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Here is why I don’t normally watch American Idol: because of hacks like Allison Whatsherbutt, who deafened me for a while last night. She sang “Someone To Watch Over Me,” one of the best songs ever put to lined paper, like a pig in an abattoir. Good job, Allison: you can song really frickin’ loud. Is that all you have to offer? Really?

Here’s the thing that, if you’re lucky, you’ll learn somewhere down the line: singing is often about subtlety. Loud is merely the first step in learning how to sing. I know literally dozens of people who can sing loud. I know a very limited number who can sing softly, and more importantly, know which to do at any given time.

“Someone To Watch Over Me” is wistful, almost a bedtime prayer. Belting it out at the top of your lungs is like playing a lullabye on a piccolo trumpet directly into your baby’s ear. It’s like a Frost poem through a megaphone. It’s like waking up your sleeping spouse by kneeing him in the testes.

Sadly, <SPOILER ALERT>you’ll be there after tonight</SPOILER ALERT>, so next week perhaps you can commit voice rape on a Norah Jones song, or something. Color me “not watching.”

Chris Hardwick over at nerdist.com has an interesting post on confidence. The gist: know how to do something that you love, really well. Even if you’re in a situation where that expertise doesn’t really apply, the simple fact that you’re really good at something can be a subconscious morale booster.

I’ve figured out the financial situation.

Well, that’s not true. What I’ve figured out is why a pure free market economy, with no regulation, has no hope of working. Or rather, I’ve figured out a way to explain it in terms that makes sense to me.

(I guess I haven’t figured out a damn thing, if I had to be honest. Still: this makes sense to me. It makes sense to me! That counts for something, right?)

Here’s how I break it down. The free market economy is like a car. Back in the 40s and 50s, cars were simple. Drum breaks, carburetors, rear-wheel drive, manual transmissions; anybody could work on ’em, and most folks did. Anybody could change the fluids, gap and replace spark plugs, tune the engine, etc. You might take it in for the really complicated stuff, but I think my father once told me he replaced the piston rings in an old Mustang he had, hardly a simple job.

Along the same lines, for most of history, investing was simple: you found somebody you trusted who needed money to start a business venture, and you gave ’em a few bucks and hoped to double your money. After a while, it was formalized into stocks and bonds, buying and selling. Pretty tame; you bought a stock, it paid dividends, the price went up or down. Hard to predict, but easy to understand, and over the long term, things tended to go up.

After a while, cars got complicated. Front-wheel drive, automatic transaxles, fuel injection, computer-controlled ignition. I’m pretty mechanical-minded, but all I can do with my Saab is change the oil and brakes. There’s something wrong with the turbo; don’t know how to fix that. Check engine light is on; I could probably get the code, but Lord knows it’s probably an oxygen sensor buried deep in the engine that I can’t get to.

Same deal with financial products: around the turn of the last century, people started “selling short,” which means betting on stocks to fall. This isn’t particularly dangerous on its face, but the problem is if you’re buying stocks, you can only buy as much as you have money for. When you’re selling short, you basically BORROW the stocks and then sell them to someone, and buy ’em back to return ’em to the guy you borrowed ’em from. (It’s slightly more complicated than that, but that’s the gist.) The problem is, unless there’s a regulation preventing it, there’s no limit to the amount you can short sell, because you don’t have to actually own the stock to do so. End result: October 1929. Stock market crash. Depression. Immediately after this, regulations were put in place such that you can only sell short a certain amount, based on how much cash you have laying around.

And then again, in 2008, after years of deregulation, banks are allowed to move money around in ways few people understand. Lenders are allowed to make loans to people who are high credit risks, because they can then turn around and sell the risk off to some investor in a credit default swap. No average person can be expected to understand all this himself, so he hands his money off to an investment professional, just as the average American takes his car back to the dealership for basic service.

