If you've seen the video on the news if Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill being pulled over by the police, chances are you saw an edited video. When you have an opportunity, search for and watch the full, unedited video. From the moment Hill was pulled over, he copped a bad attitude and disobeyed police orders.

When you are stopped by police, roll your window all the way down, turn off the radio, turn on your interior light if it's nighttime, and put both of your hands on the steering wheel where the officer can see them as he approaches. This shows respect for the officer's safety. Then follow that up with actually being respectful toward the officer by responding to his inquiries. The encounter will go as smoothly and unventfully as possible. It's not rocket science.

Tyreek Hill broke every rule of common sense. Instead of greeting the officer with respect and being prepared to accept accountability for his actions, he acted like an entitled toddler. His above-the-law attitude led to obstructing the officer's official business. When people do that, it escalates the encounter. The next time Hill is stopped by the police, hopefully his memory of the taste of pavement will remind him he's not above the law.

If you get stopped by the police and become angry and defensive because you feel like you're being personally violated, there's something wrong with your self-esteem. The police are not your enemy. It's simply their job to enforce the law. If they cite you for a traffic violation and you get angry with them instead of yourself, the police are still not your enemy — your enemy is your own ego.

The Snickers Brusky Memorial Fundraiser was a success in 2022 having raised $1,676 for a local cat rescue. I wasn't able to run a full fundraiser in 2023 due to other obligations, but this year I'm bringing back both the fundraiser and the fundraiser dance! The beneficiary of this year's fundraiser will be Touched By a Paw, a faith-based, volunteer-run, no-kill cat rescue in downtown Whitewater, WI.

I stopped by Touched By a Paw earlier today and was thoroughly impressed by the operation. The level of care they provide for all their cats simply blew me away. They don't just make sure their cats' needs are met, but they make sure all their special needs are met to meticulous standards. (In the half-hour I was there, I learned more about treating diabetic cats than in the last three years managing Arthur's diabetes, thanks to one of their resident volunteers who speaks with the expertise of a scientist... because she is one!) This shelter is truly worthy of your donations.

Here are the details of the fundraiser:

Snickers Brusky Memorial Fundraiser
September 1 – October 4, 2024

During this period I will be soliciting donations for the shelter in person and online. I'll have a web page created just for the fundraiser. I'll list all the different ways you'll be able to donate. You'll also be able to track the progress of the fundraiser. Donations will also come from my online store. The fundraiser's main event will be a polka-variety dance:

CATOBERFEST! - Snickers Brusky Memorial Fundraiser Dance
When: Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Where: Pat's Oak Manor, 1804 15th Avenue, South Milwaukee, WI
Time: 6:30pm – 9:00pm
Featuring: Tom Brusky Band (polka-variety)
Cost: Free (a donation to the shelter will be appreciated)

Everyone who donates $15 or more will receive a CD copy of my latest album, "Escape to Polka Paradise". The first fifteen people who donate $30 or more will also receive a hardcover copy of the book, "Polka Heartland: Why the Midwest Loves to Polka" (compliments of Richard March and Dick Blau who supplied me with the books in 2020.)

There will be complimentary pizza available (the thin crust pizza at Pat's is outstanding!)

Hopefully a rep from the shelter will be able to make the trip into town to meet and greet donors. If not, I'll have brochures on hand to distribute.

In the next couple of months I may come up with additional perks for the dance, but this is all I have for now. Mark the date on your calendar. I'll be creating and posting flyers in the days ahead.

UPDATE August 24:

The webpage for the fundraiser is now up and running: https://www.tombrusky.com/snickers/

When I drive in the country late at night, I always keep an eye out for deer. Last night coming home from Fox Lake, I had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision... but not with a deer. My drummer's expression says it all as we were headed west on Highway 33 just outside Horicon.

The other day I was doing some critical listening of Engelbert Humperdinck's version of "The Shadow of Your Smile," and something caught me completely by surprise. I detected an apparent studio gaffe that very likely escaped the original engineers and producers. During the recording session, someone recited a line from the lyrics.

In the middle of the line "I will be remembering... the shadow of your smile," there are three descending notes played on the flutes. Right after those three notes, I can hear a person in the background saying "the shadow!" It's very faint, and panned to the right. It will be extremely hard if not impossible to hear without headphones.

