It ain't easy being a rugged individual

Backfield In Motion

2012-01-24T21:53:00.000-08:00

This one goes back to 1966, a soul song by Mel & Tim is the only football tune I know, and it isn't even a football tune. It uses some clever double entendre about a cheatin' lover to get the point across. Nope, this rant isn't about cheatin' lovers, because that is something that I lack. I'm barking about the performance by a true rock hero, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. He sang the Star Spangled Banner at the opening of the AFC conference title game on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012. It was awful. he sounded like a wounded animal, baying for a mate to come help get his leg out of a steel trap. Aerosmith is a band that I like, they've been undergoing some problems with personnel in-fighting, which is bound to happen to any group that's been together as long as they have. After several well publicized stints in various rehabs, Steven seemed to irritate the members more by taking on the role of a Judge on the hit television show, American Idol. This is a show that I tried watching in it's early stages and found deplorable, so I haven't seen his on-screen personna, but if he is going to belt out sour notes like he did this past Sunday, I think he'd better expect a shitstorm of negative criticism coming his way.
Let's face it, our National Anthem is not a particularly good song. It is based on the tune to an old British drinking song, who we fought a battle to be free from, forming a new nation that has evolved into one of the greatest in the world. Yet there are probably a bunch of drunken blokes laughing it up and throwing darts at a pub wall in the same tune as our representative anthem, that to me seems like we started out on the wrong foot. It has verses that span a range that a trained opera singer cannot comfortably vocalize, so we expect a bunch of dipshit celebrities to do so? We're in for a long string of disappointments.
I've seen and heard all sorts of versions of this musical disater being performed, and most of the singers don't seem to understand that this is a formality that should be gotten through as quickly as possible, yet many try to jazz it up by adding all sorts of wavers and warbles to their renditions, making it even more painful to listen to. I'll agree that it's too late to change our anthem, there are many veterans who know nothing about music who insist that this a good composition, and I repsec thwat they did to feel this way, but hey, grow some ears and USE them! Our national anthem is a punchline to a bad joke and due to tradition, we're stuck with it.

I Know, But I Don't Know

2012-01-20T22:43:00.001-08:00

I took a step back through the age sto use this title from a not-so-well-known Blondie tune, for this particular tirade. Back in the mid 2000s, I think it was, there was a writers strike in Hollywood, and many television shows were put on hiatus due to this, simply because there was nobody to write the scripts for the shows scheduled to premiere in the fall. It was then that the Reality Shows became the saving grace of the networks. The talent, if you can call them that, was cheaper than hiring known actors, and the scripts were non-existent. Well these programs took off like the proverbial bat-out-of-hell, and the execs never looked back. Now all the channels are flooded with all sorts of contests and how-tos for every taste and habit known to humans. Some I watch and actually enjoy. But then there are some that make me wonder,
" Why do people care?".
I have no clue who the hell Kim and Courtney Kardashian are...yeah yeah, they're some sort of large busted fashion twits, who make the news all the time, but why is a mystery to me. Well one of these ninnies got married to a basketball player and the nuptials ended after seventy two days. Fine, who gives a shit?? Apparently a lot of people, because it made the news and stayed in the headlines for a whole lot longer than I considered interesting. Obviously I'm out of step with the rest of society, because months later, it still inspires reaction. there was an NBA strike and it looked as if there would be no 2011/20012 season, but at the last moment a deal was struck and the players went back to the courts on Christmas. When the guy who maried miss Who-Cares took to the court, he was booed by the hometeam fans. Hey, if he scores points and keeps the opposition from doing the same, that's all I consider pertinent. He's doing what he's paid to do. Why does anyone care about his love life? Especially in the sporting arena?
As I mentioned earlier, there are shows about just about anything and everything imaginable.Ordinary people trying to become chef, fashion models, beauticians, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers and partridges in pear trees. And for every bizarre occupation, there is an avid audience who cannot bear to miss single epsiode of this drivel.
One such program, one I've never seen and have no interest in viewing is a cooking show. The hostess is a southern belle who touts the use of large quantities of heart-attack inducing ingredients. It was revealed this week that she was diagnosed as a Type 2 diabetic several years ago, yet she never mentioned that, and never changed the recipes she broadcasted for her potentially obese viewers, to more heart healthy formulae. I hope she gets arteries so brittle that they crack like egg shells. Many years ago, I attended a Diabetes Education symposium. I was the only type 1 diabetic in attendance. Type 2 diabetes is a more stealthy disease, many people can have it for years and not know it. If they ate a healthy diet and did moderate exercise, the symptoms often go awaya nd they can live a life less restrictive than what I have to endure. After the educator gave a list of ways to help reverse the symptoms, almost every person in attendance said, " I can't do that" or " I won't do that". So instead they're willing to risk all sorts of pain-in-the-ass procedures because they won't walk up stqairs instead of takign an elevator or cannot force themselves to skip the cake when they go to a wedding. I hav eno sympathy for anyone that hard headed. They all wanted their doctors to prescribe them a magic pill to cure their woes, but couldn't take it upon themselves to live ahealthier lifestyle. They deserve to die a slow, horrible death. The fat-ass blob who hosts that cooking show, I think her name is Paula Dean, should be stoned to death for promoting her artery clogging meals to idiots like the ones I sat next to at that seminar. I am hardly an example of prime motivation, but I have made it my mission to live long enough to see a cure for diabetes become a reality, and I am not inclined to invite those other slobs to join me. Call me snobby, but If a person cannot make a small sacrifice to make their life richer and more rewarding, I think that there are too many others who can and do, that deserve to fill those spots on this planet.

It's Only Rock And Roll

2012-01-18T17:09:00.000-08:00

I went for the obvious as opposed to the obscure for this title tune. The rumors are flying that the Stones are getting together to cut a new album, and a tour will undoubtedly follow, if that's the case. So it isn't stretching things too much to use a Rolling Stones title for this complaint. If the Stones do indeed put out a new compilation, where will I be able to hear it? Nowadays, the artists' web site is the most likely place. In New York there is no more rock and roll radio that's going to go out on a limb and play anything that isn't already proven to be a hit. If you doubt what I'm saying, just try and name three tunes off the "Bridges To Babylon" disc. See my point? Even the group labeled, " The World's Greatest Rock And Roll Band" isn't a shoe-in for automatic radio play. On the other hand, Spruce Stringbean and the Pee Street Band are also coming out with a new album and I'm sure that my ears will be assaulted with that drech non-stop. I have to ask, who decides what music gets played on the radio? Yeah...I know, The Music Director. The stooge at some mass market conglomerate, who's given the power of his/her superiors and a laundry list of advertisers that're paying their salary dictate the choices of what I get to hear.
I've mentioned before that I used to be employed at a radio station and I don't think I'm bragging, by stating that I considered myself to be reasonably competent at what I did. Yet I was kicked to the curb for something not related to any on-air activity and I've been a nomad ever since. I listen to a great deal of disc jockeys, most of whom are not conversant in proper English, which I believe should be mandatory in a country where English is the national language. That aside, I'm REALLY pissed that the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame nominees have been selected and Joan Jett was passed aside, but The Beastie Boys are being inducted. I was working at the one radio station I had any experience at, when the "License To Ill" album came out. My station was playing the song " Fight For The Right To Party". It was brash and abrasive and I thought that was something I'd get some mileage out of, so I invessted my hard earned cash on the LP. When I took it home and put it on my turntable, I was mortified that I'd wasted good money on that horrible piece of shit. There wasn't one good tune on it. I now even hate the song that inspired me to buy that piece of crapola. I cringe when I hear the name of the band, let alone any of their godawful songs. I've despised everything to date that I've heard by them and yet this lame-ass White-Boy Rap takes precedent over a real rocker, Joan ( Jett) Larkin? Who makes these decisions? I'm not a regular reader of Rolling Stone, and I think that Jan Wenner is one of the major dipshits who calls the shots, and this is a fine example of why I'm reluctant to put any faith in what's written in that rag. I have to wonder what defines Rock And Roll, and what separates it from other Popular Music? Hell, they mights as well start nominating every schmoe who had a top ten hit to the institution, they don't seem to be too discriminatory about who gets in and who doesn't, so don't be surprised if Weird Al Yankovic, Barry Manilow, and Slim Whitman also get their names on the roster. Nobody makes a stink over the selections, so who am I to make those decisions? I seem to be wrong about everything else on this planet of our.

Talk Talk

2012-01-08T09:19:00.000-08:00

I chose this title from the fathers of Garage Rock, "The Music Machine". They were a 1960's California band that came to presence in the psychedellic era. Producer, Mike Chapman was a member, but it was their leader, Sean Bonniwell who recently died, that made me choose this song s a title for this rant.
I work with a guy who's a good hearted individual, but he spends the bulk of the day yakking, blabbing, running off at the mouth, flapping his gums, pissing in people's ears...whatever you want to call it. He's got something to say about everything, regardless of whether or not he knows what he's talking about. The fact that he makes so many blind statements, people don't take him seriously. He's considered a gasbag, full of hot air. At first I found it fairly normal, because all people tend to exaggerate at one time or another, but he does it all the time. He's not particularly articulate and apparently not well educated ( he wouldn't be working where I work if he was). I consider him to be a pseudo-intellectual. He'll run off statements and I think that he honestly believes the bulk of what he says, because he gains nothing by lying, but most of what he says is crap! His falsisms are the topic of discussion when he's not around and he's got some doozies! I'm a huge fan of the Discovery Channel show, "Mythbusters" and much of what he's said has been proven to be erroneous on that show. Simple logic disproves the rest of his statements ninety percent of the time. He is a big speaker but a little listener. If he learned to moderate his talk, he'd see that people don't take him seriously. Working with him alot, I've held my tongue too many times, now I'm at the point where I feel like telling him to shut up. But I don't want to hurt his feelings, I still have to work with the guy. He's served his country in Viet Nam, and one day made the statement, that the M16 assault rifle introduced over there, weighed eight ounces. I rolled my eyes and told him that's less than one pound. He stuck to his guns ( pun intended) and said, " I ran through the jungles of Viet Nam with one, don't tell me!" I'm a big watcher of the History Channel, Discovery Channel and Military Channel. All of which have run specials about firearms, a subject I know virtually nothing about first hand. None has made mention that the M16 weighed less than one pound. In fact,they weight about eight pounds. When another veteran pointed that out, he got very defensive and fumphered about mispeaking. He tries to sound authoritative about everything he speaks of, and it is clear to anyone with an iota of knowledge, that he's wrong more than he's right. How do I gingerly go about telling him that he's digging himself into a hole the size of the Grand Canyon with his big talk? I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, I know a little about a lot of things, but not alot about any one thing, so I'm no expert. When my other co-workers ask how I manage to work with him, I simply tell them, " I'm a true believer in the MP3 player. If you can't tune him out, put up the music VERY loud!

Heroes

2011-11-05T05:27:00.000-07:00

As usual, I start off each mental fart with a song title. This one I absconded from David Bowie, nee Jones. I'm a fan of Bowie but not a fanatic, the only albums that I own, I got when I worked at WLIR, a Long Island radio station. Also as usual, I'm not putting my opinion of Bowie into words, I'm touting a Rock & Roll Hero that generally goes unmentioned. So let's get on with it...

Last night, November 4th, 2011, I went to a venue that what was once called Westbury Music Fair and saw Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger of The Doors perform. The Theater is now the NYCB at Westbury, some corporate take-over that seems to have invaded every music and sports arena in the world. We all know what happened to lead-man/singer Jim Morrison, but the crux of the band still are alive and working. I'm not sure why drummer John Densmore wasn't with them but in any case, the show was outstanding, and they looked like they were having fun to boot. They opned the show with "Roadhouse Blues" and announced that they recall the venue from the last time they played there, April 18th 1968. Ray then announced that they'd play the same set as they did the last time, flashback!

When I worked at WLIR I produced the morning show and did lots of other production jobs along with the gig. On one event I had to edit an interview with Ray Manzarek for air on a Sunday morning, when all other stations were playing religious broadcasts. At the time Oliver Stone was getting a ton of press for his movie "Platoon", and the word was out that he was directing a Doors movie, that had yet to be released. Some of the parts of the interview I removed, since that movie was not in the theaters and I had time limitations, but it was apparent that Ray was not pleased with what Mr. Stone had done with his interpretation of The Doors. What I determined was that Ray was a vital part of The Doors and he was instrumental in the instrumentation of the bulk of The Doors songs. He was viviacious, intelligent and articulate. The movie portrayed the members as a bunch of knuckleheads who blindly followed Jim Morrison around, doing whatever he said. It was clear that was not the case.

Getting back to the Heroes theme, when people talk about guitar legends, certain names always come up. Jimi, Eric, Keith John, Paul & George. I seldom hear Robby Krieger mentioned, but after seeing him, it is clear what a brilliant guitarist he is. He squeezed sounds out of his guitar that most would sttribute to effects pedals, but he was doing it with fingers and strings. I realized how much he influenced the music of that era and it wasn't Mr. Manzarek alone who was responsible for The Doors' sound. His style is unique and so appropriate for the time, the Psychedellic Sixities. So he is now on my list of Rock And Roll Heroes, I will do my best not to overlook legendary Robby Krieger in the future.

Satisfaction

2011-10-21T13:14:00.001-07:00

Yep, I'm going all the way back to the British Invasion era, the mid nineteen sixities to steal this title. It is from a band that's still around today, if you don't know who I'm referring to, then you're wasting your time reading this rant. The Rolling Stones penned this classic when Brian Jones was still a member and certainly wasn't dead. It's a timeless song and the sentiment is also without proportional boundaries.

I'm a slim guy. I like the way I look with my hair long. Long hair is not in style these days. I don't particularly care. But I don't want to be lumped in with the Dead-Head, pony-tailed baldies who never remove their baseball caps, even when they take a shower. So once a year I go through the effort to get my locks trimmed. I like hair hanging down in my face, I have no idea why. Every time I get my tresses pruned, I give the scissor-master the same instructions, I'd like it collar length in the back, clean around the ears, LEAVE THE FRONT LONG! If I don't get what I want, I will not return to that establishment. I am now running out of places to go. For some reason, LONG to a barber means, "cut it an inch above the eyebrows". Nobody has ever asked me how long I want it. There have been times I've instructed the person doing the clipping to leave it the length it was when I walked in the door. Yet they still bob it about an inch long in the front. Does Rosetta Stone make a disc to instruct one on how to speak hair-stylist? I cannot get through to these people. It is the end of October. I last got my hair bobbed in January. That's ten months to let it grow out and some fat chick whacked it off again, leaving me to wait another year to get it the length I like, before starting all over again. I'v gone to all of the local haircutting establishments and I'm expanding my range ever-outward, and have yet to come across a snipper who'll give me what I ask for. The next title I'll have to borrow when addressing this issue is, "Give The People What They Want" by The Kinks, another British Invasion mainstay. As my range of experimentation expands outward, my musical choices are receding backwards. There must be some sort of mathematical equation to explain this, because logic certainly doesn't apply.

Another One Bites The Dust

2011-10-01T00:29:00.000-07:00

Once again, I've helped-myself to thesong title of a song that I strongly dislike. The early stuff that Queen put out was really energy filled, but they settled into a slump of dull songs that leave me feeling frustrated. I've grown to dislike the Queen songs that are played on the radio, mostly because they are overplayed, and have been for way too long. This is a song that I NEVER liked, so I can't blame the radio overplaying it for that. But Queen is not what I'm bitching about this time, it's RADIO. There a re lots of good Radio songs I could have chosen, Joe Jacksons' "On The Radio", Elvis Costellos' "Radio Radio", R.E.Ms' " Radio Silence" are all good choices, but I'm afraid that I have already used them at one time or another. So it goes.

I know that I mentioned that I once worked in radio and have an unhealthy love for the media that is rapidly sinking to microscopic proportions. For a while my station of choice was WRXP F.M. They had the most eclectic mix of contemporary music going for any commerical station in the Tri-State area. In mid-July of 2011 I went on vacation. When I returned, WRXP was a different station and no longer used those call letters. They can still be streamed on a computer or smartphone, but I'm odd. I like using my phone for...get this...phone calls. Now New York is almost devoid of any commercial rock and roll influences that aren't 'easy listening', 'lite' or 'classic". There are now three stations I have on my presets. WFUV F.M, WBAB F.M. and WAXQ F.M.

The problem with WRXP is that they seemed to not know what to play, so they tried a whole slew of combinations and never got a set audience. There was only one D.J who I actually found entertaining, informative and creative. The morning team I found to be truly obnoxious and incompetent in many ways. These two doofi ( the plural of doofuses) ended up switching with the guy I considered to be their star player, Steve Craig. It was too little too late. Apparently their ratings sucked and they were cast aside like the rest of the trash.

I then began exclusively lsitening to WAXQ simply by default. They aren't playing any new 'Classic Rock', because in their moronic opinion, there isn't any new classic rock. A supergroup featuring former members of Van Halen, Montrose, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a solo guitarist of some esteem has put out their third album, none of which I have heard on the New York stations. Who makes these decisions? I like the mid morning D.J. Maria Milito. She's got a pleasant voice and demeanor so despite the fact that I'm hearing the same old stuff day in and day out, it doesn't sound so muddy. It takes skill to do that. Her afternoon replacement is a twerp of mythic proportions. Ken Dashow is a sports nurd. Most of what he says I find irritating, annoying and uninteresting. If I wanted to hear a moron talk about sports, I'd listen to Imus. As far as morons go, he far surpasses Dashow. I tune out when he's on with one exception. He does a feature called " The Three At Three" where he plays three songs in a row and you have to figure out what the common factor is. In most cases it's sports related, which makes it all just as annoying as he is. In some cases it is a news story that I haven't heard since I still get my news from TV and at three p.m. I'm still at work. Now when I tune in to WAXQ, it's simply for the songs. Once the ones I like are over, I begin pressing the buttons again.

In late spring of this year...2011, I happened to see a write-up in the local newspaper about one of my favorite power-pop bands, The Smithereens playing at a venue close to where I live. I never got to see them when I worked in radio, so I took the plunge. The auditorium was smaller than my grade school theater and the sound was awful, but they put on a great show, which happened to be sponsored by WFUV F.M.the station of Fordham University. I began listening to them to see what they had to offer. The best thing is that they're listener sponsored, so my ears are not assaulted by dreadful Geico and Rosetta Stone commercials. They play a bit too much folky stuff for my tastes, but familiarity lessens the ho-hum quality of much of what they play. I could do without many of the bands that they're high on like Fleet Foxes, Coldplay, The Black Keys, Bon Iver and Phoenix, but've been exposed to a bunch of bands I would never have heard if I hadn't begun listening. They also feature two of the D.J.s I listened to in my youth, Dennis Elsas and Vin Scelsa, the second of whom is one of my all-time faves. Vin is a real hero of rock and roll, beause he has the ear to put it all out there and let his listeners decide what they like. I have been exposed to a lot of very interesting music, but I still need my testosterone loaded hard rock and heavy metal, which I'm not going to get at WFUV. This brings up my third choice...

WBAB F.M. I used to hate this station because their program director and morning man was a total dipshit. He's gone now and I believe one of my old co-workers is their program director. I'm not positive about this, but WBLAB ( that's not a typo) is stuck in the same rut as WAXQ. The same ol', same ol' is basically what they play. If Paul McCartney came out with new music, that would get exposure but anything else that's untested would have to sell a shitload of music before they'd add them to their playlist. I'd listen to them more, but they're more geared to the Suffolk County listeners, so I have a hard time picking them up, and often get crosstalk with a Spanish speaking station.

As Bob Dylan Zimmerman said, " The times, they are a changin'" and I suppose if I'm going to keep up on the state of rock and roll, I'll have to change with them. I wish that all the MP3/F.M. players I've thrown my money away on, had batteries that lasted for more than four hours so I'd have a fighting chance! I'd hate to have to rely on my phone to get my streaming music, the one time I actually would get a call, my batteries would probably not be able to handle it!

Breakfast In America

2011-09-30T23:25:00.000-07:00

It isn't easy to always try and use a song title for this piece of writing I call my own. I swiped the title of a song I truly dislike, simply because it's all that I could think of that fits the Rock and Roll category. It is the end of September 2011, and the possible inductees to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame have been announced. The majority are bands or performers I do not like or consider to be worthy of induction. It brings up a unique question...How exactly does one label a piece of music Rock And Roll? Is all music geared towards young people Rock? I certainly don't think so. Many of the new nominees I consider to be jazz-fusion, disco or hip-hop artists, voiding them from induction. I don't get to make the rules so my thoughts don't count. Do the people get a say in this decision? But I'm getting away from my theme here. I used a piece by the band, 'Supertramp' because I don't know of any other rock tunes with 'Breakfast' in the title.

It is often said that, "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day". I have no problem agreeing with that thought. I find it peculiar that many adults get up and go about their days without eating a good breakfast at home. They rely on the morning break at their workplaces to go for sustenance. This generally ends up being some sort of egg sandwich, or pastry such as muffins or danish. Not exactly the kind of meal to get you fired up in the morning. They are heavy in carbohydrates, which is a primary reason for the probelm with citizens of the United States being grossly overweight. I LOVE muffins! But it has become increasingly standard for them to be sliced from top to bottom and then buttered, instead of side to side. This creates a problem trying to eat them without scattering the sections that fall off all around your seat, the sidewalk, dashboard, or wherever you choose to eat them. Like cupcakes, muffins come in paper cups to help them hold together during the baking process. Once they are removed, the cup often has portions of the pastry stuck to it. By cutting it, it is now more difficult to eat without depositing the bulk of the crumbs in your lap. I don't know why this has become standard, It doesn't take any more effort to slice the cap off the muffin before buttering it, and this also leaves more bites that have the butter included, rather than trying to eat a muffin that's buttered side to side. But people are stupid, and I'm sure this trend won't go away, so make a mess of yourself, see what I care.

I really want to talk about my favorite breakfast and possibly food of any category...pancakes!
Not long ago the restaurant chain, DENNY'S opened a branch on Long Island. Prior to this, I always went to IHOP for my dosage of carbo-loaded goodies. IHOP does a deal every January where they have an All You Can Eat pancake special. I once told a co-worker that I thought I could eat twenty pancakes. It was during this time of year that I decided to put my money where my mouth is, and see how many I could make disappear. For the longest time, I never got further than seventeen flapjacks. At IHOP they have a couple of options, you can get a serving of eggs, hash browns and sausage, bacon or ham along with three pancakes and then they'll bring you as many refills as you like in groups of three. Or you can just go for a straight pancake flush, where they bring you a stack of five hotcakes and then go to the three per refill servings. I opt for this venue whenever I try to set a standard. My current personal record is twenty three, which I'm desperately trying to break. The downside is that since pancakes are almost 100% carbohydrates, my blood sugar levels are always sky high, making it necessary for me to take HUGE doses of insulin to keep my diabetes semi-in-control. If I were to camp-out at the local IHOP I think that there is no question that I could surpass my record of gluttony, but who has time to do that? I certainly don't. So, getting back to Denny's, they have the All You Can Eat pancake breakfast all year round, plus, they're open twenty four hours a day, so I could roll in at three in the A.M. and begin to stuff myself. The downside is Denny's pancakes are much larger than IHOPs', and less fluffy. They'll start you out with three cakes and then bring the following servings in pairs, so it takes longer to get to the taking-off point. On the plus side, Denny's serves their cakes with butter that's soft and easy to spread. Being relegated to no-sugar added syrup is not a choice that I favor. The sweetener used is a diuretic and causes extreme flatulence as well, making me a walking gas-bag of a one man symphony of toots and razzes. I make my cakes moist by slathering them with butter. IHOP keeps their butter cold so it doesn't get any food-borne bacteria or germs and it often tears the cakes up when you try to spread it. Dennys' cakes are harder to cut, often making it a mess to saw through the tough edges and strew the fragments all over the table in the process. So far I've only managed to stuff down thirteen Dennys' hotcakes, a record I desperately want to break, but thirteen seems to be my lucky number...I cannot get past it.

These A.Y.C.E specials are kept to the basic pancakes, so my real fave..blueberry panackes are not eligible as equipment in this sports challenge. IHOP has all sorts of dessert-like combos that have probably next to no nutritional value, yet sure would make it easier to sit around and gorge myself, but more difficult to keep that in a healthy blood-sugar range. Denny's only seems to have just one type of pancake, so that eliminates any tempatation to pork-up on something even more off-the-charts, as far as my eating habits go. So, where do you stand on this issue? Do you think you could eat more than twenty three IHOP cakes, or more than thirteen Dennys' cakes? I'll take on all comers! What abolut muffins, do you prefer them sliced top to bottom or side to side? These are the issues I'd like to see the politcal candidates tackle in the upcoming election year. The hell with the economy!

