I remember how the year would begin in a blur, in pursuit of the biggest party and the loveliest ladies. Now I'm happy just to be off the road! Times change. Happy New Year! My next post will be a recently rediscovered short story that will bring in 2008 shaken...not stirred!
Dave
Monday, December 31, 2007
Saturday, December 8, 2007
A Christmas Letter To Laura, 2003
Christmas, more than any other time of year, is a time for memories. It's probably this fact that leads so many to feel the blues, because not every memory is joyful.
Having been born with an arch funny bone, I refuse to succumb to said blues when I think of loved ones I'll never see again. So as a second Christmas approaches since my eldest sister Laura passed away, I'd like to share a note I wrote, which brought her gales of laughter. With any luck, you'll get a hearty guffaw out of it, too.
*
DECEMBER 19, 2003
Dear Laura,
Merry Christmas! Even though I can't be there for this year's festivities in the 'ville (Victorville, Ca.), I'm happy and downright misty-eyed that we were together at Thanksgiving. It was, in a word, wonderful!
I thought, to amuse you for the current holiday, I'd recall a Christmas from long ago that has withstood the test of time. No, it has nothing to do with that "special present," or that Hallmark moment," nor anything remotely connected with the true spirit of giving or warmth of the season. No, this was the kind of event that, for better or worse, is as much a part of everyone's Christmas as the Three Wise Men, or Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.
We call it...Family Shit.
It was a typical Christmas in Southern California. December 25th, 1980--strong Santa Ana winds provided what we know as seasonal warmth, dispelling any of the chilly charm we pine for at Christmas, but not the spirit. Do you recall when we were all together at Lisa's (my other sister) house in West Covina? I made the trip with your two eldest sons and Reginald (one of my brothers) in his AMC Gremlin, a car with a fitting name for what would eventually happen that day.
Yes, there was a feeling that something would occur, and linger in our memories like the scent of Reg's cigarettes. It was, in fact, his inattentiveness to hygiene that set the tone on Christmas Eve. Darryl (my nephew), old friend Craig Gross, and I travelled to Reg's apartment on Orizaba Street, in an aging part of Long Beach. It was my own brotherly attempt to stave off some sort of embarassment. As you know, to open Reg's front door was to be assaulted by a conflagration of ash, smoke and stench. The ash rested in a fine layer over everything, just deep enough to make a snow angel were you to dared lay on the floor.
Then there was the smoke--wafting, moving slowly like a ghost. Smoke so white you'd think a Pope had been elected right there between the empty chili cans and rotting milk cartons. The evil scent that reached into one's nostrils and nearly pulled out an organ, should be left to your imagination.
Somewhere in the midst of this squalor was Reg's clothing. We figured he'd be able to get through Christmas Day if he were, at the very least, dressed decently. As he opened the door to his hall closet, I half expected a squadron of moths to fly out and buzz us like German fighter pilots. Even moths have to sustain life, however, and the cloistered environs of that closet would have suffocated Dracula!
Reg chose a suit he'd been given nine or ten years earlier, a green-blue, two-pant suit with a reversible, checkered vest. God knows what had happened to the green-blue pants, so he selected the checkered alternative. We suggested he try them on--years had passed since he'd worn them, and he'd put on a little weight. So he stepped out of trousers to reveal an unspeakable pair of briefs...fast on their way to becoming the color of Coca Cola. I stifled a thought that he might want to try a fresh pair of shorts as well, but I decided to choose my battles wisely.
The checkered pants were a mess. Getting into them, he looked for all the world like a teenaged girl putting on her first pair of panty hose, or a hausfrau struggling into a girdle. They fit him like the leotard on some Shakespearean actor...and if he were to wear them, he'd be asking for some sort of Shakespearean drama to occur.
"They don't fit, " I told him.
"These are MY pants, and I'm GONNA wear 'em!" he told us firmly, sucking the cork off a KOOL filter-tip cigarette. His attitude was so entrenched, we all backed off. The stage, then, was set for Christmas, 1980.
And it didn't take long for the fun to start. On the drive to West Covina, I kept my feet elevated, because some shopping bags were acting as a floor mat on the passenger's side of Reg's Gremlin. Apparently, he'd tried to consume what must have been an entire brewery a couple of nights before, and had tossed his cookies right there. It was a bad sign.