If you couldn't hear it, I created a duplicate audio file dubbing "the shadow" with my voice at the same spot I hear it in the original clip:

If you still can't hear it in the original music, don't be discouraged. I posted these audio clips in a forum of music composers, and almost none of them could hear it. Why is that?

In my opinion, being able to hear these kinds of "hidden" things in audio is a lot like looking at autostereograms. An autostereogram is a two-dimensional image that reveals a three-dimensional image, but in order to see the 3D image, one must not focus on the image but relax their gaze so that their eyes focus on a specific distance behind the image. It often takes a bit of practice for someone to finally see the 3D image, but once they learn how to focus their eyes, they can view autostereograms much more easily.

The reason I caught this little gem in the audio is because I my focus was not on the lyrics, rhythm, or melody, but on the midrange frequencies of the strings and woodwinds in between the beats. I was parsing the audio through headphones to detect which notes were being played by which instruments, and that's when "the shadow!" caught my ear.

So who said it, and why? I don't have the answer, but I do have a theory.

One of the composers in the forum posted a digitally-isolated vocal from the music. It reveals where Engelbert's vocal track was punched out and in, or spliced together. In between the punches of the last line, there was a pronounced "s". That "s" doesn't gel with the lyrics at that spot, so it shouldn't even be on the vocal track at that spot... unless Engelbert accidentally sang the wrong words.

"The Shadow of Your Smile" is a classic today, but back in the late 1960s when this album was being recorded, it was a relatively new song. When you think about it, "the shadow of your smile" is a strange lyrical line because who thinks of a smile as casting a shadow. Suppose Engelbert had a brain block on that line and, during the taping of the orchestra, had a habit of singing, "the smile of your... " Now suppose during one of the takes with the orchestra, one of the trumpet players got snarky and fed him the lyric so he wouldn't screw up the line... except that take ended up being the one they used for the album!

Neither Petra Wierschlegsteiner nor Zofia Dobrzyszyski know how to play a concertina, but if one ever got damaged by a festival volunteer who claimed protection from negligence under a contract's indemnification clause, no legal team would be more qualified to rectify the matter.

Petra and Zofia not only share over 35 years of law experience between them, but both grew up self-proclaimed polka brats whose parents took them to polka dances all over the Midwest. Their interest in law started at one of those dances.

"I was at a polkafest in Medford when someone in a wheelchair caught the leg of one of the band's speaker stands," recalled Dobrzyszyski. "The stand broke and the speaker fell backward, landing on the tuba, causing the tuba player to chip his tooth while he was playing. The tooth chip came flying out the bell of the tuba and landed on the dance floor. One of the dancers slipped, and as they were going down, they grabbed the nearest table. The table collapsed, causing all the drinks to spill out onto the dance floor. Petra slipped on an ice cube, slid into another dancer, and caused a chain reaction as everyone came down like Dominoes."

"Everyone started yelling at each other," interjected Wierschlegsteiner. "It was crazy. A huge lawsuit unfolded. In the end, the tuba player's dentist lost his practice. That's when I knew I wanted to be a lawyer."

"Me too," chimed Dobrzyszyski. "A polka lawyer."

The Law Offices of Wierschlegsteiner & Dobrzyszyski handle all aspects of polka law, including negligent instrument handling, contract disputes, and copyright infringement, with a specialty in defending bands accused of having ripped off Slavko Avsenik in the 1960s and '70s.

Contact:

     The Law Offices of Wierschlegsteiner & Dobrzyszyski
     1265 Ellis Street, Stevens Point, WI
     Email: polkalawyers@weirdolaw.com

It's been standing at the intersection of Highway 54 and Herman Road since 1934. This spring, after 90 years of hosting polka dances, Wisconsin's historic Riverlake Ballroom will be reduced to ashes due to a totally unplanned, accidental fire — possibly an electrical malfunction, but most likely a lightning strike.

"We had a good run," said ballroom owner Frank Leewaldt, "But people don't come out dancing anymore. And kids today all want to get married on beaches and in those &#$&@! converted barns."

Still lining the walls of the dance hall are photos of the ballroom's heyday. "We used to pack this place. Back in the '40s and '50s we had bands like Happy George Woolford, the Pilsen Dutchboys, Aunt Mitzie, and the Two Rivers Ramblers," said Leewaldt. "We'd jam this place full, but those days are long gone."

