Being Pretty or Ugly Depends on Who's Observing

It’s interesting to me how some people can see or hear something and call it beautiful while others observing the same thing can call it ugly. Maybe others have no opinion of it at all.

There are certain things that every rational person agrees is good or bad. All but psychotics and sociopaths would agree that thievery and murder are bad. And almost everyone agrees that having a good deal of wealth is better than living in poverty.

Those situations can be viewed from an objective standpoint. But even some subjective viewpoints can be generally agreed to by the vast majority of people. For example, almost everyone agrees that the sight of the Grand Canyon is awe inspiring. On the other hand, most folks would look with disgust at a puddle of fresh vomit.

What is most interesting, however, is that there are works of art or pieces of music that some people consider to be aesthetically very pleasing while others find them abhorrent.

Consider a famous painting such as the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, for example. It is obviously appreciated by most art connoisseurs. And there must have been some reason for it to become a priceless work. But if someone unfamiliar with the painting were to view it, he or she might very well consider it quite ordinary. What quality or qualities about a work of art make it pleasing, or expensive?

The same is true of music. Some people love listening to the classics, such as the masterpieces of Mozart and Hayden. Others find them boring. It probably depends on what aspect of music one finds most enjoyable: beat, rhythm, melody, etc.

For example, I find most music that is played on any Top-40 radio station abhorrent. But obviously the majority of music listeners enjoy it or else it wouldn’t be in the top 40. To me, most modern Pop and Country music is simplistic and trite.

I also tend to really loathe songs about certain subjects, regardless of the genre. For example, I really can’t stand songs about vehicles. There were a lot of early Pop songs written about hot rods, and there still is a lot of Country music written about pickup trucks.

I also can’t stand songs written about or for dances. That would include songs like Do the Twist, Do the Locomotion, The Bump, or Do the Watoobee. And I also find songs written about a specific genre of music very uninspired, such as Old Time Rock and Roll, C-O-U-N-T-R-Y, or that old Country song from the ‘70s, Kindly Keep it Country.

It’s not that I only enjoy songs with more substantive value; I also like a few with frivolous lyrics. But I generally prefer music that requires some semblance of imagination.

With paintings, though, imagination is not a requirement. I like realism in a painting. I can understand Impressionism and admit it takes talent to pull it off, but when looking at a painting, I prefer the ones that appear almost photographic.

In art and music, as in religion and politics, there is lots of room for personal preferences. I guess that’s a good thing, because otherwise, there would be only one or two genres of music and all art would look the same.

For that reason, I guess I can admit that there is a place in the music world for Rap, as long as it doesn’t invade my ear space.

Trick-or-Treat Time Again

Remember trick-or-treating? Not the giving out part, but the receiving?

When I was very young, I had no idea what the term meant. I thought it must have been just a single word: trickertreat. I didn’t find out until later, when I was an older kid and started going out on Halloween with my friends that I broke the term down for the first time into two concepts: getting treated or being tricked.

It was adult-sanctioned childhood extortion. What could be better?

Back in those days, if you didn’t provide the little fake ghouls with a treat, and a good treat at that, the kiddies would gladly soap your windows, toilet paper the tree out front, or throw eggs at your front door.

And it made no difference whatsoever whether or not you left your front porch light on as a welcome beacon. It made no difference whether or not you were even home. If the little extortionists went to your house and didn’t get a treat, you were in serious jeopardy of getting tricked.

Of course, the tricks were fairly benign. Soap washes off easily. Toilet paper decays away. And eggs are scrubbed off easily enough unless you allow them to get dry and hard. True vandalism, breaking windows, setting fires, destroying property, was rare.

Today, of course, the tradition is a little different. The rules of engagement have changed. Parents accompany their kids on their candy-seeking journey until they are almost too old to engage in such activity. And you never go to a house uninvited, one with the porch light off.

The term, trick-or-treat, has lost almost all of its former meaning. It virtually has become a single word. If kids come to your house and you’re out of candy, you can feel fairly safe that you won’t be tricked. Well, that is unless the trick-or-treaters are teenagers. Then all bets are off.

