BILLY JOEL WAS WRONG

LegalDispatch 122

Jan 10, 2025

Legend has it that back in 1989, Billy Joel was in the recording studio when he was chatting with Sean Lennon, son of the great John Lennon and, depending on which account you’ve heard, a friend of Sean’s. And Sean (or the friend) was complaining that 1989 was “a terrible time to be 21 years old” and strongly implied, if not outright stated, that times were harder in 1989 than when Billy, who had just turned 40, had been 21. Billy retorted that that wasn’t the case at all. When he was 21, America was mired in Vietnam and a cold civil war over civil rights.

Billy’s point was that there has always been tumult. Things have always been shitty in one way, shape, or form. That — as he would go on to write — the fire (as he put it) “was always burning since the world’s been turning.”

But as I watched with a heavy heart as my home of Los Angeles literally burned from climate change-fueled wildfires, I started to think… maybe Billy Joel was wrong. After ten years filled with Covid, unrestricted climate change, economic hardship, war, and the general but unmistakable decline of the American empire, maybe things are worse today than they were yesterday. Maybe, yes, the fire Billy sang of has always been burning, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t shown a capacity for burning worse.

Maybe, as the memes say, we’re living in the worst possible timeline. There’s a strong argument to be made and every day brings new, horrible evidence to support the theory. The gulf between rich and poor grows ever-wider. America is now a full-on and unrepentant oligarchy. Homelessness and gun violence are two epidemics that are going untreated. Climate change — of the variety that brought LA wildfires in January — marches on with inexorability and unopposed. Even a casual visit to CVS reveals another reminder of our fraying social fabric in the form of half its inventory imprisoned behind lock and key.

I offer no solutions to the foregoing. I can point towards no silver linings. So many friends of mine have lost their homes. A longtime family friend doesn’t even have suitcases to send their daughters back to college with. I can’t even fathom the heights of the Everest they’ll all have to climb to rebuild their lives, literally starting at bottom.

And as much as I rail in these virtual pages about the evils of Donald Trump, it’s hard not to place blame for all this devastation closer to home, with the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles, who chose to leave for a useless trip to Africa while the National Weather Service forecasted strong winds and “extreme fire weather conditions.” At least Nero had some musical talent to go along with his fecklessness. Our leaders are failing us. Our systems — which Californians pay small fortunes in taxes for — are collapsing before our eyes and under foreseen pressures. The center cannot hold.

The Los Angeles Times is also on my ever-growing shit list, but they’ve managed to make themselves useful by compiling a comprehensive list of ways you can help those affected by the fires. You can find it by clicking here.

I’d also like to signal-boost the GoFundMe page for comic book writer David Booher who lost his home in Eaton fire in Altadena. I only met David last month, but he struck me as a good person and an obvious talent. As fate would have it, he was also scheduled to go in for surgery this week — which he nevertheless had to do despite losing everything a scant day or two before. Please consider giving whatever you can.

Despite everything that’s happening, I find myself not writing this from my home in Encino (which has been surrounded by the fires but mercifully unaffected thus far) but rather from New Orleans, where I had previously committed to appear at FanExpo. It feels strange — and not a little bit wrong — to be here while so many of my friends are suffering. But I would have felt bad about canceling too. Lose lose.

Similarly, newsletters feel of equally limited utility and importance at the moment. Accordingly, I’m going to keep the rest of this week’s edition short and limit myself to the stuff that I’d already had in draft form:

SHOOTING MY MOUTH OFF

Back in October, I had the opportunity to do a really fun panel at New York ComicCon for Popverse with Deadpool co-creator Fabian Niceiza. I’m a huge fan of Fabian’s writing and hadn’t seen him since I’d interned for Marvel back in the early 90s, so this was a very special reunion.

The panel — ostensibly about Marvel vs. DC with me repping DC — was incredibly well-attended and far more enjoyable than anyone, myself included, anticipated. You can check it out below:

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BILLY JOEL WAS WRONG

LegalDispatch 122

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