"I've been trying to sell this place since 1998, but it would cost too much to bring the building up to code," Leewaldt added. "Then a friend of mine told me if the building accidentally burned down, I could collect insurance. Apparently a lot of ballrooms have gone out that way."

The Riverlake Ballroom's last dance is scheduled for Sunday, March 31, from 1pm to 5pm. Music will be provided by the Dick Lesmann Orchestra Trio. An auction of the ballroom's furniture and fixtures will immediately follow with proceeds to go toward the purchase of kerosene and matches.

The ballroom is expected to be razed as early as next month by an accidental fire. "First storm that comes through, she's comin' down," exclaimed an ecstatic Leewaldt as he clapped his hands together to mimic a bolt of lightning.

A special fundraiser dance is being held at Filbert's Banquet Hall in Mineral Springs, WI on June 6. Three polka bands are scheduled to perform:

1:00pm-2:30pm: Betty Gluszynski & the Polka Dots
2:30pm-4:00pm: The Riverland Blaskaput
4:00pm-5:30pm: Ronnie Tercik Band

Admission is $15 at the door. Proceeds from the dance will benefit the musicians in these three bands who haven't played a gig since last October.

A couple weeks ago, a musical artist asked me to co-produce a full album for him, and I gladly accepted the job. It's someone whose name you all know, but I'm not going to reveal it at this point because I am not the executive producer of the album. I'm only in charge of the music and engineering.

Apparently what sealed the deal is when this artist heard my Back to the '80s EP. He liked the way it all came together. This new album will be a months-long project taking me, at the very least, all through the spring and summer to complete. I just started production on the music a few days ago, so it's way too soon to even try estimating a release date.

Toward the end of last year, I mentioned how my articles on Narcissistic Personality Disorder received the most feedback. That continues to be the case, and the feedback is always appreciated, but I'm hoping to swing attention back to music-related topics by summing up, in one final article, some of the fundamentals of the disorder about which I've been asked.

I want to emphasize my profession is music, not psychology. Abnormal psychology is just an area of interest. I'm educated, but not licensed, so please regard everything you read on my website about personality disorders as infotainment.

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To understand narcissism, one must understand self-esteem. Think of self-esteem as a battery that gets charged at a very early age. The more nurturing, loving, and healthy a child's environment is during their formative years, the more charge their battery receives. Once charged, this battery is designed to never run out of power. People with high self-esteem are mentally equipped to live as happy, confident, productive members of society because they are internally powered by all the love and validation stored in their battery.

People who grow up in dysfunctional/broken homes, however, are likely to lack self-esteem. They go out into the world feeling insecure. This insecurity can manifest itself in many ways, such as with destructive or self-destructive behaviors (e.g. bullying, drug/alcohol abuse, cutting, eating disorders, criminal behavior) but when it develops into Narcissistic Personality Disorder, that means the person has adopted specific, clinically-diagnosable behaviors to compensate for their lack of self-esteem.

Lacking self-esteem, narcissists have nothing to defend against internal feelings of self-doubt and inferiority. Their ego is so fragile and vulnerable that every little, perceived criticism punctuates their feelings of inferiority, causing them great emotional pain. Living this way is torturous, so the narcissist does something unique to survive — they create a second ego; a superior, grandiose version of themselves. Like an actor on a stage, the grandiose ego becomes the vessel through which the narcissist interacts with the world.

The grandiose ego has two main functions:

1. To suppress and mask the vulnerable ego by masquerading as a healthy, happy person:

Since narcissists lack the internal validation that self-esteem provides, they seek comfort in external validation. External validation comes in the form of attention, admiration, adulation, and adoration. Every source of external validation is known collectively as supply.

Narcissists, in order to obtain supply, have to make themselves alluring, so their grandiose ego acts the part of a happy, content, strong, caring individual. On social media for example, narcissists often mimic life coaches and self-help gurus spreading love and healthy living advice. This is their grandiose ego at work virtue signaling as it fishes for positive feedback. Narcissists use various other manipulative strategies, such as posting selfies and love bombing, to obtain and maintain supply.

When a narcissist is made the center of attention or placed on a pedestal, the enjoy what's known as a "supply high". It's the closest they get to feeling like they have self-esteem. The supply high is a much-welcomed reprieve from their emotional pain, but it's always temporary. It never lasts.

