I can actually remember when the term "Long Hair Music" referred to the classical genre. The powdery wigs of Mozart's day and the unkempt coiffure of Beethoven must have lead to this label. The Beatles blew all that back in 1963. It's odd the way that classical music seems to enchant the more technically oriented among us. (I'd like to think it's the sonic symmetry.) Some of the first and most remarkable uses of synthesizers were programmed re-works of long-dead composers' tunes reborn through transistors, phase shifters and filter modules. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that classical music is finding the waters of the world wide web rather warm.

Web sites with embedded MIDI, allow many minutes of music to be contained in a tiny little file that drives your onboard sounds. You can find everything from jazz to Geriatric. (As I type this, I'm listening to the 3rd Movement of Mahler's 4th Symphony through a Mac 8500 that downloaded twenty minutes' worth of music in about five seconds. It sounds like a symphony of kazoos, but the notes being played by my computer through my stereo while I type can still bring tears to my eyes. Classical music sounds so much better (since it's usually better music) than popular rock hits through the tinty musicbox sounds most of our computers make. It's entirely possible that a kid in elementary school today will be exposed to Bach for the first time through a MIDI file over the internet.

I can't understand why with more money being spent, and all the technological advances of the past couple of decades why kids are dumber than ever. Faced with embarrassingly low SAT scores, The College Board, and the Educational Testing Service made a decision: make the test easier so the scores will go up. Cool huh? After the new, easier test was administered some insitutions (who hoped the public wasn't wise to the change), pointed proudly with press releases to the "improved" scores of their students.

They failed to mention that for the first time the stoonts could use their pocket calculators to figure out complex math problems; a section on antonyms was confusing kids in the English section so they simply removed it and they increased the amount of time allowed to complete the SAT. And you know what? Scores improved! Imagine that.

So the same schools that fight tooth and nail opposing apptitude testing of their own teachers, sing praises to the rafters about how much "smarter" their kids are and how much better job they must be doing as educators. Meanwhile, a couple of weeks ago a 17-year old taking the test noticed one of the math problems was written incorrectly. "We screwed up." the director of the SAT program said. Oh, more than once sir.

They call boxing one of the "oldest sports." My guess is that boxing was invented right after an argument started about who invented the sport of skipping rocks across a lake. You would think that in this day and age we wouldn't have a need for this kind of spectacle, but such things as the ultimate fight are still with us.

(Not to be confused with more civilized Strong Man challenges, where feats of strength don't necessarily involve pounding the snot out of your competitor.)

They call it "ultimate fighting championship." I call it barbaric. Last year when a similar show came through Denver a lot of locals were up in arms over the supposed blessing the city was giving to such an event by allowing the promoters to rent a coliseum. Now this is a city that just loves a good rodeo. Rodeos are cruel and the animals don't even have a choice. A horse, (unless he's Mister Ed), doesn't have a whole lot to say about how tight the saddle straps are.

In "ultimate fighting" at least the human participants willingly submit themselves to physical abuse. The fellows climbing into the ring have their own motivations. So, for what one supposes was an excited audience, pair after pair of angry young men beat the beejeezus out of one another to the hoots and hollers of a paying crowd. I must have been busy that night.

Hey, I'll trade you a share of David Bowie for a year's subscription to Todd Rundgren. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson once said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Multimedia rock artists are getting pretty clever about how they make a buck these days, and it's completely bypassing the established recording industry barriers between performer and audience.

Bowie (no stranger to innovation) has sold 55 million dollars worth of bonds backed by the future royalties of his hit catalog. Even if he never records again, which isn't likely, he has over three hundred tunes in his catalog. If history is any indication, some of these will continue to return healthy royalties for many years to come. Oddly enough, most of the bonds were bought by insurance companies. Maybe if Bowie, (who just turned fifty and got his own star on Hollywood Blvd.) gets a few more hits your premium will come down. (Yeah, right.)

We described a few of weeks ago how Todd Rundgren has decided to turn his back on an indifferent record business and become an artist that listeners can literally "subscribe" to through the internet. For twenty-five dollars interested members of the Todd Squad will be able to download piece-by-piece, from demo-to-final production, Rundgren's new album as it is being created. He's calling his new company "Patronet." As Todd told the "Hollywood Reporter recently," "This is not a disc, but a relationship with an artist over a long period of time." The eventual CD release of the same material is not included in the "subscription" price. I think critical mass will be reached when online sales outpace record store sales and that might happen pretty quickly.

Colorado is on the way to making female genital mutilation illeagal and I, for one, say it's about time. Now what about us guys?

I read where former stand-up comedian, current talk show host Rosie O'Donnel recently purchased a newborn child. When she got him home Rosie was horrified to discover that the little boy had not been circumsized. Shocked! Steven Speilberg's wife was more than happy to help out and made arrangements to, in my opinion, mutilate the little boy's genitals. If I must open my window here, I too suffered the trauma as a newborn. I firmly believe it is the reason I wear loud cothes on Fridays. But forgive me, I digress.

We grant refugee status to young women fleeing countries that practice female circumcision, yet males in this country are cut short simply beause of the momentum the practice of circumcision has gained through the decades. Everybody else is doing it, we should too. "Don't you want to be like Daddy?"

There is a lot of speculation about how circumscision, became so widespread. Hygiene is the main excuse these days, but the stats don't back it up. What it boils down to is that nature doesn't make mistakes like that. Our bodies are built the way they're supposed to be and snipping this or that makes no sense. Maybe the only thing Mother Nature screwed up was our brains.

Here's a tip for Rosie O'Donnel: maybe you should consider a tuck or two here and there. After all, what's good for baby. . . . .