Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

No Justins, No Peace

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Bark louder, little dog.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

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Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: PopCult Snippets

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I wonder what BJ’s top Elba-fanatic thinks about Concrete Cowboy?…

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113Comments

  1. 1.

    Edmund Dantes

    If George RR Martin would just be honest about it, the fans would be better. But he chooses to lie constantly and act like he is working diligently all the time.

    He also needs an empowered editor.

  3. 3.

    West of the Cascades

    Wow — Glenn Greenwald doing misogyny to Sarah Cooper. What does that fellow NOT have in his bag of (dirty) tricks?

  4. 4.

    Brachiator

    I was thinking the other day that George RR Martin has had the entire pandemic lockdown period to finish “Game of Thrones.” But all we got was … crickets. He signed a 5 year deal with HBO for new projects and is maybe involved in a Broadway production of the series. But he has had more than a year to finish his goddam book.

    I don’t think he is going to do it.

    Paul Simon sells his entire song catalogue to Sony

    This seems to be a big thing with artists with a big back catalog. They seem to be trying to counter the negative impact of streaming services. I hope it works out for them.

  5. 5.

    Brachiator

    A monster clash is reviving signs of life at the box office. Opening-day ticket sales on Wednesday for “Godzilla vs. Kong” totaled $9.6 million, Warner Bros. says. That’s a single-day pandemic record and more than most 2020-2021 opening weekend hauls.

    This sounds like whistling past the graveyard. I hope movie theaters recover, but I am not sure they can. Many are still limiting seating to 25 percent. Netflix just paid $450 million for 2 “Knives Out” sequels.

    Hollywood is still backed up with a ton of blockbusters that they are afraid to release, including a new sequel to Ghostbusters, a “Top Gun” follow-up and the final Daniel Craig James Bond film.

    Canada, which has cities counted with the US box office, is just recently getting the vaccine out, I think. There are tons of foreign countries that have not started vaccinations.

    I don’ know. It is not looking good.

    I used to love going to the movies. Even after being vaccinated, I am not in a hurry to go back.

  6. 6.

    Xavier

    @Brachiator: Interesting take on catalog sales. I imagine Sony et al can push back against the streaming services harder than individual artists.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    @Brachiator

    It’s finished but will be held back for posthumous publication. Otherwise the final chapter revealing a 10-year-old autistic child staring into a snow globe will result in torch and pitchfork brandishing fans storming his house.

    //

  8. 8.

    MattF

    I’d thought for a while that GRRM would, at least, finish the book in progress— but now even that seems unlikely.

  10. 10.

    Yutsano

    I saw the first tweet and my first thought is, “Oh great. Sean Bean is going to die again.*”

    *Don’t at me about him not dying in everything he acts again. It’s a meme. Also: Let people enjoy things.

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    @mrmoshpotato

    I have no horse in this race at all (never having read any of them nor watched the TV adaptation) other than pointing out that while it would be nice he is under no obligation to do so.

  12. 12.

    RSA

    Wow, those Drezner tweets. Too bad Greenwald doesn’t know any journalists to tell him about the news.

  15. 15.

    bluehill

    @mrmoshpotato: Even if he doesn’t, his estate can just take the HBO ending and change the parts that everyone hated. Voila RR’s everlasting gift to his fans.

    After the HBO series was on for a few years and no new book was forthcoming and there were some significant plot deviations already – I was expecting him to let HBO finish it for him.

    In some ways, it’s probably better. One of his books, forget which one, seemed like it was just written to satisfy his contract. Rambled a lot with very little plot development. It seemed like he wasn’t sure how he wanted things to end or how to get there and was just trying to fill pages. For the reader, a long slog with little payoff.

  17. 17.

    scav

    I’m not sure if reality ghosted Greenwald or just gave up calling in disgust because the answering machine was full.

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax:

    There will be one, and only one GOT character who wears a Members Only jacket. He will be introduced in the final scene.

  21. 21.

    Cheryl Rofer

    GRRM is having a lot of fun with his money. He bought a little art theater that ran sf flicks before the pandemic and had an associated bookstore. He designed a castle that the city architecture board turned down. He’s been investing in other fun projects. Haven’t seen him in the local news lately, though.

