What they did to him then was not only immoral (IMO) but illegal (factually).

Hmm. Illegal? I doubt that. Was what Murry was doing in the 1940s and 1950s illegal? Can't imagine him being prosecuted for loving his children and sacrificing for them.  For that matter, it also would have been awfully difficult to successfully prosecute Eugene Landy in the 1980s or 1990s.

Sorry. Just saw this reply.  I don’t come around much.
I was not talking about Murry but about The Stephen/Rocky/Stan set up. It’s kidnapping, physical threats, and forced labor. All illegal as they were then.

It appears that Marilyn is asking for $700K for her to pay accountants and lawyers to find a true accounting *and* for Brian to be ordered to provide a true accounting.

Seems like it should be one or the other.

Thanks guys. Sorry for dumping but it feels kind of good to have dumped.

Hey all,
I haven’t been around for a couple of reasons. 1. This place got pretty stressful for me after the 2016 election. 2. My sister had an accident about a year and a half ago.  We don’t know what happened, but I went to her apartment in NY after not hearing from her at the holiday (thanksgiving). The doorman gave me a key, saying he hadn’t seen her in a few days. I went up and found her on the floor. At first I thought she was dead, but then she groaned. I quickly called 911 and she was taken to the hospital where, after 16 hrs in emergency, they told me she had hematomas on her brain and they were sending her to ICU. After another day, they said she would likely not regain consciousness and we should prepare to make “decisions” about life support. My mom and brother flew to NY, but before they arrived, she regained consciousness. She seemed to improve for a bit, but then had a seizure and has not improved in a year. She is conscious but has no memory, no motor skills (can’t sit up or eat on her own, for example), no evident cognition, no ability to speak coherently. She needs 24/7 nursing and makes frequent hospital visits for seizures, etc. She’s in a nursing home. She sleeps, screams, and cries. That’s it, for a year.

I am her guardian, which means I’ve had to deal with sorting out her finances, Medicaid application, etc. I also drive from MA to NY every weekend to see her. I’m working with lawyers to try to move her to MA, but with a Medicaid patient, this is extraordinarily complicated.

Some brief policy comments: in the US, if you have a long-term disability, you have to go broke first to get coverage - insurance does not pay for it other than Medicaid. Consequently, if you do someday recover, you will be destitute. It’s appalling.
Second, the bureaucracy is such that you pretty much have to pay 15K or so just to have lawyers explain the process.

My life is completely absorbed with this, and I probably need psychiatric care myself, because I feel myself slipping into depression. I think finding her affected me in ways I haven’t processed and her state is like having a family member die every day over and over. The death has happened in some sense but it cannot be mourned.

The only light: Judy Garland and The Beach Boys are the only things I’ve found that give her moments of respite.

When Stephen took over the reins and replaced Nick Grillo as manager in April, 1972, momentum was finally building as the Beach Boys’ concert tours became increasingly popular. One of Stephen’s first major decisions was to start a repayment program from the band to Brian and Marilyn for $330,000 they’d poured into the group over the previous few years (well over two million dollars in today’s money). Stephen had Brian’s back. When all the money was eventually repaid, Marilyn gratefully told Stephen, “Thanks for looking after us.”

Brian cried when he signed the CBS contract. Could he miraculously create another hit record? For Brian, the thought was painful and frightening; he really wanted no part of fame or success again. After all, look what it had brought him before, nothing but heartache and disappointment. Brian had been a broken man for almost a decade.

Did he have the mettle to put his fragile self, his talent, and his soul on the line again? That was the multi-million-dollar question. We were going to see if Stephen could prop Brian up, with my help and Stan’s, and get the golden goose to produce a hit record that would resonate with the times.

A lot had happened during the years that Brian had been in bed, not writing music, totally withdrawn from the band. Cocaine and heroin had become his drugs of choice. He would call his dealers at all hours, day or night, and tell them there was a thousand dollars in the mailbox (that always guaranteed a quick delivery). Brian was a physical and emotional wreck. At his peak weight, he carried over 300 pounds on his 6-foot, 3-inch frame, had greasy hair down past his shoulders, a scraggly beard, unclipped toenails, nicotine-stained fingers, and went unbathed for days, sometimes weeks at a time.