As I recall it, Darryl, Bryan (my other nephew) and I walked into Lisa's house first and milled around. Pop (my late father) was seated as only he could be, having eased his bulk into one of Lisa's comfortable chairs. Only two things could get him out of that seat: the shrill blast of our Mother's voice, or the chance to verbally jab at his sartorially and hygienically challenged third-eldest son. The latter opportinuty presented itself when Reg shambled through the door, dropped something, then bent over--in those pants, and while still in Pop's line of sight. Uh-oh...
As he bent, the pressure on Reg's pants was so incredible, the conjoined checks in the pattern were separating. The pantlegs were rising up his shins as if he were preparing to wade across a pond of elephant pee. Reg's ass was all anyone could see, his pants so taut, a sudden moment of flatulence would force a hole the size of a hubcap through them.
As Reg's "moon" rose, Pop seized the day--he simply could not resist.
"Hey, Smokey! Just couldn't conform, could ya? Couldn't find some decent clothes," he started. Reg ignored him.
"Oh yeah, I'm gonna talk about ya!" And Pop charged on, newly energized by Reg's reticence to acknowledge his caustic comments. And, yes, he sure did talk about him. At length! So as not to endure any further blistering, Reg went outside and fired up three or four consecutive KOOL filter-kings--the most powerful cigarettes not made in Turkey. Seriously, he could have saved money by just going down to La Brea and snorting the tar right out of the pits.
While Reg made like a refinery, belching smoke and frustration, I took a deep breath of fresh air, then went out to join him.
"I told you what would happen, asshole," I said, hoping the message would somehow get through the haze...the haze of his beer addled consciousness, and the fog of smoke curling from his nostrils and permeating everything in sight.
Reg fled the scene shortly after the meal. My only other rememberance of that day is going home to the folk's house and listening to the Lee Morgan jazz album that Thomas (another of my brothers who, sadly, has also left us) gave me for the holiday. Forever, though, along with Deck the Halls, Sleigh Ride, Jingle Bells, and Silent Night, the words, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna talk about ya!" will always, always conjure up this memory of Christmas, 1980.
Here's hoping Christmas 2003 is filled with Joy and laughter...not necessarily at someone's expense, but laughter, still and all!
Much love,
Your Brother Dave
*
More Christmas stuff to come.
Having been born with an arch funny bone, I refuse to succumb to said blues when I think of loved ones I'll never see again. So as a second Christmas approaches since my eldest sister Laura passed away, I'd like to share a note I wrote, which brought her gales of laughter. With any luck, you'll get a hearty guffaw out of it, too.
*
DECEMBER 19, 2003
Dear Laura,
Merry Christmas! Even though I can't be there for this year's festivities in the 'ville (Victorville, Ca.), I'm happy and downright misty-eyed that we were together at Thanksgiving. It was, in a word, wonderful!
I thought, to amuse you for the current holiday, I'd recall a Christmas from long ago that has withstood the test of time. No, it has nothing to do with that "special present," or that Hallmark moment," nor anything remotely connected with the true spirit of giving or warmth of the season. No, this was the kind of event that, for better or worse, is as much a part of everyone's Christmas as the Three Wise Men, or Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.
We call it...Family Shit.
It was a typical Christmas in Southern California. December 25th, 1980--strong Santa Ana winds provided what we know as seasonal warmth, dispelling any of the chilly charm we pine for at Christmas, but not the spirit. Do you recall when we were all together at Lisa's (my other sister) house in West Covina? I made the trip with your two eldest sons and Reginald (one of my brothers) in his AMC Gremlin, a car with a fitting name for what would eventually happen that day.
Yes, there was a feeling that something would occur, and linger in our memories like the scent of Reg's cigarettes. It was, in fact, his inattentiveness to hygiene that set the tone on Christmas Eve. Darryl (my nephew), old friend Craig Gross, and I travelled to Reg's apartment on Orizaba Street, in an aging part of Long Beach. It was my own brotherly attempt to stave off some sort of embarassment. As you know, to open Reg's front door was to be assaulted by a conflagration of ash, smoke and stench. The ash rested in a fine layer over everything, just deep enough to make a snow angel were you to dared lay on the floor.
Then there was the smoke--wafting, moving slowly like a ghost. Smoke so white you'd think a Pope had been elected right there between the empty chili cans and rotting milk cartons. The evil scent that reached into one's nostrils and nearly pulled out an organ, should be left to your imagination.