  25. 25.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @RSA:

    Thing is, I’m truly not a Sarah Cooper fan, and simply ignored the fawning posts when she did those dumb Trump lip synchs (liked the Caulvin impersonations better). That said, I thought Greenwald zeroing in on her to be really weird thing consistent with his lack of character and judgement.

    He’s retweeting Rachel Bovard today – she’s an awful person spawned from an awful right wing lineage.

  26. 26.

    Anonymous At Work

    Paul Simon selling his catalogue???  What about the valuable input of Art Garfunkle?

    (I managed to type that with a straight face…Garfunkle may have held out for 5 bucks and a roast beef sandwich, if he played it tough…)

  29. 29.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    One other thing on Greenwald – pushing his crap out via Substack is a great way to obscure payment sources. Wonder how many subscribers have .ru email addresses?

  30. 30.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Want a good laugh, watch “journalist” Griftwald say the polls are skewed (the mythical enthusiasm gap) and predict Obama would lose the election because youth and Latinos would stay home and swing states like Florida would flock to Mittens. (video)

    Good times

  36. 36.

    Shalimar

    I guess now we wait for a 10000 word post from Greenwald where he defends his petty insult of Cooper without ever addressing any actual facts.

  40. 40.

    Spinoza Is My Co-pilot

    @Cheryl Rofer: Meow Wolf (GRRM involved) in Santa Fe is pretty cool. Was there when on a road trip stop between Denver and Phoenix in the fall of ’19, would love to do it again someday (getting to groove to one of my favorite tech house DJs at a show there that night was icing on the cake, but the place is an especially enjoyable immersive art installation on its own).

    I have faith that GRRM will complete A Song of Ice and Fire, and in so doing it will become the GOAT of fantasy stories. Not entirely sure why I have that faith, but I do (wishful thinking, probably).

  41. 41.

    Feathers

    I read somewhere that Martin realized he had killed off a character he needed to get the ending he wanted to work out. I remember chasing the story down at the time and deciding it was legit sourcing, but now can’t remember where I read it. The gist of it was he had an ending he’d been working towards for a while, but when he sat down to write/plot it out, realized that a character he needed was dead. So he may just be stuck. He’s always been a ton of side projects kind of writer.

  42. 42.

    PJ

    @Brachiator: ​

    @Xavier: ​
     
    It’s not about streaming rates – whoever buys the catalog rights would have the same issues with streaming rates that anyone has. This is about estate management. All of the artists who are selling their back catalog are senior citizens. I don’t know the details of these deals, but my guess is that they get a large lump sum up front plus a guaranteed rate of return for the length of the deal (which is probably the length of the copyright, which is life plus 70 years for works created after 1978, 95 years from date of creation for works created prior to 1978). I can imagine a few reasons why older artists would like this: 1) they may be betting that the value of their work will decrease in the future as music is continually devalued; 2) it lets their estates and heirs just have to deal with managing money rather than the copyrights. Currently they have management and legal teams to deal with this, and they may not trust subsequent teams to do a good job after they die (or the current managers and lawyers die).

    But I suspect the real reason is that there is a shit ton of cash floating around right now that extremely wealthy people are looking to invest in something that will provide a higher rate of return than they are currently getting from the market. These people are not buying the catalogs of working or unknown artists – they are going for songwriters and musicians who own their masters who have generated a large body of popular, income-generating work. They are betting that the work of popular, well-known artists like Paul Simon will increase value over the next 70-odd years, and they are willing to pay an obscene amount of money to get those revenue streams. For the artist, it’s a huge payday right now, and more money than they would have ever seen for the rest of their lifetimes. For someone like David Crosby, who probably blew all his earnings on blow, it guarantees him a comfortable remainder of his life. For those who managed their money well, well it’s a nice addition to their estates.

  43. 43.

    Shalimar

    @Brachiator: My guess is Martin finished it a few years ago but it isn’t actually good and he can’t figure out how to fix it.  Or rather,  it is a lot better than the tv series’ last 2 seasons but not even close to the quality Martin is capable of and expects from himself.  When he dies, the publishing company will release what he has and people will be relieved just to get it.