2. To protect the vulnerable ego by deflecting anything that threatens it:

These two functions of the grandiose ego working in tandem are what give the narcissist their notoriously hypocritical and intolerable personality. A narcissist portrays themselves as loving, empathetic, caring, and kind, but the moment they feel a threat to their vulnerable ego, they can flip on a dime and reveal their self-centered, apathetic colors as they try desperately to neutralize the threat. For example, a narcissist might virtue-signal how important it is to handle conflict with dignity and tact, but then fly into a rage when they're faced with it.

Narcissists' moods vary from hour to hour, day to day, week to week, or month to month depending on how supplied they feel at any given time. On social media, cycles of contradictory highs and lows can be a telltale sign of Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

Supply vs. Love:

Narcissists do not possess the required tools – self-esteem and empathy – to process love and reciprocate it. Instead, what makes them feel "loved" is abundant supply. A narcissist's perfect world is one in which they are receiving adulation from adoring fans. Since most narcissists do not have fans, they typically obtain supply from individual people. A narcissist will feel supplied by an individual as long as that individual makes the narcissist feel superior or exalted in some way.

A narcissist always feels most validated by another person in the beginning of the relationship, called the idealization phase. Over time, however, the narcissist will feel less and less validated by that person, which is known as the devaluation stage. When a narcissist no longer feels adequately validated by the person, or when the narcissist feels threatened by them, they will discard them in favor of seeking fresh, new supply. This explains why narcissists are incapable of forming normal, healthy, lasting, loving relationships. At best, a narcissist may form a co-dependent relationship with another person who possesses low self-esteem.

If a person with low self-esteem becomes so emotionally attached to a narcissist that they're willing to tolerate the narcissist's devaluation of them, the narcissist can feel especially flattered/supplied by the person's desire for them, resulting in a co-dependent relationship centered around a trauma bond.

Through their grandiose ego, a narcissist will often make an outstanding first impression, but over time, most people begin to see through the facade. The more a person sees through the narcissist's facade, the more the narcissist will devalue that person as a source of supply. This unveils a key component of narcissism:

This key component of narcissism explains why narcissists obsess over their social media presence. Narcissists typically have a love-hate relationship with social media — they crave the "love" (validation) that comes from likes and comments, but feel hurt when the quality or quantity of validation doesn't meet their standards.
 

Can Narcissism Be Treated?

When a narcissist is suffering from a long run of low supply or collapse, they may seek professional help for their depression, but they almost never stick with treatment, and there's a specific reason why:

The narcissist has relied on their grandiose ego for survival their whole life. While the vulnerable ego is filling the narcissist's head with, "I am worthless, unlovable, and inadequate," the grandiose ego is fighting back with, "No, I am an innocent victim. I am not to blame. There's nothing wrong with me. I am exceptionally wonderful." Whenever the narcissist feels threatened, the grandiose ego always comes to the rescue.

For a narcissist to admit to being a narcissist, they'd have to let go of the protective safety of their grandiose ego and realize they have a disorder that warps their perception of themselves and the world, causing them to hurt innocent people based on that perception. They'd have to acknowledge and accept that they are not the victims of abusers, but the abusers of victims. When a narcissist is presented with this information, however, you can probably guess what happens: they perceive the diagnosis as criticism and defer to their grandiose ego's defense mechanisms for protection. They label their therapist a threat, summarily quit treatment, and revert to seeking relief from supply.

Healing by faith doesn't come any easier because the same grandiose ego that can discard a therapist is powerful enough to discard the people God equips to help a narcissist heal. Some people make comparisons between narcissism and demonic possession due to how the grandiose ego can even discard God by molding Him into a Biblically-innacurate source of supply. When that happens, the narcissist may think they're receiving divine healing, but what they're experiencing are dark forces preying on their grandiose ego and rewarding them with deceptively divine-appearing supply for straying from God.

Narcissists are rarely successfully healed, but even without formal treatment, a person can slowly shed their narcissism over many years by changing their situation so that they're living under favorable, self-esteem-growing conditions. As a narcissist gains self-esteem, they'll lose their need for external validation and a grandiose ego. When the vulnerable ego becomes powered by enough self-esteem to reverse roles and suppress the grandiose ego, the narcissist will, for the first time, gain a clear view and accounting of their behavior, culminating in the ability to recognize how much damage they've caused and why they caused it. When they've built up enough self-esteem to take full responsibility and atone for all the harm they've caused, only then will they be truly reformed. And finally lovable, happy, and free.

