The biggest part that caught my ear was obviously the Smashing Pumpkins news. Corgan getting back to writing rawk songs?! YES! Gish/Siamese Dream era-ish sensibilities? YES! With Jimmy Chamberlin on the drums?! YES! Maybe with the original line up touring? YES!
I've been pretty disenchanted with Billy's passion in his music over the last few years; so much so that I no longer will buy tickets to shows. The last Chicago show they did, I just went and hung across the street while they played. However, now, if the passion is back, I may be brought back into the flock more tightly. I'm not expecting Gish II or Siamese Dream II but rather commitment in his performance and solidarity in the band. It's so hard being a Pumpkins fan all fo the time as billy always finds ways to challenge me :) Lets hope this one pays off.
Another thing that caught my ear was the Billy finished up a solo record with my all-time favorite producer Rick Rubin. I am not a fan at all of Billy's first solo record so normally I would write this second record off as a vanity project. However, if he has Rick Rubin involved, I will definitely give it a chance even if it isn't SP. Rick Rubin's sensibilities are spot on 90% of the time with artists. If a song comes on from an artist I don't necessarily like/follow and I like it, I find out many times that Rick had a hand in doing it (ahem, Limp Bizkit's "Results May Vary"). So, that's exciting.
So, let's see what fruits come to bear in 2017! I'm excited.
It resonated with me today being a father of children myself. I can't truly imagine what'd it'd be like to have to find out my children were killed/murdered in any fashion let alone a la the Sandy Hook shooting. However, I can empathize because it made me sick to my stomach when I heard about it. The pain this father must feel has got to be extraordinary and I wouldn't wish it on anybody.
I never really thought about the fall out from Sandy Hook other than the political discussion regarding gun control and mental health services in the US. This article descrives this father's plight of having not only to bury his son but having to deal with the idiotic conspiracy theorists/trolls rampaging online. The amount of anger and anguish this family must be going through must be unbearable at times. I would lose my mind if people wrote off a personal tragedy as anything other than what the end result remains - loved ones were lost and they're never coming back.
The thing I hate most about conspiracy theorists is that they have a lot of questions and a lot of answers but lack a lot of proof to support their statements. I must've watch the "9/11 was an inside job" ragumentary Loose Change in all of its incarnations at least a dozen times. What entertained me were the theories they came up with to explain events that many thousands of people saw with their own two eyes - two planes crashed into the World Trade Center, fires raged for a long time, then the buildings came down. The filmmakers point out issues with the 9/11 Commissions' report and actually do provide their own theories as to what happens (sort of) but provide ZERO EVIDENCE to support their claim. There's a lot of demanding for "answers" and demands on releasing things that may/may not exist to the general public. If asked to support/recreate the theories in which they support, there are a million excuses as to why they can't do it. I have to ask, "If it's so important to you to deny the facts presented, why is it not equally or even more important to prove you're right?"
I have seen "truthers" saying things like:
The planes that crashed into the buildings never existed. They were elbaorate holograms by the government generated to coincide with a controlled demolition of the buildings to justify a sinister plot to go to war.
The planes were real but never had people on them. The passengers were taken to secret government facilities, deplaned, and either killed or given new identities so that the planes can be used to induce martial law on the east coast (New World Order type stuff).
The planes did crash as stated but there was NO WAY POSSIBLE that the buildings could go down (even though the supports were heavily weakened by the crash itself and fires further weakened what remained to the point they couldn't support the weight of the rest of the building).
I've tried to buy into these guys theories. I really have. The one 9/11 event that never truly convinced me went down the way I would think it would was United 93 which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. All I saw on TV was smoking hole in the ground and no wreckage whatsoever. Despite the lack of evidence, I will go with the official story because I CAN'T PROVE A COT DAMN THING OTHERWISE.
What keeps turning me off to the truther movements out there is that NO EVIDENCE is presented to support their claims. The excuse that typically comes up is "Well...The government did XYZ to supress that information therefore I can't show you the truth!" Shut up. Seriously.
So, when reading what Lenny has had to go through with people denying that his son never existed to be killed in the first place, having people calling him and his family at all times of the day to harass him, and to destroy everything one could hold onto that makes you believe people are inherently good is just horrible. These people want him to suffer to make themselves feel better about themselves in a sick, twisted way. I'm just glad he's found a way to dish it back on them.