  45. 45.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @bluehill: I think you’re right. I don’t know if The Winds of Winter is the novel you’re referring to, but I got halfway through before I gave up, because I realized if George didn’t give a damn anymore, why should I?

  47. 47.

    PJ

    @Spinoza Is My Co-pilot: ​
      It’s not the greatest of all fantasy stories now, and it won’t be when he finishes. Martin is a great storyteller when he’s got a good editor reining him in (as in, not on the last two ASOIAF books), but he’s a middling writer. There are no beautiful sentences in his books. And in the last two books, the storytelling goes astray and the bad writing (“WHERE DO WHORES GO?”) proliferates.

    I think it’s clear he would like to have the series finished but he doesn’t actually enjoy writing it anymore. Will books that he doesn’t enjoy writing be any good, or good enough? If he lives long enough (a big if), I think he will actually finish, but I think a lot of people will be disappointed. I am hoping the last two or three books (I don’t think he can wrap up all of his loose plot ends in two volumes) are great, but, if the past is an indicator, I wouldn’t bet on it.

  48. 48.

    Connor

    GRRM is doing just fine for a guy who started out writing letters of comment to Marvel comic books as a kid. I know him a little bit — first met the man in 1972 — and I have to put my hand up here in his defense.

    First, writing any good fiction is hard. Writing a series of this size and scope is way the hell harder. Anyone grumping at him for not finishing sooner should basically shut up until they’ve personally created something just as big, but managed the trick faster.

    Second, working on something of this length is creatively exhausting. So tiring that it actually makes sense to step away and work on entirely different things, or the same material from different angles or in different mediums or forms. That provides room for the imagination to rest and refresh itself. Rather than these new GRRM project announcements being distractions from finishing the series, I personally suspect they may be critically necessary to him completing it. Gears need oiling!

  49. 49.

    Martin

    @Shalimar: He should NFT the pages off one by one. By the time anyone gets them all together and realizes it sucks, he’ll have made billions.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    Although both are people I don’t read, my impression is that everyone would be happy if GRRM killed off Greenwald in his final book.

  51. 51.

    dexwood

    @germy:  Yes indeed. As a huge Los Lobos fan, I’ve been aware of that story for years. Paul Simon is a gaping asshole and a thief.

  53. 53.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Does Greenwald have any influence outside of twitter? I believe he quit the pretty marginal Intercept in a huff, didn’t he?

  54. 54.

    debbie

    @Mary G:

    I didn’t realize that was a chicken until she walked back with her!

     

    ETA: That chicken is a speedy thing!

  55. 55.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Mary G: I had a little Cochin Banty like that one in the second clip.  He was full of personality and he liked to ride on my shoulder

    Eta: the chicks are adorable, with little feathers on their feet like the adults.

  57. 57.

    cain

    @Shalimar: ​
     
    That sounds like what happened to Wheel of Time. (can’t wait for that series to start on Netflix) Brandon Sanderson finished the last 3 books I think better than Robert Jordan would have. Brandon took away all the wierd annoying somewhat misogynistic ticks in the books and gave a much better presentation IMHO.

    That said, the first 4 book of WoT were epic. There was an entire cottage industry that sprung up on what the fuck was happening in the series and what was going to happen. But after the 4 books it started to get kind of squishy with more mysteries added and no old mysteries being closed off.

    I read the first 2 books of the game of thrones and immediately realized that this is not going to be finished and stopped reading the series and ignored the tv show knowing fully well that we were all going to get fucked. The same thing for Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss – wonderful first book, ok 2nd book, and I haven’t heard anything since and it’s been about ten years.

  65. 65.

    aliasofwestgate

    @cain:  I never got into WOT or GOT. I have tried reading the first books of each and it was just. Nope. I rarely nope out of SFF fare, but those rare times i did.  I couldn’t myself to immerse into GRRM’s narrative in GOT, and WOT just didn’t appeal to me overall despite some intriguing concepts.

    Ironically. Brandon Sanderson’s style works perfectly. I’m a huge fan of The Stormlight Archive and have read quite a bit of the other cosmere based stuff. Plus the non cosmere books aren’t half bad either. Regarding the Cosmere, i’m amazed at what he’s got planned and the man is a machine.  I still have to finish Rhythm of War from SA, and i just started the Wax and Wayne books over in Mistborn.