I Wonder Who?

2011-05-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

As always, I try to start my rants with a song title...a ROCK AND ROLL song title! I was torn between two tunes this time. The first was "Question", the landmark tune from The Mooody Blues. The second is a blues number by the late, great "Irish Clapton" Rory Gallagher. I live in the suburbs of New York City, one of the greatest cities on the planet, and yet there is an extremely limited selection of rock and roll radio to listen to. I touched on this in an earlier post, but it seems to grieve me more and more. Having dumped six years of my life intoa toilet bowl radio station on Long Island, so I know that radio is a business and if it doesn't make money, no matter how hip they are, they cannot and will not survive. But to be bombarded with the same treacle day in and day out is making me nutso. I like Billy Joel, he's a brilliant song wrtiter and musician, but I don't want to hear "Miami 2017" every day for the rest of my life. Radio overplays everything they play. I think I may have mentioned that I was in college when Meatloaf released his landmark album, "Bat Out Of Hell". I liked and wanted to buy it, but never got around to it. Now I thank heavens every time I heart "Paradise By The Dashboard Light", that I didn't throw away good money on it. Radio stations pounded it into the dirt. It was radio wallpaper, I heard it enough to last a lifetime. The smae goes with other crap from that era, "The Sultans Of Swing" was another victim of gross overplay. I cring when I hear the opening bars from any Dire Straits tunes. So the "Question" is: " I Wonder Who " decides what is considered "Calssic Rock" and how it is determined?

The Moody Blues were a landmark band in the progeressive era, and yet they cannot buy their way into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, but Madonna can, and she never rocked a day in her life. What determines what is Rock And Roll and what is Pop Music? There are so many bands and songs that I recall being all over the radio dial, that have drifted into obscurity. Much of the Moody Blues vast collection of rock has been filed away in the dust bin.

I was in college when the Jefferson Starship released the album Red Dragon, and the song "Miracles" was a mega hit, but where is it now? I rarely hear any Jeff Airplane/Starship on the blab box these days. The Airplane/Starship were one of the innovative bands of the sixties and up through the early eighties. Are they in the R&R Hall Of Fame? I'm not sure, without looking it up.

There are lots of bands that have a lot more leeway than others, The ones you'd expect...Beatles, Stones, Who, Zep, Floydd, Cream, The Doors, and I don't have a problem with those choices. As much as I detest Spruce Stringbean's music, I can understand why he gets stomped into ourt eardrums, but I'm not so sure about Tom Petty. I like his stuff, but he is NOT in the same category as the first list of players, and he's gotten to the point where i'm on the verge of hating him because I hear it so much, not only that, but it's always the same small pack of songs. He's got a vast collection, ...spread the maure around, rather than dumping it all in one big stinking heap!

I consider Emerson, Lake and Palmer a supergroup. I saw them when they did their "Works" tour with a seventy piece orchestra. They had a song called, "Pirates" that was one of the most memorable songs of the summer that the movie, "The Deep" came out. I always associate the song with the movie, so when The "Pirates Of The Carribean" movies series became collossal blockbusters, I figued that it was a given that some D.J. would dig up and revive the interest in that wonderful piece of music...boy, was I ever wrong! "Karnevel #9" is about all I hear from those innovators.

So who is calling the shots? It certainly isn't the listeners,. There is a small minority that want more, but the average schlubb is satisfied hearing the same old drech day in and day out. I pity the poor D.J.s that are stuck with this routine as their job, it does force them to get creative and expand the boundaries, even if it's only by millimeteres rather than miles. I listen to Maria Malito on WAXQ F.M. She's got an appealing voice and does a respectable job of not sounding bored by the lack of variety. She's followed by a twerp named Ken Dashow, he has the annoying habit of expressing his view on subjects that don't amount to a fart in a hurricane. If I wanted to hear an idiot talk about sports, I'd listen to Imus. I tune him into hear special he does called,
" The Three At Three", where at three o'clcok in the afternoon he plays three songs and the listeners have to guess the common bond. In most cases it is so easy it is impossible not to know the link, in others it is something that is completely out in left field, on rare occaisions it is truly challenging . I listen to that feature, then bail out because he is the king of inane chatter.

Down the radio dial is a station that makes the bogus claim, "The only radio station polaying new music in New York". Too bad the new music is packaged like the other pop culkture we're force fed. For a while they were playing all kinds of innovative artists, but that seems to have come to a screeching halt. I cannot hear bands like, The Duke Spirit, The Kaiser Chiefs, Ben Harper, Lilly Allen, Regina Spektor, Ray LaMontaigne, Pete Yorn, they've all been swpet aside for Pearl Jam, The Foo Fighters, Green Day, Nirvana...all bands I like but the bands I dislike are truly irritating. The Black Keys, Cold Play, Smashing Pumpkins, Phoenix, all fall into the Choice B category. They used to have a morning show that two abrasive clods. A female sidekick/newsperson who always botched up peoples names and pronunciations of common words and her coworker, who I respect because he's a rock and roll encyclopedia is another blank slate as far as his personailty goes. Sometimes he tries to talk tough which is the only funny thing that ever comes out of his mouth, he reminds me of Dr. Lovelace from the old TV series, "The Wild Wild West", he's the size of a peanut and about as intimidating as peanut butter. Iam happy to see that the opne Jock I like, Steve Craig got the morning slot. He does a few things to break up the monotony much better than the other beanbags who work there. I generally don't listen as much as I'd like because he's still playing songs that make me automatically hit the "dump" button.

Not long ago I saw a concert by one of the country's best songwriting bands, The Smithereens and it was sponsored by a college station. I began listening because two of the D.J.s were favorites of mine from an innovative station that no longer exists. They play too much folky stuff for my liking but it is more tolerable than haveing wax stuffed INTO my ears, rather than cleared from them.

So, here in the suburbs of the Hippest City on Earth, I have to play Radio Roulette to find music that I can get excited about, and I'm still not satisfied...should I have titled this blog, "Satisfaction"?

Just an aisde, a band called Bloodwynn Pig did a song called, " I Wonder Who" as well as Ray Charles. I know that the Pig song isn't the same as the Rory Gallagher blues number, I'll have to see what Ray Charles did, it's got to be better than what I'm being force fed.

Radio Radio

2011-04-29T04:20:00.000-07:00

It doesn't seem so long ago that Elvis Costello ( Declan McManus) was singing those words in the heart of the punk revolution. There are several other songs I could have chosen, R.E.M's "Radio Silence" would be appropriate, so would Joe Jackson's, " On The Radio". All are iconoclastic tunes from the same era, an age when radio was alive, it bristled with excitement about what new music would show up on any particular day. Radio isn't like that any more. Radio is a business, and creativity is nothing if it isn't making money. So Here in Metropolitan New York, the hippest city in the world, there is no good commercial radio to get exposed to new artists. Radio has been choked by the bean counters. Of course the listeners are also to blame.
When I was in college, I had an instructor for one of my radio classes, and he kept on saying,
" You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American audience". I sat in those classes thinking to myself, 'It's the 1970's, this isn't the nineteen twenties, Americans are educated, informed and alert, we're not a bunch of dupes!'. Boy, was I ever wrong! We're worse than saps, we're a bunch of sheep, Lemmings following the lead of whoever is out in front.

I grew up in a time when radio was playing everything that came out, entire albums got played to let us decide what we wanted to hear, now it's a bunch of doofuses who decide what we're to be force fed. The legendary rock station in New York was WNEW F.M. I heard so much from listening to them, not only music but opinions about the times we lived in. The disc jockeys went on tangents playing stuff that came to mind as they went along. It was exciting. There are now only two so-called rock stations in New York City. The classic rock station plays a steady diet of stuff that gets played over and over on a daily basis. This stuff has been around since the nineteen sixties and yet they cannot find enough to vary the play list so we don't get bloated listening to it. I think Billy Joel is an extremely talented song writer and musician but I don't want to hear "Miami 20/17" every day. This goes for all the other stuff that's crammed down our throats, and yet every day I hear people call in saying how much they love this station,. These are the ones that my professor was talking about. American Idiots! There is another station that plays some of the overlapping music. Sure they play Cheap Trick's " Surrender" and "I Want You To Want Me" but none of the other great Cheap Trick tunes ever hit their airways. They tout themselves as the only station in New York playing new music, it's semi true but it's so watered down with the leftovers from the nineties that it sounds as static as the stuff the Classic Rock station plays. For months I heard the airstaff raving about a hot new band called, The Black Keys. They only played one song and it was mediocre to a painful degree. It's title is "Tighten Up". I kept thinking, "If they're so good, how come they only play one song?" In the 1960's there was a band called , Archie Bell And The Drells, they had a song called "The Tighten Up" which was also a dance. Back in those days, there were all sorts of stupid dances, The Watusi, The Frug, The Freddie, The Swim, The Pony, and a myriad of others. John Travolta could do a hundred more "Pulp Fiction" movies to get them all in. But the Archie Bell song was more memorable than the Black Keys tune, and it has long ago faded into obscurity. The Black Keys record company has released another song to be pounded into our eardrums. I don't know the title of this one, but it sounds like a mash-up of Gary ( I'm Not A Child Molester) Glitter's Rock And Roll Part II. Needless to say, I turn away whenever either of those songs pop up on the dial. Much of what they play, I have a similar feeling towards. I don't think it's an age thing, because much of the stuff I love, but it is so watered down that any impact is negated. The Cars released their first album in twenty years and it sounds pretty good from the one song they've played, but if it gets no support from radio stations it will end up in the back rack with all the other stuff that's gone unplayed. Late in 2010 DEVO released a new recording, that also sounded like the vintage stuff they put out, but it got no support from radio and it never was more than a curiosity, I can't even recall the title of the disc.
So we're going to be hearing a lot of Supertramp's "The Logical Song" and the typical Beatles, Stones, Who, Led Zeppelin, blended in with Tom Petty, Van Halen, Spruce Stringbean, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, etc., etc., etc untill we cannot stand it anymore, the ratings on those stations fade and they're taken over by Spanish and Eastern European language speaking stations, and that's the dollars and cents of it all. Radio is NOT our sound salvation, Radio is pure frustration...with apologies to Elvis Costello.

Bitchin' Camaro

2011-03-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

As I've previously mentioned, I AM a car freak!Alot of trade publications have made a big deal about the rerelease of GM's touted "Muscle Car" the Camaro. The car had goen through many generations and it was finally yanked from production in the early2000's. But consumer demand for a car that's not front wheel drive and has some ooomph, made them rethink that decision.

I'm using the title by and band called The Dead Milkmen, a semi-punk group from the 1980's for this rant. I don't know why I bother, I don't read other peoples' blogs, so it should come as no surprise that nobody reads mine, but it's a plcace for me to vent my unwanted opinions, so here goes...

When I heard that Chevrolet was bringing back the Camaro, I was sort of psyched. I always liked the car...well not always, but most of the time I thought they were cool looking and had good performance. When early photos of the proposed new version of the muscle machine were leaked, I was a bit more receptive to the idea, because it looked more like the first generation of the pony car. Now that they've been out for a while and I see them on the street, I'm less impressed. They seem to be suffering the same problems as todays youth...obesity! The car doesn't look sleek, it looks like it's packing too many pounds around it's mid-section. It looks bulky and clunky. Looks can be deceiving, because it has good performance statistics, but yet I sure wouldn't want one because of it's look like it needs to go on a diet. Many of the "tuner" cars sport a lot of stuff that looks like it was glued on them, and one of those are these "body kits". For the most part I feel that these kits don't enhance the looks of the vehicle aside from making it look different from what rolled off the factory floor. The new Camaro has that same look, only it's not a body kit, it's the way it was designed. Sure, I'm at the age where I start to whine about how things were different when I was young, but I'm not a complete Luddite, I do like change and seeing things evolve, but I'd like to see them evolve into something that looks better, not worse. I'm going to attempt to post some pictures on this to let you compare and decide which is more visually appealing, to put me in my place if I'm wrong.

American Idiot

2011-03-13T16:09:00.000-07:00

Well for once my title is directly related to the topic of my rant. This is the title of an album by Green Day, that I happen to like...ALOT ! It has gotten pretty good reviews and won some Grammy Awards, so it was made into a Broadway Play. As a Christmas Gift, I asked for a ticket to see this production. It happened during a span where Billy Joe Armstrong, the front man, guitarist of Green Day, and writer of the play was appearing in the show. It's been a longgggg time since I saw anything on Broadway, other than taxi cabs and traffic, so this was a big night out for me. First of all, the seating at the St. James Theater was NOT comfortable. Secondly, I shouldn't have had two beers with my dinner because there was no intermission. Those things aside, I really enjoyed the musical, but it wasn't a ten on a scale of one to ten. If you had no idea of what the plot was, it wasn't easy to figure it out. Secondly the choreography was minimal. I'm not sure iof that was intentional, to give it a punk "edge" or just economical, to keep it going for a limited run. In any case, the cast was very good, the music is what made the show, but since there was almost no spoken wording, the story line was not a "gimme" Despite stretches where I wasn't quite sure what was going on, I still enjoyed it thoroughly. When it became apparent that I wasn't going to make it to the encore without emptying my bladder, the trip to the men's room in the basement caused me to miss a couple of segments that were important to the play. The price of $137.00 dollars per ticket is also out of my price range. I can't afford that for a concert, and I know that Broadway shows aren't geared towards the working class, I think more people would take the plunge if they were less expensive. That said, I still enjoyed it alot and would encourage any rock fans to give it a viewing.

Heartbreaker

2011-02-14T21:17:00.000-08:00

It's St. Valentine's Day 2011. With that in mind, I chose a song title that several bands use for different songs. Led Zeppelin, Free, Pat Benatar and Grand Funk Railroad all have tunes with that title yet they are different songs. But those aren't what I'm whining about today. Nope, this is the day of love...or so the legend says. But a new study claims that there are many men AND women who don't like Valentine's Day. In all likelihood, they're single and can't get dates, the hype that goes along with the day bring them down even more, because they don't have anyone to send chocolates, cards, jewelry, flowers or any of the other items linked to romance to. I am not one of them. Yes, I am hopelessly single and have no hot prospects on the horizon, but I treat the day for what it is, just another day. I could have titled this after Joe Jackson's "Biology", or The Michael Stanley Band's "Chemistry", because hormones play a huge role in our mating/dating choices, but the universal symbol of St. Valentine's Day is the heart. Of course the heart is simplified to a symetrical red icon, when in reality, it's a kind of gross mass of bloody vessels and it's multicolored and hardly the thing to decorate a card professing one's love for another.
In real life, the emotions are experienced in the brain and the heart is simply a muscle that circulates blood through the body, a glorified sump pump if you will. But it doesn't sound right to say, "that girl broke my brain". I'm sure that the Zeppelin tune "Brainbreaker" wouldn't have the punch that "Heartbreaker" has. To tell a loved one that you care for them with all your brain, just doesn't do it. But neither does any other vital body organ either. Hallmark would be out of buisness if they had card that expounded on you love a person with all your liver, kidneys or intestines. So why are we so moved by the heart? Sure we couldn't live without it, but we also can't live without oxygen, nutrition, water, and shelter, and yet those things aren't associated with romance. Who is the genius that started the whole myth that the heart is where the emotion of love is centered? I don't think Leonardo Da Vinci can get the credit for that, or maybe I should say blame. It's all wrong, and as much as I know it, out of habit I still use those trite cliches as much as any other doofus. What's going though our heads when we speak of "matters of the heart"? Why is this bad habit so hard to break?
Our social system is geared towards us pairing off, in hopes of propogating the species. There aren't a whole lot of single seater automobiles on the market for losers like myself who can't connect. Ever go on vacation by yourself, and try to get a single occupancy room? Forget about it, all prices are based on two in a room, so a single person is punished for being socially awkward or undesirable by being charged more to sleep alone. Where's the justice in that? I tthink the major hotel chains should have a discount room for people who are fighting the overpopulation of our planet. You'd think these corporate titans would have a little heart, or at least some brain.

Tonight

2011-02-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

I'm obviously showing my age. All the song titles I've used to kick-start my rantings are from the sixties, seventies and eightites. Occasionally I'll come up with a nineties or double zero song, but those are rare. I can put the blame in a lot of places, first of all, with CDs and MP3 style music, the packaging is less prone for study than an album cover. Even a cassette box isn't something you can pore over while cruising in the car...at least it's hard to do safely, but tell THAT to the doofi ( the plural of doofus) who text message ad-nauseum while behind the wheel. Secondly, I spend less money and time proing over my music choices than I did when I was a younger man, something I'm not proud to admit. And probably most of all, I'm just eveloving into an old fart, and the music of the younger generation is less appealing to me than the stuff I grew up with, although one never stops gorwing up, I can name the few bands I'm into who are currently on the charts on one hand. Thank heacvens for The Foo Fighters and Green Day, because without them, my interest in the Grammies is in the negative column.

Cheap Trick penned a song simply titled, " Tonight" it's a real, raucous rocker that never gets played on any of the oldies stations, classic rock stations or pop music stations. Tonmight, February 13th 2011 is the Grammy awards ceremony. Grammies are traditionally long, drawn out tedious exercises in inanity. The music I like seldom gets nominated, let alone chosen for this award, so I see no point in wasting two or three hours of my life watching tardos like Eminem accept awards for music that means nothing to me, it's pointless. The Grammies aren't about what's good, it's about what sells. That's it, plain and simple. When I was younger there were lots of ablums that I bolught that I look at now and wonder, " What was I thinking when I spent $12.99 of my hard earned cash on this piece of crap?". I'm reasonably sure that when people go through the annals of history and look at previous winners of this award, will think " Why did that poseur deserve an award?" Hindsight is 20/20. And it's perfectly clear to me, that the judges for this contest are looking through their asses. If you don't believe me, check the results Tomorrow.

Madison Avenue Man

2011-02-08T18:33:00.000-08:00

This is a title I pickpocketed from Greg Kihn., best known for "The Breakup Song" and "Jeopardy". His earlier works had more of a punk rock tone to them, if this sparks your interest, check out a tune called, "Museum". But I'm not here to expound on my admiration for Mr. Kihns' songwrtiting abilities, no I've got a beef with...the hype over the Superbowl ads...

The local newspaper, published a top five rating of the ads that ran during the most watched TV event of any sports season. The ad they rated as #1, was a horrid piece of schlock, that was way too long, took too long to make a point and went nowhere after it made it's message known. Those flaws aside, it featured Eminem, a rapper whose work I can't stand, so it was a loser on all fronts for me. Yet on Monday morning I was reading quotes where people claimed it brought tears to their eyes. What a bunch of sappy wimps! The hype of the ads far surpasses the hype of the ultimate football face off, and every year the ads become more and more disappointing. At one time, New Yorks' Madison Avenue was the hotbed of the advertising universe. With computer technology, any doofus can produce and shoot a decent quality ad. This year there were some submissions to Pepsi Cola, I believe that weren't far removed from the CGI ads of mega companies. Volkswagen had two ads that i found enjoyable, but only one got any acclaim. The old adage, " Half a loaf is bertter than none" comes into play in that case. Budweiser always has entertaining ads, and this year was no exception. E-trade also has some that are amusing. Chevy Trucks had a winner this year, and Audi had one near the very end that made me laugh, but most of the other car ads were lame-o. There was an animated ad that also featured Eminem, that I also hated, so I'm two for two on the Eminem front. The Best Buy ad featuring Ozzie Osbourne was a bit of a letdown, it didn't suck the big one, but it wasn't hilarious either. What has happened to the cretive minds who used to come up with all those memorable ads from my childhood? Have they been pout into suspended animation, to save for a brighter time? Why am I constantly bombarded with shitty Geico ads? Humor is a perfect selling point, so why are there so many drab, dull and lifeless ads decorating our televsion sets? Is it a "lowest common denominator" type of theory, that the humor has to be at a third grade level to appeal to the average American? I had tried to get a job in advertising after I emerged from college, and discovered that I didn't have the backbone for it. I knind of wish that i hadn't given up so easily, because what i see on the tube these days m,akes me feel like I couldn't do any worse than the hacks who are polluting our airwaves in this time frame!

Jet

2011-01-23T08:24:00.000-08:00

As I have previously mentioned, I am NOT a fan of Paul McCartneys' solo band Wings. But this song title fits the rant I have this week, so here it goes... For the most part, football songs SUCK Big Time! They are written by sports nurds who have zero talent for song writing. Back in the Bill Parcells era of the New York Giants, Howard Sterns' crew wrote a song to the tune of "Summer Time Blues". called " Big Blue Wrecking Crew" That was the best of all the parodies I've heard before and after. Today, Janurary 23rd, 2011 The New York Jets will play the Pittsburgh Steelers for the AFC title and a chance to go to the Superbowl. That's great, I'm all for it, but since the Jets no longer play their home games in New York State, I'm a shade ambivalent about it. For weeks the hype haqs been nauseating and even worse, a slew of truly HORRIBLE songs hacve cropped up and the idiots who have the power to say how badly these tunes Bite The Bag, are playing them like mindless idiots. Some starving, wannabe, song writer from Great Neck wrote a Goddawful hip-hop song about the Jets that was featured on CBS TV news and the moronic newscasters actually LIKED it! YUK! The local Classic Rock radio station has been playing a heap of garbage called " Rex Machine" after the abhorrent disco tune "Sex Machine" which also blows BIG Time! The D.Js promote the hell out of it, and all that does is inspire me to change stations before my eardrums are assaulted by this crap. Doesn't anyone have any taste about music anymore? Why can't a Disc Jockey actually say, "Nice try, but this is below listenable standards!"?
Some fireman came up with a chant that has taken off at Jets games where the rooters will all call out the letters, " J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets!" All I can say is that this is also high on the lameness scale, and as far as creativity goes, it's in the negative column. It makes me wonder if we had a team name with a lot of letters in it, would these neanderthals be able to spell it? " C-R-U-H-S-E-R-S, nope wait...C-R-S-H-....no that's not right...C-U-S-H- no wait...C-R-U-S-H-E-R-S, what's that spell?......uhhhhh I think....ughhhhh...maybe it's uhhhhhh......." I'm a football fan but I refuse to subject myself to the idiocy of going to as sports bar to miss a game. I'm always amazed at the stupid things I hear my co-workers saying on Monday mornings. If I want to hear a bunch of dolts talking about what shoulda, coulda, woulda been, I'd listen to WFAN. I don't need a heard of iliterate doofuses at work expounding on the faults and flaws of the games.
I wasn't a believer that the Jets had what it takes to go the distance, and I am being proven wrong, that's cool I hope they can do it, but if I have to listen to the endless stream of hype about it, when there's much more important stuff being sidelined in the news because of it, I might go bugnuts and send stink bombs to the News broadcasters, just to highlight how shallow they've become. The Jets going to the playoffs should be covered in the sports section of the news and that's IT! It isn't a world changing event if they win or lose! It's a goddamn GAME, that's all! Learn to live with it!

It's The End Of The World As We Know It

2010-12-30T04:10:00.000-08:00

I pickpocketed this title from Athens Geogria's own R.E.M. I'm writing this on December 30th 2010. For the past few weeks I've been seeing and hearing lists of peoples choices for best movies, books, songs etc of the year. I haven't seen any releases in the theaters, only read a couple of books and am getting further and further out of touch with pop music and the people who make it. For many years I listened to The Howard Stern show on the radio, but due to federal regulation and him being fined so often for content, he took a deal on satelite radio and I stopped hearing his show. I began listening to an upstart radio station whose call letters are WRXP . At first I liked them but soon grew weary of the typical commerical radio blight. Overplaying the same songs, lack of variety and idiot disc jockeys. This is all a part of a large phenomena I call, "The Blanding Of America". An effort to be so politically correct that everything morphs into a lump of boring white bread. I cannot see why people get excited over bands like Phoenix, Cold Play and The Black Keys. The songs I hear on the radio are so dull and unmoving that I feel like saying, "Wake me when it's over" everytime one comes on the air, which is too often for my tastes. I began listening to the classic rock station which is equally disappointing. In the afternoon the D.J. plays a feature called "The Three At Three". He plays three songs with a theme and the listeners have to guess what the common bond is. I like the feature but the D.J. is annoying. He's a sports twerp, and spouts off too often his feelings about stuff that is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I am reasonably certain that none of this will change in 2011, so I am going to print my list of rock songs I would be happy to NEVER hear again for the rest of my life.

