Scott Joplin teaches ragtime

Sometimes a team of experts and a year of research are needed to determine if the credited author of a document is really the author of the document.

Sometimes there's no doubt at all.



The Library of Congress has in its digital collection a four-page publication titled "School of Ragtime: 6 Exercises for Piano by Scott Joplin." The publication date is 1908 and the cover price is fifty cents.

If you would like six lessons in how to play ragtime from Scott Joplin himself, click here, because there's no doubt, it's really him.

Only the real Scott Joplin would have sounded so prickly, defensive and irritable about what others were doing to his music.

"All publications masquerading under the name of ragtime are not the genuine article," the composer writes.

Translation: I don't appreciate third-rate hack writers trying to cash in on my success with their cheap imitations.

"That real ragtime of the higher class is rather difficult to play is a painful truth which most pianists have discovered."

Lousy hack players, butchering my work, I hope their fingers break.

"Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at 'hateful ragtime' no longer passes for musical culture."

A thousand rave reviews are forgotten, but every word of a single bad write-up is permanently engraved on my cerebral cortex. Ignorant #$&@$! critic, what has he ever written?

"To assist amateur players in giving the 'Joplin Rags' that weird and intoxicating effect intended by the composer is the object of this work."

Play it right or play something else.

That ends the polite preliminaries and Mr. Joplin proceeds to the first of the six exercises.

"It is evident that, by giving each note its proper time and by scrupulously observing the ties, you will get the effect. So many are careless in these respects that we will specify each feature."

I am so tired of sloppy players. Can't anybody read music?

"Never play ragtime fast at any time."

When it says 'Slow march tempo,' that's not a suggestion.

The exercises teach ragtime by comparing the syncopated notes with an unsyncopated illustration above them.

"The upper staff is not syncopated and is not to be played," Mr. Joplin writes. "The perpendicular dotted lines running from the syncopated note below to the two notes above will show exactly its duration."


Click to enlarge.

"We wish to say here," Mr. Joplin concludes in Exercise No. 6, "that the 'Joplin ragtime' is destroyed by careless or imperfect rendering, and very often good players lose the effect entirely, by playing too fast. They are harmonized with the supposition that each note will be played as it is written, as it takes this and also the proper time divisions to complete the sense intended."

Translation: Your little improvisations do not amuse me. Play it the way I wrote it.

That is the voice of Scott Joplin, there just can't be any doubt about it.

Anybody else trying to sell music lessons would have written, "Ragtime is fun for all! And YOU can learn to play it in six easy lessons for just fifty cents!"


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: Visit the Library of Congress Performing Arts Encyclopedia at http://www.loc.gov/performingarts/pae-home.html to see the whole incredible collection. The ragtime collection at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/ragtime/ragtime-home.html includes Scott Joplin sheet music, in case he hasn't scared you off.

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Holiday spirits

America Wants To Know has been working day and night to perfect a low-calorie egg nog, and we are happy to report that we have done it.

If you'd like a damn-the-torpedoes, tomorrow-we-die recipe, click here for President Reagan's Favorite White House Eggnog. (Peace through strength, baby, and Merry Christmas!)

But if you're confident that bikini season will come again and the end of the world will not save us from it, we proudly present:

America Wants To Know's Summer-is-Coming Diet Eggnog

For each two servings:

Ingredients
1 large whole egg, very fresh
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup Splenda® sweetener
1/2 cup 2% milk
1 ounce brandy
1 ounce rum
1 ounce bourbon
Freshly grated nutmeg

Directions
Put the egg, vanilla and Splenda® into a blender and blend on high speed until frothy. Add milk and blend well. Add brandy, rum and bourbon, blend again, and pour into two glasses. Dust the top of each serving with nutmeg.