Somewhere in the midst of this squalor was Reg's clothing. We figured he'd be able to get through Christmas Day if he were, at the very least, dressed decently. As he opened the door to his hall closet, I half expected a squadron of moths to fly out and buzz us like German fighter pilots. Even moths have to sustain life, however, and the cloistered environs of that closet would have suffocated Dracula!
Reg chose a suit he'd been given nine or ten years earlier, a green-blue, two-pant suit with a reversible, checkered vest. God knows what had happened to the green-blue pants, so he selected the checkered alternative. We suggested he try them on--years had passed since he'd worn them, and he'd put on a little weight. So he stepped out of trousers to reveal an unspeakable pair of briefs...fast on their way to becoming the color of Coca Cola. I stifled a thought that he might want to try a fresh pair of shorts as well, but I decided to choose my battles wisely.
The checkered pants were a mess. Getting into them, he looked for all the world like a teenaged girl putting on her first pair of panty hose, or a hausfrau struggling into a girdle. They fit him like the leotard on some Shakespearean actor...and if he were to wear them, he'd be asking for some sort of Shakespearean drama to occur.
"They don't fit, " I told him.
"These are MY pants, and I'm GONNA wear 'em!" he told us firmly, sucking the cork off a KOOL filter-tip cigarette. His attitude was so entrenched, we all backed off. The stage, then, was set for Christmas, 1980.
And it didn't take long for the fun to start. On the drive to West Covina, I kept my feet elevated, because some shopping bags were acting as a floor mat on the passenger's side of Reg's Gremlin. Apparently, he'd tried to consume what must have been an entire brewery a couple of nights before, and had tossed his cookies right there. It was a bad sign.
As I recall it, Darryl, Bryan (my other nephew) and I walked into Lisa's house first and milled around. Pop (my late father) was seated as only he could be, having eased his bulk into one of Lisa's comfortable chairs. Only two things could get him out of that seat: the shrill blast of our Mother's voice, or the chance to verbally jab at his sartorially and hygienically challenged third-eldest son. The latter opportinuty presented itself when Reg shambled through the door, dropped something, then bent over--in those pants, and while still in Pop's line of sight. Uh-oh...
As he bent, the pressure on Reg's pants was so incredible, the conjoined checks in the pattern were separating. The pantlegs were rising up his shins as if he were preparing to wade across a pond of elephant pee. Reg's ass was all anyone could see, his pants so taut, a sudden moment of flatulence would force a hole the size of a hubcap through them.
As Reg's "moon" rose, Pop seized the day--he simply could not resist.
"Hey, Smokey! Just couldn't conform, could ya? Couldn't find some decent clothes," he started. Reg ignored him.
"Oh yeah, I'm gonna talk about ya!" And Pop charged on, newly energized by Reg's reticence to acknowledge his caustic comments. And, yes, he sure did talk about him. At length! So as not to endure any further blistering, Reg went outside and fired up three or four consecutive KOOL filter-kings--the most powerful cigarettes not made in Turkey. Seriously, he could have saved money by just going down to La Brea and snorting the tar right out of the pits.
While Reg made like a refinery, belching smoke and frustration, I took a deep breath of fresh air, then went out to join him.
"I told you what would happen, asshole," I said, hoping the message would somehow get through the haze...the haze of his beer addled consciousness, and the fog of smoke curling from his nostrils and permeating everything in sight.
Reg fled the scene shortly after the meal. My only other rememberance of that day is going home to the folk's house and listening to the Lee Morgan jazz album that Thomas (another of my brothers who, sadly, has also left us) gave me for the holiday. Forever, though, along with Deck the Halls, Sleigh Ride, Jingle Bells, and Silent Night, the words, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna talk about ya!" will always, always conjure up this memory of Christmas, 1980.
Here's hoping Christmas 2003 is filled with Joy and laughter...not necessarily at someone's expense, but laughter, still and all!
Much love,
Your Brother Dave
*
More Christmas stuff to come.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like YIKES!
To begin the Christmas season, I have to confess: I always wince when I hear "Frosty the Snowman." I must have been 9 years-old when the story was turned into a cartoon special for CBS. There I was, a kid with three brothers in the service; I'd watched the nation mourn Martin Luther King, Junior and Robert F. Kennedy on TV, and endured a change of schools. Then, to compound events, I watched a holiday special about a snowman, and got bummed because the sumbitch melted!!