Now here’s where the analogy breaks down: imagine you paid your mechanic and got your car back after service, and a few days later the entire car fell apart, Bluesmobile-style. You would, rightly, be very angry with the mechanic, right? You would expect him to repair your car, and probably get you a rental to drive around for your trouble, right? Of course you would.

Unfortunately, if you give your money to an investment professional, and he blows it all on credit default swaps, he can blame it on an economic downturn. All the while, he’s taking his usual commission.

If your car starts acting funny, you know it right away. The check engine light comes on, or the brakes squeal. Something like that. You know to get it fixed right away. With your investments, you mostly have to rely on our investment professionals to tell us, something that they are loathe to do because they know if we knew how incompetent they were, we’d take our money away. Sure, they send out quarterly “statements,” but most Americans throw them into the trash unread. Why would they worry? They’re years away from retirement! So most Americans had no idea what was going on until they watched the S&P 500 lose 50% of its value and called their money man to ask, “Hey, I’m doing okay, right?”

Um…no.

I guess what I’m saying is that giving money to unregulated investment professionals is like giving a Ferrari to these guys. I’m all for the free market, and whatnot, but perhaps maybe just a little government oversight? Maybe? You think?

[Disclaimer: I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Take all of the above with a grain of salt the size of my head.]

The weekend was full and overstuffed. On Saturday, Charles and I spent all morning doing yard work in a vain effort to tire him out so he’d have an early nap. We dug, and mulched (“melched,” as Charles puts it), and trimmed, and planted. The “early nap” plan was an utter failure, of course; he went down at 10:30, talked to himself until noon, and finally get maybe an hour’s sleep before we woke him to go to a party.

Luckily, sleep or not, homeboy is always up for a party. We met a bunch of our musical theatre friends at one of their homes, out in West Chester, where we got our barbecue on and watched as the Flyers gained and lost a three-goal lead in a deciding playoff game. There was much anger, which was calmed by drinking large amounts of Canadian beer.

On Sunday we were able to sleep in a tiny bit, then got some breakfast at Bob Evan’s, followed by a trip to Sarah’s old church for the baptism of children belong to some old high school friends. I spent the afternoon mowing the lawn in temperatures approaching 90 degrees, and then sitting around drinking water so that I could stop looking like a dessicated husk. (Is it just me, or are temperatures in all seasons getting a little crazy? It’s not unheard-of to have 90 degree days in April, of course, but it seems like year after year we got a bunch of really hot summer days, a bunch of really hot winter days, but we also get some oddly chilly days in early August, and of course last winter there were at least five separate days when I had to chisel frozen saliva from my lips just by walking from my car to the office. That was a really long sentence, which will stay in place because I have no editor. Huzzah!)

After making the lawn look reasonably tame, we went to the in-laws’ for the brother-in-law’s birthday, at which I ate so much chicken-fried steak that I couldn’t effectively breathe for the rest of the day. I tried to stuff some birthday cake in there but it wasn’t happening. I went to bed 4 hours later in a semi-coma, still thinking there was no way I’d ever eat food again.

Turns out I was wrong, which happens sometimes.

My day so far: Charles woke us at 6:15 by falling out of bed and initiating Maximum Tears. Then on the way north I got the bird flipped at me by some dumb broad from New Jersey who was in the left lane holding up traffic all the way through the city. So let’s star the day off with a dose of awesome:

Meat Cards

Business cards made of beef jerky, embossed by laser. Salient quote:

MEAT CARDS do not fit in a Rolodex, because their deliciousness CANNOT BE CONTAINED in a Rolodex.

I know what you’re asking: do they have Twitter? of course they do.

In Lancaster, California, Honda decided it would be fun to carve grooves in a road such that when you drive over them, the vibration of your suspension plays a song. They decided, for unknown reasons, to use the William Tell Overture, by Giaochino “Joey Chinos” Rossini. In case you haven’t watched the Lone Ranger recently, listen to this.

Then, go watch and listen to this.