10) Paradise By The Dashboard Light-I was in college when " Bat Out Of Hell" came out and I liked Meatloaf when I first heard this record. It became a huge hit and was played to death. Now I cringe everytime I hear anything by Mr. Lee and immediately switch stations. I am truly appreciative that I didn't spend my hard earned cash on any Meatloaf discs.

9)Rosalita by Spruce Stringbean. I was also in college when the Boss hit the scene. At first I was indifferent to his music. All the D.J.s were ranting and raving about him, yet I failed to see what was so innovative about him or his tunes. The guys in the room next door in my dorm would put on Rosalita, and yell, scream or shout along with it. Once the song ended, they'd replace the needle and do it all over again. At first I found this amusing, but that quickly wore off. Born To Run was released that year and the radio stations pounded it into the dirt. My disinterest in Asbury Park's homeboy grew into dislike and I soon detested every song he sang. ( I do like Greg Kihns' cover of "Rendezvous") I hope not to ever hear any Bruce music for the rest of my life.

8) Blinded By The Light by Manfred Manns Earth Band. As much as I despise Springsteens' music, This cover version is hundreds of times worse. It is long, boring, and irritiating. Manfred Mann had big hits in the past, "Doo Wah Diddy" the most notable and I like it. I also like their cover of Bob Dylans' " The Mighty Quinn" but when I hear the long intro to Blinded, I have to press the button.

7) Live And Let Die-After the Beatles broke up, Paul McCartney formed a band called, "Wings". They had numerous hits, as one would expect. Most of them did not make me want to own a Wings album. When Paul was tapped to write a theme song for a James Bond movie, that was BIG music news. Live And Let Die was a crappy Bond movie, the resulting song was a lemon to my ears.

6) Aja-Steely Dan was another one of those bands that I was indifferent to. I didn't mind Aja when it came out, but again it was overplayed and I got sick of hearing peoople refer to them, as "musical geniuses". If they're geniuses, why are their songs so blah?

5) Lady. This bag of excrement should bannish the band Styx from the radio for eternity. I actually used to like some of their early stuff, and the Paradise Theater album isn't completely unlistenable, but they have a ton of crappy songs to go along with the few I like. They were up at the radio station where I worked and were pushing one of their tours. They said their show would make "The Wall" look like a childs' game. Like a fool, I spent my heard earned money on tickets. Pink Floydd has nothing to worry about. Styx should add an N to their name, Stynx is more appropriate.

4) Now I add a clause to my choice. In the late sixities there was a band called, "The Move". They had some cool songs and soon evolved into The Electric Light Orchestra. When I was in high school they released a kick-ass version of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven". It got played, replayed and overplayed. It was at the point where you'd hear it on one station, switch to a different spot on the radio dial and it would be playing there too. Another press of the button and, BINGO there it would be. There's no need to hear it three and four times an hour but the song was inescapable. I soon revolted and refused to spend money on anything that ELO put out. I like their version of the song, but I heard it enough to last a lifetime.

3) We Are The Champions/We Will Rock You. I like Queens' early works. They fell into the category known at the time as "Glitter Rock". "Leave Yourself Alive" was the first song by them I ever heard and I like it, they have some serious rockers, but their biggest hits are the wimpy ones. From a musical point of view, this is a bag of shit. The starting point for other turkeys like "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Bicycle Race" and " Fat Bottom Girls".

2) As I sit here typing this, my mind is racing to come up with all the songs that have me pressing the radio buttons and I have to think back to the 1980s when there was a ton of disposable music out there. Sure "Kharma Cameleon"is a stinkbomb, but it's so forgetable that it no longer bothers me as much as it did back then, I feel that way about most of the stuff that made me cringe at the time. There was a band called EBN OZN, who put out a serious piece of drech called "A,E,I,O,U and sometimes Y". This was absolutely dreadful! But nobody plays it anymore, so it is forgotten, along with a host of other musical dung heaps. So they don't count. This crapola I do hear and wish I didn't. Jesus I Just Alright-By The Doobie Brothers. I never liked the Doobs and this is the worst of their compositions. I even hate the name, Doobie Brothers, it sounds like something you step in. "Hey man, take off your shoes, you're tracking some kind of gunk all over the clean carpet, what is that?"
" Oh no, I stepped in doobie!"

1) American Pie-This song SUCKS! I Never want to hear it again! Period!!!

Okay so there's one of my lists. I have to add a few "honorable mentions" or maybe "Dishonorable mentions" since they are also songs I despise. " The Sultans Of Swing" by Dire Straits is another mid 70's tune that I had no feelings about at first, but was also pounded into the soil by the local radio stations. I keep hearing about what an impressive guitarist Mark Knofler is, but that means zero if you hate the songs he plays...right? Another briar under the saddle is by a band that I like and has some kick-ass tunes but their most famous one bites the bag. I'm talking about Bachman Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care Of Business". Garbage! Early in my music listening stages, I took a liking to The Steve Miller Band. I'll never know why. His music is appealing to someboy who is perpetually a fifteen year old girl. Real bubble-gum tripe. I'm still at odds as to which is the most repulsive. "Living In The U.S.A" is the one that's not completely nauseating, the rest can take their place in the dung heap of music that's overplayed and not deserving of that honor.
Having taken my own stab as musicianship, I am really moved by the bass guitar. I was trying to think of the ten best bass songs, but there are too many where the bass is so overpowered by the rest of the music. Any song by Cream, Led Zeppelin, and The Who all have wicked bass, but the rest of the song is generally so well composed that the individual instruments are overlooked. The Doors have really great bass lines but they don't have a bass player. Ray Manzarek did all the bass with the foot pedals of his keyboards, so can I count them? Being an over-opinionated doofus, I'll give it a try anyway.

10) Come Together-I am NOT a Beatle freak, I always liked the Fab Four but I was never avid about my admiration. It wasn't until after I got out of college and I started playing bass that I actually noticed how complex Mr. McCartney's bass lines were. This one truly sticks out in my mind.
9) Money-Pink Floydds' music marvel, Dark Side Of The Moon is the epitomy of space rock. Yet this pop tune has a bass line that automatically sticks out in my mind. Kudos Roger Waters!

8) Time Of The Season-It doesn't have to be complex to be catchy. I can't even recall the bass players name from The Zombies. This one is etched in my head.

7) Birthday-The Beatles. Again hats off to Paul!

6) Twilight Zone-Golden Earring. Another example of how a basic riff can stand out and make a song.

5) The Real Me-The Who. I know I said that the bass is often overlooked, but this one is just too extreme to omit. I miss John Entwhistles' influence.

4) What Is And What Should Never Be-Led Zeppelin. John Paul Jones's work just can't be ignored, it's too good. All of their songs have serious bass lines, but this is one of my faves.

3) I Want You, She's So Heavy-The Beatles. A hat-trick for Sir Paul McCartney.

2) Mystery Achievement-The Pretenders. The late Pete Farndon has a real classic here!

1) Blood And Roses-The Smithereens. Yes I chose a band from New Jersey with their riff as the best bass line in rock and roll. I asked friends what their choices were, and I got responses like " Under Peressure" which is memorable, although it is a song I really dislike. Blood and Roses is simple yet catchy, and the song is intense enough to make it a stand out in rock history!

Honorable mention: I know this one will cause some snickers, some outrage and some agreement, but the immortal, " Inna Gadda Da Vida" has a bass hook that's unforgetable and easily recognizable.

Okay this is a category that I made up simply to get plugs in for songs I have a hard time categorizing. I call them "Crescendo songs". They start out kind of slow and ballady, and then go into instrumental jams that get progressively more intense, like a freight train rolling down a thirty seven degree incline, picking up speed as they thunder down the track, and seem to be heading towards a fatal collision.
10) Highway Song-Blackfoot. Yes this was a song that got a bit of radio play during the height of the Southern Rock daze of the mid to late seventies.
9) Standing At The Station-Ten Years After. My all time favorite rock and roll band, and most rock neophytes know them only for two songs, "I'm going home" and "I'd love to change the world". Two good tunes, but there's so much more to this band than the Classic Rock pair that get any radio play. If you've got Pandora, it's worth a listen.
8) Crazy On You-Heart. I know it seems like all of these songs came from the same era of music, but it was a trend that didn't survive, what can I say?7) In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed-The Allman Brothers. Back when both of the Allmans were alive their stuff was tuff to beat. The "Brothers and Sisters" album was the point where they jumped the shark. The only reason this one landed so high on the list is that it doesn't get hairy at the end. It's more like a disconnected caboose rolling into the station rather than barrellling down a twisty mountain track at breakneck speed.
6) Stairway To Heaven-Led Zeppelin. Yeah I hate to add this to the mix, but after starting this thread, my mind went blank and I can't think of some of the better examples. You can be thankful I didn't place it at number one.
5) Slow Ride-Foghat. This is a band that the critics love to hate, but in my opinion, they're one of the best Boogie Bands that ever played. I'm not sure if it's a compliment or a face slap that this song appeared on an episode of Seinfeld.
4) Nantucket Sleighride-Mountain. One of the most overlooked guitar virtuosos of the sixties and seventies, is Leslie West. Anoter band that has tons of terrific songs but only a few get any radio play. That's one of the reasons I dislike commercial radio so much.
3) Green Grass And High Tide-The Outlaws. Yep, another Southern Rock Band makes the list, they practically invented the style and certainly excelled at it.
2) Don't Run Me Down-Foghat. I never heard this tune on the radio, and I cannot understand why. It cooks! When Lonesome Dave Peverett played slide guitar, I can't imagine anyone not tapping their foot along with it.
1) Free Bird-Lynrd Skynrd. It's almost a cliche, but they set the standard with this song.

There is another category that I consider to be one of the most importatn in rock assessment, and that is best musical jams. This is still up in the air for me. It was a rebellious thing back in the psychedellic era, to go against the norm and come out wiht songs that had long musical interludes ( not to be confused with quaaludes). The typical radio hit was two minutes forty three seconds long, and that's what I used to hear on the am radio in our car. It was Labor Day weekend of 1967 when we were driving home from Cape Cod and got stuck in a huge traffic jam due to a backup at the Throggs Neck Bridge. The station was drifting in and out, ( we had analog radios in those days) so my mother switched to a Connecticutt station, at least that's what I think it was. The Doors had a hit at the time called "Light My Fire". That song came on the station she had just switched to but it wasn't the two and a half minute radio edit, it was the album version. That lasts about seven minutes, to this day, I'm convinced it is one of the best rock and roll musical jams of all times. Depending on your musical influences, there are any number of candidates. The Grateful Dead built a steady following on their jamming talents, The Allman Brothers, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Jimi Hendrix, any of those sixites bands can be named, it doesn't much matter which. In current times, the only semi-new band that comes to mind is Phish, and even they have slipped into relative obscurity. I know I'm going to ruffle some feathers with the choices I've made but here goes,
10) Keep On Chooglin'-Creedence Clearwater Revival. The live version is like somebody pulled the cork out of the bottle and the musical genii got loose.
9) Soul Sacrifice-Santana. Live versions are the bulk of my choices, because the bands just went off on a tangent and some engineer caught it on tape, yeah, some are edited, just about all of the recordings that appeared on the original Woodstock album have been shortened, but they're still incredible.
8) Stormy Monday-Mountain. The version that appears on the Atlanta Pop Festival/ Isle Of Wight album is killer!
7) Whippin' Post-The Allman Brothers Live at the Filmore.
6) Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad-Derek And The Dominoes Live.
5) You and I-Yes a much overlooked band as far as trendsetting music goes. I forget the name of their live album.
4) Stone Cold Fever-Humble Pie. When Peter Frampton and Steve Mariott were still the front men the Rockin' The Filmore album had a ton of good tunes.
3) Voodo Chile A Slight Return-Jimi Hendrix. Any version of this is too good to ignore.
2) I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes-Ten Years After. Another from the Atlanta Pop Festival/Isle Of Wight LP. and of course I already mentioned my number one pick for the best musical jam. Hats off to the recently reprieved Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, and Robbie Krieger.

And so I say goodbye to the year 2010 with my typically snarky attitude about music. I welcome other opinons to see what I may have left out, or to hear what those opposed think. In 2011 you can make your own fucking list and put me in my place, if you think you can! Ta ta!

Hungry

2010-09-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

This title I borrowed from Paul Revere And The Raiders. Back in the mid sixities, when the "British Invasion" was occurring in music, the Americans fought back with our own brand of contemporary rock 'n' roll. Bands like " The Young Rascals", " Tommy James And The Shondells" and Sonny & Cher were making hits to counteract what the Brits were importing from across the pond. As embarrassed as I am to admit it, I still like that stuff. But that's not the subject I'm barking about today. No I'm griping about....sliders.

Lately I've been hearing tons of ads for sliders. They are a new breed of hamburgers that are small. That's about all I know about these things. The name alone is enough to make me want to get a stent in my veins. The title "slider" implies a greasy, slimy piece of undercooked meat. Hardly something I'd go out of my way to ingest. The most ads I hear are for White Castle, one of the earliest fast food establishments here on the east coast. Their hamburgers are capable of creating enough gas to power our major metropolis into the next millenium. So a White Castle slider sounds like double the cholesterol and five times the gas. But as somebody who keeps missing the mark as to what is popular and what's not. These things are BIG. Not size-wise but as a phenomenon. There's a definite market for this type of belly bomb, why is a mystery to me. Is this just a conspiracy to serve us less and charge more? Our news services are peppered with reports about the obesity plague in America, and yet we still want to eat sliders. Just an aside, but not only are we deluged with warnings about how overweight we are as a nation, but we're also innundated with lawsuits about models being unrealistically thin and how many people are developing eating disorders to mimic and unrealistic image. What's it going to be? We can't have it both ways! Either we have to decide if we're going to be a nation of fat slobs or aenemic anorexics, which is better for us? I'm not aware of many fast food establishments that serve fruit or veggies to any noticeable degree. Sure, you can get a salad at Wendys or McD's but is that really nutritious? Especially once it's drowned in oily dressing? I'll never cease to wonder why so many of the things I find unappealing are so popular. I guess I'm just out of synch with the world I live in, or maybe I'm the one that's right and everyone else in the world is wrong. I wonder if I'll ever find out which is the right answer?

TV Is King

2010-09-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

I grabbed this title from a song by The Tubes. It came out in the 1980's and was a minor hit on some progressive stations, but that aside, I'm sure it was quickly forgotten by all but a few rock afficianados. But as always, this isn't about the music it's about...television.

In the past few decades, more and more vintage television shows have been morphed into Hollywood movies. In most cases, they were incredibly BAD. It makes me wonder what the hell has happened to creative writing? Can't those doofuses who finance these disasters read? Here's a list of some of the more memorable forgettable movies
in no particular order....
Dennis The Menace( although this was a TV show based on a comic strip)
Dragnet
The Wild Wild West
Mission Impossible
Bewitched
The Addams family
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Flintstones ( TWO bad movies based on a cartoon)
Charlie's Angels
Lost In Space
Get Smart
The Brady Bunch
Maverick
and the ever dreadful...Starsky and Hutch
Just to name a few, I'm sure there are some others that I've forgotten for very good reasons. But I have to wonder why so much of what we see has gotten solame? I used to look forward to the start of the new televsion season, which always coincided with the start of a new school year. I'd go to class and we'd talk about the shows we saw the night beofre. There was a writer's strike a few years ago, and that put the television season off to a late start. In the interim a bunch of "Reality Shows" wer eput on, one because they required no writing. They were inexpensive to produce, since there were no high priced stars to command big prices. The production costs are minimalized by the lack of sets and props. I have to admit that I actually watch many of these shows. The most famous is "Survivor" and after twenty seasons, I'm still hooked. I also like the programs dealing with custom cars, bikes etc. The novelty wears off too fast though. I liked "Monster Garage" and "Monster House" they had short runs and didn't ge to the point where they were tiresome, although Monster Garage's projects became a bit too bizarre towards the end of its' run. "American Chopper" has gotten to be more about the fmaily squabbles of the Teutel clan, which I have zero interest in. I want to see how radical customs are created, like in "The Great Biker Build Off". Even "American Hot Rod" got to be overdramtized as it grew older. One never knows how much the editing process plays in how this phenomena proceeds. What's left in and out can totally change one's perspective, so a bit of creative cutting can make a mountain out of the proverbial molehill. The stations that watch tend to have the stuff I want to see over the old networks. I don't care who the "American Idol" is, who wins "Dancing With The Stars" or who wins " The Amazing Race". There are shows about cooking, hair cutting, getting ahead in business, fashion modeling, weigt loss, and a plethora of other subjects, each with a core of followers. I consider myself to be a fairly competent writer and I would enter a contest to prove it to myself that I'm not delusional...but I cannot imagine a more boring reality show than one about writing. so I guess that's about all I can add to this tirade.

I Must've Got Lost

2010-05-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

This is a title from The J. Geils Band that's vintage early 1970's. I considered using Commander Cody's " Lost In The Ozone Again" but I'm not sure that he wrote that tune, so I stuck with a sure thing. The local Classic Rock station in New York, does a feature called, " The Three At Three" where they play three songs with a common thread and you have to figure out what it is. Today, May 24th, 2010, Ken Dashow used the tune I wracked my brain deciding on, so I lose points for "originality". Yesterday the 23rd was the final episode of the ABC TV series "Lost".
J. Geils aside, I liked "Lost" but I was confused by it. Now I no longer have to think about it.

It started with a plane crash on an undiscovered Island, and the survivors go through a series of bizarre encounters, that got increasingly strange. The coolness factor was high, but that opened it up to a lot of cop-out reasons for what was going on, the final cop-out being the ending. For six seasons one was left wondering how things would turn out, and the explanation was low on the creativity scale, despite being well done and tactfully presented. I wasn't impressed. The ending of " The Sopranos" was harshly criticized by most viewers, but I found it less annoying than what "Lost" fed us. Characters would escape the island, then somehow either return or get killed due to something that resulted from their being on that weird, mysterious chunk of earth. Characters fell in love, hated each other, cured themselves of life influencing disabilities or diseases, and it all seemed to be leading up to some all-encompassing revelation. That reveallation was...they were already dead. None survived the plane crash, so how was it that new characters could come and go in this make-believe afterlife? Why were there alternative timelines and parallell universes if the one they were a part of had ceased to be? It's easy, make up a cop-out ending and voila, presto, abra cadabra, everything is cool. If that doesn't spell " Cop-Out" I don't know what does.

In other network TV endings, tonight, May 24th is the final episode of the Keifer Sutherland series, "24". This is a show that has gone way past it's prime and needs to end, because it has crossed the line of entertaining into the realm of 'incredibly preposterous'. It is due for a decent burial, although there is now talk of a "24" movie. I can't see that happening. Who would sit in a theater for 24 hours, or go to twelve two hour epsiodes to see how it ends, especially at todays movie prices? So what concept is going to play out in that case? The world is full of talented, creative writers, why aren't any of them writing for the television shows that I watch? The one exception is " 30 Rock", but that's a comedy and the idiocy of the dramas has made them more humorous than the sit-coms.

Heart Shaped Box

2010-02-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

I swiped this title from Nirvana's second album. Today is St. Valentine's Day, a day when Love Is In The Air...allegedly. It is also a long weekend, tomorrow, Monday is Presidents Day. It was this weekend in 1987 that my last girlfriend, left some vital clues that she was no longer interested in being associated with me. I think it would have been a whole lot easier if she had just told me, but people make all kinds of decisions which others cannot figure out. This is just an example.

I hate to admit this, but looking back, I can feel pretty safe in saying that I'm not a very good boyfriend. I have no idea what women want and I'm terrible at figuring out what is the right or wrong thing to say, and I often get them mixed up. That aside, I've been alone so long, that I've lost my ability to compromise, a vital part of a lasting and enduring relationship. I've become self centered, since I'm the only person that I really have to deal with closely. One of my old girlfriends classified me as, " A Disposable Person" . At first I took this as a good-natured barb, but she seemed to hit the nail right on the head. It was early in our courtship and she didn't know me very well when she said it, but I am NOT the type of person that people miss, or cannot live without. When I am out of sight, I am truly out of mind. I certainly wish I could change that, but I've been me for so long, I don't think I could pull it off without coming across as a phony or a poseur, which I consdered to be worse, so that's basically what I'm stuck with.

In the early to mid-1980's I worked at a local radio station. It was during that time that the local newspaper, Long Island's Newsday began running personal ads. I was producing the morning show and one of the more valuable lessons I learned was, 'get material where ever you can'. So I began skimming the personals in search of humor, and I did write some moderately amusing sketches as a result, but the side-effect of reading these, was that I began to think, " Hey, she sounds like my kind of girl" and I started answering these pleas for romance. I wrote what I considered to be amusing, engaging and offbeat responses to women. When I got no responses, I began to feel like I was taking the wrong approach, yet I didn't want to alter my strategy, since I felt it accurately reflected my personality ( or lack thereof). One of the caveats was that a photograph was to be enclosed. At the time I was hovering around one hundred and twenty five to one hundred and thirty pounds, and often looked like a cadaver in snapshots. Since I was a loner, there wasn't anybody that I felt I could ask to take pictures of me, who could do a decent job of it. This is before digital photography, so I'd set up my 35mm camera on a tripod and use the 30 second timer to go and get in the picture. The problem with this is, that until the film was developed, I had no clue as to how they looked. I'd go through rolls only to find them unfocused, under-exposed, un-centered or just plain scary looking.

I became a regular at the 90 minute photo booth near my apartment, in hopes of getting the shot that would win the heart of a beautiful girl. The results were the same. I then began putting in the caveat, " I can undersand if you don't want to meet me, but please return the photograph" at the end of each attemtp to meet Ms. Right. Still nothing. I finally began including self-addressed, stamped envelopes with my responses. of all the mail I sent out, I only got one back. The gal wrote that she was six feet one inch tall and didn't feel comfortable dating a guy shorter than herself, which I considered to be understandable. It was at that point that I began posting my own ads, hoping that the fish would come to me, rather than trolling empty waters. I specified that I wanted to date women who were slim, thin, slender, petite, and weighed less than I did. My friend Mark told me that I better be ready to be lonely a Longgggggg time. Boy, was he ever right! I got three responses, one had no picturei and was written in pigeon English, which made it sound like this gal was looking for a green card. The seond was from a woman who looked to be older than my mother and twice as large, and third was type-written and easy to read, but was from a guy in the Suffolk County Correctional Center. Three strikes and I was out. From time to time, in desperation I'll give these types of hook-up media a try and each time I have to ask myself, "Why do I put myself through this type of torture?"

For me, dating is like work, I put in my forty hours and the boss says, " You did a good job but I'm going to have to pay you next week, we're a little bit short..." At first you shrug it off, but when it happens time and again, you have to tell yourself," I cannot afford to keep this up!" I keep doing the legwork but not reaping any rewards. I met one girl who had to weight at least 180 pounds. I don't understand why people think the person they're meeting won't notice, it's like they're setting themselves up for rejection.

On the other hand, there's no formula for what a person will like and won't like. I was meeting a girl in a bar/grille on a Wednesday evening. It had snowed earlier in the week and the streets weren't bustling with activity. The place she suggested had a bar that ran against the south wall. The door was on the west side and there was a step up to the bar area and a sunken eating area to the north side. The bartender was chatting up a couple who were parked at the eastern corner. I sat close to the door, at the south west corner , so I'd be the first person she saw when she walked in. I was served a club soda in a goblet the size of a small goldfish bowl. A gal walked in and I stood to introduce myself, she stepped into the sunken eating area, which was dark and hard to see into. I sat back down. A short time later, she came out of the area and asked if I was Tony. When I affirmed that, the look of disappointment on her face was like a neon billboard.
" Why do I put myself through this?" I asked myself, sat down and bought her the obligatory drink. We chatted for a bout half an hour and then she told me she had to leave. I thanked her and then left myself wondering what the next step was.

Flash forward several years. I was watching the television program "CBS Sunday Morning" it's an hour and a half program about arts and entertainment, done in a style sort of like "Sixty Minutes" but a little more lighthearted. They ran a feature about the internet dating site E-Harmony, basically gawking over their success rate for matching people up and how many had gotten married and were living happily ever after. The ads on the tube all stated, " Join now and get your first connections for free. This led me to believe that it is no bargain as far as cost goes, so I never bothered to look deeper into it. After afew months of seeing their ads, I decided to see what it cost. I got on-line and read all the fine print and those long, tedious and confusing terms and saw no mention of fees, so I continued with the sign-up process. Next I was faced with filling out the personality profile. Four hundred and fifty questions of profiling. At the time the TV show, " Rock Star Supernova" was running so at nine o'clock I had to stop to watch the show, dashing back and forth to my computer during the commercials to answer another question or two. It was well past the eleven o'clock news, and into the Letterman show that I finally finished the questionaire portion. Next I had to wait while all the data was correlated and see what they had for me. I got a note stating, 'that even E-Harmony cannot find a suitable match for everyone'. At least they didn't charge me for that tidbit of self-confidence busting.