Calories: About 165 per serving.
Options: You can double the alcohol. It will add 96 calories per serving, but only you know what kind of year it's been.
Warnings: Raw eggs may not be safe to consume; if your immune system is less than top-notch, make a White Russian instead. Watch your fingers on that nutmeg grater. And, of course, don't drink and drive.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a happy and healthy New Year to you and yours from America Wants To Know. Here's to a better 2009!

Copyright 2008

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Frozen out

The Federal Reserve has made more than $2 trillion in emergency loans of taxpayer dollars and refuses to say who borrowed the money or what was accepted as collateral.

Bloomberg News filed a lawsuit on November 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to get that information, and on December 8, the Federal Reserve responded.

The Fed said there are 231 pages of documents that are responsive to the request, and Bloomberg News can't see any of them.

Why not?

The Fed says the documents are internal memos that contain trade secrets and commercial information.

And?

That's it. They're not releasing any information. Nobody sees the wizard, not nobody, not no how.

The problem here is that lots of people must know who borrowed this money. There are people inside the Fed, inside the Bush administration, inside the companies that borrowed the money, perhaps inside foreign governments, who know who borrowed this money.

In all likelihood, the information is fully discounted in the financial markets. The smart money already knows.

It's just the rest of us who are in the dark.

Does the Federal Reserve fear that the information will cause the public to lose confidence in banks and other financial services companies?

Well, secrecy doesn't increase confidence. Secrecy increases conspiracy theories.

Another six months of this and forty percent of Americans will think their retirement accounts were stolen away by black helicopters full of extra-terrestrials.

And Congressman William Jefferson won't be the only one with cash in his freezer.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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Rod Blagojevich saves America

Just when it looked like the U.S. auto industry was about to join the financial industry as a ward of the federal government, just when it looked like a new president and his majorities in Congress were going to force the U.S. energy industry to commit suicide on orders from a computer climate model, just when it looked like another four hundred or five hundred or seven hundred billion dollars of your hard-earned tax money was about to be buried in concrete, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich saved America.

With his boyish good looks and burlesque ethics, the man from Chicago brought fans of freedom to their feet cheering this week. It will be a good long time before the voters trust any politician's word on anything.

You can argue until you're blue in the face that big government spending programs are nothing but a swamp of corruption and an irresistible invitation to abuse of power.

But nothing gets the point across like a Chicago pol on an FBI wiretap.

What a performance. Trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat for a million dollars was good, but holding up funds for a children's hospital until he got a huge campaign contribution from a hospital official was better. Also deserving of special mention was the phony-baloney foundation he wanted to set up with coerced contributions so he could draw a big salary while pretending to work on health care.

The man is truly outstanding in his field.

The Constitution limits the power of the federal government, and for good reason.

But since nobody seems to have a copy of it, we're lucky we have Rod Blagojevich.


Copyright 2008

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Failing and bailing

Have you noticed how much the debate over the auto industry bailout resembles the debate over closing military bases?

All the talk is about job loss and economic harm, with lots of feature stories about the fate of local sandwich shops and dry cleaners. There's little if any discussion of the original purpose of the investment, and whether it's still serving that purpose, or any other.

Rep. Barney Frank told reporters on Tuesday that the bailout legislation has to be written to prevent the Big Three automakers from closing plants in the U.S. and opening new plants somewhere else.

But lawmakers are also demanding that the companies become more efficient and profitable.

We don't need a crystal ball to see where this is going.

The automakers will get federal money in some form, and then if they try to close plants or lay off U.S. workers, alarm bells will go off in Washington and there will be a ferocious effort to pressure the companies to keep the plants open and keep the workers on the payroll.

The members of Congress who represent those workers will thunder about how the companies have wasted the taxpayers' money on executive lunchboxes.

The executives will agree to work for fifty cents a year and skip lunch, and they'll get another bailout and another lecture about becoming more efficient and profitable.

It will be instructive to see who is selected for the post of Car Czar. Will it be an auditor or inspector general type, someone who is experienced at watching the taxpayers' money? Will it be an auto executive who knows something about building and selling cars?