Are You a Narcissist?

Narcissists are notorious for taking personality quizzes on social media and posting the results because their grandiose ego does all of the answering of the questions. Needless to say, they come out looking like the Dalai Lama's life coach. And although narcissists are known for exhibiting specific undesirable behaviors, narcissists are not self-aware of these behaviors. Since personality quizzes and an outline of known behaviors don't work to detect narcissism in oneself, I'll instead list some of the symptoms.

Narcissists typically...

    * Are very slow to trust others
    * Have a hard time accepting criticism
    * Sense that other people are negatively judging them
    * Feel as though a lot of people have hurt them in the past
    * Flood their social media with inspirational messages of love
    * Have terminated a lot of friendships/relationships in their life
    * Feel as though most people are self-centered, arrogant, and fake

Narcissistic traits exist at varying degrees. There are high-functioning narcissists capable of being the President of the United States, low functioning narcissists who live in isolation due to fear of being judged, and all kinds of narcissists in between. Most of the above symptoms still apply to all narcissists.

Narcissism is believed to affect approximately one out of every 20 to 200 people, so odds are you're not a narcissist. But if most of the above symptoms apply to you, you could be one. If most of the symptoms apply to you and you think I wrote this article about you, the odds are unfortunately against you.

▌  Tom Brusky is bored, certified know-it-all licensed by the State of Wisconsin (to drive a motor vehicle)

You may remember I pulled a couple of my albums from YouTube in 2023 when I noticed YouTube had stopped paying royalties on roughly 60% of my streams. Before I pulled the albums, I attempted to find out why they had stopped paying royalties, but my digital distributor neglected to field any of my inquiries. While looking at my distributor's most recent royalty reports, however, I was able to determine out what happened.

Up until now, I've never seen a royalty payment from any digital music platform lower than $0.0001. That's one one-hundredth of a cent. I assumed that was as low as a payment could go. I was wrong.

YouTube's royalty payment ledger goes to eight decimal places. Their per-stream royalties were usually a few tenths of a cent, which meant the ledger would have a typical song entry that looked something like this:

        $0.00420000  x 8 streams = $0.03360000

Last year, I noticed about 60% of my YouTube plays suddenly started looking like this:

        $0.00000000 x 8 streams = $0.00000000

I assumed this meant YouTube decided not to pay me anything, and that's when I pulled my albums. While looking at my most recent royalty ledger, however, I noticed something interesting. Although most of my music's streams still show as paying out $0.00000000 per stream, I accumulated enough plays with my latest 80s music EP to reveal the smoking gun that explains everything. Using this entry as an example:

        $0.00000000 x 1,066 streams = $0.00310000

I discovered that although YouTube's royalty ledger shows eight places to the right of the decimal, it only places numbers the first four. I also discovered that most of my music on YouTube is earning less than 1/100th of a cent. Even less than 1/1,000th of a cent. Using the above entry as an example, this is what the ledger is not showing:

        $0.00000290 x 1,066 streams = $0.00310000

My music is earning money on YouTube, but as low as a few ten-thousandths of a cent per stream.

Last month I wrote an article explaining how Spotify's new royalty distribution system would take all the royalties earned by songs that did not receive a minimum of 1,000 plays in a calendar year, and redirect them to their more popular artists. It was estimated that approximately two thirds of Spotify's music library does not receive 1,000 plays per year, but new data tells an even more revealing story.

Luminate (the successor to Nielsen SoundScan) released their 2023 year-end music report. Of the 184 million tracks measured by Luminate across digital streaming services, 158.6 million received less than 1,000 plays. That's 86.2%.

The reason for these numbers is very simple — the vast majority of the world's musicians and bands are not world famous. Most are like me... relatively obscure and local, garnering a few dozen or a few hundred plays here and there.

Assuming Luminate's data reflects Spotify's actual statistics, Spotify is now taking all of the royalties (tens of millions of dollars annually) away from the artists responsible for more than 85% of Spotify's music catalog, and redistributing them to the artists who are responsible for less than 15%.

Consider the fact that all artists signed by Sony, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group are in that top 15%, and those three labels have an ownership stake in Spotify. These labels are going to make a killing off the backs of thousands of independent, hard-working artists all over the world.