So here it is February 14th 2010, and I haven't any girlfriends or even any potential girlfriends in the wings. Thinking back to this weekend twenty three years ago, the girl I'd been seeing I was making extra efforts to insure that she'd keep seeing me. She had stopped being home when I called her, and didn't return my calls. I called her at work, where she couldn't dtich me.
" Are you avoiding me?"I asked.
" Oh no, it's nothing like that..." She let the sentence hang.
" Well this is the long weekend and Valentine's day, I'm off from work and I was wondering if we could do something?"
" You could give me a call..."
" That's what I'm doing. You haven't returned my calls for two weeks"
" Things have been kind of crazy, I'm just getting ready for when I go to England, call me at my other job"
" Okay, I'll call you Sunday night" Feeling a bit relieved, I convinced myself that I'd just let things get blown out of proportion in my head. I went out and picked up a heart-shaped box of chocolates, sexy lingerie, and a long stemmed rose. She worked nights at a Pizzaria and generally got off around eleven thirty p.m. I called at ten, only to have whoever answered the phone tell me that she took off early that evening. I packed all the stuff she'd left at my apartment, along wih the drying rose, box of chocolates and black lace teddy into a big box and on Tuesday I sent it UPS to her, with a note saying that if she didn't want to go out with me anymore, all she had to do was say so. I don't know why she had to let me think that things wer a lright, I'd think that she'd want to tell me just to get me off her case, but as I stated earlier, I have no clue how women think and I suppose I never will.

There are lots of Conspiracy Theorists who say that St. Valentines day isn't a real holiday and that it was invented by corporations, yet the legend of the holiday goes back long before Hallmark and Hershey's were big industries, so who's to say? I just hate the feeling like I'm not a part of it because I'm a solo act and don't have anyone to lavish my affections on. On the up side, think of the money I save not buying those heart-shaped boxes!

Supersonic

2010-02-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

This title is vintage '90's Alternative, stolen from the often warring band, Oasis. The Gallagher brothers seemed to steal a page from the Davies brothers of Kinks fame, and on stage sometimes came to fisticuffs. Oasis has broken up several times, and in 2009 announced that they will never perform together again. It's a shame since they made music that has been compared to The Beatles. But that's not what my mind is on today..it's...

Football!

Today is February 7th, 2010 and marks the forty fourth playing of The Superbowl. This matchup between the AFC and NFC has gone through a lot of changes. I recall watching Superbowl 3 when Joe Namath and the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts. It was played on a Sunday afternoon, just like any other football game...prior to Monday NightFootball, Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football and the playoffs when games are played on Saturday and Sunday. Of course this is all due to the imense popularity of football and it's television coverage. Halftime events used to be a bunch of marching bands and baton twirlers, allowing viewers to head to the bathroom and grab more snacks to engulf during the game. This has become impossible. I would become independently wealthy if I could invent an external bladder that can be worn on Game day. You see, now the commercial ads are almost more of an attraction than the game itself. At a cost of between two and three million dollars for a thirty second spot, advertisers want to get the most bang for their bucks. As many people will discuss the ads around the water cooler on Monday, as the plays that were run during this extended hour of competition. In the past I've seen some brilliant ads, but many were so entertaining, I had no recollection of what the product being hawked was, which kind of defeats it's own purpose. Not only that, but now halftime is a mini concert extravagnza, featuring name acts like The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Aerosmith and the biggest mystery of all, Michael Jackson have all appeared. Michael Jackson and football should never be mentioned in the same sentence, let alone performing in the same arena. It's like seeing Ku Klux Klansmen wearing "Have A Nice Day" buttons on Martin Luther King Day. They just don't mix!

I'm getting off track here, tonight's extravaganza will feature The Who, or the remannats of the legendary band performing at halftime, leaving me to ask the question, when do I get to run to the bathroom? I don't want to miss the game, nor do I want to miss the ads, and now I don't want to miss the halftime show! What's left???

Is there some sort of medical procedure that I can undergo, which will keep my bladder from filling up? Should I just abstain from liquid refreshments? Is it too late to install a television in the lavatory? How does the average American football fan deal with this dilemma? I am set to record the entire program just so I can review memorable ads in the event that I miss one. The things we have to do in this day and age in order to enjoy sports!

A Day In The Life

2010-01-31T07:48:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that I'm Not a Beatle-Freak. I always liked the band, but never went bugnuts over them. The anthemic song that John Lennon penned is the perfect tune to highlight what I'm bitching about today...

It's late January 2010 and the new season of the television show, "24" has begun. The first two seaons were riveting examples of high suspense drama. It has steadily gone downhill like a rockslide. Yet I contiunue to watch it. The show could be salvaged if by some fluke, Keifer Sutherland read my blog ( yeah right!) and followed my lead. The first preposerous notion is that these crises all span exactly twenty four hours. It would be much more believeable if the show was called "Real Time" that way they could avert the disaster in sixteen hours or thirty two hours if the need arose. But the shows have gotten overstuffed with meaningless fluff, simply to stretch it out to the given twenty four episodes. Drivel! Alot of these sidebars are red herrings to divert the viewers from out-thinkiong the hero Jack Bauer, who like our former President George W. Bush, also pronounces "nuclear" as "Nuke-You-Lar", which proves he isn't THAT smart. The show has gotten tedious and I find myself getting impatient waiting for the real grit and trying to ignore all the unnecessary chattle that's being crammed in like a giant trash compactor. I'm starting to believe that anything that's successful will be ruined by over-exposure and "24" is a prime example!

Moving Pictures

2010-01-09T09:36:00.000-08:00

Old Age sucks! I'm not positive if this title is an actual song name, or the heading of an album by Rush. I know there's a Kinks song by that title, but I cannot recall how it goes. Either way, I'm using it for the song title this piece is about...

I've mentioned many times that I'm a car freak. My love of working on cars and modifying them so they're different from what rolled off the factory floor is a passion that I don't get to realize on a daily basis. WhenI was young, my parents viewed cars as a way to get from Point A to Point B, and my mother was constantly warning me to stop spending money on my Van, Car, etc. Also, we were not fortunate enough to have a garage where I could comfortably work on my vehicles. My mom has long since passed away and in the economic crunch of being unable to land a job modifying cars for a living, I've been forced to take on a "regular job". ( God forbid!). I had to move out of my apartment and into the home my Dad now inhabits. On the plus side, he doesn't charge me rent. On the negative side, he's let the place go to hell. His way of dealing with problems is by ignoring them. The portion I live in has no heat. He's also become obsessive/compulsive about saving things...EVERYTHING! If a branch falls in the yard, he'll cut it up and put it into paper bags that he gets from the store, tapes them up and saves them to burn in the fireplace. The only problem is: me never makes fires. He does the same with sawdust, pine needles and just about anything else that's combustible. This takes up quite a bit of space. Every sliver of wood has also been set aside. He saves cardboard boxes, old pens, nails, screws, wire, and any other piece of random hardware. This takes up considerable space. I could understand it if he was a mad scientist, Mr. Fixit or amateur inventor and created stuff out of all his hoardings, but all he does is save them, and that's it! Space is at a premium in this abode and I have little of it to claim for my projects, which compounds the problem. So I dream about the day when I can move into a space of my own where garbage is disposed of instead of stashed away, and I can work on my truck.

I spend the bulk of my time planning what I'd do if I was indeed able to do this, but as times goes by, it's become an unrealistic fantasy. I spend more time watching car shows on Speed TV. On a recent volume of Hot Rod TV, they were highlighting cars from movies. The ones they gave the most lip-service to were, The '77 Pontiac Trans Am from " Smokey and the Bandit", the '57 Chevy from "Hollywood Knights", and the Mustangs from "Bullit" and "Gone In Sixty Seconds".
With the exception of "Bullit", I've seen all of these films in the theater. My mother, who was a prudish type, would read movie reviews in "Good House Keeping" magazine or some similar publication. If they didn't approve it for children, that was it, I was not allowed to view these flicks! I had to wait until "Bullit" appeared on network TV. Of the listed films, this was the least preposterous. Naturally the car chase was the highlight and that was the one where more than one car was needed to complete the filming because one car wouldn't stand up to that type of abuse unscathed. "Smokey And The Bandit" was NOT a good movie, despite its' popularity. "Hollywood Knights" was totally forgetable, and a lame imitation of "American Grafiti", the truest car film ever. " Gone in Sixty Seconds" was a total bag of shit, with very little redeeming quality to it, despite a good cast. It was a car chase with a plot loosely wrapped around it, and not a very good one at that. They did not mention the ultimate Mopar lovers' film, "Vanishing Point", but did mention the crappy TV show, " The Dukes Of Hazard". Why is it that motorheads can read and write tech articles for popular car magazines, but their taste in automotive movies is somewhere that gets wiped with toilet paper?

I was reading an article in one of the many car mags I get, and it mentioned the anniversary of "Project X" a yellow '57 Chevy that was featured in "The Hollywood Knights". I had forgotten about that movie, and I'm still scratching my head trying to recall this vehicle. Most notably, it was yellow! Hardly a manly color, but it would at least make it stick out. Yet I have zero recollection of it. Apparently the big scene was when it raced a Cobra, yet I haven't the foggiest idea of what happened. I DO remember Robert Wuhl singing " Volare" and the fake sounds of farting when he put the microphone up to his ass, that accompied it, and that's about all.

There was a sequel to "American Grafiti" that was surprisingly good, yet that seems to have dropped into the void of automotive movies. Try locating "More American Grafiti" on DVD, and see how much that's going to set you back! Car themed films are like the vehicles themselves, they're all a matter of taste...and mine is in a distinct minority!

Let's Shake

2009-09-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

As I typically do, I'm zapping back to the '80s for this title. It's from a band called, "Teenage Head" I liked the album that it came off of, but like many of my musical choices, I seem to be alone in that sentiment. The average person undoubtedly never heard of Teenage Head, let alone knows any of their tunes. Why can't any decent radio stations hire me to turn the world on to these lost gems, eh? I would think that there'd be an opportunity on Satellite Radio, but I've heard that they aren't doing so well in these tough economic times, so I'm not holding my breath. Besides, I didn't start this stem to write about Teenage Head, I'm bitching about a different trend...hand shaking.

I was told as a youngster, that you can judge a man by his handshake. Nowadays, handshakes can consist of tapping a clenched fist against another, grabbing the greeters' arm and pulling it into a shoulder butt, or just a plain old open handed slap. I think the shoulder bump is rather gay, so if I'm ever caught doing that, I grant you permission to shoot me on sight. There is a guy at work, who makes the rounds each morning and shakes everyone's hand. I have no idea why he's compelled to do this. I would think he'd be more afraid of getting swine flu by utilizing this tactic, but then again what do I know? In any case, I don't dislike the guy, he's okay by me, but I have no interest in shaking hands with him every time I see him. It's a worthless, pointless gesture. This seems to be a current trend amongst a certain ethnic crowd, typically younger members. Why, is what's puzzling me.

As I already said, I don't object to shaking hands, I'll do it when I meet somebody for the first time, if I'm saying goodbye to someone, wishing them good luck before a potentially dangerous endeavor, or if I'm congratulating them for an achievement, first child, winning an award or contest. As a greeting, I'm more inclined to simply say, " Hey, how's it going?" It's easier, there's less potential for spreading of disease and it takes less time. Time is something that man still hasn't gotten a hand on harnessing, so as I get older, I'm less interested in wasting it, especially with useless gestures.
I know girls who go around kissing everyone, 'Hello'. I like kissing girls, but only for its' erotic value, not as a way to say, " Hey, how's it going?". This also is another waste of time, motion and effort.
Could these feelings be part of the reason I'm alone so much of the time? Naturally, I don't think so, but I'm not right about anything, and mystified by everthing, so it all boils down to,
" What Do I Know?". I certainly don't know why people are such obtuse beings and hard to figure out. I'll shake your hand on that!

You've Got To Have Friends

2009-07-12T05:13:00.001-07:00

This title is stolen from an artist who got a bit of radio play in the late sixites/early seventies by thye name of Buzzy Linhardt. His biggesat break was when Bette Midler did a cover of the tune I'm using on her "Devine Miss M" album. To be perfectly honest I'd rather have used the more obscure tune from Led Zeppelin III, simply entitled, "Friends" but that would have been too easy. Led Zeppelin is more of a pivotal band in my upbringing than Buzzy Linhardt ever was, but I enjoy the obscure and ecclectic, so there's the logic ( or lack thereof) behind my choice.

I am an admitted loner. That isn't by choice, it's simply just the way things work out. I know lots of people, and I consider them friends simply because they aren't enemies, but if I was stranded at an airport at 11:55 p.m. and needed a ride, there's nobody that I'd feel comfortable calling and asking to come pick me up.

Back in the eighties, I was seeing a girl and one night we went to the movies. By some coincidence, a bunch of her friends were at the theater. The relationship was new and she asked me if I'd like to meet her friends, naturally I said, 'okay'. She introduced us and then she told me to go back and save our seats before someone else took them. When she returned to the seats, she announced that her friends thought I was cute. She then asked when she could meet my friends. I told her that my friends were the people I worked with, and she already knew them.
" You work with them, they're not your friends!" She informed me. I was stunned by that revelation. Of course she was right. I get along with my coworkers on a pretty steady basis, but once the workday ends, we'd go our separate ways and I wouldn't see them again until the following workday. It was next that she told me that I was a, "Disposable person". I laughed and thought that was a pretty efficient was to describe people that don't serve any real purpose on our planet. But she had hit the nail straight on the head, driving it ino the wood with one shot. I don't fill any needs in anybody's life except my own. I think this is why I have such a difficult time dating. I'm bland and boring, and the women that I like, are the ones that everyone likes! When a gal has a tribe of suitors all vying to conquer her ass, I fall pretty close to the bottom of the list, end of story...sort of.

I was in high school when the movie "American Graffiti" came out. I wanted to see it because it featured hot rods as a central theme. So when the group of guys I was hanging out with were talking the topic of movies came up and I mentioned that I wanted to see the new George Lucas film. On Monday when I returned to class, a bunch of my pals were talking about the weekend. In passing they let it slip that they saw "American Graffiti".
" Why didn't you tell me? You knew I wanted to see that?" I blurted out, enraged that I'd been excluded from their foray to the cinema. They kind of shrugged and blew it off. I then asked myself why I was trying so hard to hang out with people who didn't give a fart about me, and made an oath that I wouldn't bother with them anymore. After about four weekends of staying home, I decided that was even less appealing.
I'm not anti-social, I enjoy going to parties, and social events, but apparently I'm not the life of the party, or even the flickering, fading candle flame of excitement...I'm just a guy. I refuse to force myself upon people. I've known folks who did that, and they are most often secretly resented by the group they're trying too hard to fit in with. So I've learned to bite the bullet and entertain myself when the need arises. I still go to concerts from time to time, but the lack of a social interaction makes it an empty experience. I've seen some great shows, but without somebody to share it with, makes it almost the same as watching TV. So in conclusion...oh one of my favorite shows is on, I'll finish this later....

People Are Strange

2009-07-05T08:39:00.000-07:00

That title of a Doors song can be used for a lot of my rants. I never cease to be amazed at how well their music holds up over time. There have been newer bands that cover their tunes, but the one that sold the most copies, was Jose Felicano's dreadful version of "Light My Fire". It's almost on a par with horrendous version that Ike & Tina Turner did of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary". Better left forgotten. When I worked at WLIR F.M. way back in the mid 1980's, I had to edit an interview with Ray Manzarek the keyboardist for the Doors. It was prior to Oliver Stone's release of his movie about the band. I was blown away by how smart and talented this individual was. I later read some comments by Mr. Manzarek denouncing Stone and refusing to help promote the flick. Naturally I went and saw it when it came out,a nd I can see why. It made Jim Morrison into an icon and the rest of the band came across like mindless dolts, who unthinkingly just followed along with whatever Morrison did. Anyway my tirade this time isn't about the Doors, but someone very close to me...

My Father

I moved back home with my Dad and Sister after being destitiute for a while. Living alone in my apartment, where I moved when I got the job in radio for over twenty years, I amassed a considerable amolunt of useless crap. Most of it was materials that I had plans to make into something, but never got around to because I was spending a ton of time taking buses back and forth to work, and I wasn'tmaking enough money to be able to spend it on the necessary parts and equipment to launch those plans I had. When I moved, most of it went in the trash. I inherited this mentality from Dad.

Dad cannot throw anything away! At Christmas time, the grabagemen should tip HIM! My father is also negligent about maintaining things. His way of dealing with situations is to ignore them until they reach critcal mass. I'm a car freak, as I've mentioned in other posts, and I recently got another vehicle that I am anxious to customize. This will be a near impossible undertaking because there isn't an inch of spare space in the house. It is all taken up by the crap he's amassed. The garage, basement, attic and most of the rooms are overflowing with ordinary junk. He cannot throw out a box, he must save every one he gets, the yard is littered with every flower pot that ever came onto it, despite their being empty, if I attempt to get rid of them, I'll be reprimanded. To try and get rid of furniture is beyond comprehension to him. Things that get broken, are all taken to some part of the house to use valuable space. I worked at a car stereo shop in the late '80's through the mid '90's. They had a service center there,. My father's VCR had gone on the fritz so I took it in to be fixed. I was told that parts were no longer available for that model and to junk it. I passed that diagnosis along to my Dad, it's still down in the cellar. If a branch falls off a tree, he will cut up the twigs and put them into one of those wax coated cardboard milk containers and stow it away to burn in the fireplace, the problem is we had maybe a dozen fires this past winter and not one of those boxes was among the things torched. He's also got boxes of sawdust, broken light bulbs, old dead batteries, styrofoam packing, and if I suggest we get rid of them to make room or a drill press or something that has a practical value, he bites my head off. He's beyond the packrat mentality he's obsessive/compulsive. If he buys something and it's not what he wanted, he won't return it. He's as negligent about his health as he is about household maitenance. He complains about his arthritis but won't seek any medical treatment for it. He'll throw away tons of money on snake oil that's advertised on infomercials but won't seek advice from a medical specialist. I'm willing to help do some of the stuff around the house to make it easier to live here comfortably, but his attitude makes it the kind of thing one has to tiptoe around. I certainly don't have the money to get much of the work done by a professional, and the DIY method would be really hard because to move anything would make the house into a labyrinth of clutter. The only viable solution I can see, is to move out, but to find another apartment where I have a garage or a work shop is already out of my price range, so I just have to hold my breath and live with it.

Everlong

2009-07-02T03:23:00.000-07:00

Thank God for the Foo Fighters! Along with Green Day, they are keeping original Rock and Roll alive. When Dave Grohl appeared on the Howard Stern show, back when he was on terrestrial radio, they did a killer acoustic version of "Everlong". The station has since become another outlet of bland dance music, leaving New York with one less outlet for Rock and Roll music. But my admiriation for the Foo Fighters isn't what I'm bitching about today...it's shoe laces.

Back in the early nineties black youth would buy the highest sneakers available and then buy thick, brightly colored laces but only lace the boots or basketball shoes up a small part of the way, leaving a streamer of laces dangling behind them. It didn't take long before white kids copied this trend. First of all, why buy high top sneaks if you're only going to use the lower portion? You can save a large hunk of cash by purchasing the smaller athletic footwear. Now it seems that manufacturers have seen the light and automatically include oversized laces with any shoes that need to be tied. The effect, constantly stepping on the tips that lay on the ground, cracking the aglets...those sleeves over the lace tips that enable you to easily feed the lace through the eyelets. So in the event you ever have to relace te shoes, you're guaranteed to have a difficult time of it. The first thing I do whenever I purchase a new pair of boots or shoes, is to take out the laces and seek some of a more apporpriate length. Does this boost the economy? I don't think so. Is it a major conspiracy? Hardly, it's just one of those pain-in-the-ass fads that make life more of a question mark than anything else.

I am baffled that this has yet to pass it's course and become ancient history the way Nehru Jackets and Love Beads did. But I'm also still baffled that the wearing of low-slung pants that exhibit giant underwear still is trendy. Especially since the people who do it aren't hot girls, they're generally young men with big butts that nobody is interested in viewing. I am hardly a fashion maven, but I know what I like and I certainly hate having to constantly retie my shoes because the laces are too long. Am I crazy? I must be, to let something this trivial inspire me to write about it!

I Don't Wanna Be A Pinhead No More

2009-06-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

Finally! I get to use a Ramones title for one of my rants. I wasn't a big fan of the inventors of "Punk Rock" for a long time, then I kind of got the joke and realized what a creative and talented band the boys from Queens were. I've also mentioned that I worked in radio here on Long Island, New York for six years and I've got some very strong opinions about the state of this media, partially due to this experience.

When I was in High School, the band Electric Light Orchestra put out a record with a killer version of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven". It was played to death by the radio stations of the day. They pounded it into the ground with a sledgehammer. It was heard at least once an hour if you switched to different radio stations in the course of your listening time. I began to get sick of the song, and quickly learned to hate The Electric Light Orchestra, the band that preceded them, The Move and everything associated with Jeff Lynne. It's much the same with many other performers. I was in college when "Born To Run" was released. I had heard Spruce Stringbean songs from his "Welcome To Asbury Park" album, and was not knocked out by any of them. The guys in the dorm room next to me, played and screamed along with with Bruce on this irritating recording. I learned to despise the song,"Rosalita" because of the high decibel neighbors. Not long after I transferred to another college, did radio begin pounding the Bruce tunes. I soon despised, detested, abhored, and cringed at the thought of listening to this music. I blame radio for this. I do not like the music of the man titled, "The Boss". What is he the boss of??? While working at WLIR, I was dating a girl who was a fan of the Bruce, so when I heard advance notice of tickets for a show going on sale, I let her know about it.

While producing the morning show at the afore mentioned radio station, a listener who had a t-shirt business sent some "Dare To Be Different" shirts to the guy who's show I produced. One featured a picture of the Bruce with the red circle with the line trhough the center over him. Ben laughed and said, "I can't wear this, I like Bruce"
" I'll take it!" I quickly interjected, and proudly wore it until it disintegrated off my skinny body. In the middle of that summer, I broke my toe and was hobbling around on crutches when one evening my girlfriend stopped by and asked if I felt like taking a ride. Naturally I said yes. I happened to be wearing the anti-Bruce T-shirt at the time. It was only after we crossed the Throggs Neck Bridge that I began to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. We were heading towards the Meadowlands. We parked in a distant field and had to cross over several major roadways on rickety wooden bridges, the last of which at the end crews were stationed to confiscate any alcoholic beverages. It was on this bridge that I thought my life would end, because the owners of the disallowed beverages were swilling them down like condemned men on their way to the gallows, seeing my anti-bruce Tee Shirt didn't go over well, and I was pondering how fast I could move on crutches. As it turned out, The Bruce put on a very good show, if I didn't hate all the songs I would have given it a positive review. That aside, I blame radio's lack of human choice in the selection of what gets played for contributing to this feeling.

In the New York Tri-state area, rock and roll radio stations are on the endagered species list, so there aren't a lot of choices to press the buttons for when I song I dislike comes on. As of late I've been listening to WRXP, a relative newcomer to the New York radio scene. There are many aspects of this station that I like very much, and as it goes, many I don't.

The morning show host is a guy named Matt Pinfield. I had never heard of him prior to stumbling across WRXP, but he used to be on a New Jersey radio station as well as MTV and VH1. He also was some sort of high muckey muck at one or more record companies.I was awed at his musical knowledge, I used to pride myself on being a pretty well informed rock trivia hound, but he left me in the dust. In May of this year...2009 he announced that he was going to be off the air for a time to enter rehab. A gutsy move, but his announcement of this fact left me feeling much the way I feel about Spruce Stringbean. I'll try and quote him as closely as my memory will allow, but he said somehting along the lines of...
"...you'll not come across a more honest D.J. on the radio than myself..." Not too shy with the backslapping there Matt... "...and it takes some real balls to do what I'm doing..." Bullshit! That came across as self-serving and pompous. If anybody said it about him, I'd agree, but for him to announce it about himself, is nothing short of arrogant. That left me feeling that he's not as awesome as I initially thought. And I do agree that entering rehab is a positive thing and announcing it rather than just disappearing for a time, is a BIG help to any listener who may be encountering the same dilemma. It was the blowing of his own horn that left me turned off. Another feature on his show, is that he's got an iPod with twenty thousand some odd songs on it, and each weekday a listener gets to pick a number and choose a song. He always prefaces the choice by saying, " Oh, this is a really great song..." Well..."DUH!" if it wasn't a song he liked, he wouldn't have put it on his iPod. Of course I don't think every song I've heard is a great one, but that's what makes the world go around.