    My ability to concentrate on a book entirely is happily returning after the shitstorm of the last 2 years.  So i’ve been burning through my catalog of ebooks and library rentals alike.

  67. 67.

    zhena gogolia

    We just started watching Mozart in the Jungle last night. (I know, we’re slow.) My husband said, “Sex in the City with classical music!” I guess that’s the idea.

  68. 68.

    J R in WV

    @germy: ​

    Google Los Lobos and Paul Simon to get a good idea of Paul Simon, the man.

    Oh, wow!

    Thanks for this, I’m a huge Los Lobos fan, have seen and heard them live several times, can’t believe Simon treated them (and so many others!) like that~!!~

    What a jerk!

  71. 71.

    Keith P.

    And his estate will make 10x cash publishing Winds of Winter posthumously

    What’s really depressing, is that WoW isn’t even the last book!  He’s supposedly got another 1000+ pages planned for Dream of Spring, so unless he’s been writing that in parallel, that book ain’t happening.

  74. 74.

    Matt McIrvin

    @rikyrah: Yes, it’s on HBO Max.

    I will warn you, I’ve seen it and it is pretty dumb even by the standards of giant-monster smackdown movies. But the giant monster smackdowns are pretty. There’s a certain Michael Bay Transformers quality to the plotting, but with not as much misogyny (and the monster scenes are far less confusing).

  76. 76.

    NotMax

    @zhena gogolia

    When it comes to lighter fare, if you don’t mind subtitles, Little Coincidences (from Spain) is lots of fun (as well as has some scalpel sharp writing). Takes a short time to get up to speed, so hang in there if the first episode or two doesn’t grab ya.

  78. 78.

    Yutsano

    @WaterGirl: Does Cauvin have a TikTok presence? If so he needs some attention there! If not he should embrace the Chinese malware cause all the kids have*!

    *although the olds have found TikTok so the kids are gonna start hunting around for “their own space” again here soon.

  80. 80.

    NotMax

    @Yutsano

    although the olds have found TikTok

    Endless river of videos of the Macarena from Sun City and The Villages.

    :)

  81. 81.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Feathers:

    The gist of it was he had an ending he’d been working towards for a while, but when he sat down to write/plot it out, realized that a character he needed was dead. So he may just be stuck. He’s always been a ton of side projects kind of writer.

    I’m kind of surprised. I only saw the TV version, but as I understand it, it’s even truer in the books that death is not a permanent state in Martin’s world.

  83. 83.

    piratedan

    @cain: you might give Glen Cook’s The Black Company a try.  The first three books actually complete a very satisfying end to an arc and if you want to follow the after stories you can but in order to keep things fresh, the author inserts different narrators into the story (very much before GOT).

  85. 85.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jeffery:

    I also have never seen Titanic.

    Never saw Forrest Gump, though I can understand a lot of references, and even quote a few lines.

  88. 88.

    James E Powell

    I haven’t read or heard anything from Martin himself on this, but I wonder if he really had an end in mind when he started the Song of Ice & Fire series or felt like he would have to come up with one any time soon. I’m sure he had an idea – “this will be five or six books” – but reading the first three books doesn’t seem like it’s working out that way at all.

    It’s not like a Big Finale is required for a series of books. “How does this end?” became a pressing issue because the books became an HBO series and those have to end in a relatively short time.

  89. 89.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    There’s a certain Michael Bay Transformers quality to the plotting,

    I don’t often see the word “plotting” and Michael Bay used in the same sentence.

    but with not as much misogyny (and the monster scenes are far less confusing).

    Godzilla doesn’t wear short shorts and a tight bra?

  90. 90.

    aliasofwestgate

    @piratedan: I need to reread that first set of 3. I never did get much further than that and i was curious as hell about what happens next.  Grimdark, but man the comedy asides of the shenanigans of the Company were also funny as hell. Mostly the pranking and shit going on within the ranks.

  91. 91.

    dmsilev

    @Matt McIrvin:

    There’s a certain Michael Bay Transformers quality to the plotting.

    Better that than Zack Snyder I suppose, ‘The monsters stopped fighting when they discovered that both of their mothers were named Mothra’.

  95. 95.