I am pulling all of my music from Spotify. Even if my 60 tracks on Spotify received the minimum 60,000 annual plays to earn royalties and put me in the top 15%, a percentage of the royalties I'd receive from Spotify would come from the other 85% of independent artists. There's no way in hell I would allow myself to take that money. Those artists earned that money with their blood, sweat and tears — not mine.

To every artist who stays on Spotify, you're either a spineless pushover for allowing Spotify to exploit your artistic talent to grease the palms of their investors and more popular artists, or you're a traitor for shamelessly accepting some of that grease. Show some integrity and pull your tracks from Spotify.

I write about a lot of topics on my blog. Sometimes my articles generate feedback, and those emails are always appreciated. But guess which topic (not counting the April Fool's Day articles) generated more feedback than any other last year? Hint: it had nothing to do with music. The article that generated the most feedback was the one about Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Apparently it's a subject to which almost everybody can relate since so many use social media and have witnessed people behaving in the ways my article described. My personal belief is that narcissism is on the rise due to the growing trend to raise kids to be soft by, for example, awarding them for failing to win competitions. When you send a kid out into the world unequipped to handle criticism because their bedroom shelf full of participation trophies tells them they're perfect, you're setting them up for a lifetime of problems. Criticism is going to obliterate their self-esteem so badly that they'll live in continual fear of it, and that fear will turn into Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

People with NPD are characterized by self-centeredness, lack of empathy, intolerance, and host of other undesirable traits. Wait... self-centered? How is it possible for someone with no self-esteem to think so highly of themselves?

A narcissist's lack of self-esteem makes them extremely insecure and plagued with self doubt. In this condition, they are highly perceptible to, and deeply affected by, criticism. They fear criticism so much that their brain interprets constructive criticism as hostile and even twists benign remarks into perceived hostility.

This is how someone with self-esteem sees criticism:

In the example above, the person with healthy self-esteem takes harmless comments just as they are intended. The narcissist's insecurity, however, causes them to perceive hostility in benign comments, so their responses will often be inappropriately hostile and unnecessarily dramatic.

Take this comment for example: "Hey, you forgot to put the milk away last night and it went sour." A person with healthy self-esteem will accept responsibility and apologize, but a person suffering with NPD will translate what they hear into, "You worthless pile of vomit! You can't do anything right! You're an insufferable failure of a human being!" A person in this condition sees the whole world as an unfriendly place because they feel like they're continually being judged and criticized. Since they perceive themselves as victims of this cruel and judgmental world, they develop a feeling of possessing superior empathy and righteousness.

Although narcissists believe they are exceptionally empathetic, they are actually the complete opposite. Empathy means having the ability to place oneself in another person's shoes in order to fully grasp and feel their pain, and only people with healthy self-esteem can do this. A narcissist's primary concern above everything else is the protection of their fragile ego and keeping their shields on high alert at all times. They are so consumed by this task that they don't have any mental capacity left over to care about other people's problems. Even when they pretend to care, they're still fully preoccupied with their own problems, which is how the narcissist gets their notoriously self-centered reputation.

For people with healthy self-esteem, criticism is not a concern. It's a normal part of everyday life. They take constructive criticism to heart and shrug off destructive criticism. But to a narcissist, all criticism, real or imagined, is a dangerous, persistent threat. Without self-esteem to absorb criticism, they instead turn to psychological defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are behaviors narcissists deploy, kind of like shields, to help them withstand the painful blows of perceived criticism. These behaviors are also what give narcissists their intolerable personality.

The most common defense mechanism used by narcissists when they feel attacked is projection. Projection is the act of taking all of one's own undesirable personality traits and projecting them onto someone else. Since the narcissist believes their pain is caused by the wickedness of other people, it's no stretch for the narcissist to quickly label other people as self-centered, spiteful, intolerant, damaged, judgmental, narcissistic, etc.

In the cartoon above, the narcissist perceives their friend's innocuous comment as a hostile attack, lashes back with projection, and drives their friend away. This simplified example demonstrates how narcissists sabotage their relationships, often bringing them to abrupt, dramatic ends.