Another sore spot about this new radio station, is that they tout themselves as where " Classic rock, new music and alternative meet". I have no problem with that, but they play Tom Petty as if he were as infuential as the Beatles, Stones or Led Zeppelin. I hear a T.P song at least once every two hours, which is more than I heard him in the seventies and eighties combined. I like Mr. Petty, but I don't think he deserves that much airplay. It's moves like this that spark conspiracy theories. I can hear it now..." The music director is Tom Petty's wife's second cousin, and he does it so he'll get the royalty payments..."

The listeners aren't as saavy as I am, they think the jocks get to choose all their music selections, which isn't the case. I still listen because there's not much else for a die-hard rocker to tune in. Maybe I'll be able to get satellite radio in the near future. Matt Pinfield is back from rehab, and doesn't miss an opportunity to promote that he's healthy and sober. That's a good thing, but the bad thing is...he doesn't miss an opportunity to promote that he's healthy and sober. Self promotion is one of his one of his fortes. There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm no longer such an admirer of his, I don't wanna be a Pinfieldhead no more!

Matt's sidekick is a woman named Leslie Fram. She does the news reports and if the names are anything more complex than 'Smith' or 'Jones' she's destined to screw it up. Recently a woman who had octuplets was a big item to report. Her name is Nadia Suleman, her last name being a fairly common one in Asian cultures. For weeks Leslie pronounced it as "Shulman"...not quite the same thing. It's as if she heard no other, better informed reporters say the name. In local news, a young female student at John Jay college was found dead, her name was Ymette St. Guilliene. Leslie totally butchered this name as well. One day she was reporting a story about men ogling women, and she pronouced it, "ooogling". This confirmed my suspicions, Leslie is stupid.

Another strike against Matt is, a news story was big on Long Island for a while, about a couple goign through a divorce. The husband had donated a kidney to his wife and he was demanding it back. There's plenty of room for humor in the story, but every account that I read, indicated that the husband was a control freak, and overly jealous and suspisious of his wife. Matt made the statement, " You know that she's got some blame in this as well, I think she's equally at fault...". This came across as very misogynistic to my ears. Matt is trying too hard to be controversial, and he can't pull it off. Howard Stern is a master of this type of radio, and Matt Pinfield is NO Howard Stern! He qualifies his staements, to remain 'Politcally Correct', yet if you want to be outrageous, you cannot do that, you have to pick a side and stay with it. This reinforces his lameness. 'Pinfield Justice' is third rate radio, best left to morning zoos.

Along with the fact that he's clean and sober, now the morning show has a title. It's " The Rock Show" I wonder how many sleepless nights were spent coming up with THAT original gem? Like the rest of the shows on the station aren't rock shows. Duhhhhh. As far as I'm concerned, this only makes the show sound even more forced and bogus. It's a meaningless title, like "Morning Zoo". I associate dumb names like with with those hokey, wacky morning D.J's who pull all kinds of moronic pranks that appeal to sophomoric humor.I don't know, I was really impressed with this tripe when I first started listening, but familiarity breeds contempt, and it's growing on me like mold on moist bread. The morning shoe on WRXP could be a real kick-ass presentation but instead it's devolving into the typical radio crap-ola. That makes me sad.

It;s early December 2009 and I'm adding this as another example of how the Pinhead is making me despise listening to him in the mornings. It seems that the golf legend "Tiger" Wooods has been playing his balls on a lot of different courses. Severalof which he isn't married to...if you get my drift. This came to light when he smashed up his car just outside his property and crashed into a fire hydrant and then a neighbors' tree. It was after 2:00 in the morning and there were rumors to the effect that his wife and he were going at it over an infidelity issue. Tiger declined to speak with police who tried to question him about what went on. This was dumb move #1. It truly made it look as if he was hiding something. Had the incident only taken place on his property, he'd have been well within his rights to refuse to talk to thelaw...but it didn't. Next the news media began bandyingabout the name of a New York socialite, Rachel Uchitel as his mistress. I've never heard of her beofre, seen no articles descibing them as being spotted together in public or anyting else for that matter. She hired the high priced lawyer Gloria Alred. When this was reported on WRXP, by the inept newsperson Leslie Fram, Matt Pinhead immediately responded by saying...and this is a direct quote..." She's obviously lying!"
Why? It is common for people in the public eye to hire a lawyer if the neighbors' dog farts in their yard, so if she's being accused of something that she hasn't done, hiring a lawyer to get it stopped isn't much of a stretch. Pigfield gave no basis to explain why he thought she was lying, which only makes him look even more misogynistic. After that statement, a waitress came out with cell phone messages that she saved, that have Tigers' voice telling her that his wife found his phone records and she should delete her voicemail message so not to give away who has reached that number. Several other girlies have tried to sell their stories to tabloids, so Tiger isn't the gentleman he has been painted to be, but I still see no reason to call Ms. Uchitel a liar.

Two concerts are being held by the radio station and they are both billed as, Matt Pinfield's Holiday Extravaganzas. To me this casts him as a shoboat, craving attention. Why isn't it the WRXP Holiday Extravaganza? The seems more unified to me. Oh well, I never considered myself to be a very diplomatic person, but I'm Dag Hammerskjold compared to Piinfield! I actually bought tickets to the second show and now it's been announced that he'll be accompanying a special guest group doing their offbeat Christmas song. I've heard him do this on the air last year and I think that will be the ideal time to go to the bar or the bathroom!

Insurance Adjuster

2009-02-28T07:58:00.000-08:00

When I post these mental farts, I generally have a song picked out of my head from my personal musical knowledge. Not this time, I actually had to hunt for an appropriate tune, and I came across a beauty. "Insurance Adjuster" is by the Brass Kings, a band I know absolutely nothing about, but I sampled the tune and liked it...a lot! I'll have to delve deeper into this musical combo and see what other gems they have created...but that's not what I'm writing about...this rant is about....

ADVERTISING. Ever since I can remember, the Insurance Company GEICO has been the lower cost choice for young drivers. It wasn't until post 9/11 that I have any recollection of them advertsing on the tube. I know lots of guys in the autobody business and they all hated dealing with Geico, so I never employed their services, but I do know people who did and when an accident occured, they weren't thrilled with the response to the needs that arose. Maybe things have changed, I don't know. What I DO know is: The somewhat clever commercials with the,
" It's so easy, a caveman can do it " theme have run their course and have been replaced by some seriously annoying, irritating ads that...to put it bluntly, Suck!

The Geico Gecko is a stupid choice for an icon. I don't know a single person who is enamored with this creature. Most would love to see it run over by an eighteen wheeler than to take it's advice for insurance needs. Why they chose to give it a British accent is even more curious. Here in this depressed economy, when our new President is trying to inspire American Know-how and the can-do-it attitude, I'd certainly shy away from a lizard with a foreign accent when making a choice about any product or service!!! So I get the impression that I'm not alone in this thinking. Whenever a Geico ad comes on, I hit the remote so fast, it would make Hank Aaron's head spin.

An even more obnoxious campaign has now supplemented the grating gecko, a stack of money that has eyeballs. Moronic people want to know what it is, and patient person explains that they are being observed by the money they could save if they used Geico. The DUH Factor is so high that I'd love to see Geico go the way of AIG and other insurance giants, simply because I detest their advertising. I certainly wouldn't trust them with MY money. Really, if they cannot see that their advertising is pathetic, what other bad decisions are they making???

Favorite shirt

2009-02-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

As always, I name my blogs after songs. Although Haircut 100 had a big hit with the tune, "Favorite Shirt", it's hardly one of my faves. It falls into the "disposable music" category, like much of the stuff that came out in the mid '80's. If you like to dance it's hardly a horrible song, it falls right in the middle. If I never heard it again, I wouldn't even think about it, yet if it shows up in a TV commercial, I won't turn away because I despise it so much, unlike the Wal-Mart ad that has a family singing the Goddawful " We Will Rock You" while preparing for their Superbowl celebration. But I'm not here to whine about Haircut 100, I'm here to bitch about.................shirts.

I consider myslef to be a 'grassroots" kind of guy. I like wearing jeans, sneakers and T-shirts, When the weather cools down, I switch to western cut shirts because they are the few garments that are cut well for aenemically skinny guys such as myself. I will NEVER understand why so many people wear Polo shirts!!! They are heavier than tees, they look dreadful with anything emblazoned on them, opposite of the way Tees look T-rriffic featuring logos, sayings, silk screening, airbrushing, etc. Polos are made of heavier material, making them less comfortable in hot weather and worst of all, they have that idiotic looking collar on them! Nobody is going to wear a neck tie on one of those eye sores, so why burden the manufacturer or the wearer with it? The other dumbo style flaw is, they have three buttons at the neck, yet you still have to pull them over your head to take them on or off. I think if you're going to pull on a shirt, then there is no call for buttons. If you are going to button a shirt...button it all the way! This gives you the freedom to remove it without mussing your 'Do', or opening it to allow air in and sweat to dry. What Polo shirt can make that distinction? Yet these ugly coverings never seem to go out of style. Who is perpetuating this faux-pas? Even more pressing, why? Don't these people ever stop to think how much more comfortable they'd be if the left the designer names to the designers? In the process, they'd be saving themselves a bunch of moolah! Come on people, stop and think about what you're wearing, other people have to look at you!

White Sugar

2009-01-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

Hahaha. I'm stealing this title from Peter Frampton. In the late '60's or maybe the early '70's Frampton was the guitarist of a supergroup known as Humble Pie. The lead singer, Steve Marriott was with The Small Faces and was replaced by a guy called Rod Stewart. They put out a bunch of really great albums and Frampton left in the mid '70s to pursue solo efforts ( I'd say he was successful at it). His first solo LP contained a song titled "White Sugar". About the time it was released, I had been hospitalized and diagnosed with Diabetes Melitus. Now it's known as Type 1 Diabetes, because now an overwhelming amount of people are coming down with a variation known as...Type 2 Diabetes ( Wow! What a stretch) This is a disease where the islets in the pancreas are usually killed off by the immune system and the person no longer produces insulin, a hormone that converts sugar and carbohydrates into energy. The body will then burn fat for energy which produces ketones as a side effect, which poison the body and cause all sorts of harmful problems. Type II diabetes is usually due to the person being overweight and not being able to process the sugars 100%. Many times the effects are not noticeable until after the disease has a serious grip on the owner and cannot be undone, however most people can cause a remission of these effects simply by losing weight and maintaining a healthy diet. I sat in on a Diabetes seminar where I was the only one with Type 1. I got really angry listening to the Overweight and obese Type 2's moaning about how they couldn't avoid sweets, cakes, pies, candies or do simple exercises to help control the condition. I'm five feet eight inches tall and top the scales at one hundred and twenty nine pounds. I'm hungry all the time, and have to prick my fingers a half dozen times a day to find out what my blood sugar count is, and these whiners are moaning because they can't do without their cupcakes? Gee life IS tough! But that's not what I'm writing about...the real subject is....

PANCAKES. I absolutely adore pancakes! I make them whenever time permits. I've whipped up all sorts of varieties of these wonderous delights. Blueberries are my favorites, but I've also made apple/walnut, sunflower seed/oatmeal, cranberry ginger and lately...Corn fritters. This is a southern dish usually fixed during the summer when corn is sweet right off the stalk, but it can be made year round with frozen or canned corn as well. I found a recipe on the internet and modified it to suit my tastes. I am reminded of this because every January the International House Of Pancakes IHOP has an "All You Can Eat" pancake special. I have boasted that I could eat twenty pancakes and have tried on numerous occaisions to do so, but always fell just shy of the goal. Today I gorged myself and finished about eighteen of the flapjacks before I reached terminal fullness. Not bad for a skinny guy, but hardly Guiness world record material. In any case, here's my recipe for the corn delights...a true chef will modify it to fit his/her tastes as I did...P.S.I ditched work the day I bought my latest vehicle, and managed to gorge down twenty two pancakes before heading off to the DMV...hahahahaaaaaaa........

INGREDIENTS ( this is for one person, double or triple if you are entertaining guests)
1 cup flour- I use self rising flour which makes them a bit fluffier, if this isn't your thing, regular flour is the way to go.
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup Splenda ( 1/8 cup if you use real sugar)
1 egg equivalent in egg substitute
1/2 cup 1% milk
1/4 cup corn meal
3/4 cup frozen corn
1 capful vanilla extract

Cover a griddle with canola oil and lay it on fairly heavily, like they do when making funnel cakes, but don't put it right up to the edge, because when you flip the cakes, it'll make one hell of a mess! Heat the oil and while it's getting hot, add all the dry ingredients together and mix well. Once the goodies are mixed, add the egg and milk and mix well, until all the batter is smooth, add extra milk if it's too gooey. Once it's easy to stir add the vanilla extract. Put the griddle at a low-medium flame and add the corn to the batter. Now add the batter to the griddle, this has to be done fairly quickly, since it's a sort of deep frying, and if you take too long it will create some bizzarre shapes and become difficult to flip. If the flame is just right, the cakes take about three to five minutes per side to get done, check to see from time to time. I perfer mine on the light side, but some like their's dark. It's a matter of taste. Flip them over and let the other side get done and slide them onto a plate. Since I cannot use sugar I simply slather them with trans fat free spread, but you can use powdered sugar, syrup, jelly or whatever condiments you top your hotcakes with, it's all good.

Of course after eating these culinary delights, I must take an industrial sized dose of insulin to counteract the high carbohydrate intake, but what the hell, you only live once. After listening to all those type 2's whine about what they can't do without, I have to satisfy my own vices. As the verse in the song s says...

" White sugar, evil as the day you were born..."

You Talk Too Much

2008-11-08T07:53:00.000-08:00

George Thorogood is not especially known for writing original tunes. The bulk of his work consists of remakes of existing music, so I'm not sure if this topic is based on a Thorogood original or a version of his interpretation of somebody else's work. I always liked Mr. Delaware Destroyers' music, but I'll concede he lacks originality...but that's not what I'm bitching about today, no my beef is with....

EVERYBODY who yaks incessantly on their cell phones, simply because...they can. In New York, there's a ban on making cell calls while driving unless you use a hand's free mic, yet day in and day out I see hundreds of ignorant boobs with one hand on the wheel and the other plastered to the side of their head gabbing about the idiocies of their lives. I travel by bus and the moronic conversations I overhear are beyond inane, the people are gabbing simply because they can. I have to wonder what the parties on the opposing ends of these one-sided conversations think about the dull tales that flow out of the mouths of these doofuses.

Last week I had to pick up a prescription at Wal Mart. The branch I go to has very narrow aisles, so navigating them is a real headache, especially if you're pushing a shopping cart. yet many are plugged and clogged with dimwits who are so busy blabbing into their phones they don't realize what problems they're causing. The worst area is where the check-out lines abut the aisles with merchandise. A couple of young gals were waiting to approach the cashier and were way out in the main aisle, I asked if they could move up to make it easier to pass by. One turned and sneered down her nose at me and then proceded to blather on the phone about Daniella's gym outfit. I truly wanted to kick her fat-ass up the line a few feet, but since I can't afford an assault charge, I was left to manever around her immense portruding buttocks. What is it about cell phones that everybody who owns one feels that they must use it 24/7/365? I can understand the CEO of General Motors having to make important phone calls in the course of his day, but the schmoes that I encounter on a daily basis are just killing time by flapping their gums. This would be an appropriate time for a busy signal! If you've got an opinion on this, don't call, e-mail me and let me know what you think. Sigh....

Madness

2008-10-18T08:32:00.000-07:00

Harkening back to the 1980's, this title is one of those Rock 'N' Roll songs that can be used in the trivia question: What bands also have songs that are the same as their names? During the "new wave" blitz of the early '80's a band called Madness, had a song called Madness. It was more of a Ska tune than a real rocker, but I'll stretch things when they're convenient to my goals.

Being that I'm destitute, I started watching the cable channel AMC once I had to ditch the premium channels due to lack of income. I kept seeing promos for the original series, "Mad Men" not about lunatics, but the advertising forces on Madison Avenue, ( Greg Kihn's "Madison Avenue Man", is probably a better title for this one, but then I'd have to lose the trivia question connection, this will pop up later!) during the heyday of television. It starts in the 1950s and works it's way up to the Psychedellic '60s. This fits my interest in pop culture, since I was born in '55 and lived through much of what I was viewing. I kept intending to watch, but never did. The first season passed me by. I began reading all kinds of rave reviews of it, and seeing letters from fans asking when the new season would start, so I began watching the new season of "Mad Men" in September of '08.

On the 'plus' side, the acting is very good, and they've got the look down pat. I think of all the shows I watched as a kid and how the commercials still stick out in my mind. They were vivid, they had orignal jingles, animation and humor, television advertising was a new frontier and it was being conquered like Hannibal crossing the Alps. So why am I writing this?? because I have watched the entire second season and I'm still waiting for something to happen. The show is bo-ring, there's no suspense, it's too much like real life! I've never seen an episode where I am left on the edge of my seat thinking, " I can't wait until next week!" If I miss an episode, I don't feel compelled to watch the repeat to get 'up to date'. The entire first season was rerun during one of the holiday weekends and I couldn't force myself to sit and watch what I'd missed for openers. Why are people so in love with this show? It got several Emmy nominations.

I understand that everybody has different tastes, but maybe I'm emotionally deprived or something, because I just watch each week and end up thinking, "eh, so what?" when it's over. I'd much prefer to see the inside deals and creative wrangling of the team creating the advertising campaigns, than their dirty laundry and the lives they live as an aside to their job. I certainly don't see the comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock movies. Maybe I need some mental conditioning to make me see it their way. People's lives have a dark side no matter what their occupation is, so any job could be made into a television show, just look at " The Office". I find the humor in that sit-com disturbing, despite being mildly amusing.

The bands who's names are also song titles are: Madness-Madness, Talk Talk-Talk Talk, Black Sabbath-Black Sabbath, Bad Company-Bad Company, and...damn there's one other that I cannot think of at the moment and it'll drive me nuts from now until the next time I can get to a computer to update this column. It sucks getting old!

21st Century Digital Boy

2008-08-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

I swiped this title from Bad Religion. I really like this band, and I've often commented on how much they sound like Pennywise. I don't know if they're still together or if they broke up and members of that band are in Pennywise. But that's not why I'm writing this. On February 19th 2009, our television systems will switch from analog to digital transmissions. I LIKE technology, I think it's ultra-kool! Many adults, are not in acceptance to change, and whine about it, but it's going to happen whether we like it or not, so it doesn't pay to get angry about it. The thing that totally bugs the hell out of me, is that our politicians don't make any plans for the ecological removal of old technology.

For years I've heard how batteries were the scourge of the landfill. They contain heavy metals, acids and make a nice toxic brew when they decompose. In the late 1980's or the early 1990's New York had some sort of ordinance that any vendor that sold batteries, was supposed to take the dead ones to be recycled. This was at the height of the Walkman/Discman era, when every schmoe had a personal music system that ran on energy cells. I would see people replacing them and tossing the old ones down the storm drains. Yeah, that's a "green" solution to the problem! On several occaisions I tried to turn in dead batteries, and most vendors got around it by saying that I had to have proof that I bought them at their store. Who does that? Many new electronics come with batteries included. When I bought my TV, the remote had Toshiba batteries in it. Naturally, they didn't last forever and I had to put in some Duracells. Now, where does one go to return Toshiba batteries? I've never seen them in any stores. Now I just put them in the trash because I have no clue as to how to responsibly dispose of these power systems.

So pretty soon, the United States will be awash with old analog TVs. I saw an item on a local news show about a homeless guy in Southern California, who would find old electronic gizmos in the trash, and he'd recycle them because many used precious metals on the circuit boards. He did this to sustain himself, but then he discovered that the computer ships were worth more than the metals. He started a business selling them to China and he's no longer homeless and the subject of a modern Rags To Riches story. The problem is, when I try to find places to take my old electronica, there aren't any on Long Island. People aren't 100% against recycling, it's just that we're so overloaded that every task has to be EASY. If all communities had a week every month where recyclers of electronics came around and picked up trashed computers, televisions, radios, stereos, etc., they'd do it! But These things take up space, and too often we need that space to make room for the new era of entertainment. If the recyclers only came twice a year, nobody would bother to keep the old Maganvox aside until they did, instead it'd end up in the landfill, the one thing we're trying to avoid. Putting aside the electronic junk for a few weeks is doable, and I personally would like to see that happen, if nobody else is willing, maybe I'll have to take it upon myself to start this trend. Maybe I'll become the next Rags To Riches story....nahhhh...life never works out that way!

Last Night I Wrote A Letter

2008-08-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

As always, I start my bitching with a title of a song that has particular significance to me or my situation. Sometimes I really struggle to find something apropos. This time it's the complete opposite, I have a bunch and am wondering which is the best choice. My first instinct was "Mr. Postman" by The Beatles. I Llike the song and I like the Beatles, but I'm more inclined to go for the obscure. Next was the 1960's classic by The Boxtops, "The Letter", but then I remmeber the godawful version that Joe Cocker did, and nixed that one. I then recalled a band called, Starz, one of my faves from the early 1980's. It fits as well as the others and it gives me a chance to expose a lesser known rock entity to anyone who reads this drivel. So let's get to what's bothering me today....

As a loner, I enjoy getting mail, it gives me the illusion that I somehow fit into this universe. Since I don't have friends or acquaintences who regularly write me , I order lots of stuff so I get packages, the "Every Day Is Christmas" syndrome. I suffer from it badly. I have an amigo who lives in Georgia, and when I closed down the business I was running, I had a ton of binoculars left over. I decided to mail a couple of pair to my buddy and his wife. I also enclosed a program from the 2008 Belmont Stakes and a couple of Triple Crown baseball caps. I boxed them up and took them to my post office and mailed them out. Like everything else, shipping has gone up, but it was still within my price range and I let it go at that.

Weeks went by and I hadn't heard from my friend. He frequently is out-of-town for long periods, so I e-mailed him and asked if he'd gotten the package. The answer was NO. I took my receipt and went to the Post Office and asked if there was any recourse to find out where the package went? The answer was NO. In order to do that, one has to pay extra to have tracking, or a return receipt, or any other number of methods to keep tabs on the mail. But since the Post office's job is to deliver mail, a part of the job should be, to make sure it gets where it's destined to go. If I had a kid come to my door and ask if I'd like to have my lawn mowed for twenty dollars a week, I might think, "That's a good deal, with the price of gas and the time it takes" So I might take the offer, then if the kid added,
"And for an extra twenty dollars, I'll ensure that the job gets done" I would think twice.

If I'm paying somebody to do a job, then I expect that the job will be done, it's like a contract. The U.S. Postal Service is taking MY package, and I'm paying them to get it from Point A to Point B, it becomes their responsibility to do that. I shouldn't have to pay extra to make sure that they do.

I have sent tons of useless items to people all over, and they generally seem to get where they're intended. The time I send something valuable and irreplaceable, that's when the Postal Service loses it? I'm not sure I'm buying that line. If you live in Georgia and spot your local postman checking out the scenery with a pair of Selsi Binoculars while wearing a maroon Triple Crown hat, I'd be leery of relying on him to deliver your packages!!!

LOW

2008-08-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

As always, I try to find a rock 'n' roll song title to use to start my blogs. This isn't always easy, so some times it's really a stretch to get the title and my complaints to coincide. The first song that came to mind when I was composing this blog in my head was, " Low Rider" by Eric Burdon and War. The only thing is...I despise that song, I don't even consider it rock and roll. The next one was "Lowdown" by Boz Skaggs. Although it's not as grating as "Lowrider", it is a song that will never appear in my music collection, in any way, shape or form. Wracking my brain for something more appropriate, it came to me in a flash. The whole "Keep It Simple, Stupid" ethic arose and the song "Low" by Cracker fit perfectly. Cracker is a band that came out in the Grunge era, so I associate them with The Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Bush, and that ilk. But I'm not writing about Cracker, I'm writing about....PANTS.