Enjoy "Frosty," if you must--I'll take an uplifting tune like "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, let's exchange breathmints."
*
Now, on to the holiday just passed. It was a quiet time for a man not used to two consecutive days off the road. I decided to spend the day after Thanksgiving observing the hustle and bustle of my fellow Americans as they consumed any and everything on sale. What I saw was just how the world has changed over the last ten years. It's over the last decade that the day after Thanksgiving morphed into Black Friday. At what point (during what apparently has been my ten years snooze) did the day after Turkey day turn into "Black Friday?"
In the 60's, this was a welcome second day home from school, with ABC-TV offering a full slate of cartoons. It was also a day for the first of what would be a hundred turkey sandwiches (in our house, that meant bread slices, spread with butter, then loaded with stuffing, cranberry sauce and turkey---no small wonder a family-wide cholesterol battle rages, still).
At some point, local TV news organizations appropriated the retail jargon that alludes to the profit goal of that day, and "Black" Friday was born. It's covered as breathlessly as a Presidential campaign. We're treated to early morning video, capturing a phalanx of shoppers (and a few loutish buffoons), in herculean exhibitions of pre-dawn bargain hunting.
Some stores were open as early as 3 am, others said the hell with it and were open on
Thanksgiving Day. The pumpkin pie could obviously wait! There was money to be made!
My Friday journey started with circling the mall parking lot for about 15 minutes. I marveled at the fact that, even by 2pm, this massive horde had descended upon one place.
This was immediately apparent: at least one in three of the drivers had one hand on the wheel, and the other jammed to their skull, in the now familiar position of the frequent cell phone user. Since 1997, as the years flew by with the whoosh of an F-15, not only has the term "Black Friday" become standard, but cellular telephony has become affordable, convenient, and conspicuous to the point where it's taken for granted.
This kind of constant communication was once the stuff of comic strips. Something Dick Tracy would use to track down Mucous Face, or Flattop, or some other miscreant. With cell phones we get chit-chat, photos, video, music, instantaneous information. Dick Tracy would be amazed.
None-the-less, I don't use a cell when I drive. I have enough on my hands making sure I don't get run into by the people who are talking, gesticulating, head jerking, doing all the things people have always done when they talk on a phone.
Back to the mall--once I parked and went inside, it was much the same as it was in the parking lot. One in three were ambling along, engrossed in conversation. I walked and watched, while my inner monologue carefully noted it all. Had I been on the phone, I wouldn't be soaking it all in...the chatters, the gawkers, the cuties, the waddlers, the whole atmosphere.
There's been a transformation in human behavior with the advent of the technology we use so readily. Most obvious to me is that as people engage the urge to gab, they do so at a full robust volume, and it doesn't seem to phase them. Any and all personal issues are thrust into the open to bounce off the walls and into the consciousness of others--from the most mundane item of daily drudgery, to the embarrassingly prurient detail. I guess there was reason Ma Bell put public telephones in booths, that reason being PRIVACY. People don't seem to care about what they say, how loud they say it or where they might be when it's said. This fascinates me because when I use the cell in public places, I gravitate toward an enclosure, or someplace where I won't disturb others or air any private harangues.
It's increasingly evident that the more technological advances we make, the more we have to sacrifice in return. We don't realize it's a sacrifice because the conveniences we enjoy are so awesome. But they are sacrifices, still and all. There was a line Spencer Tracy delivered in an old movie called Inherit The Wind that says it better than I ever could. Playing a fictional version of attorney Clarence Darrow at the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial," Tracy addressed the jury about the price of progress: "The telephone unites us, but we lose the charm of distance; The airplane brings us closer, but the birds lose their wonder and the clouds smell of gasoline!"
If the Clarence Darrow-like character wondered about the advances of the 1920's, what we have in the 21st century would make him beat his head like a Neanderthal seeing a fire lit for the first time.
This is where we are, and there's no going back.