Notice anything? Am I the only one? They spent heaven knows how many man-hours gouging grooves into that road and did it to produce the wrong fricking notes. This commercial gets played at least once every time I watch a Daily Show online and it makes me insane.

Just so you know.

Andrew Sullivan, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow all took Karl Rove to task for this stupidity. I might as well join in! Let’s break it down like En Vogue:

What the Obama administration’s done in the last several days is very dangerous.
What they’ve essentially said is, if we have policy disagreements with our predecessors,
what we’re going to do is, we’re going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses . . .

Hey Karl, you know what else is popular among South American dictators? Torture. They LOVE the stuff.

. . . and what we’re gonna do, is prosecute, systematically, the previous administration, or threaten prosecutions against the previous administration, based on policy differences.

Policy differences? Really? Not, you know, criminal acts?

Is that what we’ve come to in this country? That if we have a change of administration from one party to another, that we then use the tools of the government to go systematically after the policy disagreements with-that we have with the previous administration? Now that may be fine in some little Latin American country that’s run by, you know, the latest junta. It may be the way that they do things in Chicago. But that’s not the way we do things here in America.

You know what, Karl? Your mom’s a junta. (I should probably look that word up.)

Ignoring for the moment that I think Chicago is technically located within the borders of the United States, Mr. Rove apparently thinks that the matter of torture, which is against federal law and various international treaties, is merely a “policy disagreement,” like arguments over tax rates or deficit spending.

Hey Karl: shut the hell up. You’re a buffoon. What we’re talking about are crimes. Crimes that hopefully will be prosecuted by the Department of Justice. Shepard Smith put it best (warning: uncensored F-bomb, if that bothers you).

It’s all Gerald Ford’s fault, I think. When he infamously pardoned Richard Nixon, he set a dangerous precedent that a Presidential administration should not pass judgment on the crimes of a previous one. Which is fine, if we were some kind of banana republic in which every new dictator spends the first week slaughtering everyone associated with the last one. I can’t remember any incoming President immediately telling the Department of Justice to go after the last guy because he didn’t like him. What would the benefit be? It’s not as if last guy is going to come back. The time of Grover Cleveland is gone, people.

By “closing the book” on the Watergate scandal, President Ford gave credence to President Nixon’s idea that when the President does something, it’s not illegal. Since we didn’t punish Nixon, now we can’t punish anyone, seems to be the feeling.

My ass. Mr. Holder, the only way to prevent these kind of crimes from happening again are to ensure that everyone knows they’ll be punished for it. As much as I hate the idea of “setting an example,” anyone who authorized or ordered torture tactics needs to be prosecuted and jailed. Go get ’em.

I do have to admit, however, that my judgment may be clouded by the fact that I’m giddy over the possibility that Dick Cheney might end up with a prison tattoo saying “If u reed dis, bubba kill u.”

Saw this on Andrew Sullivan’s blog this morning, and found my curiosity piqued. In all the arguments about healthcare in America, all I ever hear comparisons to are the Canadian and UK versions of free public healthcare, which by many accounts are kinda sucky. Apparently what we need to model our healthcare system on is the French one.

According to Wikipedia, FrogHealth^TM was

named by the World Health Organization as the best performing system in the world in terms of availability and organization of health care providers.

Sounds like “Win” to me. As I understand it, and admittedly my grasp of the situation is tenuous at best, the French healthcare system pays something akin to 80% of basic medical costs. The rest is born by the patients or the private medical insurance that a majority of French citizens have. Who’s covered? Any legal resident of France. Still, having to pay 20% of medical costs can get pricey, right? What about serious illnesses like cancer? The public healthcare system covers that 100%.

It sounds like the best of all possible worlds: serious sickness is covered completely, and treatments that are prone to being overused by demanding patients have a co-pay to deter them from doing so. Meanwhile France, as a nation, spends about $3,500 per person on healthcare, as opposed to the $6,100 spent by Americans.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to tell me why this couldn’t work for the US. Cut costs, get everybody covered? What’s the roadblock?