While younger kids and preteens offer little threat, teenagers often forgo the asking-for-a-treat part of the night in favor of concentrating on the tricks. They don’t need to dress like a dork and ask the neighbors for candy; their smaller siblings will provide a bounty for them.

And if you’re in certain larger cities, like Detroit, the tricks have often gotten out of hand. Older teens and even young adults find it amusing to go out on an arson spree on Halloween night. Thankfully, those kinds of serious tricks of outright vandalism are not common in most civilized neighborhoods.

I stopped trick-or-treating when I was about 12 or 13. These days, I often get visits from kids in their mid teens making their rounds. Some of them are simply taking their younger siblings around and so join in the act. Others go out in groups on their own.

Even so, I’ve been fortunate enough over the years not to have been tricked. My first year out of college I got my car egged. And there have been two or three less troublesome tricking events, but nothing major.

There was a time, back in the ‘80s, when the tide got turned and the treat givers started playing dangerous tricks on the costumed kids. Sharp objects such as pins and glass started showing up in apples and candy.

Although there have not been many reports of candy tampering in recent years, the incidence did spark a sense of heightened awareness by parents. More parents are checking the treat bag and more parents are taking their youngster around the neighborhood to trusted homes.

It’s just another way Halloween traditions have evolved over the years. We’ve come a long way from the ancient practice of beggars asking for soul cakes on Halloween in exchange for their prayers on behalf of the dearly departed. Today, a Snickers bar will do just fine.

Radio: Better Format, Worse Music

Back in the early 1970s, I was interested in being on the broadcast end of radio. Although I was studying to be a teacher, I also tinkered with the notion of being a disc jockey. I spent three years of my college career being one of the on-air personalities at Franklin College radio.

The college station was small and not very powerful. The AM side of the dial could be heard only on campus, but with a good radio and the right weather conditions, the FM signal could be picked up over much of Johnson County.

At first, the play lists were pretty much up to the DJ. There were genre guidelines, of course, but I could play whatever I liked. Back in those days, Country Music didn’t enjoy the popularity it does today, but that’s mostly what I played. It wasn’t cool, but it was better music than the assembly-line stuff that’s played on country stations today.

If I had my own radio show today, I would play jazz and the standard vocals. But I went the other way, opting to teach instead of broadcast.

These days, radio doesn’t play a big part of my life. I neither broadcast nor do I listen. I don’t know what has changed the most, radio and the music it plays, or my personal tastes. Either way, the stuff they play on most radio stations is not what I would play on my stereo system.

When I was in my teens, I listened to WIBC in Indianapolis a lot. They played a mix of popular songs. But mostly they played commercials. It was the bane of radio in the 1960s and ‘70s.

While in college, I listened to WIRE country AM. The DJs grew to be my on-air friends. Still, there were all those commercials. Typically, the station would play one song then air about three of four commercials. Then the DJ would talk for awhile before playing another song about 10 minutes following the last one.

In those days, most artists knew that if they wanted their song to be played on the radio, they would keep it below three minutes in length. That went for Pop and Country music.

Of course, there were those few progressive musicians that bucked the trend, such as Don McLean whose American Pie lasted well over seven minutes. Radio stations got around that flaw by playing only half of the song, then airing some commercials before finishing it.

These days, radio has caught on to what listeners were telling them. They play more music at a time. Oh, there are still plenty of commercials, but they are mostly lumped together in a five to seven minute block every half hour or so. In the mean time, the stations typically play at least three to five songs in a row without too much interruption.

That still doesn’t make the music worth listening to. Most stations play either Top-40 Pop or Country. I not only don’t like 95 percent of it, it actually upsets me that the majority of Americans would actually consider the stuff they play as real music. Of course, that’s just my opinion. The stations play what sells and most teenagers don’t care that their music is artistically anemic.

So I typically just leave the radio dial in neutral while listening to my personalized music on my favorite Internet radio station. It allows me to fine tune the music they play to exactly what I would play myself if I were still a DJ and had the freedom to make my own play lists.