America Wants To Know doesn't think so.

We think it will be a George Mitchell type. The former Senate Majority Leader most recently was tapped to head up Major League Baseball's steroid investigation, and as we said at the time, he's not the kind of guy you call if you want to know what happened. He's the guy you call if you know what happened and you don't want anybody else to find out.

No one in Washington wants the voters to fully realize that taxes are being withheld from their paychecks to subsidize the wages and benefits of people who make twice as much as they do.

If we were wagering, we'd bet that the Car Czar will be George Mitchell, Sam Nunn or James Baker. They've all got that great knack of looking severe and serious in front of the cameras while everyone responsible for the mess escapes through the back door.

In fact, the title shouldn't be Car Czar. It should be Getaway Driver.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Nancy Pelosi, car designer" and "The fabulous, fictional Chevrolet Volt."

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Tabloid update: "Hillary promises Obama: I'll divorce Bill!"

If you don't do your own grocery shopping, don't worry, America Wants To Know is always here to update you on the supermarket tabloids.

This week's Globe talked us out of $3.49 with its headline, "World Exclusive - Hillary promises Obama: I'LL DIVORCE BILL!"

"Revealed!" the cover shouts, "Her secret deal to win Cabinet job!"

Inside, the Globe reports that the Obama team did a special background investigation on President Clinton and believes he is moments away from another major bimbo eruption.

According to the Globe's sources, the former president "cheated nonstop on Hillary while she campaigned for the White House."

"Even with sex counseling and all of the damage he's done to himself, his presidency and his image over the years," the Globe's source laments, "he always seems to be courting disaster."

Fortunately for "squeaky-clean Obama," Hillary Clinton is perfectly willing to dump the guy, the Globe's source says. "She's convinced it's time to finally pull the plug" and "she told Obama she'll file divorce papers by June of next year."

That's a cute story, but we're not buying it.

We think if anybody's filing papers, it's Bill.

You can read more of our crackpot but pretty convincing theories in "Hillary Clinton and the perfect crime."

And you can read our slightly pornographic novel about amending the Constitution (Let's see you write a book about due process of law and get anybody to read it) at www.The37thAmendment.com. Makes a great Christmas gift for people who like histories and mysteries. Much more fun than another dried-up biography of Lincoln.


Copyright 2008

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Hillary Clinton and the perfect crime

And in the end, it all made perfect sense.

President-elect Barack Obama nominated Senator Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State, even though he spent the better part of the campaign calling attention to her utter lack of experience and judgment about foreign policy.

Why did he do it? Was there a secret deal between them?

America Wants To Know doesn't think so.

At first, we thought the president-elect floated Senator Clinton's name as Secretary of State in order to help her raise money to retire her campaign debt. We wrote in "Hillary Clinton considered for post of Tooth Fairy" that it was likely a feint to allow Senator Clinton to shake contributions out of people seeking to become ambassadors or State Department contractors.

We were wrong about the feint but right about the shakedown. Reports this week from the Associated Press and Politico document the frenzied fundraising effort that Mrs. Clinton is making before federal ethics rules kick in on the day she's confirmed as Secretary of State.

Next we thought the president-elect was pretending to dangle the nomination in front of Senator Clinton in order to destroy former President Bill Clinton's global cash-for-favors business.

We were wrong about the pretense but right about the destruction. Peter Baker of the New York Times reported that President Clinton has been forced to agree to "nine conditions" imposed by the Obama team, "all of which go beyond the requirements of U.S. law." He will have to give up foreign donations to the Clinton Global Initiative and make the list of donors to his library and foundation public for the first time. The future secretary's husband also had to agree to clear his speeches and business deals with the Obama administration. It's enough to make a former president call a divorce lawyer, just to get out from under these humiliating O.J. Simpson-style restrictions on his earning power.

But then, on Friday, we saw the third and most compelling reason for the president-elect's nomination of Senator Clinton to be Secretary of State.