To further complicate the challenges he faced, Brian heard voices on a regular basis, voices sometimes telling him to harm people, or that people were about to harm him.
...
. He was in the throes of addiction, a seemingly hopeless lost cause, and he’d been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He had absolutely no interest in life, love, music or anything of value. Being a productive member of society was dead last on Brian’s list of priorities.
...
He was a defeated shell of a man, simply waiting to die. If ever there was a modern-day tragic Shakespearean character, Brian filled the role. He had, in the vernacular of surfers, wiped out.
...
Psychologist Eugene Landy was hired for the first time in 1975, but he was fired by Stephen after his fees climbed to over $22,000 a month. Marilyn reached the end of her rope in 1976, when she felt Brian was a danger to himself and to the family. She threatened to have him committed to a mental institution.
...
Stephen pleaded with Marilyn to delay committing Brian and to give it one more try, take one last chance to save Brian. He asked her permission to hire his younger brother, Stan, to enter their home and drag Brian out of bed—against his will, if necessary—to try and save Brian.
...
Marilyn would always push back. “You either do what Stan tells you to do, or you’re going to the mental hospital.”

Clearly, Stan needed more backup in the extremely demanding, nearly impossible task of saving a lost soul who would go to any length to get drugs. That’s when Stan suggested to Stephen that they bring me aboard to help.
...
Stephen’s last-ditch effort to avoid institutionalizing Brian worked, despite some surprising actions by Brian’s own brothers, and despite every wily effort Brian made to get drugs. Brian did come back from the edge, and Stephen’s "Brian’s Back" campaign made the band richer than it had been in its heyday in the Sixties.

This was an interesting thread.
To add to the comments about  the factual inaccuracies and the heroism of Mike Love, I would like to add the following thoughts:
1. If you feel that for legal reasons you can’t write an honest book, the ethical thing to do is not write it, and maybe write an article about the legal pressure to be either dishonest or silent.
2. Co-writing a nonfiction book behooves you to research the subject and fact-check.
3. The above quote recounts what was my main problem with Rocky before: the incredible inhumanity with which Brian Wilson was treated and the continued defense of it. It is clear from the set up that Brian Wilson has enough money to get proper treatment. It is also clear from the entire narrative that money for other members of the band  was the motivation behind Stephen Love’s and the other participants’ actions toward B Wilson, despite their justifications. The excerpt makes clear that all understood that he was suffering from severe mental illness, yet they decided to put him, at threat of physical abuse, in a stressful and damaging situation. To feign, among all the evidence of being motivated by finances, that the purpose was to save his life is pure gaslighting and justification for immoral exploitation of an extremely damaged and vulnerable person.
What they did to him then was not only immoral (IMO) but illegal (factually).

Hi SmileySmile.net.
So sad about Hal Blaine, though he seems to have lived as full a life as one can want.

Good to see Emily drop in. She was always one of our most eloquent posters.

Thank you. That’s nice of you to say.

A week after my stroke last August



Today

Geez. I’m sorry to read about your health. Best wishes to you.

Here's what I posted at PSF after reading of his performance in the UK.

I guess our friends in the UK should have rolled out a glowing orb for the president. Perhaps then he'd have been sufficiently distracted so as to avoid speaking about things he doesn't understand (i.e., everything beyond the fun of looking at glowing orbs). Up next in Helsinki, he'll finally get to have a good time talking to the fella on the other end of our true "special relationship." I can see the glimmer of lust in the president's eyes as he first glimpses a shirtless Putin.

"Did you see what I said, Vlad?" he'll seek approval like the child he is, mentally. "I said May was ruining Brexit, was mean to the Muslim mayor, and said Johnson would make a good prime minister. I zinged 'em. Did you see it?"

The faux quote, of course, has been edited for coherence. His actual statement would presumably be something more like:

"Vlad, guys like us, uh, we strongly with, ahhhh, talking on, and a lot of people are noticing, I say to the guy, I say, um, the uh, lady isn't doing the, what's the thing, a lot of people are on my side with this one, very smart people and more and more every day, she's not, and here you've got the guy who's one of those, the banned ones, the names they have, it's not American and so a lot of people, you know, they are not so ... Boris, is this guy Russian? I said to Miller, I said, is this guy Russian or what? He'd be, I think, and many smart people are agreeing with me and they're saying, Donald, you are really on to something, that he could make a good, uh, a better, than that lady. Get 'er outta there! I was very strong in this. I can, you know, a lot of people, it's hugely the way I'm, um..." [at which point shirtless Putin patted him on the head and gave him a piece of well done steak with ketchup, which the president happily gobbled up].