I have mentioned on numerous occasions that I am unusually thin for a person my age. Being thin is a mixed blessing. I am turned off by fatties. I know it's not politcally correct, but it's also not attractive or healthy to be hauling around a ton of excess blubber on your body. Yet I find it rarer and rarer to see thin gals walking around. A demi-tee, cut off just below the breasts is a good look for Daisy Dukes, but it doesn't have much appeal if it's accompanied by a roll of flesh the size of a pool float just above the waistline. But being that this is a Capitalist Society, manufacturers see that people are growing widthwise as well as heightwise, and they're making clothes to cater to that crowd. My dilemma is: that I can no longer find clothes designed to fit me comfortably, since I seem to be the only adult male with a 28 inch waist. I've got Levis corduroys from when I was in high school, that still fit me. I certainly can't wear them to any event where looking decent is a concern, but it's nice to know that I haven't porked-up the way the rest of the country has. Much of this is due to the Capitalists trying to be up on the latest trends in fashion, and that is dictated by...(gasp)...adolescents. That's right, our bratty teenaged offspring are who decides what gets mass produced and what doesn't. It will always be, that kids will go out of their way to look differently than their parents, for the simple reason...parent's are majorly uncool. Form and function have little bearing on the trends in teens' garb. They want to look radical, so a bunch of egg-headed parents, see what's being worn and then set up the process of mass marketing this look, so all high schools and colleges are festooned with thousands and thousands of individuals trying to look different by buying the stuff their hip friends wear. Talk about a viscious circle! But face it, do you know of any teenagers who are so innovative that they'd take the time to make their own clothes? RIGHT.

Getting back to my problem, I was skimming the internet trying to find somebody that manufactures pants cut for thin people and I discoverd that Levi Strauss now makes a new number code for their jeans series. I recall how badly the 505 with the button fly flopped. But in any case I ordered a pair and waited for them to arrive wondering if this was the answer to my dilemma. The jeans do indeed fit, but they don't fit well. The problem being...that they are the style popularly known as "low rise". Low rise jeans look great on females, they have wider hips and nicer butts than males...or they used to, now it's a toss-up. And because females are anatomically different from males, the low slung jeans aren't a problem for them, because when "mother nature" calls, they simply have to lower the jeans to go about their business. Males, on the other hand have been known to just "whip it out" and go where ever they happen to be when their bladders get to the point of exploding.

Since low rise jeans don't go up as high on the torso, they have less material between the crotch and the waistband. That translates to mean a shorter zipper. And that means when it's time to "leak the lizard" that it's harder to fish it out of the layers of underwear through the smaller opening. Hypothetically speaking, try to imagine this: you're having a barbecue and have the grille fired up and the guests are starting to arrive. You grab the package of a dozen hot dogs from the fridge and try to open the sealed plastic wrapper. You can't tear it, so you try biting off a piece to start a rip, and that fails. You search frantically for scissors but cannot locate any. In a final act of desperation, you grab the pen out of your back pocket and poke a hole into the seemingly impregnable plastic barrier. You eventually get an opening the size of your finger in the packet and you then try and worm the hot dogs out of it. The hole isn't expanding and your fingers are tearing the hot dogs to flecks of micro-sized, meaty dandruff. That's what it's like trying to urinate while wearing low-risers.

I'm sure there are some people out there who'll say, "Why don't you just undo the top of the jeans and lower them?". My response is, for one, that I wear my cell phone clipped to my belt and the weight of it is enough to cause it to slide off and fall to the floor, and I certainly don't want my phone swimming on the urine soaked floor of a public mens' room. And secondly, I find it very freakish to walk into a public lav to see guys standing at the urinals with their pants around their calves and their hairy, fat asses greeting me as I walk in. You see these people who do this are the types that wear sweat pants, not because they're avid sports fantics or in the middle of an intense work-out, they're middle aged blobs who can't be bothered to find clothes that fit them correctly. Stretch waist bands are a godsend for the lazy, couch potatoes our nation has evolved into. I don't enjoy that sight, so I don't want to present that scenario to anyone else!
Besides, I don't have a nice ass, it's flat and skinny, like a purple neon sign that says, " Sorry girls, nothing good for you here!"

Don't want to be alone

2008-07-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

This is a title from an album that came out when I was still in High School. When existing members of successful bands got together, the media deemed them..."Supergroups". BBA was a supergroup that featured Jeff Beck of "The Yardbirds" fame, plus Tim Bogert, and Carmine Appice who served in "Vanilla Fudge" and "Cactus". Not only were they a "Supergroup", but a "Power Trio" as well. I'm partial to power trios. There are bands with a lot of members, like The Allman Brothers, and despite the talent level of the individual members, when you've got a big band, the amount of sound will make up for any lack of talent that may exist. Many of the disco bands of the late '70's and early '80's suffered from this problem. But that's not what I'm writing about...as usual...I'm whining about my own little world.

I'm one of those characters that just doesn't seem to fit in anywhere. I get along with my cohorts, co-workers, co-inhabitants and any other co's that exist. But I seldom get close to any of them. This makes dating a real problem. I once had a friend tell me over the phone, that the personal column in the local newspaper was hysterical. At the time I worked as the producer of a morning radio show, this also made me the main comedy writer. One of the early lessons I learned was: take material from any place you can get it! The personal columns ended up as fodder for much of what I wrote. The problem was, the more I looked at them, the more I began to think, " Hmmm, she sounds like MY type of girl..." And I foolishly began to respond to them. At the time, computers weren't widely used, so you had to enclose a photograph and send your replies to a P.O. box. This was to keep stalkers and axe murderers from having easy access to the women folk who posted ads looking for Prince Charming.
After sending out dozens of witty replies, and getting no responses from any. I began to get desperate, and I'd add tag lines saying that I understood if I wasn't their idea of the perfect mate, but I'd appreciate it if they returned my photograph. This is a key point, because I don't photograph well, and since I'm always alone, I have nobody to take any pcitures of me. I would go through my archives of snapshots and find one that was flattering, and get a dozen copies of it. After sending them all out, I'd head back to the local 24hr Photo ( this was the '80's if you recall) and order a dozen more. After doing this more times than I'd like to remember, I had still gotten no responses. If these women didn't want to date me, I can understand that, but why would they want my picture??? I began inserting self-addressed, stamped envelopes in my and asking for my pictures to be returned. After all of that I finally got ONE back. It had a note enclosed with it, beginning with..." You sound like a nice guy, but...". The word "but" is crucial here, because after it you can roll out a scroll of faults and it absolves the writer of being predjudiced. It continued, "...I'm six feet tall, and I don't want to date anybody who's shorter than I am". A reasonable clause in the unwritten rules of dating. It was then that I decided, rather than answer the ads that were placed by desperate women, most of whom I'm assuming aren't all that good looking, otherwise they wouldn't need to run ads in the paper, I'd place my own ad. In this I took a page from the only person who retunred my photo and added a caveat. I said that I'm skinny and preferred that I date women who weigh less than I do. BIG MISTAKE!
In this world of battling obesity, the only women who weight less than I do are either, A) in a chemo ward. B) pre-schoolers. C) Already taken. Leaving me to sift through the crumbs once again.
On a program I saw on The History Channel, it said that 120 pounds was the trigger for women to hit puberty. With the Thickening Of America running wild, that means that women are reaching puberty in the pre-natal stages. Can you picture the doctor informing a lady who's just spent her summer giving birth, " Congratulations, you've got a healthy, one hundred and twenty two pound, baby girl! And boy...has she got a rack on her!" Kids are being born with boobs and pubes, and they develop into a disaster area of overweight problems. So the odds of me finding a cute, slim, thin, svelte, slender, trim, skinny-assed gal are looking astronomical. Add to it that I'm not getting any younger, handsomer, or wealthier and it's not likely that I'll find the girl of my dreams. Yet, I still keep on looking. What's wrong with me?

Undercover

2008-06-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

This title is one I pinched from the Rolling Stones in their post "Some Girls" phase. It is no secret that many bands do versions of other people's songs...some seem to rely on that as the sole source for their material. These are most often called "Covers".

I am convinced that if Jimi Hendrix had never done a cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower", that song would only be a small footnote in rock and roll history, but his interpretation has jettisoned it into the stratosphere of rock classics, and as a result, a ton of other people have done covers of that tune. His ears picked out things that don't exist in the original version, and has helped create a rock icon. Everyone from U2, to Dave Mason have done versions all leaning towards the Hendrix style of playing that one song. I think Bob Dylan owes Jimi BIG TIME! I sure as hell would not have considered doing a cover version of that song had I only heard the Dylan disc being played on the radio...but let's face it, the Bob Dylan version didn't get a whole lot of radio airplay because it was long and monotonous. Hendrix created a monster, and now some forty years later, it's still huge and assautling everything and everyone with a dynamic that simply did not exist in the original tune. Thanks Jimi, it certainly was worth it!!!

Radio Silence

2008-06-18T06:41:00.001-07:00

This title is stolen from an R.E.M early work, which in turn is a term used during wartime for a period when communications are shut down to avoid tipping off the enemy of activity planned against them. More and more I find myself reminisicing about my short radio career. I hate to sound like a braggart, but I was good at my job, and it never ceases to baffle me as to why I was unable to get a gig at another radio station. I was hungry and would have busted my balls to make WLIR regret ever letting me go, but apparently that wasn't enough. There's a new radio station in town and I've been tuning them in more and more, partially because they play some of the stuff I used to dish-out, but also just because there's still a part of me that says, " I should be working there!"

If you are from the tri-state area, the new station is WRXP 101.9...New York's Rock Experience. What gets me even more miffed is: there's a guy working there who also worked at WLIR when I was being phased out. I never met him or heard hisshows,but the word in the hallways was: He was completely un-hip and one of the other workers did a pretty good impression of him that really cracked me up. I was always at the station at odd times, so our paths never crossed but he went on to work at the radio station my mother listened to, which in my way of looking at things, meant...he was in it only as a job, not for the passion of the music. Or maybe he was passionate about a lot of different types of music, it's hard for me to say. He used to announce the records and mispronounce the artists names, referring to David Bowie as David Booey and other similar blunders...he's got a gig at the new station in town and I'm, sitting here with six broken ribs typing and trying to keep myself from coughing up a lung.

We've heard the old expression, " It only hurts when I breathe", well having broken ribs is like that, except it hurts all other times as well. I had a trailer run over my right side, so that is where all my ribs got broken and a small puncture in the right lung. Like most people, I'm right handed so that makes everything a painful effort. Sleeping is the worst because it's something that allows me to escape from the doldrums of my now boring existence. To avoid the pressure on my right lung, I have to sleep with my back perpendicular to the ground, which isn't easy. Complicating matters, my right knee took a nasty shot as well, so I cannot bend it easily and that makes it really tough to find a way to get a restful, comfortable sleep. I have a prescription for pain meds, but they aren't especially effective, long-acting, or plentiful, so I've been taking only half as much as I need to avoid having them won't run out too fast. The drug is Oxycodone, the stuff that the fat slob Rush Limbaugh was hooked on. Why that loudmouth got hooked on this crap is a mystery to me, it isn't at all euphoric, or enjoyable. But one man's poison is another's passion. I'm rambling again, so it's time for me to stuff my beaten tail between my legs and hobble off to my next dosing of meds...I wonder if they make you take a drug test at WRXP?.....

Superman

2008-05-10T07:33:00.001-07:00

Now I'm really dropping down on the calendar to steal song names, this goes back to the seventies, from a song by The Kinks. As a youth, I would read the superhero comix, but I wasn't a die-hard fan of them. I liked the war comix much more. I read them until the covers disintegrated and the pages were dog-earred and torn. One day, my mother decided to go through the collection of comics that my brother and sisters had amassed, and she threw away the ones that were ratty...the ones we read the most. She saved stuff like the Archie comics, Betty & Veronica and the ones we'd read once and didn't like, so they remained in pristine condition. Superheroes translate well into motion pictures, sales-wise and script-wise. The Christopher Reeve Superman series started out well and quickly slid into the typical Hollywood overkill syndrome. Then in the '90's the Tim Burton Batman series began, and boy did I HATE them. Michael Keaton was a terrible B-man, but the series made a ton of money so they kept it alive. Burton's second effort was even more dreadful, then he gave it up and Val Kilmer played the Dark Knight or the Flying Fox or whatever other catchy title you want to call Batman. He was a better representation of the crime fighter, but the script of the movie he starred in was so pathetically bad that nothing could save it. George Clooney was his replacement but I never bothered to watch after the first three abortions. This past week, the movie " Ironman" came out. It's gotten primo reviews, but then again so did the Batman flicks and you just read what I thought of them, so I'll have to wait before making any assessment of the nature of the movie. Black Sabbath has a song with the same title, and from the lyrics I cannot tell if it's based on the comics or not, since I never read Ironman, but using that would have been too easy, so the Kinks are the next best thing.

Also released this week is a television cartoon that was one of the first Japanese Anime styles I ever saw, I hated the artwork, the animation and the characters. The plots were beyond lame and yet the movie, "Speed Racer" is getting high reviews. I don't care if Sir Alec Guiness was in it, I still wouldn't spend any of my money on that crap. The first Anime I ever watched was a shitty cartoon called "Astroboy". It was equally lame as SpeedRacer and drawn in the same style and animated in the same choppy, inaccurate motion as "SpeedRacer". I tend to lump them into the same category. The best animation was the Warner Brothers, Bugs Bunny and those characters along with Walt Disney's movies, there was true artistry in the way they were produced and looked when completed. Speedracer did not have either of those qualities.

Change is not easy to accept, and I find myself torn between trying to get over my childhood dislikes and see if the movie is as good as they claim, or if I'd hate it as much as I despised the Batman flicks. I DO want to see the Ironman movie simply because it's based on one of OUR superheroes, not some import from Asia, but that's being stupid too. As I already said, change is not always easy and I'm wondering if I'll have an easy time liking Ironman or Speedracer, or if I'll stick to my crotchety old ways and wish I'd spent my money on something more lasting, like an ice cream sundae?

Picture This

2008-04-30T07:20:00.001-07:00

Harkening back to the 1970's I swiped this title from one of my favorite bands, BLONDIE. They came out of New York and put out a bunch of really FUN albums. Once they moved itno the 1980's they became commercially successful and the music became less spontaneous. But that's not the point of this topic, it's the subject of pictures. There are all kinds ofg expressions, like a picture being worth a thousand words, or a Kodak memory is lasting, well this scandal probably isn't, so I'd better get it written right now!...

Miley Cyrus. That for those who are living in a vacuum, is the real name of the Disney Channel's teen sensation, Hannah Montana ( no relation to football legend Joe). Miley or is it spelled Mylie(?) appeared in the June issue of Vanity Fair in some revelaing photos taken by the acclaimed shutterbug, Annie Leibovitz. Hanna/Miley appeared on the cover with a bed sheet clutched to her chest, her hair covering her back and the photo is taken from an angle where the most skin you see is on her shoulders and uncovered side. Back in the vacuous '80's her father, Billy Ray Cyrus had a Country/Western hit with " Achey Breaky Heart". She is now fifteen years old and had a sold out tour in 2007. The tickets went for exhorbitant prices and parents were going bugnuts trying to get tickets for their young darlings to see this manufactured pop sensation.

I imagine the uproar is about a fifteen year old looking like a vampish tart on the cover of a national magazine. I personally think it's a fart in a hurricane. Who cares? You can find teen porn plastered across the inernet, so why would I care if a fifteen year old poses minus her pajamas with only a bedsheet covering her goodies? The same kind of ado quickly came and went when a fourteen year old model named Brooke Shields played a preteen hooker in a movie called "Pretty Baby". The uproar was over faster than a sneeze, and Brooke wasn't suddenly thrust into a world of vice and sin. Teens are resilient creatures, and we all do stupid things in our lives, so Miley did hers, it's out of the way, now just let it go! The really audacious thing is that on the inside of the magazine is a picture of Miley and her father in a pose that is truly creepy! They're positioned ion a way that looks like a child molester and his victim more than a father and his daughter. According to Leibovitz, they were shown all of the pcitures before they went to press, so they had the option of nixing any that they objected to. The fact that they let the photos go is a reflection on the Cyrus family's decision making abilities, more than Vanity Fair exploiting a teenager. Miley's been around, so I'm sure that she's a bit world-wiser than the average fifteen year old girl. I think she's literate and is aware of how Britney Spears downward spiraled into rehab clinics and trashy press coverage. Of course the media is like a fireman dumping 98 octane on a six alarm blaze, feeding the frenzy rather than pointing out that people all do stupid things at one time or another, and this was her Blunder Du Jour. So let's forget about Miley and concentrate on how candidates can spend hundreds of millions of dollars just campaigning to be the runner for the Presidential post, and what that money could do if it was spent on environmental or health issues. I'll worry about Miley when she poses for Playboy, ( if my subscription is still valid )

Planet Earth

2008-04-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

Going back to my radio heyday, I borrowed this title from Duran Duran. Double Ds are a band that recently reformed for the typical reunion tour. Although thye won't be making the rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, I kind of liked Duran Duran. They produced some good dance music in a time when dance music was sneered upon. Disco was the basic form of mindless beat that was used for dancing in the late seventies to mid eighties. Although it was less mindless than disco, new wave dance music was still pretty low on the totem pole of danceable rock. But nobody cares about that in the late Two Thousands. I borrowed this title because of Earth Day.

Earth day started in April of the late seventies. I always believed that Earth Day was April Seventeenth, but it fell on April twenty fifth this year, so either my memory is failing or somebody else's is. In any case as human beings we are rapidly developing junk that is polluting ourselves out of existence. Plastics, which are oil based can only be recycled so many times before they break down to unuasble levels. Whereas glass and aluminum can be recycled eternally and they don't become any less viable as materials with each reuse. Unfortunately our representatives in the grand forum of politics don't seem to find this to be an important issue. Litter is everywhere, but legistlation to fight it is nowhere. Electronic gizmos with limited lifespans are also increasing in popularity and use, but when these things reach the end of their lives they end up in landfills or our sewer ssytems. The silicon chips can be resued in all types of other electronic circuitry yet reusing them has gotten very little notice in the media. Here are some pleces that specialize in the recycling or reuse of electronic refuse...Myboneyard.com
eBayEZtradein.com
Freecycle.org
Earth911.com

are all places that spcecialize in reusing our garbage for worthwhile purposes. Yet they will remain virtually unknown because the powerbrokers to make them household names are too busy acting like morons to focus on telling the world about a better way to use our leftovers.

Back in the early 70s, I saw a news report about how batteries have potent pollutants, adding acids, toxic heavy metals and other potential pollutants to our air and water, we were told to recycle our used batteries, but to do so was a logistical nightmare. If it is made an easy step, I think people will try to follow the lead they are given, but if just left up to to us, it is unlikely to happen. I recall this specail saying that we should put our batteries in a glass jar and mail them becak to the manufacturer. Did this reporter have any idea how much this would cost? I had a Toshiba telelvision, it came with a Toshiba remote equipped with Toshiba batteries. How long do uyou think it would be, before I filled a glass container with Toshiba betteries? They aren't on the store shelves the way Duracell, RayO Vac, and NeverReady batteries are. Why isn't it easy to recycle batteries? Because it would cost the battery manufacturers money to make it easy. In the end it would save them countless dollars and cents, but the initial lay-out of funds would be sizable, so we won't see it untill it becomes mandatory. And our political candadates won't make it mandatory becuse they're all wimps, and they don't want to lose the votes of those battery company employees. So we all will pay for it in the end. Funny, I don't recall seeing any battery connections in my asshole.

Politician

2008-04-22T08:05:00.000-07:00

Ahhhhh yessss, going back to the fabulous sixties for this title. "Politician " was a tune by the famed supergroup trio, Cream. What most people don't realize is that Jack Bruce did most of the vocals, NOT Eric Clapton! In my opinion, he's one of my favorite bass players in all of rock, plus one hell of a vocalist too. But that's not what I'm writing about. I'm writing about the era of that song. The age when psychedelic rock was all over the radio, protest in the air due to the increasing military involvement in a place called Viet Nam, and youth seemed to be a dominant force in everything that was seen and done in those days. I was a freshman in high school in 1969, the year that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and this little outdoor rock concert in a small place in upstate New York called Woodstock were dominant stories in the news. Of course there was a whole lot other than that going on, but we have selective memories. We tend to overlook the less pleasant moments in our biographies, and dwell on the memories that grow in scope and scale as we age. In my opinion, youth have always been interested in the political process of the United States, but when riots are breaking out across our great nation, things get hyped more than they really are. I think that was the case in the late sixties, but not by much. There was a buzz in the air, protest songs were what suddenly was being played on the radio and reaction to what was going on in Southeast Asia was more important to young people than it was in the following years.

My mother was what many would describe as a "bleeding heart liberal". But she wasn't as liberal as my friends who had "cool" parents. In her mind, there was no need to try drugs, no need to get drunk, no excuse for wild parties, there were laws and they were in place for a reason and it was a citizen's duty to follow those laws, like 'em or not. My mother also disliked change, and was not very adaptable to new technology or changing standards. The way things were done in her youth was the way they should stay. I remember asking her why she never used her sideview mirrors when she drove, substituting that for a rapid back and forth head swivel that made me nervous to sit in the car with her. Her answer to that question was, " They didn't have them when I learned to drive". My response was,

" But the car has them, it's not like you have to go out and buy some, so why not use anything that will make life easier?"

Her response was, to remain silent and ignore the question. Old habits are hard to break. One Election Day she called me up early in the morning and began spouting off about some candidate she was particularly impressed with and urged me to go out and cast my vote for this hopeful. Resentful at being told who to vote for I said I had no intention of wasting my time going out in the rain to vote for anyone other than a President, knowing full well that it would piss her off to an extreme degree. Upon hearing that reply, she resorted to extortion. " Don't ever call me up and ask me for help if your car breaks down, if you don't vote...." I interrupted her to explain that I had already voted and I resented her telling me who to vote for, simply because it was a candidate that SHE liked. That shut her up and she apologized for telling me WHO to vote for but expressed interest that I did vote. It was an important issue. During the police action in Viet Nam, people not old enough to vote were being drafted and killed in the conflict, so fighting for that right was a big issue in my day.

I'm also glad to see that youth are playing an important role in the upcoming election, although I'm less impressed with the candidates. I actually like John McCain because of what he endured in the Viet Nam war, he seems less impulsive than our second Bush, who has gotten us into a HUGE mess in Iraq, which had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on September 11th 2001, but now he has created a breeding ground for Al Qaida to thrive in. Not to mention, Osama Bin Laden is still runnning around untethered. If we had spent the amount of money looking for that goon, as we have on the conflict in Iraq, he'd be dead or captured by now, but Iraq has become a quagmire that we cannot get out of gracefully and without creating more enemies than we had before our involvement there. I'm a vehement anti-theist, and I dislike McCain's religious ideas however, despite them being much less intense than some of the other Republican candidates had. I supported Hilary Clinton when she ran for Senator of New York, simply because she's a woman and I like to see things turned upside down. Halfway through her second term at that position, I cannot think of a single things that she's done other than campaigning. Whereas I am completely impressed with Senator Chuck Schumer, and he's frequently in the news because he actually does things.

I have no firm feelings about Barack Obama. I don't dislike him, but on the other hand, I can't say that I like him either. I have no feelings positive or negative for either Democratic candidate. They strike me like a couple of schoolyard rivals taunting each other, but actually lacking the guts to call each other out to the bike rack after school. I keep expecting to hear one of them make the accusation, " I'm rubber you're glue, it bounces off me and sticks to you!" When the other makes any statements that are less than flattering. " I know you are, but what am I?" probably will be the official response to what the first has to say. Afterwards a speed round of " Afraid Not!", " Afraid So!" will ensue until the host declares the debate over. These are the youth of my era now in position to become the leaders of the free world, and this is what campaigning has boiled down to.

I think I'll get out my headphones and listen to what Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker have to say, it's more entertaining and a whole lot better sounding than Hilary's story about landing under sniper fire in Bosnia.

P.S. I hate the fact that this blog forum doesn't allow indentation when starting a new papragraph. What the fuck is the deal with that???

P.P.S I'm adding this afterthought in February of 2009...after the presidential campaign got to the nitty gritty, I did 180 degree rotation. Barak Obama ran a skillful and erudite campaign, I ended up voting for him because McCain ran a sloppy bid for the P.O.T.U.S ad made a seious blunder in his choice for Veep. Our new President is a much more eloquent speaker than Mr Bush and has hit the ground running in his efforts to clean up the economy. He's inherited a big mess and will be spending the honeymoon period of his term just trying to dig us out of the cesspool he chose to jump into. My hat goes off to him, I admire the gusto which he's taken in his new job!