Caroline Kennedy wants that Senate seat.

Caroline Kennedy, the woman whose public endorsement of Barack Obama last January was a stake through the heart of the Clinton political machine. Caroline Kennedy, the one woman in America that the Clintons couldn't discredit or smear.

Caroline Kennedy would like to have Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, and President-elect Obama opened it up for her.

It's the perfect crime.

Hillary Clinton is flattered right out of the Senate, where she could have meddled with the new health care reform effort and plotted her comeback in 2012.

Bill Clinton is silenced and leashed, held to an ethics standard set by the Obama administration instead of the guilty-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard that's kept him free so far.

Caroline Kennedy walks unscathed into the United States Senate, where she can run for re-election two years from now as a well-financed and much-beloved incumbent. Good luck to the Republican Party finding a candidate who thirsts for the chance to attack the last surviving member of President Kennedy's White House family.

It's perfect, all right.

The only problem is that Senator Hillary Clinton is still the person who thought the Iraq war was a good idea, still the person who uttered a dismissive "whatever" when she couldn't remember the name of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, still the person who fabricated a self-aggrandizing story about dodging sniper fire on a runway in Bosnia, and still the person whose ties to India led an Obama adviser to dub her "Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)."

She's still the person whose management skills took a front-running presidential campaign awash in cash and turned it into a shark tank of bloodied, chewed-up factions drowning in debt.

She's still the person whose ethics, truthfulness and sensitivity to conflict-of-interest have been less than model virtues.

But she's going to be the next U.S. Secretary of State.

That's the crime.


Copyright 2008

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Burying the Clintons" and "Burying the Clintons, Part II."

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On her word as a Barrymore

A couple of days ago we told you that America Wants To Know had been recruited to audition for a reality TV show with the gushingly flattering pitch that the show was looking for "the country’s most desirable women who have yet to meet their equal."

According to the casting director's e-mail, "This is a legitimate show being produced by a major A-list actress on VH1. Because she is producing the show, it will be very classy and tasteful as she is all about female empowerment. This is not a trashy show, there will be no cheesy challenges or elimination or no rose ceremony. It's a show about finding and maintaining a healthy relationship along with the Do's and Dont's of Dating."

This will shock you, we know, but America Wants to Know declined the invitation to participate.

We find that dysfunctional and catastrophic relationships add spice to our writing, and the second novel is coming right along.

But we didn't want to pass up a chance to illustrate the technique used by reality TV producers to rope people into these unbelievably humiliating television shows.

This is how the trade publication Variety reported the news of the "classy and tasteful" show from an A-list actress who is "all about female empowerment":

VH1 has made an eight-episode commitment to "Tough Love," a reality series from Nancy Juvonen and Drew Barrymore's Flower Films.

Skein takes a group of women, puts them in a house, and gets them ready to meet Mr. Right. Matchmaker Steve Ward will be the host.

Ward will reshape the contestants' destructive dating habits through a "Tough Love Boot Camp."

This show could run forever. Amanda Blake took a group of women, put them in a house and got them ready to meet men, and "Gunsmoke" ran for twenty years.

"We're all trying to figure out how to make love function while continuing to better ourselves," Ms. Barrymore told Variety. "This show is a fun way to do that."

VH1's executive vice president of original programming and production, Jeff Olde, said Drew Barrymore and her partner Nancy Juvonen brought matchmaker Steve Ward to the network's attention.

"The moment they introduced us to Steve, we knew that he is not your mother's matchmaker and has the rare courage to tell women what men honestly think," he said.

America Wants To Know will not comment on the rather vicious misogyny inherent in the premise of "Tough Love." It speaks for itself.

Instead, we'd like to tell you what we learned through a thirty-second Google search about matchmaker Steve Ward, who incidentally was described by the casting director as a "life coach" who charges $20,000.