Indeed.

This has been stuck in my head since I was about 4:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x4wBbx9wE5U

Thanks Lee Marshall and Smile Brian! It’s nice to be welcomed.
I thought Kevin Love’s description of his panic attack was very similar to the 1964 Texas airplane incident.
I thought the article was thoughtful and it’s great to see a pro athlete talk about mental health issues so openly. Good for Kevin Love!

Surprised not to see this here. Is there a thread somewhere?
https://www.theplayerstribune.com/kevin-love-everyone-is-going-through-something/

Populism
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage

It seems that it's just been confirmed that he died.

Iraqi Kurds are voting on independence today. Catalonia is preparing to do the same. I believe Scotland is considering another vote. I always keep my fingers crossed that Texas is serious in its occasional threats (I kid!).

What do you all think generally or about any of the specific efforts?

If a region wants independence from a greater state because people who live in that region agree that they have a problem with the state for some reason other than shared nationality - it's worth considering. If the argument is that a nation should have its own state, I don't support it.

I was reading this for a completely un-Beach Boys-related reason when I came across this:

"He hated dealing with some of the people like [Brian Wilson's father] Murry, who he found extremely manipulative."

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/nydn-features/long-amp-winding-life-exec-proud-signing-beatles-classical-loved-yeah-yeah-yeah-article-1.771819

I don't know a single instance of the left glorifying a known perpetrator of violence in the way "based stickman" has been glorified on the right.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/meet-the-based-stickman-173908
Search for the term "based stickman". Then look at 4-chan and other right wing sites and see all the people with user names "based-" something. Read them preparing for "battle", arming themselves, planning how to incite violence against themselves so they can "counterpunch"
Read this perversion:
https://townhall.com/columnists/jackkerwick/2017/04/25/the-battle-of-berkeley-when-patriots-beat-the-antiamerican-left-n2317702

Watch Antifa attacks on people's personal twitter videos. If anything they downplay the violence.

The problem is that I've seen several that were taken out of context. One in which a Trump guy brass knuckled people
first, then the RW media passed a clip of the aftermath as if the Antifa people hit first. When two sides go armed and a fight ensues, a YouTube video of a melee is not good evidence of what happened.
Again, I don't support violence, and it's clear that Antifa uses it at times and I don't support that, but it's very clear that it's also being glorified on the right with "based-" being a clear reference to planned violence in many user names and pre-protest planning for violence being obvious on many right-wing sites. So the right is using Antifa as a tool to excuse their own violence.
All the violence is wrong, pretending that antifa violence is worse or more pervasive than RW violence is dishonest.

Hi!
So I seem to have missed DACA and Antifa:
DACA - I'm for open borders, so of course I'm against the repeal. I think Trump is trying to exercise his claimed but so far not in evidence deal-making skills. I'm a little concerned how it may turn out.
Antifa - frankly, the glorification of violence on the left concerns me. As do other impressions I've received that much of the left has decided to fight the right on the right's terms, which dismays me. Having said that, it's pretty hard to tell the reportage from the propaganda on Antifa and I suspect their violence is exaggerated.

Glad to see you're Ok Billy.

I agree that the main posters in this thread have in common a distaste for Trump, but that doesn't make it an echo chamber. The Captain, CSM and I all have expressed clear differences on multiple points.

Bungalow Bill.

Please don't take this as a challenge, it's legitimate curiosity with no underlying angle:
1. How to get there? Do you suppose people will vote in the current system to move to a different system or do you suppose an extra-constitutional event must occur?
2. i think I have a high-level idea of the economic system you advocate. What might the government look like?

I guess here's where I'm going: I support voting or at least some form of popular decision-making, whether by representation of some other form of popular input. So to me, the only means of change are: change gov't structure to another one with popular involvement; change who the population is (by, say, dissolving the US into separate countries); or by changing the minds of voters. Only the first, to me, would represent changing 'the system'.
So, when you say 'the system' do you mean the form of government or something else?

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