A narcissist's pain comes entirely from having no self-esteem. Picture self-esteem as an oven glove, people as bacon, and criticism as grease splatter. If you're wearing an oven glove, you can enjoy working with bacon all day and the grease splatter won’t bother you. But if you don’t have an oven glove, every bacon strip will splatter grease, and the grease will hurt. A narcissist will blame the bacon for hurting them and throw it away one strip at a time, but the bacon isn’t actually doing anything wrong. The bacon is just doing what bacon does. The narcissist is hurting themselves by not wearing a glove.

As long as a narcissist has no self-esteem, they will never change. They'll always be intolerable, miserable, self-centered, apathetic, and incapable of maintaining normal relationships. What they need is to seek a licensed therapist who can help them build their self esteem. Unfortunately for many narcissists, they're so afraid of trusting anyone that they'll keep their shields up even during therapy. With their shields up, instead of making progress, they'll feel judged by their therapist and abandon treatment.

In lieu of professional help, a lot of narcissists turn to social media as a form of self-medicating. Positive comments and likes, even from total strangers, are a form of narcissistic supply which provide the narcissist with a fleeting, albeit false sense of self-esteem. Many narcissists flood their social media pages with positivity attempting to garner adoration and recognition, but supportive comments from strangers cannot fix low self-esteem; they can only mask the pain of it for a short time. Eventually the narcissist will realize criticism on social media can sting them just as hard as criticism in real life, sending them into temporary retreat.

As unpleasant as narcissists can be, it's important to remember they didn't ask to become narcissists. They didn't ask to be coddled as children and spared being toughened by their mistakes, or to be raised in a dysfunctional home without a positive role model. They would much rather have self-esteem than have to rely on defense mechanisms. They don't want to fear criticism. They don't want to keep making enemies of people. They just want to be normal. They want to be free of the disorder that's causing them so much pain.

The next time you find yourself in a conflict with a narcissist who's projecting onto you like a first class a**hole, please remember it's the disorder you want to punch in the face —  not the person suffering with it — and just walk away.

The loss of Steve Meisner on June 1 knocked the wind out of a lot of musicians' sails, but thankfully, the Meisner family's perseverance and Don Hunjadi's hard work to keep Steve's legacy and music going has helped to keep us on course. That's what Steve would have wanted. Though his passing will have an enduring effect on our music circuit, we're all getting through it together because we are all part of a wonderful, supportive polka music family.

Last year saw the release of three singles and one EP. My version of "Go Rest High on That Mountain" – a tribute to Steve Meisner – became my all-time most-played song with nearly 30,000 plays. I can't take credit for that, though, because I didn't digitally release or promote the song. Almost all of those plays came directly from Steve's fans when it was posted and shared on social media by Don Hunjadi.

My EP of four pop hits from the 1980s got off to a great start in December. It was a particularly fun project on which to work because the songs have been embedded in my memory bank for nearly 40 years! During the production phase, I made a few changes to the vocalist lineup, and each decision left me feeling like I struck gold. Josie Day was actually the third singer slated to record the Whitney Houston song, but it was one of those "happy accidents" as Bob Ross would say because the level of heart and soul she put into that song, and into this project, wowed me. All of the vocalists nailed their performances with perfection, but Josie's work ethic was so exceptionally exuberant, I'm inspired to make space for her on future recording projects.

Speaking of professional vocalists and future recordings, I mentioned in my latest email newsletter that both Abby (Broeniman) Kramer and Mollie B gave their thumbs up to being featured on a new album. The album is still in the concept stages, but I reckon it will be a polka-variety album to be recorded in 2024 and released in 2025.

Here at the homestead, 2023 wasn't much different from 2022. I'm still nursing my diabetic cat, Arthur, whose twice-daily injections of insulin prohibit me from being gone for long periods of time. I haven't been able to take so much as a daytrip since 2021. Since I work out of my house anyway, being home this much is nothing to complain about. I consider Arthur a divine gift, so his health and happiness will always be a priority to me.

My band will continue to run strong in 2024. The Oktoberfest season is already shaping up, but with a few changes to note. The annual Oktoberfest at Full Mile Beer & Kitchen in Sun Prairie, WI moved to a different weekend, leaving us open to play for Gemuetlichkeit Days in Jefferson, WI on September 14. I'm putting together a five-piece band for that event. We're also happy to have been invited back to Runaway Brewery in Burlington and East Troy Brewery on September 21. Many more dates will come in as the year progresses.

I wish you all a happy 2024!