Mr. Ward is a partner with his mother, JoAnn Ward, in a business called Master Matchmakers. According to the company's web site, JoAnn Ward "has successfully created a very high end service that provides a sophisticated way to meet exceptional, successful, attractive, marketable, singles who are also looking for long term relationships." Ms. Ward has been "matching up her Client Friends" for 18 years, the web site reports. "She understands these people."

Steve Ward's title is given as "Vice President and Master Matchmaker":

Throughout his life, Steven Ward has been surrounded by his mother’s business. Always encouraged by JoAnn to develop his interpersonal skills and other strengths, Steven had been groomed for this career since he was a child. As a graduate of Drexel University with degrees in Finance and Economics, he has contributed more than his childhood background to the business by implementing critical improvements to Master Matchmakers' infrastructure, as well as applying other strategic initiatives that are fueling the growth and success of the company and its Client Friends.

Steven has also gained notoriety in the media from his featured appearance in Cosmopolitan Magazine’s November 2003 Hottest Hunk edition. Prior to that, he appeared on several episodes of CBS’s soap opera Guiding Light and has performed in other minor film and TV roles. Steven was also featured as a bachelor contestant on NBC’s primetime, love based reality TV show For Love or Money 4. He was additionally featured in editions of Woman’s Own and Complete Woman magazines for his bachelorhood and matchmaking career. Steve has also appeared on Good Morning America, Livin’ It Up with Ali and Jack and Fox’s Morning Show as well as Your Morning on CN8.

Our half-minute Google search also turned up some consumer complaints about Master Matchmakers and the people who run it.

"JoAnn and Steven Ward are unprofessional and degrading," M.C. in Philadelphia complained to RipoffReport.com, "They tell you they have many matches for you, then tell you you need plastic surgery after you pay them money to give you your matches."

"JoAnn and her son were very nice to me when they were trying to get me to join their service but then began personal attacks and harsh language and criticism about me," wrote A.H. in Philly.

"JoAnn Ward & her son Steve are unprofessional, degrading, self-serving tyrants!" wrote Stephanie in New York City. "JoAnn commented that I could be matched up with a good-looking man, if I only would get plastic surgery. I have come to learn that she pushes plastic surgery on quite a few of her female clients."

By coincidence, or maybe not by coincidence, there is a "Marketplace" area on the Master Matchmakers web site where plastic surgeons can advertise their services. For instance, in Upper Gwynedd Township, Pennsylvania, "James C. Fairfield, MD of the Center for Aesthetics has been a leading authority on cosmetic surgery and dermatology in suburban Philadelphia since 1982. JoAnn highly recommends his very personal service and friends of her will receive a complimentary gift when mentioning her name at their appointment."

America Wants To Know has nothing against plastic surgery or plastic surgeons. We just don't think people who make a living by insulting insecure women -- or by having the "rare courage" to tell women "what men honestly think" -- should get away with claiming they are promoting "female empowerment."

Bring back scripted television.


Copyright 2008

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The stunning stupidity of Harry Reid

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid showed off the new Capitol Visitors Center on Tuesday and described to reporters one of the advantages of the $621 million taxpayer investment.

"My staff tells me not to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway," the Nevada Democrat said. "In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol."

He's smart to disregard the advice of his staff in favor of that great speech Marie Antoinette left in the sofa cushions. Good thing he threw out those folding chairs from Lech Walesa and finally got some decent office furniture.

In 2010, Republicans will have an opportunity to criticize the Democratic majorities for the arrogance of power and for being out of touch with the American people. "You could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol" will make a nice tag line on those campaign commercials.

The stunning thing about this self-inflicted gunshot is that Senator Reid was told by his staff not to say it, and he didn't understand why. He was so amused by his own colorful imagery that he couldn't wait to share it and get the reassuring you're-one-of-us laugh.

That's a little peek into the mind of the man who is likely to control a sixty-vote filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate.

It may turn out to be a very stinky omen for the Democrats.


Copyright 2008

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