*
Not that some don't want us to--go backward, that is. A couple of weeks ago, Mike Huckabee, a Presidential candidate who's slowly rising in the polls, told an interviewer he believes the world is six thousand years old. If Clarence Darrow were living, his head would explode! This is what the "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 1925 was all about. Educator John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in Tennessee. He'd done so to test the validity of the law. Darrow defended Scopes, and William Jennings Bryan, three time presidential nominee and fundamentalist voice of the everyman, served as prosecutor. The film "Inherit the Wind" dramatizes the story brilliantly. The Scopes trial was in 1925, the movie was released in 1960. The idea of a presidential candidate in 2007 disavowing the theory of evolution is alarming. This is a battle with ignorance that was fought and won years ago...or so we thought.
That little nugget from Governor Huckabee was compounded by an utterance made a few months ago by the latest "brain surgeon" to fill the "zaftig" seat on that one hour tribute to oral halitosis, The View. I don't know her name, and don't really care to, but this misguided, gum-flapping cretin said she didn't know whether or not the world was FLAT. I could surmise the same about her head. Somebody please show her a photo from any Apollo moon mission, or maybe, just maybe have her crack open a school book before her lips separate once more, and foul the air with her appalling stupidity!
*
For those not in the Los Angeles area, and if you're of a certain age, you missed a holiday flashback. L.A's Channel 5, KTLA, celebrated its 60th anniversary on the air, with 60 straight hours of venerated old TV shows. I hadn't seen some of these series in 30 years. The lesson here is that what once made you howl with glee doesn't always hold up. What we recall as amusing TV in the 1960's, with rare exception, ages poorly. Case in point, McHale's Navy and F-Troop were must-see shows for me as a child. Watching them this weekend, there was no escaping the triteness, and the unflinching insensitivity to Asian and Native Americans. Such were the times. It's better to not watch those old shows, and just remember they once entertained you.
The exceptions, though, were strong! Jack Benny, The Honeymooners, and yes, The Munsters are still funny, even though it's been 42 years since the thermos from my Munsters lunchbox rolled out, hit the sidewalk and imploded.
'Til next time, Merry, Merry!
Enjoy "Frosty," if you must--I'll take an uplifting tune like "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, let's exchange breathmints."
*
Now, on to the holiday just passed. It was a quiet time for a man not used to two consecutive days off the road. I decided to spend the day after Thanksgiving observing the hustle and bustle of my fellow Americans as they consumed any and everything on sale. What I saw was just how the world has changed over the last ten years. It's over the last decade that the day after Thanksgiving morphed into Black Friday. At what point (during what apparently has been my ten years snooze) did the day after Turkey day turn into "Black Friday?"
In the 60's, this was a welcome second day home from school, with ABC-TV offering a full slate of cartoons. It was also a day for the first of what would be a hundred turkey sandwiches (in our house, that meant bread slices, spread with butter, then loaded with stuffing, cranberry sauce and turkey---no small wonder a family-wide cholesterol battle rages, still).
At some point, local TV news organizations appropriated the retail jargon that alludes to the profit goal of that day, and "Black" Friday was born. It's covered as breathlessly as a Presidential campaign. We're treated to early morning video, capturing a phalanx of shoppers (and a few loutish buffoons), in herculean exhibitions of pre-dawn bargain hunting.
Some stores were open as early as 3 am, others said the hell with it and were open on
Thanksgiving Day. The pumpkin pie could obviously wait! There was money to be made!
My Friday journey started with circling the mall parking lot for about 15 minutes. I marveled at the fact that, even by 2pm, this massive horde had descended upon one place.
This was immediately apparent: at least one in three of the drivers had one hand on the wheel, and the other jammed to their skull, in the now familiar position of the frequent cell phone user. Since 1997, as the years flew by with the whoosh of an F-15, not only has the term "Black Friday" become standard, but cellular telephony has become affordable, convenient, and conspicuous to the point where it's taken for granted.
This kind of constant communication was once the stuff of comic strips. Something Dick Tracy would use to track down Mucous Face, or Flattop, or some other miscreant. With cell phones we get chit-chat, photos, video, music, instantaneous information. Dick Tracy would be amazed.
None-the-less, I don't use a cell when I drive. I have enough on my hands making sure I don't get run into by the people who are talking, gesticulating, head jerking, doing all the things people have always done when they talk on a phone.
Back to the mall--once I parked and went inside, it was much the same as it was in the parking lot. One in three were ambling along, engrossed in conversation. I walked and watched, while my inner monologue carefully noted it all. Had I been on the phone, I wouldn't be soaking it all in...the chatters, the gawkers, the cuties, the waddlers, the whole atmosphere.