    Brachiator

    @dmsilev: 

    Better that than Zack Snyder I suppose, ‘The monsters stopped fighting when they discovered that both of their mothers were named Mothra’.

    Very good….

  96. 96.

    PST

    @J R in WV: The discussion of what a jerk Paul Simon is, which I’m in no position to dispute, reminds me of a conversation I had couple of years ago with a New York business contact I knew pretty well about memorable concerts and the subject of Simon & Garfunkel in Central Park came up. She unexpectedly said, “I went out with Artie a couple of times in high school. What a jerk!” She told me that he was a friend of her older brother, which is why she went out with him, but he was incredibly arrogant and full of himself. Paul, on the other hand, was sweet and shy, she said, but Art bullied him. Just tossing this in as fun gossip. Obviously people change.

  97. 97.

    JML

    A Song of Ice & Fire is so frustrating for those of us who were on board with the books from the beginning; the first three came out in 4 years and were really enjoyable and a fascinating epic. Then it took 5 years for book 4 to come out, and it was missing so many of the favorite characters from the first three books and was only one half of the story (at best). Then it takes another 6 years for book 5 to make it…and the quality didn’t stand up to the first 3 as GRRM turned it into a travelogue to show off parts of the world that no one really cared about and introduced WTF characters. Now, it’s been 10 years since the last book was published. It’s a hard thing for a loyal reader, whose investment in the series helped paved the way for the tv series, to have to deal with the fact that the series will likely never be completed.

    Between GRRM, Patrick Rothfuss, and Scott Lynch it makes you not want to invest in an epic series until it’s already been published in it’s entirety…but if you do that, they’ll never even get published.

    I tell you, my respect for Seanan McGuire increases every time I think of this. How she manages that level of output while maintaining quality staggers me.

  100. 100.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I am not particularly fond of Martin or Game of Thrones.  However, I applaud any creator who got rich off of it.

    @Feathers:

    I read somewhere that Martin realized he had killed off a character he needed to get the ending he wanted to work out

    This would not surprise me in the slightest.  I gave up on Game of Thrones when I realized his writing just wanders, there’s no greater meaning to any event that happens, and he kills off characters – the Red Wedding being the most obvious example – just because he’s gotten tired of their subplot and it’s the easiest way to move on.  I can’t invest emotionally in that, and I’m pissed that he tricked me into thinking it was going somewhere.

    @Connor:

    Anyone grumping at him for not finishing sooner should basically shut up until they’ve personally created something just as big, but managed the trick faster.

    You mean me?  Sure.  He’s an overblown hack who needs to get off his ass and finish the series.  Yes, I know intimately the need to intersperse with other projects to keep inspired, but he should still be done by now.

    I actually don’t dislike or disrespect him that much, but I don’t respect him, either.  Like the execrable Jordan he does a great job of implying there’s an awesome story that does not actually exist.  That and naked breasts got enough people hooked that he made a fortune.

    Although, again, good for him getting rich.  I don’t have to like him to applaud his luck.

  101. 101.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    the twitter reviews of King Kong are not encouraging, which bums me out, even if I’m not surprised, having seen the most recent Godzilla movie in the series. I wasn’t expecting great art, but I was hoping for some good cinematic junk food.

  102. 102.

    James E Powell

    I just finished the fifth and final season of The Bureau, which I’m pretty sure somebody here recommended. It’s not perfect. It has the flaw of every spy story – a nation’s entire intelligence service appears to be about ten people, most of whom are pretty good looking – but I really enjoyed it.

    One amusing thing – not a spoiler – there are regular scenes of the characters at lunch in the agency’s cafeteria. Those lunches look fantastic. Have to give it to the French. They know how to eat.

  103. 103.

    bluehill

    @Alex in FL: Agree and there’s the opportunity. RR can use that as the basis for an alternative ending.

    I wonder how much the HBO writers consulted with him about the ending, either how he envisioned it or what he thought of their version.

  106. 106.

    PJ

    @bluehill: They met him with after the end of the third or fourth season, when the sixth book had failed to appear, because they needed to map out the rest of the series.  He told them certain things that were going to happen, including the ending that appeared in the series (two of the others he disclosed involve Hodor and Shireen.)