Make A Circuit With Me

2008-04-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

The Polecats are hardly a household name in the Rock and Roll archives, but they had a semi-hit with a song by that title in the mid 1980's. It essentially ran down a bunch of terms of semi-conductors and then had the chorus, "Make A Circuit With Me". This was the best I could come up with in my title management, and it's a song that i like so it will have to do. Naturally, I'm not really interested in the Polecats or their one hit semi-wonder, I'm writing about how we've become a "Disposable Society". Environmental issues have long been a sore spot for me. I'm not a tree-hugger or one of those fanatics that throw paint on people who wear fur coats, I'm directing my anger at our administrators for being so lax in making it easy for the citizens to to recycle our resources. I believe that many more would do so, if it weren't such an effort. Our daily lives are bombarded with electronic devices, gizmos and gadgets. I bet you can't recall the last time you were in an environment where there were no cell phones, PDAs, laptops, Ipods, MP3 players, walkmen, battery operated watches, or any other forms of conveniences that require batteries. I can't. These things all fail at one point in time or another, and they're often more expensive to repair than replace. So our trash system is filling up with all types of eco-hazzards that we're ignorant about. I recently saw a story on some news program about a guy who was down-and-out, he lost his abode and like so many others, began living on the streets. He was mazed at how many old computers and other electronic paraphenalia he came across while dumpster diving. He saw that the circuit boards had gold on them, and he began saving them and cashing them in to sell the semi-precious metals. At one of the places where he sold the goods, they informed him, that the Integrated Circuit Chips were actually more valuable than the gold, silver and beryllium on the circuit boards. He started a business salvaging used electronica, and in the stereotypical "rags to riches" story, he's now a very successful businessman. Here on Long Island, I have seen zero places that do the same thing as this innovator did, asnd I keep asking myself, "Why?".
There's obviously money to be made in it. It's good for the environment, and good for the economy so what are we doing sitting on our fat, lazy asses throwing these treasures into dumpsters for? I would love to see my old stuff going to a better use than just taking up space in a landfill! I lack the knowledge to differentiate what can be salvaged and what can't but it can't be all that tough. Why don't municipalities make it easy for all of us to do the right thing? Why does everything have to reach critical mass before it makes headlines? Why do we all have to wait until somebody else does it first? I always thought it was cool to be the first, to be the innovator not the imitator, to be the leader and not the follower. Yet our trash cans runneth over.
Let's complete the circuit and get as much of this stuff out of our waste system and put it to good use. Then we can revel in the fond memories of that song by The Polecats!

Hell Hole

2008-04-15T11:35:00.001-07:00

This title I swiped from "The World's Stupidest Heavy Metal Band" Spinal Tap. I recently had to vacate the apartment I lived in for twenty some odd years and moved in with my father. He grew up on a farm and what other people thought of the appearance of your proerty, was inconsequential. Unfortunately, living in suburban Long Island, that is NOT the case. He's become obsesssive about keeping things. He has a garage, a basement an attic and rooms filled with crap-ola that he'll never use, but he refuses to dispose of. A carpenter by trade, he always comments on television programs that feature tradesmen working in shops or garages that are efficiently organized, expressing his skepticism over wheather or not any "real work" gets done there because of the clean nature. I happened to mention that I' ve worked in shops that were neat and organized, and yes, the did get messy, but at the end of each day, we had to clean up and actually throw out the stuff that doesn't get used. He'd reply with a snort.
I find myself in a true to life hell, I'm something of a pack rat myself, but I can face the obvious and will toss things out when I get buried under and need space to work. I had hoped to get a job or start a business airbrushing. That image has long since faded and I seriously doubt that I'll be able to pursue my dream simply because I have no place to do it. He cannot throw away a box, the garage is full of semi-damp cardboard containers. He's got a wood-burning fireplace, so any branches, limbs, twigs or scrap pieces of wood are all saved, even though he only makes fires on rare occassions. He began saving styrofoam packing material because he noticed how hot a cup of coffe is and yet when in a styrofoam cup it can be comfortably held with a bare hand, so he plans on insulating the house with it. Forget the fact that this is strictly against fire codes and would turn the house into a funeral pyre in seconds if it somehow ignited, which judging from the substandard wiring is a very real possibility.
The section of the house where I have my kitchen is filled with boxes of stuff that I have no place to put, there's an air conditioner from the 1960s sitting on the floor, a fish tank with no fish in it on the counter. I'd like to unpack my belongings and find places for them, but I'm facing a tough job, because he hasn't moved a finger to make space for me to put my possessions. I had to throw away my bed, several chests of drawers and workbenches because he won't stop collecting firewood for the fireplace that gets used four or five times a year. He seemed annoyed at me that I threw thigns away. The old bumper sticker, "He who dies with the most toys, wins" seems to hold true for him, but he doesn't have toys, he just has junk, trash, garbage, and things which take up space and collect dust. I said that I'd like to do some serious cooking in my kitchen once I get some space. He perked up and pointed out that I'd managed to empty three or four boxes of stuff. I said that was aonly a fraction of the mountain, and I had no place to put the rest. His reply was, " Well find someplace". This made it clear that he had no plans to assist in this endeavor by actually tossing out any of his goodies. So I find myself halfway through my first month of living in a Hell Hole, with only remote prospects for jobs and no assistance as to where I can easily store and access my belongings while living with the King Kong of packrats. I have seen the future and it isn't bright, shiny or easy to maneuver around in. Somebody shoot me...please!

Hot Rod Lincoln

2008-04-14T12:51:00.000-07:00

This song was a big hit for Commander Cody and The Lost Planet Airmen when I was in high school, back in the early 1970's. I grew up living across the street from a guy who's father was a cartoonist for the local Long Island paper, Newsday. He was a hot rodder, and it was always cool to see T-bucket roadsters, and bubble top Impalas in his driveway. This guy was also a pinstriper, an art that I truely didn't appreciate until late in my life. Now I wish that I had befriended him when I had a chance, who knows what I might have learned. He later opened up a speed shop called,
" Northeast Performance", it didn't last long and he soon fell back on his pinstriping skills to make his living. I was always into airbrushed customs, for one, because I picked it up relatively easily, whereas pinstriping takes practice, and I was too itchy to do that.

I recently left my job in hopes of making my living airbrushing full time. My timing couldn't have been worse, I broke my ankle and while laid-up, was unable to practice, or do much else for that matter. By the time I was mobile again, I had exhausted my suppply of cash on medical bills and was stranded with the inability to get around and try to find a gig doing custom-paint work. Car freaks are everywhere and Long Island is no exception, but the messy winters and salty air play havoc on car bodies, so those who have show-quality machines keep them garaged during the winter. The economic news hasn't been rosy either, so people of moderate incomes can't spend money on frills when the mortgage is overdue, and rich people go to established places to get custom work done, not some start-up who has no reputation or resume to fall back on.

Cars have evolved to the point where many of them look like gum drops that have sat on the rear deck of the car in the sun while parked at the beach in summer. They don't have the lines that accent their shapes. Two tone paint jobs, no matter how well executed they are, add little flair to their amorphous lines. Front wheel drive and transverse mounted engines make hot rodding more difficult and the skyrocketing gas prices make it even less appealing. Hot Rods are on the endangered species list.

Not that it will ever die off, because young people and car-freaks will always look for ways to modify their vehicles. If they can't soup-up the engines, they'll trick-out the paint jobs, the body shapes or the interiors. Anything to individualize what they choose to drive. A car says a lot about its' owner, and todays cars are saying that we are a boring, unimaginative group. Let's prove them wrong!

Lie To Me

2008-04-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

I copped this title from a blues guitarist named Johnny Lang. He was sixten years old when he had his first major CD release, and has several releases since then. Despite his age, he has a worldliness that surpasses his years, so he sounds like a Mississippi Delta, struggling, working stiff rather than a midwestern kid. But that's not what I'm writing about, as usual I'm writing about...me.
I am currently out of work, I am not inept, lazy or difficult to get along with, yet I've been experiencing a tough time getting back into the working world. I've always been fascinated by cars, custom cars especially. I'm NOT a whiz of a mechanic, or a hotshot at body work, my forte is modifying cars to stand apart from the crowd, rather than just blending into it. Long Island, New York is hardly the center of the custom vehicle industry, so I am limited as to the number of places where I can attempt to make a living altering vehicles, and yet when I do find places where I think I could make a noticeable impact on what is done there, they seem rather closed to my attempts to work with them.
I have a friend, who is a Type A personality to an extreme degree. When I've mentioned my lack of success getting jobs in the custom industry, his advice is always the same...LIE!
The problem with that is, once people figure oput that you fudged the truth, they think everything you do is bogus or bluster. I have no problem exaggerating my experience, but I'm not going to come straight out and say that I'm adept at doing something that I've never tried before, because those who are experienced will notice it right away and trying to explain the lack of sincerity with previous statements become an anchor around your neck.
I know lots of people who are chronic bullshitters. Most of what they spout out is far beyond believeablity, so they aren't fooling or impressing anyone. Instead they are inviting people to talk about them behind their backs and the way they play with the truth. Most of their stories make Hollywood dramas appear tame by comparison. I have no interest in having that sort of label dropped into my skinny lap. The same friend that urges my modifying the truth with job applications also suggests the same thing when attempting to woo women. For the same reason, I tend to shy away from that tact. It's one thing for a one-night-stand, but for a lasting relationship, any falsehoods will tend to pile up and it then gets difficult to sort out what I've told to whom, and keeping those stories straight will become a burden that builds up over time, eventually the dam will break and I'll look like an even bigger loser than if I just admitted ignorance.
So, for the sake of sanity and keping my image intact, I am saying that lying is something that we all have done at one time or another, and it's part of human nature. But THINK about what lies you tell before you open your big mouth. It will save you a ton of embarrassment in the future.

I am the D.J.

2008-03-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

This one is from David Bowie, I believe it came out in the early '80's, but I could be mistaken.
When I was in college, way back in the late '70's, I used to cruise around Long Island to check out bands at nightclubs, and hopefully meet women. I was alway surprised at how hip the D.Js, who played the tunes between band sets were. They played stuff that I never heard on the radio, when I talked to them, they would often show me the album covers, and the bands were NOT the playlisted, top twenty, radio formula music. I often wondered, if they didn't hear it on the radio, how do they find out about these groups? Well I later learned, once I was established at WLIR F.M., that there's something called, "music service". This was a subscription organization that provided D.J.s with records.
Once I got out and began spinning tunes at clubs, I still had to buy my records like every "Joe Average". This became an expensive endeavor. I often drew the ire of music fans because I wouldn't spend my hard earned money on music that I didn't like. One evening a girl asked me to play a song by Bruce Springsteen. I told her that I didn't have any Bruce with me at the time, which was true...but I also didn't have any Bruce with me at ANY time, because I hate his tunes.
The club owner happened to be coming to tell me to make an announcement, and overheard the request. He told the girl to write down what she wanted to hear, and they'd get the record. He handed her a yellow legal pad that I happened to have with me and she wrote down her request, but as she moved away, she muttered, " I don't like him". By some strange coincidence, that happened to be my last night as a D.J. at that club. I have no probem playing tunes that I don't like, I just didn't want to pay for them.
The days of the ultra-hip D.J.s are a thing of the past, now you have to spin what the public wants, regardless of how inane it is. There may be some dance clubs where the unknown song can be snuck into a set without too much bad kharma, but I could never get the admiration of the common man by turning them on to the obscure rock that moved me. So it goes. ( A tune by Nick Lowe off the "Pure Pop For Now People" lp)

Neighbors

2008-03-15T08:07:00.000-07:00

Yep, another Stones song for a title. This one's from the landmark '80's ablum, "Tattoo You". In the summer, for six weeks my job took me to Upstate New York, to the cozy community of Saratoga Springs. This could turn into a headache, since I don't drive and getting around was always a nightmare, but things there still had the "Small Town" feel of the late '50's/early '60's, so walking to breakfast and dinner was less of a nightmare than it would be here on Long Island ( Lawn Guyland for us natives).
One thing that I noticed was, that in the process of going out, people that I passed on the street all said, "Good Morning" or "Hello" as they passed, whether they knew me or not. That always gave me a good feeling, like the entire world hasn't become jaded, only the small portion I live in. When I return back to the Island, I try to be civil as I pass people on the street, for the most part, they regard me suspiciously as they pass. It's as if they're asking themselves, " What does that guy want?". I had hoped that this tiny gesture, might have a snowball effect and spread through the area, but that hasn't been the case. We've become more insular, shutting out the world and barricading ourselves behind real and mental barriers. I don't know if that old adage about strong fences building better neighbors has any truth in this day and age, it sure seems like stronger fences build suspiscion, doubt and underhanded ways to break them down or go around them.

Centerfold

2008-03-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

Once again, I've borrowed a title from the '80's. The J. Geils Band had a hit by that name, circa 1984. When you think of Centerfolds, Playboy is the first magazine that comes to my mind. They made them famous, with such notable women, as Marilyn Monroe to Pamela Anderson baring it all for men to drool over. I've had a subscription to that "Gentleman's" magazine since the mid nineteen seventies. I don't think I threw any of them away. Inside there are advertisements for leather folders to preserve the naked women in a classy way. I put mine in boxes. When I was airbrushing fairly regularly, I often used them as references for my work, but lately, I've been reading them and then putting them into storage, never to look at them again. Due to my inability to find gainful employment, I have to move back home. I've amassed a sizable amount of junk, and sorting through it is a full time endeavor. There is a lot that has very little practical use, but I can't bring myself to part with it. My father is a worse pack rat than I am. He won't throw anything away. So compiling my junk with his is a good way to insure that most of it will remain buried in a time warp.
I tried gettig rid of some of my worldly goods on the internet. I have a couch that I cannot bring to his place, simply because there's no place to put it. I put that up for sale for $1.00. So far nobody's interested. I have one of those mini-cube refrigerators that has also garnered zero interest. The last item was my collection of Playboys. They're only magazines so who would want them? I put them on Craigslist for $1.00 just to get them out of my possession. I was hit by a number of inquiries, so I quickly changed the ad to read "Best Offer" instead, hoping that I could actully benefit from they're disposal. Once I weeded out the kids who were looking for "Whacking material", I was left with only two bidders. I ended up settling for $35.00 which was fine with me, otherwise they would have ended up in the recycling pile and the trashmen would have scored on that one. As much as I hate to admit it, times are changing too fast.
We now live in a disposable society. Buy it, use it, throw it out and buy a new one, seems to be the standard procedure for most of our goods. The electronic industry creates an incredible amount of pollution, due to the rate that things become outdated. I keep seeing stories on the news about how much recyclable material is in most ciruitry, and someindustrious guy goes about salvaging old computers, cell phones, radios and other assorted gizmos and not only melts down the precious metals from the circuit boards, but also found that the i.c. chips are even more valuable. I've got some computer equipment that's outated but in good condition, I hate to just dump it, yet when I try to find one of these industrious recyclers, there are none in my area. Why is that? I always see what a potential danger old batteries are to our environment, and back in the early nineties, some sort of ordnance was passed that stated any business that sold batteries, had to take old ones to be recycled. I never found anyplace that did. With Hilary, Barack and John out stumping for votes, I'd like to hear their thoughts on ways to get people up off their lazy asses and do something about a probelm that I'm reasonably sure I'm not the only one experiencing. As a race, we're too cavalier about what happens to what we don't use once it leaves our hands. The old "Out Sight, Out Of Mind" adage holds true in that respect. We only think about potential pollutants once they cause a problem like Love Canal, we're not proactive about environmental hazards, we wait until things get out of hand, then react to them, rather than mandate change before things get over our heads.
We as humans are so disposable, yet our dominance on the planet is making life difficult for the other living things. In New Jersey, they've had to change the hunting regulations because bears have been a problem in populated areas. Well DUHH, if we keep bulldozing wooded areas and building homes there, the bears don't exactly have Travelocity to help relocate them, so our solution is to kill them. If a bear kills a human, we feel justified doing it in, but bears would rather avoid us if they had the choice. We're taking that option away. It's even more mind boggling that I started out writing about a J. Geils Band song and ended up worrying about the future of our planet's animal life. I think I may have a problem...

Undercover

2008-02-24T10:11:00.000-08:00

I took this song title from The Rolling Stones. I keep making jokes that the Stones will be soon touring in wheel chairs, yet every time they launch yet another world circuit, they never cease to amaze me how good they are. This title isn't from one of their better tunes, as always, that's not what I'm writing about, so it doesn't really matter.

In previous posts, I've stated my feelings about some of the clothing styles of the moment. This is another such tirade. For some peculair reason, hooded sweat shirts have become all the rage. These have been around for as long as I can remember, and I'm over half a century old. To me, hoods have always been a mark of dipshitness. When I was in my twenties, I wanted a leather jacket and went to several department stores looking for something to give me a "tough guy" mystique. The fact that I'm grossly underweight and couldn't intimidate a fruit fly, had nothing to do with the fact that I liked the way they looked. The jackets offered by department stores like Macy's, were very conservative. They seemed to be geared towards yuppie, brief case toting, business types. I started going to boutique shops in hopes of finding a cool jacket that fit my thin frame. On once such venture, a store clerk saw me poking through the merchandise and came over to offer assistance.
" May I help you?" He asked.
" Yes, I'm looking for a leather jacket" I explained.
" Do you want one with a hood?" He asked. The look on my face probably said more than I could have. I envisioned the Hell's Angels motoring through a town on their Harley's when a sudden rain started falling, so they all pull off the road to put up their hoods. The nurdness factor is off the charts. So now we've got a whole generation that walks around with their hoods up, and it's supposed to be cool. I'm not buying it! Even more preposterous is that, once these clowns get out of the weather, they leave the hoods up. I hang out at a local branch of Hooters, and seeing a hooded twerp shoving a hamburger into the void covered by the cloth that won't keep you dry in the rain, is like going to a geriatric Ku Klux Klan meeting. The intimidation fact or is: Zero. Even the name is one that doesn't inspire any emotion.
Hoodie. How cute is that? It sounds like a something adults say when they're around a newborn baby, " Ohhhhh, look at little baby Johnny, isn't he sweet. Look at those darling little fingers. Yes Johnny, that's such a cute little hoodie you've got on, ohhh yesss, you're soooooo cute..." Try to picture a stereotype bully walking into a store and asking to check out the Hoodies, it's a stretch. The girlyness is extreme. Am I the only person with in possession of any testosterone on the planet? I'd rather be tortured than have to wear one, let alone try to buy one.
In the form vs. function category, they do have their place. Worn underneath a jacket that will stop wind, they can keep you fairly warm, but on the other hand, so can lots of other more macho looking outerwear. So I think people who wear hoodies need to examine their wadrobe a bit carefullly, unless robbery is part of their agenda.

Changes

2008-02-20T05:55:00.000-08:00

I'm a "Baby Boomer", born in 1955, schooled in the '60's and out on my own in the '70's. Actually not, I graduated from college in January of '79. It wasn't until my grandparents decided to sell the house we lived in, that my parents were looking at houses they could afford in the mid 80's. At the time I was working at a local radio station, and averaging five hours of sleep a day. The houses my parents could afford were further away, and if I moved with them, my sleep time would have lessened, so I decided that I wanted to live under my own rules. My folks didn't really like my lifestyle, so it was time to get away. I chose the David Bowie song title for this blog, since the 70's were when I was getting itchy to get out from under the wings of my overbearing parents.
As a single male, one of the things I had to do was learn to prepare meals for myself. I think I suceeded at that point. When I was in high school, there were cooking classes called Home Economics, or "Home Ec". Any guys who took that class were immediately suspect of being "fruity". Of course nobody ever questioned why so many of the great chefs are men, or accused them of being gay. Also, where better to meet women, than in cooking classes? Alas, I wasn't that sharp in those days and missed all the fun. I had to do it the Trial & Error way. Being a diabetic, meal preparation has always been a crucial point of survival. The fact that I'm still alive leads me to believe that I've been at least partially sucessful. In my younger years, I was also driving, so I had more time to prepare meals before dashing off to work. One of the easiest meals to fix was also one of the healthiest...oatmeal. It wasn't rocket science, if you wanted a cup of oatmeal, you boiled two cups of water, added the meal, stirred, put it in a bowl, added milk and sweetener and voila, you were done.
Lately things have changed. I've restarted eating oatmeal after a long hiatus, and if I add one cup of oatmeal to two cups of water, I get...runny, drippy, gruel. How have oats mutated to cause this phenomenon? Why all of a sudden ( maybe it isn't so sudden, maybe I just never noticed) has oatmeal required less water to get a consistent density? Why do the instructions tell you to add too much water? Don't they have people who test these minute details out? Does all the world except for me eat sloppy, runny, oatmeal? I'm really stunned by this development. I've refined my oatmeal making procedures, I now add 3/4 of a cup of oatmeal to 1 cup of water and things work fine. So I'm able to adapt, but why has oatmeal been reduced to an unappetizing slop? I thought they want people to be "heart healthy". Does the rest of the civilized world really eat oatmeal this way? Am I the deviate as opposed to the norm? I wish that somebody would explain this to me, but since nobody reads these bloggy bits, I'm betting that I don't get any answers, leaving me to just wonder...

When I Write The Book

2008-02-19T05:36:00.001-08:00

It didn't take long, but once again I've ripped-off another title from the '80's. This one is from Nick Lowe's band Rockpile. It's a shame they didn't have more than one album, a band with Lowe, Dave Edmunds & Billy Bremner is a winner by my standards. In any case, they came and went like a fart in a summer breeze, leaving me with this title as a lead-in to my thoughts...
As a person who'se pretty creative, but a rotten businessman, I've spent many hours dreaming up all kinds of bizarro ideas. When my last girlfriend split, also back in the '80's, I was so irate, that I sat down at I think it was a typewriter and just started pounding out my thoughts. After writing several pages, I realized what a waste of time and paper it was, because nobody would have any interest in reading any of it. My friends weren't the literate type, reading was something they had to do in school, it wasn't something one did for relaxation, enjoyment and to become more informed. So pawning my attempts at literary freedom off on any of them was like pissing into a gale force wind. So I channeled my lack of prowess winning women's hearts into a more marketable medium, a novel. I wrote, rewrote, edited and rewrote some more. I finally ended up with what I considered to be something pretty decent. I had zero knowledge on how to submit works to be published. I thought one just mailed copies of their manuscripts to the various publishing companies and hoped they got lucky. That would have been easy compared to the bitter reality of it all. I bought a subscription to Writer's Digest, in hopes that would give me some insight as to the process of getting something published. Boy, was I naive!
At the time I was working at a car stereo shop, and making about fifteen grand a year. I found several "Publishers" that catered to unknown writers in the magazine, and submitted my work to them. One sent back a reply that stated that the plot was interesting, the characters were memorable and for fourteen thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars they would publish and print up one thousand copies of my book, the marketing was up to me. Am I crazy for not taking that super offer? My sister had friends who worked for Proof Reading companies. They were essentially the same thing, charging a fee to read and critique new "talents". She told me that most of the people were crack-whores who hated their lives, and wrote novels about crack-whores who hated their lives. Hmmmmm, that's a stretch. But one thing she also said was, they never told the people who submitted their tales of woe that the work was no good, they took the money and coached them on ways they could improve their manuscripts. Kindling came to my mind.
As time progressed and I bounced from one job ot the next, I ended up working at a concession at the local thoroghbred racetrack renting binoculars. It was the late eighties at that point and televsion sets were replacing field glasses as the preferred way to view the races, so I had a lot of down-time. I brought my old computer to the track and used that to write and rewrite several sequels to my first unpublished novel. Now I've got a whole series of works that nobody has ever read. Wow! The '90s came and went, and I watched my income slowly diminish as fewer and fewer people attended the races. This allowed me more time to write. I still think that my work could be sold, but getting it to the attention of anyone with clout is a talent that I don't possess. In the 2000's I decided to try E-Publishing, figuring that anything is better than nothing. It turns out that most works submitted for on-line reading must be in the format of Microsoft Word. As my luck would have it, I used Corel Wordperfect. I got my program at a computer show for thirty dollars, so I figured that if I had to buy a new word processor program, it might set me back $49.95 or something like that. Boy, was I ever wrong!
Microsoft Word is still in the two hundred dollar range. Even if I could afford that, I don't think I'd contribute to the Bill Gates's Offspring College Fund. I have no idea why it is so damn expensive, or what features I get with it that make it so much more valuable than the Corel or Brand-X word processing programs. So as I sit here typing out a blog that nobody will read, I wonder if my novels are really unintersting to everyone except myself, or if I'm sitting on an unopened treasure chest? I know that I don't read other people's blogs, so it isn't unexpected that nobody would read mine. If I had friends that read, it would be one thing to send them the links to my mental farts, but I think that most of it would fall into their definition of "spam".
On the plus side, my fingers will never be obese.