There's been a transformation in human behavior with the advent of the technology we use so readily. Most obvious to me is that as people engage the urge to gab, they do so at a full robust volume, and it doesn't seem to phase them. Any and all personal issues are thrust into the open to bounce off the walls and into the consciousness of others--from the most mundane item of daily drudgery, to the embarrassingly prurient detail. I guess there was reason Ma Bell put public telephones in booths, that reason being PRIVACY. People don't seem to care about what they say, how loud they say it or where they might be when it's said. This fascinates me because when I use the cell in public places, I gravitate toward an enclosure, or someplace where I won't disturb others or air any private harangues.
It's increasingly evident that the more technological advances we make, the more we have to sacrifice in return. We don't realize it's a sacrifice because the conveniences we enjoy are so awesome. But they are sacrifices, still and all. There was a line Spencer Tracy delivered in an old movie called Inherit The Wind that says it better than I ever could. Playing a fictional version of attorney Clarence Darrow at the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial," Tracy addressed the jury about the price of progress: "The telephone unites us, but we lose the charm of distance; The airplane brings us closer, but the birds lose their wonder and the clouds smell of gasoline!"
If the Clarence Darrow-like character wondered about the advances of the 1920's, what we have in the 21st century would make him beat his head like a Neanderthal seeing a fire lit for the first time.
This is where we are, and there's no going back.
*
Not that some don't want us to--go backward, that is. A couple of weeks ago, Mike Huckabee, a Presidential candidate who's slowly rising in the polls, told an interviewer he believes the world is six thousand years old. If Clarence Darrow were living, his head would explode! This is what the "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 1925 was all about. Educator John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in Tennessee. He'd done so to test the validity of the law. Darrow defended Scopes, and William Jennings Bryan, three time presidential nominee and fundamentalist voice of the everyman, served as prosecutor. The film "Inherit the Wind" dramatizes the story brilliantly. The Scopes trial was in 1925, the movie was released in 1960. The idea of a presidential candidate in 2007 disavowing the theory of evolution is alarming. This is a battle with ignorance that was fought and won years ago...or so we thought.
That little nugget from Governor Huckabee was compounded by an utterance made a few months ago by the latest "brain surgeon" to fill the "zaftig" seat on that one hour tribute to oral halitosis, The View. I don't know her name, and don't really care to, but this misguided, gum-flapping cretin said she didn't know whether or not the world was FLAT. I could surmise the same about her head. Somebody please show her a photo from any Apollo moon mission, or maybe, just maybe have her crack open a school book before her lips separate once more, and foul the air with her appalling stupidity!
*
For those not in the Los Angeles area, and if you're of a certain age, you missed a holiday flashback. L.A's Channel 5, KTLA, celebrated its 60th anniversary on the air, with 60 straight hours of venerated old TV shows. I hadn't seen some of these series in 30 years. The lesson here is that what once made you howl with glee doesn't always hold up. What we recall as amusing TV in the 1960's, with rare exception, ages poorly. Case in point, McHale's Navy and F-Troop were must-see shows for me as a child. Watching them this weekend, there was no escaping the triteness, and the unflinching insensitivity to Asian and Native Americans. Such were the times. It's better to not watch those old shows, and just remember they once entertained you.
The exceptions, though, were strong! Jack Benny, The Honeymooners, and yes, The Munsters are still funny, even though it's been 42 years since the thermos from my Munsters lunchbox rolled out, hit the sidewalk and imploded.
'Til next time, Merry, Merry!
Sunday, November 11, 2007
A few Random notes for November
THE DECADENCE OF SLEEPING ALL DAY
It's only decadent if you've spent all night, thrashing about in a world of hedonistic pleasure. If you work overnight, four or five nights a week, it's more like a refueling. That's what I did with the day, regardless of how I would like to have spent it, or where I'd like to have gone. When the body says "shut it down," you listen.
Having established that the day is gone, I figured this time out in the blogosphere, I'd tackle random topics with a few pithy comments, a la Larry King's old column in USA Today. I call it Larry King's old column, but who's to say Larry ever pushed a noun against a verb unless it was while he on radio or TV, massaging the egos of some politician, or Teeing up softballs for the latest tabloid sensation?