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Correction: in this post, the French Healthcare system was referred to as “FrogHealth^TM.” This is inaccurate; the true title of the program is “CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeysHealth^TM.” We regret the error.

I don’t get this whole Susan Boyle thing. If you’ve been hiding in an oil barrel this week, the latest internet sensation is a 47-year-old Scotswoman who appeared on “Britain’s Got Talent” over the weekend. Go watch the video; I’ll wait.

Okay, welcome back. Are you as confused as I am? I mean, she certainly has a nice voice. Is it opera- or Broadway-ready? Of course not. She needs a lot of training, if only to try and put a governor on that vibrato, which is wide enough that a fellow could drive a double-wide through it. It’s certainly not better than several local sopranos I’ve sung with, and that’s just in the Delaware Valley.

Obviously, there’s notability in the fact that the woman is hideously ugly and has led a pretty sad, boring life (never had a boyfriend, never been kissed, never waxed her eyebrows), and yet has this semi-remarkable voice. I put a “What’s the big deal?” post on Twitter, and one reply said, “Everyone with a negative spin on Susan Boyle is missing the point. She’s a phenomenon because talent doesn’t discriminate.” Which is a bit like saying “water is interesting because it can be both hot and cold.”

Of course talent doesn’t discriminate; most everybody has a talent in one thing or another. The feeling I’m getting from the masses is, “Look everyone! Even ugly people can be musicians!” Um…duh. The point is, I suppose, that we shouldn’t pre-judge someone’s abilities based on how they look, but on what they actually do. Can’t judge a book by its cover, and all that.

What’s odd is that the reason that she is popular disproves the reason that people say she’s popular. Yes, talent should trump physical appearance. But in this case, it’s not the talent: her skill is reasonable, but it’s the juxtaposition of that skill and her disturbing looks that interest people. It’s notoriety, not musical ability. Ask Kevin Federline how well notoriety sells albums.

I hate being a “hater.” It’s not a role I do well. I wish Miss Boyle all the best, but I have a feeling that once the news cycle is done with her, all she’ll have left is her voice, which isn’t really any better than an especially good church soloist (trust me, I’ve heard dozens). That’s going to lead to heartbreak for her, but by then no one will care a whit.

I’m writing a post mostly so that people stop complaining about the most recent one; a new post will cause that one to scroll down the page.

Last weekend we wrapped up the Brandywine High School show, which was “My Fair Lady;” I would have posted about it but was far too busy working on it. I had to rearrange a lot of music, plus transpose an entire bassoon part into bass-clarinet, along with actual rehearsals and performances. I’m still catching up on sleep. It went off extremely well, and was super-fun as usual, but I’m so excited to be done that I can barely stop whistling.

Now we’re just preparing the house for “Rosie,” as Charles calls the creature lodged inside my wife’s abdomen. Her appearance is scheduled for early May, but Sarah, stressed over the state of our domicile, thinks that she’ll come early just to spite us. She’s a pretty violent little thing; Charles certainly wiggled and shimmied when he was in there, but “Rosie” is fond of jabbing feet and elbows into Sarah’s internal organs.

Less important news, although probably more germane to your interests: I’m planning another site revamp. I’ve had this weird dark wintery theme up for about 7 seasons too long, and I want some spring colors. Pastels, people! That’s where it’s at. Also, instead of the periodic longer updates, I’m going to turn this thing into a true “blog.” There have been a lot of thoughts jump into my head lately that I’d want to explore a bit, but didn’t have time to put together a complete “column”-style post, but it was too involved for a 140-character tweet. So expect to see shorter little notes, filled with the usual “humor” and “insight,” throughout the day, mostly sent through email from my iPhone, because That Is How I Roll. I might even post the new template tonight and start the new blogging paradigm, but a lot depends on whether or not Charles, who is not feeling very well, allows me to do anything.

Peace and bacon!