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Peppercorn band

Ecstasy--pure human ecstasy, not the cheap drug--is a beautiful, necessary thing. Living the modern life of civilized apes, we sometimes either impoverish ourselves of the ecstasy of life or outright outlaw it. Not good; not right. Seeing visions was essential to a great many of America's original people. How they got 'em seems natural enough--fasting, dancing, natural stimulants, worship of nature, etc...
  To which I say: Beatles = liberation.

  Thus it was at the sixth annual 'Beatles-a-thon', 12 hours of live Beatles music provided by Joe and Matt Peppercorn and their band of highly proficient deep believers in the Beatles canon. I was ecstatic simply waiting in line half-an-hour before it began at the Blue Stone at 12:30 p.m. December 26. Liverpool and nirvana, here we come!

Lots of people from Bernie's posing together

I predict the New Year will probably include a presidential election.

  Sorry, that was a joke.

  You want to hear about music?

  Deerhunter performed at the Skully’s Music Diner December 17th. This show was about a year after singer and multi-instrumentalist Bradford Cox was involved in a car accident that hospitalized him and resulted in him taking stock of his life.

  Deer Hunter’s latest release, “Fading Frontier” is a reflection of this.

  Well, it’s weird because if you look at the photos of Cox in the hospital and compare it to the amount of sounds and movement on stage one would one remark that he recovered from depression induced from immobilization quite well.

  Musically the Atlanta group operated poppy hooks, on occasion upbeat, at intervals melancholy, but eventually optimistic with layered tales of bored inertia turned motivation. Deer Hunter is aurally some place in between indie-rock, jam-band land and Neu!

Montage of New Orleans images

So as it turns out, we never made it to Frenchman Street.

Every year, a few friends and I engage in a weekend of musical tourism, taking trips to cities which claim a vibrant live music scene and/or some historical interest. Past trips have included Memphis (Beale Street, Sun Records, Graceland) and Nashville (Downtown, Grand Ole Opry), among others. You know, famous places. 

This year, we decided to make our pilgrimage to New Orleans to get hammered and listen to jazz. From the moment we got into the cab at the airport, locals directed us to Frenchman street. According to pretty much everybody, this was the place to see jazz. The party was great, the music was fantastic, and you didn’t have to worry about the filth and violence of Bourbon Street. So sayeth the cabbie, the hotel concierge and the guy working at CVS.

But the problem was that our hotel was right in the middle of the French Quarter. Everything was a just a short walk away, from bars to museums to famous cemeteries – everything, that is, except for Frenchman Street. At over three miles away, it was unquestionably a cab ride proposition if we intended to drink seriously.

Photo of two actors from Star Wars

As we close out 2015, the continued mainstreaming of geek culture couldn't be more obvious: Star Wars: The Force Awakens is currently obliterating box office records like they're superweapons with conveniently-located weak spots. And while some have railed against their fandoms going mainstream, the simple capitalist truth that bigger audiences bring more money has had the effect of making geek culture as a whole more progressive, more welcoming and more diverse.

  The biggest trend in movies this year was nostalgia, but instead of remakes (the worst of all being tepid PG-13 remakes of R-rated classics) we got new entries to moribund series that often chose to ignore the more recent entries in favor of unapologetically homaging the originals.

Photo fo Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam,” 1967

Photo of Vegan Mushroom filled Pastry with grilled asparagus and baked potato

Smith & Wollensky Columbus Steakhouse in Easton serves a smart and an original vegan option (with advanced nutritional requirements notice) that is pretty exciting to those who enjoy a savory varietal mushroom filled pasty. If you have a penchant for grilled asparagus, baked potatoes, varietal olives and the biggest, saltiest, capers I’ve experienced, you will resonate with their vegan offerings. Healthy, fresh berries finish the meal but don’t satisfy that tempting chocolate craving you may have (especially when you witness other desserts non-vegans delight in- FYI vegan chocolate exists). However, there was some confusion with the team on the salad dressing and the mashed potatoes presented, because both contained dairy. If you have allergies or a heart/cancer/diabetes condition or prevention strategy for which you are avoiding animal products, you will want to remain vigilant on qualifying suspicious offerings.

Ohio Hospital for Psychiatry sign

“If the physician presumes to take into consideration in his work whether a life has value or not, the consequences are boundless and the physician becomes the most dangerous man in the state.” Dr. Christoph Hufeland (1762-1836)

Before Reynoldsburg police broke down the door to her home November 19, 2015, Linda Leisure, long-time corruption investigator and whistleblower, thought she had seen it all – including previous police break-ins into her home. But she had no psychiatric history and never before witnessed “forced psychiatry” Ohio-style.   

  Earlier that day, during a verbal argument with a police officer at her home, Leisure cursed him for ignoring her complaints about harassment she was suffering from Columbus police officers Delmar and Steve Knotts, one who lived across the street from her Reynoldsburg home. Within minutes, a woman identified as a “social worker” came to Leisure’s home. Leisure described the woman as “unprofessional” and that she “looked like a bag lady.” A few minutes of discussion through a partially-opened door led the “social worker” to diagnose Leisure with “a mood disorder,” according to police records.

Image of cop beating someone

Last December 2015 while some waited for the holidays to bring them “good cheer” and were consumed with the media hype in regards to Trump, or just waited for the year to end, many African Americans and Civil Rights Activists were more concerned with the outcomes of grand jury indictment decisions and jury trials held in December concerning African Americans who lost their lives in 2014 and 2015 at the “alleged” hands of police officers.
  Twenty-Five year old Freddie C. Gray Jr., was arrested on April 12, 2015 in Baltimore and while being transported by a police van to jail fell into a coma and died April 19, 2015 from “injuries to his spinal cord.”  On December 21, 2015 a hung jury left the Gray family as well as Officer William Porter and the other five officers awaiting trial, in limbo until a retrial this June 2016.

Tall downtown skyscrapers

JPMorgan Chase and Co. is a bank “too big to fail,” and according to the G20 or The Group of Twenty, it is the bank too big to fail.
  The G20 is an international forum of the world’s major governments and central banks, and recently published a report stating if JPMorgan were to get into trouble, the greatest global financial havoc could follow because the bank is interconnected with so many smaller banks and investors.
  As Wall Street sputters into 2016 amidst global market volatility, many in Central Ohio and the rest of the state aren’t aware of how connected JPMorgan is to the local workforce and beyond. Way beyond, as in 200,000 state worker retirees and their beneficiaries.
  JPMorgan is the region’s largest private-employer with more than 20,000 workers, and many are well-paid. JPMorgan is also the custodian of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System’s international fund, which accounts for $21 billion of the pension’s total fund that’s currently at $87 billion.


It has been argued that nonviolent struggles to liberate occupied countries – such as West Papua, Tibet, Palestine, Kanaky and Western Sahara – have failed far more often than they have succeeded but that secessionist struggles (that have sought to separate territory from an existing state in order to establish a new one) conducted by nonviolent means have always failed. See 'Why Civil Resistance Works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict'. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/why-civil-resistance-works/9780231156820

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