So, here we go with random thoughts:
JACK O'LANTERN THIS, CHARLIE BROWN
The pumpkin I bought for Halloween was tough enough to seat two fat rats and Cinderella. The sharpest steak knife couldn't carve it, so I drew the face of an imbecile on it with a magic marker. The neighbors loved it. Imbeciles were offended.
*
Have you noticed that once Halloween is over, Christmas season begins, with Thanksgiving as the huge meal in between? I'm certain that time hasn't dimmed my memory. There was a definite distance between the holidays, in the past. Here in the 21st century, you go to the drug store on November 1st, and the electrodes on Frankenstein's neck are replaced with jingle bells.
NEWS YOU COULD LOSE, AND JOHNNY U
After inhaling 858 pages of Arthur Schlesinger, I read Howard Kurtz, "Reality Wars," the latest tome detailing the seriousness and adjacent tom-foolery behind the world of network news. It's for those who are curious to examine the story behind those who present the news, and how delivering information has changed since TVs began to glow in every household. A 1983 book called "The Evening Stars," by Barbara Matusow starts the real tale of TV network news, from the 40's through Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather. Kurtz ' book picks up where Matusow left off. Interesting history. Where the early anchors, like Cronkite and Brinkley, made the ascent from newspapers to radio and TV, today's anchor is a creation of TV itself, hence they are celebs...yet journalists, still. If you are inclined, give it a read.
*
Another book I've been going through is a biography of Johnny Unitas, the old Balitmore Colts quarterback. In those far way days before VCRs and DVDs, I had a film-cartridge player with a hand crank. In one of the film cartridges, Johnny Unitas taught you how to play quarterback. Imagine a day before 24-hour sports networks and sports talk radio. Cranking those cartridges was a way to watch football between games and in January (yes, January) when football season was over. Also, turning the crank forward and backward a click or two could make Johnny Unitas do wacky things with a football that only kids could appreciate.
In the Unitas book, the author details Johnny's first days in training camp with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1955. When he asked where equipment like pads, socks, and jockstraps were, Johnny U was appalled when directed to grab what he needed from a large pile in the corner of the locker room. That was the NFL in the 50's, unsophisticated, uncouth, and unsanitary. After reading this passage, I saw a 60 minutes TV report about the spread of MRSA, a super staph infection that is impervious to anti-biotics. High Schools in Virgina are disinfecting their locker rooms on a regular basis, and telling players to wash frequently and not to share towels and clothing. It occured to me that those who played in the 1950's era NFL may well have risked the PLAGUE.
WE WISH YOU A SCHMALTZY CHRISTMAS
Not to beat a point to death, there are times when I envy the bears that hibernate between November and January. Bears are lucky, because they don't have to endure the maudlin seepage that serves as Holiday music, today. Jingle Bells, Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer, and O Holy Night have been almost completely supplanted by so many depressing efforts, the joy of the season is nearly lost. It is a fact that as the days grow short, and as pressure to please and entertain mounts, the blues can take hold. It's my position that the happier aspects of the season can only be enhanced by music that picks up the spirits. Devastating lyrics about lost pets and other hideous circumstances pluck the heart strings, yes. But in my mind, they have little association with the words "Merry Christmas."
I'm nearly alone in my opinion. Since 9/11, the ratings companies tell us all-Christmas radio stations do very well playing both Frosty the Snowman and co-dependant, sob-inducing, dirges by the likes of New Kids on the Block and Kenny G, for up to two months, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Don't get me wrong--sentimentality, nostalgia, and pathos are a part of Christmas. I'd just rather hear bells jingling and egg-nogg pouring...with more nogg than egg, thank you. In other words, I prefer all the good-old Christmas tunes.
*
More holiday stuff to come, as Turkey Day ensues, and Santa gorges himself for his wild, world-wide ride.
It's only decadent if you've spent all night, thrashing about in a world of hedonistic pleasure. If you work overnight, four or five nights a week, it's more like a refueling. That's what I did with the day, regardless of how I would like to have spent it, or where I'd like to have gone. When the body says "shut it down," you listen.
Having established that the day is gone, I figured this time out in the blogosphere, I'd tackle random topics with a few pithy comments, a la Larry King's old column in USA Today. I call it Larry King's old column, but who's to say Larry ever pushed a noun against a verb unless it was while he on radio or TV, massaging the egos of some politician, or Teeing up softballs for the latest tabloid sensation?