The End

2008-02-19T03:45:00.000-08:00

My sister recently e-mailed me a list of the worst Rock & Roll songs put out by Rolling Stone Magazine. Of course, many of them were songs that I liked. One was the tune by The Doors,
" The End" closely associated with the movie, " Apocalypse Now". I'll agree that it's not one of Jim Morrison & Company's best tunes, but how it ended up in the worst of all time is beyond me. At least it's not a ditty from the '80's.
Today I'm writing about a televsion show that's been getting a slew of great reviews. "Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles" First of all, it's on Fox, which makes me leery from the get-go. I sat through an episode of this allegedly good show and had to make some observations. First of all, I liked the 1980's movie that it' based on. The sequel was also pretty cool. By the third installment, I was getting sick of it. I like things with a beginning, a middle and an end. It was clear that there was no END in sight! The "Terminator" series is a money maker, and nobody wants to stop making money, even if integrity suffers. "Terminator 3" wasn't bad, but it was painfully obvious that it was being milked for all it was worth, and that irritated me.
Getting back to the Fox series, I HATED it! The character, Sarah Connor was a babe played by Linda Hamilton. The television "cheap imitation" is nowhere near as cute or charismatic as the first Sarah Connor. Secondly, the first movie took place in the '80's, so now why are Sarah, her son and a teenage female terminator that's on their side, suddenly living in the present without having aged? Even worse, why is Sarah Connor no longer a blonde? Does she think a dye job will make her harder for a cyborg to recognize? The whole time-travel aspect of the premise is like a lame excuse to explain everything that's inexplicable. Maybe I'm being too harsh, since I didn't see the series from the onset, but what I saw did NOT make me want to see more. It, like most other television series, dragged things out to the point of being tedious. I'm sure there are legions of fans out there who love the show and will faithfully view it, but I'm not one of them. For me, the beginning was THE END!

I Can't Explain

2008-02-18T08:30:00.000-08:00

Don't freak out! I used a song title from the '60's for a change. This one I 'borrowed' from The Who, and it means a lot to me, because it was one of the few Who songs I could play on my bass, without totally butchering.
The thing that I can't explain, is the rapid changes in merchandise availability. I would think that waffles are pretty much a standard type of breakfast amongst American families. But times are a changing. More and more households rely on pre-packaged, pre-mixed, pre-cooked food to eat right out of the package. I think I'm safe in saying that most households rely on more than one income to support the cost of living, so nobody has time to prepare, let alone eat a decent breakfast. Now that I'm out-of-work, I have the luxury of being able to prepare my favorite, carb-laden meals, pancakes and waffles. Unfortunately, my waffle iron has seen better days. In the baby boom years, I think waffle irons were popular house-warming and wedding gifts. Not so long ago, you'd see them in the Sunday newspaper supplements, on sale for $29.95 at any number of department stores. The iron that I use, came with a non-stick coating. After thousands of waffles, the non-stick coating lost it's repellant qualities, making it necessary to spray some form of oil on the grid to keep from fighting to get the waffles off the cooker. I like waffles that are fluffy, not the type that have ben on the grille too long and get a cardboard-like quality to them. So after using the oils to make removal easy, cleaning the iron has turned into a nightmare. I try to avoid immersing electrical equipment in water when ever possible, but not just the removable grids have gotten tarnished from the spray oil, the whole thing is a gloppy mess. It takes much longer to clean up after making the waffles than it does to prepare and eat them. This is precious time I could better utilize to look for a job, or write blogs. I finally decided to price a new waffle maker.
My first destination was Froogle.com. The implements they displayed were of the Martha Stewart caliber. As much as I love waffles, I'm not about to spend $149.99 on a machine to cook them. For that price, it should mix the batter, cook the waffles and serve them to me! If I was working, and had all the money in the universe, I see no reason to spend that much on a simple tool that could be gotten for thirty bucks two or three years ago. I next ventured over to Overstock.com. They were also poorly suited to fit my waffle addiction. Why have waffle irons gotten so damn rare and expensive? I can't explain. I'll certainly try though. As I mentioned earlier on, everybody's rushing to get somewhere, so taking time out to prepare a meal is a rarity. Popping an Eggo Toaster Waffle into the microwave is a far cry faster and easier than dragging out all the ingredients and fixing them yourself. Of course I don't think there's any comparison to how they taste. Since I'm a diabetic, I've devised a special formula to the mix, in order to help me deal with the wimpy tasting sugar-free syrups that are flooding the market. The fact that I often add fruit to the mix also has contributed to the demise of my waffle iron.
I suppose that I could try one of those liquidator outlets to see what they have to offer. I suppose I should hustle, there may be a run on the market, when all the carbo-junkies go out looking to score these much prized works.

Middle Of The Road

2008-02-18T06:36:00.000-08:00

Yep, I'm going back to the '80's once again. This title I swiped from The Pretenders. Since music was once a critical part of my lifestyle, I always try to use a song title for my posts. This in itself isn't always easy. The first song that popped into my mind was, "Stuck In The Middle With You" by Stealer's Wheel. That was a '70's band that featured Jerry Rafferty as their lead man. He had a big hit with a song that I despise, "Baker Street". That's getting off on a tangent that's not at all applicable to what I'm moaning about.
I guess I was in college when some scholar came out with an analysis of "Personality Types". As far as I can recall, this genius declared that the world is divided into two personality types, Type A, and Type B. I could be mistaken, but I actually did a bit of checking before writing this, and I was unable to find any references to Type C personalities, so I think I'm safe. The Type A personality is Outgoing, Aggressive, Assertive, Dominant, Gregarious, Bold, Brash, somewhat Egotistical, and if they aren't smart...talked about alot behind their backs. The Type B is more likely to be introverted, shy, cerebral, a follower rather than a leader, analytical, observant, and considered more of an outsider. These traits aren't mutually exclusive, there's a lot of crossing the lines, and that makes it harder, and I believe less valid that this labeling system is at all accurate.
There are two people I was friendly with who I'd label Type A without hestitation. Both of them were minimally educated, but "street smart". This isn't to say that all Type As are uneducated, it's just that the two examples I know, were. From my point of view, the Type A guy is more likely to get the girl. I think that harkens back to the early stages of man, where a woman wanted a good provider to produce strong, healthy, offspring and furnish food, shelter and protection for them. I'd label Donald Trump as a Type A, and he certainly doesn't fit into the "dumb jock" category. He does seem to lean heavily towards the obnoxious factor however.
I have a hard time categorizing myself, I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I certainly am not aggressive all the time, but I do have a competitive spark in me. I'm not a good loser, I want to win and when I don't, I used to let it bother me. It's only in my later years that I could easily shrug off a poor result of something I tried. I am not outgoing, but on the other hand, I did wangle a job as a disc jockey at a radio station out of sheer perseverance. I've done stand-up comedy, which isn't for the Shrinking Violets among us. I've bullshitted my way into jobs that I was marginally qualified for. I don't think those are features generally associated with Type B people.
I once had a girlfriend call me, " A disposable person". At the time it was early in our relationship, and I just took it as a joke, a jibe, a teasing comment. But more and more I really think she hit the nail on the head. When I look back at the people I hung out with, I was never the center of attention. One day we were hanging out at a small park, when another member of the group showed up and announced, " We were just over at the sandpits. They leave the keys in the trucks and we were driving them around..." One of the group who I was with turned to another and said, " Ya wanna go over there and drive the trucks?"
" Yeah, let's call Mark and Woody and have a demolition derby!" And the plot was devised. I didn't have to say, " Can I go too?" because it was just assumed that I was a part of the plan. However, if the same scenario arose and I wasn't on hand, the sentence, "Yeah, let's call Mark and Woody and Tony, and we'll have a demolition derby" would never have been spoken. When I was out of sight, I was truly out of mind. After numerous incidents similar to that, I asked myself, " Why am I trying so hard to hang out with people who don't give a shit about me?". I decided that I didn't need them, and I stopped going where I knew they'd be, or calling up on Friday night to ask what was going on. The results, I spent a lot of time alone. I've drifted through several groups of crowds I've hung with, and things always seem to turn out the same. I get along with them when I'm there, but once I'm gone, I'm forgotten. I don't enjoy being a loner, I'd much rather be a socialite, but since I've never found a spot where I fit in, I've decided not to force my way into a group, because that only fuels resentment. Maybe I should found a Type C Club, for all the people who don't quite fit the mold of the two types that are accepted. The only problem with that is, I think that eventually I'd be ignored, cast aside and forgotten.

Love Stinks

2008-02-13T10:11:00.001-08:00

For this post, I'm taking the title of a song by The J. Geils Band. I suppose I could use Elvis Costello's "My Funny Valentine", but Peter Wolfe sums it up better. Tomorrow is St. Valentine's Day. A day when all express their love for their partners with gifts and displays of affection. But for single people...forget about it. It's just another day, a day when everyone else rubs it in that you are alone. Sometimes it's a concious maneuver, but most of the time it's not. People are overjoyed to be loved, so they feel the need to let everyone know, whether they're interested or not.
I seem to be one of those people who's "Terminally Single". I've tried all kinds of avenues to meet attractive women, but they always seem to turn out to be dead ends. The basic problem is: that I'm attracted to the girls that everyone is attracted to. When a lady has a bevy of potential suitors to choose from, I always seem to end up pretty low down on the list. I hate to say this, but I think that romance is a dying virtue. People look at dating from all angles, and much of it is financial in nature, so that's a major strike against me.
Once, while talking on the phone to a woman who's personal ad I had responded to, she asked me, " What are you looking for?" I responded,
" I'm looking for somebody who's attractive, creative, with a sharp wit and unconventional"
" No, I mean what're you looking for?" She asked again.
" I'm looking for somebody to date, isn't that what I said?" I asked, feeling like a doofus.
" No, but what're your goals?"
" I'm looking to date somebody that I have a connection with..." I tried again, hoping that this time she got the gist of what I was looking for.
" Are you looking to get married!?" She finally spelled it out for me.
" I'm not looking to get married just for the sake of being married. I want to meet somebody special" I answered.
" Why?"
" Because I'm alone and lonely" I snapped, getting flustered with the direction the conversation had taken.
" You've gotta offer a girl more than that!"She snickered. After that, I stopped answering personal ads. I simply have nothing to offer. But human emotions don't work on that kind of logic, and years later I saw a report on the TV show, "CBS Sunday Morning" where they did a feature about the internet dating site EHarmony.com . It touted how successful they were at matching people and how many had gotten hitched since their first meeting. Their ads had a caveat stating, "If you apply now, your first contacts are free" or something along those lines. I went on line and read all the fine print, expecting to see what the cost of the set-up was. There was no mention of any prices . I decided if it was free, I'd give it a shot. There were 450 questions to be filled out. I began the process, and less than halfway through it a television show that I wanted to see came on, so I'd watch it until the commercial break, dash over to my computer, answer two or three more questiuons, dash back to the television, watch more of the show and then repeat the process. It took me forever to finish, when the results came back it said something like..." even E-Harmony.com cannot find a match for everyone". So in other words; I'm too fucking weird for even an internet dating site to find some scag to dump in my lap. What a confidence builder!
I could go on for paragraph after paragraph with dating disasters I've endured. With that in mind I just want to wish all those loving couples a Happy Valentine's Day. On February the 15th, don't go to work and recant all the tales of your undying love to the single folks who're cringing inside. It won't endear us to your tender hearts!

Got Alot On My Head

2008-02-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

This is a song title I swiped from one of the better '80s bands, The Cars. I'm not a "fashionista". I like the clothing styles of my youth more than what's available today. I believe that my underwear looks better beneath my clothes, rather than having my pants slung around my ankles so everybody can see my, big, brightly colored boxers. I'm funny that way. Hats are a negative in my book. Sure, they serve a purpose and I believe in form following function. It's okay to wear "lid", "skypiece", "topper", "cover", "copter" or whatever other slang term you want to apply to keep your ears warm or your hair dry. As a fashion statement, hats suck! Most of them are ugly, and anybody who chooses to wear them must have a truly hideous looking head if they want to keep it under wraps.
I DO wear hats, however. In cold weather the capilaries in the skin on your noggin don't recede the way they do on other parts of the body, so it's possible to lose a large amount of body heat through the head. I used to work at the New York thoroughbred racetracks, and as an enticement to get people to show up, they'd have give-aways. Most of the trinkets they dispensed were cheap items, like t-shirts and...( dont' tell me you didn't see this coming)...hats. These are baseball cap styled bonnets that were extremely cheesey. The portion that covered the head was usually small, so it almost resembled a Yarmulke with a brim. I usually ended up with more than one of these junkers, and I'd keep one in my backpack in the event of rain. On one such weather related occasion, I dug out my cap and went to the bus stop. I kept noticing a peculiar odor. I checked to make sure that I hadn't stepped in anything unwanted, glanced around to see if I was near a dumpster, and sureptitiously took a whiff under my arms. They were all fine. When I got home I hung my jacket and cap on the newel post and went about my regular activities. Remembering that I'd forgotten to pickup a chance at the Mega-Million lottery, I grabbed my cap and flipped it onto my head. It was then that I caught another whiff of the dank odor, it was the hat that smelled. I tossed it aside and grabbed another from my closet and went out. Once I got back from the local 7-11, the second hat also stunk. It seems that these hats once moistened, get quite odoriferous. They also DON'T keep your head dry. Fine lot of good that does, " I want a hat that only is useful on days when it's not needed!". I smelled like a hamper in the high school gym locker room, where all the damp, musty towels were tossed, to ferment into a sickly aroma.
After that discovery, I went to a camping catalog and searched for a waterproof hat. I found one that was reasonably priced and not overly unappealing looking. With shipping, it came to about sixteen dollars. This hat served me well for many months, and I happened to lose it about two weeks ago. I went nuts going through on-line sites looking for another. It seems that most hats are worn for style, as opposed to protection from the elements. The kids today like wearing baseball caps, with the brim which is designed to keep the sun out of your eyes, backwards, or skewed sideways. Why don't they just get those doofy looking caps that fisermen wear? Those have brims that go all the way around, so no matter which way you put it on, the sun still won't get in your eyes. Form vs. function.
It is also de rigeur for today's youth to tote their goodies around in a back pack. Most will loosen the straps to extreme points, so they're easier to slip ones' arms in and out of them. I don't have any problem with that, except...it causes the pack to droop low on the body creating stress on the lower lumbar region of the back. Ages of camping/hiking wisdom has taught me that it's best to put the heaviest items as close to the body as possible and then tighten the straps so the pack is firm against the owners' back. This keeps the weight close in, and makes it easier to move about without having the weight of the pack offset your balance. But that's not what I'm bitching about, the thing that surprises the hell out of me is: that the backpack industry has to be a multi-million dollar a year business, yet try finding a backpack that's water proof. I've had many newspapers, records and other items I lug around get ruined because my pack leaked in the rain. There are water repellant packs out there, but they're designed to use when scaling Mt. Everest and the cost is nearly as high. With all of todays high-tech fabrics and materials, why can't an affordable back pack be made that will keep kids' school books from getting drenched in the walk from the bus stop to the front door of the house? What's even more perplexing is that many packs DO use water resistant fabric, but the zippers allow water to drip in, so when you get inside out of the elements, you open up your pack to find that your posessions are swimming in a pack that allows water in, but it doesn't seep out. Brilliant designing there, all of you portable tote engineers. Maybe one of these geniuses can design a pack that can be worn on the head, so today's kids can fill them up and wear them backwards or sideways.

Kill The King

2008-02-10T07:44:00.000-08:00

Today is the day that the much touted Grammy awards are being announced. I've never been a fan of Grammy's because the music I like, isn't what the masses like. I buy music because it strikes a personal note with me, and I don't care who else likes or dislikes it. There are some automatons out there who like whatever is popular and their tastes shift with popular opinion. I borrowed this song title from Rainbow, when Ronnie James Dio was still their lead singer.
I personally am not a fan of Elvis Presley. I don't consider him to be the king of anything except White Trash garish behavior. Back in the '50s, when Rock and Roll was young, Elvis was an important factor, I won't deny that. His early stuff I have no problem with. Tunes like "Jailhouse Rock", "Heartbreak Hotel", "Hound Dog", and "Love Me Tender" are okay in my book. It's only during the 1960s, that Elvis put out such miserable drech ( or is it drek?) like, "Suspicious Minds", and "In The Ghetto" that I began to really detest him. The kicker was, when the Beatles were in the height of their Psychedellic phase, that Officer Elvis contacted then President Richard Nixon and offered to get evidence of the Fab Four's drug abuse in order to deny them the right to tour in the U.S.A. In 1972 when the televised farwell Tour From Hawaii was aired, that Elvis appeared on stage in his flamboyantly, flashy matador outfit that he performed the song, "Something". As a bigger Beatle Fan than Elvis Fan, I was enraged. He'd tried to stop the Beatles from earning a living by touring, and yet he had the balls to perform one of their songs? I am mystified as to why people put him on a god-like pedastal.
Of course the final chapter in Elvis's life is that he was as big a drug abuser as the Beatles, yet none of their lives ended due to their experimenting with substances for recreational purposes. Elvis became a punchline to a bad joke. He evolved into a fat, buffoon, stuffing himself into his idiotic costumes. Rock and Roll has survived just fine since his demise. I was working in a factory when he checked out, and that really killed me, because I worked at a machine where hearing protection was required. I happend to have a pair of headphones that looked almost identical to the ear protectors, so I'd plug in my radio and have tunes to make the drudgery, less tedious. For at least ten days after the death of Elvis Aron Presley, I couldn't listen to the radio because my ears were assaulted with tributes to him.
The King has left the building, and I can breathe a whole lot easier.

Black Coffee In Bed

2008-02-02T08:24:00.000-08:00

I worked at a radio station during the early to mid 1980's, when "disposable music" was at it's peak. I swiped this title from a band called "Squeeze" formerly "U.K. Squeeze". Just because I labeled the music 'disposable' doesn't mean that I don't like it, I have some very fond memories of that era, but let's face it. Duran Duran, The Thompson Twins, & Thomas Dolby aren't going to make it into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. They'll be swept under the rug, stuffed into an obscure corner of the trivia pile.
In any case, science marches on, and every day, some new revelation comes out about our lifestyles. First it was discovered that there's something in coffee that has amazing antioxident properties, then it was discovered that caffeine has all kinds of negative side effects. Now they say that preganant women shouldn't drink more than one cup of coffee a day. What should we believe? I personally don't care!! Coffee sucks! Just the way it smells makes me wonder how anyone can put that in their mouth? Yet Americans go to extreme lengths to get the crap. Starbucks is a wonder unto itself. For a while there was a big debate about Krispy Kreme vs. Dunkin Donuts. People told me that the KKs blew away the DDs, but the Krispy Kremes on Long Isand all went out of biz. Many people speculated that it was because their coffee was nowhere close to DDs. No matter how many Dunkin Donuts are in or around your town, there's always room for one more, and they all seem to thrive. One opened up in my area recently and it's across the street from where I buy my newspaper . Every morning I watch people make suicidal maneuvers that would have had Evel Knieval shitting in his pants, trying to whip into the parking lot of the local DD. It's all for that coffee buzz. Plus the fact that where all overworked, overstressed and trying to do eight and a half million things at one time, that people need to gnash their teeth to get their caffeine jolt and the sugar rush. And we wonder why Americans are so obese? Hmmmmmmm. I'll take the disposable music of the 1980's over coffee any day of the week!

Walk This Way

2007-12-18T06:19:00.000-08:00

On my old blog dashboard, I used this title once before. Since I've been unable to access it and update my old blog, I have to write it anew.
This is one of Aerosmith's biggest hits, but as of the end of 2007, it seems like very few people walk anywhere these days. This is evidenced by the huge guts and fat asses of kids still in high school, forget the adult population! I LIKE walking. It's a great way to see our world at a liesurely pace, I've found all kinds of neat things that I would have missed in a car, and it also helps me lower my blood sugar. As a Type 1 Diabetic, this isn't always an advantage, but nobody ever said that life is E-Z, and if they did, they lied! It never ceases to amaze me that people will drive around a medium sized parking lot for half an hour looking for a space close to the store, rather than just parking and walking fifty or sixty yards. We're evolving into a nation of lazy self-absorbed slobs. In the beginning of October I broke my ankle in three places, and had to wear a cast for seven weeks. Getting around on crutches was a nightmare. I developed huge sores under my arms, that wouldn't heal because I had to keep using them if I wanted to get around. Little things I took for granted became nightmares. In my apartment there is no kitchen sink, so I use a laundry sink in the adjoining room. Ever try to carry a stack of dirty dishes on crutches? After trying this out, I abandoned that strategy and would hop on one leg to and from the sink, which lead to the next difficulty. Filling up a pot of water and then trying to get it to the stove without all of it sloshing out. Do that for seven weeks and see how jolly you remain.
The winters here on Long Island have been milder than I can recall when I was a child. We haven't had a White Christmas in about five or six years. This year we got a cold spell earlier than usual, and I'm sure many people in this suburban haven don't realize it, but home owners and businesses are required to clear the sidewalks in front of their abodes and stores. The average Joe will only shovel a path from his front door to his driveway so he can get his car out, and then he's gone. Clearing the sidewalk is a thought that doesn't even cross Joe Averages' mind, because nobody walks. But lo and behold, here comes old dumb Tony hobbling along on his recently broken ankle trying to wend his way though the uneven mess of a sidewalk that Joe left unshoveled in his haste to get to work on time.
When I was in high school, the minimum wage was $1.72 per hour. So a big snow was a way for a kid to go out and earn some money. I remember after a "snow day" one kid coming to school the next morning telling us how he made sixty six bucks shoveling driveways. Snow blowers have all but eliminated that source of income for kids, but even if they hadn't, I seriously doubt that any of these fat-assed blobs would bother to even try it.
Getting back to my original thought, when the sidewalks aren't shoveled, people must slog through the snow. Once the temperature drops, it freezes into hard, uneven, irregular forms that are even worse if you're recovering from a broken ankle. Businesses are just as negligent as homeowners in this department. One of the worst cases is the local Home Depot, they're on a main road with a long stretch of sidewalk bordering their store, and they can run televison ads about how they help sponsor employees to the special olympics, but they can't get one of the snow blowers that they sell and clear their sidewalk. Good way to build customer relations! Of course as long as their parking lot is clear, that's all that matters, since I'm the only dipshit who bothers to walk to this home improvement emporium. I wonder if I boycotted them, if anybody would notice?

The Kids In America

2007-12-11T05:35:00.000-08:00

I have a blog going but since nobody reads it, I lost interest in posting my thoughts. As an overopinonated loner, I have this impulse to let people know what I think, regardless of whether they're interested or not. I've been watching the CBS series " Kid Nation" on a fairly regular basis. There isn't a whole lot of orignality in the new network TV shows, and the writers' strike has decreased the wealth of worthwhile viewing on the tube. Getting back to opening thoughts, I've been unableto log onto my original blog site because it required a password that is something other than what orignally comes to my addled brain. I used to work in radio, and always titled my blogs after the names of songs. This one is stolen from Kim Wilde and it was a minor radio hit in the muscially dismal 80's, the decade of disposable music.

The premise of Kid Nation, is that a bunch of kids under the age of sixteen or seventeen, I'm not positive which, are set out in a "Ghost Town" and are to rule and govern themselves. First of all, this is a farce. They are being manipulated by the powers that produce the program. It isn't like " Lord Of The Flies" where a bunch of kids are shipwrecked on an island and have to fend for themselves, these kids are being shaped and molded by what a "log" of the town that died dictates. Ahem, kids ruling themselves??? I don't think so. There are the usual mixture of reality show personalities, they're just younger than the casts of "Survivor" or " The Amazing Race". There is also a host who imparts his feelings into what is going on, so it isn't what it claims to be in the advertisements. But it IS still compelling viewing. I can't be too harsh on CBS for not letting the show become totally anarchy, but that sure as hell would've been good for ratings!
Like any reality show, creative editing can make things look a whole lot different than they play out. But it truly bothers me that they keep touting it as 40 kids ruling themselves. Say for instance the kids aren't doing a good job of following their assigned duties, the counsel members go to the town center and look at the log book of Bonanza City, where by some fantastic coincidence the settlers wrote about how the town had slipped into decay because people weren't doing their work. Because they're dealing with young kids, and the potential for lawsuits is a real possibility, they have to keep a lid on things. But I sure would much rather see a bunch of kids set loose and left to their own devices, no coaching, prodding, nudging from any outside sources, just let the cameras roll and see what comes up. I've always had a fascination with stories of survival, but as a type 1 diabetic I wouldn't last long in an extreme situation simply because I've got a medical ball and chain around my ankle. Mentally I think I'd do well, because I can look at situations from a variety of angles but I'll never get an opportunity to find out, unless CBS decides to feature a new reality show called " Medical Survivor". Yeah, I know...fat chance!