    It was apparent to the showrunners that Martin had no idea how to actually get to the ending, and only the barest sketch for what would happen in the sixth and seventh books.  They did a much better job of adapting Martin’s written work than coming up with their own material to fill out the last third of the series, but I can’t pin the failure on them when Martin had promised he would have the series finished in a few years and they had to come up with something they were unequipped to do.

  107. 107.

    Fair Economist

    @cain:

    The same thing for Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss – wonderful first book, ok 2nd book, and I haven’t heard anything since and it’s been about ten years.

    I saw the rave reviews for that, read it, and didn’t get the raves. It’s fine, but it seemed like a YA novel written at an adult level; nothing really special.
    @PJ: 

    [The GoT showrunners] did a much better job of adapting Martin’s written work than coming up with their own material to fill out the last third of the series, but I can’t pin the failure on them when Martin had promised he would have the series finished in a few years and they had to come up with something they were unequipped to do.

    I can. The last season was really awful, even granted the unsatisfying ending. If they couldn’t write themselves, they should have hired somebody who could.

  108. 108.

    scott (the other one)

    @NotMax: I disagree. Nearly everyone who bought his books (leaving aside some who bought the very first very early on) did so knowing it was part of a series, a series which would someday have a conclusion, as the overwhelming majority of such series do, especially if they sell well. Had those people know it would never conclude–as now seems entirely likely–his sales would have been a fraction of what they were, and the television show would never have been greenlit.

    He promised his readers a story. A story has a conclusion. His will never conclude, not while he’s alive. He has sold his most loyal fans a bill of goods.

    He’s obviously under no legal obligation. But you’re damn right he owes his fans something. And he’s never going to give it to him.

  109. 109.

    prostratedragon

    Concrete Cowboy: might have to get Netflix just so I can see it. Among other things, I like stories about obscure or unexpected urban cultures.

  112. 112.

    Connor

    @frankensteinbeck

    I gave up on Game of Thrones when I realized his writing just wanders, there’s no greater meaning to any event that happens, and he kills off characters – the Red Wedding being the most obvious example – just because he’s gotten tired of their subplot and it’s the easiest way to move on.  I can’t invest emotionally in that, and I’m pissed that he tricked me into thinking it was going somewhere.

    It was going somewhere. It was going to the Red Wedding. And the Red Wedding sets up serious changes and consequences rolling forward through the rest of the storyline. That choice was absolutely deliberate on GRRM’s part and had nothing to do with “getting tired” of the subplot.

    You mean me?

    I stand by my statement.

    That and naked breasts got enough people hooked that he made a fortune.

    He already had the fortune before the TV show started. It just got lots bigger then.

    I don’t have to like him to applaud his luck.

    Success as a writer often looks like luck, and sometimes is. But in GRRM’s case it really was the result of decades of very hard work in both fiction and television writing. Not suggesting you have to like him — but deliberately ignoring the phenomenal amount of labor he invested in order to get to where the “luck” happened is disingenuous.

  113. 113.

    PJ

    @PJ: This thread is long dead, but I just read an interview with David Crosby (DC in the quote) where he goes into the reasons for artists selling their catalogs:

    DC: Okay, it’s pretty simple. I had a financial wizard friend of mine explain it. If you’re going into the world with $100 million to invest in the stock market, you take $50 million of it and put it in T-bills, because you know exactly what they’re gonna pay, and they’re safe. Then you take the other $50 million and go adventuring to try and make money. Well, then you think about publishing, you have 20 years of records. You know exactly what it’s gonna pay. It has that same security. The only thing is it pays a lot better than T-bills. A lot better. They used to buy publishing by a multiple. For most of my life, ten years of your publishing’s yearly earnings was what your publishing was worth. When it got to  19, faced with the situation I was faced with, it was definitely the right thing to do, to sell it.

    RA: That seems to be what drove so many others’ decision to sell their publishing: The Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt, Dylan … I actually read that Neil ended up selling about half of his work at the beginning of the year.

    DC: It’s that and also that the tax situation is more advantageous now in the leftover situation from Trump than it will be when it readjusts to a more reasonable and less permissive kind of way of doing things. So, if you were gonna take a bunch of million dollars for making one of these deals, you’d want to it under this (tax situation) and not the next one.

     

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