DeanMail - January 2013 - Gig-Alert - Los Angeles, California gig Saturday, February 9th Kulak's Woodshed Hey Folks, First let me say that I find this peach background to be slightly unnerving - I'm not sure why. It was an experiment - I thought it would be calming. So I figured, I'd just go with it. Maybe it'll grow on me. You never know.  Next, before I forget, here's a last-minute GIG-ALERT for a rare west-coast gig: Saturday, February 9th, I'm playing at a small coffeehouse venue in North Hollywood, California - Kulak's Woodshed. It's a small singer/songwriter-friendly venue that only seats about 40 or so, so anyone in the L.A. area that would like to attend is encouraged to order your tickets asap (like, say, today!), as it's likely to be sold out pretty quickly. You can order tickets here via my website: www.deanfriedman.com While I'm on the subject of gigs... I'm currently booking dates for my 2013 UK/Ireland tour. Anyone associated with a venue that would like to discuss a possible gig, just drop me a line. (By the time the tour is announced there's usually not much room left on my calendar to add any dates) So, now that the procedural stuff is out of the way, there are already two events that have occurred in this new year, 2013, which I consider alternately terrifying and hilarious, though I'm not sure which is which. You may have read about them, but I felt compelled to comment: 1. To everyone's considerable relief (except maybe the Mayan's) the 'Doomsday' Apophis asteroid (aka asteroid #99942) failed to end 'life on Earth as we know it', on Wednesday. But we're not out of the woods, just yet! There still remains some genuine cause for concern, by virtue of the fact that Apophis keeps getting closer and closer, every time it swings by our puny planet. According to a bunch of near-sighted brainiacs with computers and telescopes, Apophis (named after an evil world-destroying alien on the Stargate SG-1 TV show) is due to return in 2029 and again in 2036. In 2029, the wily asteroid is projected to pass within 20,000 miles of us; that's right - a virtual hop, skip and a jump for a giant spinning rock hurtling through space at a speed of 5.87 kilometers per second. But here's the real problem: there's something called a gravitational keyhole, an area of near-space within Earth's gravitational pull. And if Apophis passes through this gravitational keyhole during its 2029 visit, that would ever-so-slightly deflect the asteroid's current flight path, just-enough, so that the next time it pays us a visit - in 2036 - it will come heading straight at us, barreling down from outer space, hurtling through our thin atmosphere and smashing into the Earth's crust with the explosive force of 100 of our largest nuclear bombs. Now if this were to happen in someplace like, say, Hackensack, New Jersey or, you know, Grimsby, it would still be a tragedy, but, you know, most of us would shake off the atomic dust and get on with our lives. O.K. Sorry! Don't throw bottles. I was just kidding. It was a thoughtless and admittedly tasteless joke. It would be horribly tragic if Hackensack was wiped off the face of the Earth. Meanwhile, NASA scientists insist that there's absolutely no cause for alarm, as according to their careful calculations, there's only a 1 in 250,000 chance that the Apophis asteroid would hit Earth in 2036, causing cataclysmic destruction and devastation. I suppose that should reassure us. Oh, by the way, congrats to the more than 3,000 lottery winners who have won over a million pounds (1.6 million dollars) in the UK's National Lottery, alone, since its inception (a handful of whom are pictured above). For what it's worth, their odds of winning a million pounds in the National Lottery were only about 1 in 14,000,000. Very long odds, indeed. Longer even than a 'Doomsday' asteroid hitting a 'bullseye' on Earth and blowing most of us to smithereens. And yet... they won. Three thousand of them. At 14 million to one odds. Now I'm no statistician. But, suddenly, 1 in 250,000 chances of utter obliteration sounds like a slightly less remote possibility to me. I don't mean to dampen the mood, folks; think of all the end-of-the-world partying we can do between now and then! .................................................................................................... Seriously, though, don't stress about this wayward wobbly space rock. Instead, consider this brilliant solution to America's 16 trillion dollar (and counting) national debt! Respected economists are currently having a serious discussion about the possibility of the US Treasury employing an obscure law from the 1980's - originally intended to permit them to mint commemorative coins - in order to print a platinum coin worth - A TRILLION DOLLARS! That's right, according to the law, the US Treasury can define any arbitrary face value to the coin (so long as it's made of platinum), deposit it with the US Federal Reserve Bank and start to pay off all its bills. This zany idea has been proposed as a last-ditch contingency plan, just in case the Republicans in Congress fail to increase the national debt limit, thereby risking the default of the US Government and the collapse of the entire global economy. (Who needs a 'Doomsday' asteroid, when we've got the US Congress?!) Thing is, we already print money out of thin air (quantitative easing, anyone?), so crazy as this idea sounds, it's not entirely out of the question as a viable means of bypassing legislative paralysis in Congress in order to pay America's bills. You gotta love it! This is creative accounting at its best. In fact, I'm thinking of getting some color ink for my printer and doing some quantitative easing of my own. .................................................................................................... So have no fear, folks. There's hardly any problem that can't be solved with a little creative flim-flammery. And if you're one of those early adaptors who've purchased the landmark publication, 'A Musician's Guide to Surviving the Great Recession', by A. Musician, you'd already know that! ;-) On the other hand, if you're one of the few people on this email list that hasn't already ordered it, what are you waiting for? ORDER Paperback or eBook HERE ( It's also available via Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk and Barnesandnoble.com ) Anyway, everybody take care of yourselves! Watch out for falling asteroids tumbling out of the sky like so much loose change.   Be good! Be safe! See ya!   Dean  copyright (c) 2013 Dean Friedman Productions If you would like to be removed from Dean's email list, please send a reply email with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject.