreme Court opinion here.