So, here we go with random thoughts:
JACK O'LANTERN THIS, CHARLIE BROWN
The pumpkin I bought for Halloween was tough enough to seat two fat rats and Cinderella. The sharpest steak knife couldn't carve it, so I drew the face of an imbecile on it with a magic marker. The neighbors loved it. Imbeciles were offended.
*
Have you noticed that once Halloween is over, Christmas season begins, with Thanksgiving as the huge meal in between? I'm certain that time hasn't dimmed my memory. There was a definite distance between the holidays, in the past. Here in the 21st century, you go to the drug store on November 1st, and the electrodes on Frankenstein's neck are replaced with jingle bells.
NEWS YOU COULD LOSE, AND JOHNNY U
After inhaling 858 pages of Arthur Schlesinger, I read Howard Kurtz, "Reality Wars," the latest tome detailing the seriousness and adjacent tom-foolery behind the world of network news. It's for those who are curious to examine the story behind those who present the news, and how delivering information has changed since TVs began to glow in every household. A 1983 book called "The Evening Stars," by Barbara Matusow starts the real tale of TV network news, from the 40's through Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather. Kurtz ' book picks up where Matusow left off. Interesting history. Where the early anchors, like Cronkite and Brinkley, made the ascent from newspapers to radio and TV, today's anchor is a creation of TV itself, hence they are celebs...yet journalists, still. If you are inclined, give it a read.
*
Another book I've been going through is a biography of Johnny Unitas, the old Balitmore Colts quarterback. In those far way days before VCRs and DVDs, I had a film-cartridge player with a hand crank. In one of the film cartridges, Johnny Unitas taught you how to play quarterback. Imagine a day before 24-hour sports networks and sports talk radio. Cranking those cartridges was a way to watch football between games and in January (yes, January) when football season was over. Also, turning the crank forward and backward a click or two could make Johnny Unitas do wacky things with a football that only kids could appreciate.
In the Unitas book, the author details Johnny's first days in training camp with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1955. When he asked where equipment like pads, socks, and jockstraps were, Johnny U was appalled when directed to grab what he needed from a large pile in the corner of the locker room. That was the NFL in the 50's, unsophisticated, uncouth, and unsanitary. After reading this passage, I saw a 60 minutes TV report about the spread of MRSA, a super staph infection that is impervious to anti-biotics. High Schools in Virgina are disinfecting their locker rooms on a regular basis, and telling players to wash frequently and not to share towels and clothing. It occured to me that those who played in the 1950's era NFL may well have risked the PLAGUE.
WE WISH YOU A SCHMALTZY CHRISTMAS
Not to beat a point to death, there are times when I envy the bears that hibernate between November and January. Bears are lucky, because they don't have to endure the maudlin seepage that serves as Holiday music, today. Jingle Bells, Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer, and O Holy Night have been almost completely supplanted by so many depressing efforts, the joy of the season is nearly lost. It is a fact that as the days grow short, and as pressure to please and entertain mounts, the blues can take hold. It's my position that the happier aspects of the season can only be enhanced by music that picks up the spirits. Devastating lyrics about lost pets and other hideous circumstances pluck the heart strings, yes. But in my mind, they have little association with the words "Merry Christmas."
I'm nearly alone in my opinion. Since 9/11, the ratings companies tell us all-Christmas radio stations do very well playing both Frosty the Snowman and co-dependant, sob-inducing, dirges by the likes of New Kids on the Block and Kenny G, for up to two months, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Don't get me wrong--sentimentality, nostalgia, and pathos are a part of Christmas. I'd just rather hear bells jingling and egg-nogg pouring...with more nogg than egg, thank you. In other words, I prefer all the good-old Christmas tunes.
*
More holiday stuff to come, as Turkey Day ensues, and Santa gorges himself for his wild, world-wide ride.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Baseball, TV News, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Each region of the world has its climatological cross to bear. The paradise of Island life (Caribbean or south Pacific) is annually wracked by hurricanes or typhoons. For southern Californians, it's the constant knowledge that an earthquake is possible, and the devilish offshore flow, known colloquially as the Santa Ana winds. These super-heated winds that blow like hell from the northeast, make this rain deficient part of the country a literal tinderbox. As I put this week's thoughts down, I can smell the smoke from Malibu, one of 5 areas at this end of the state that has burst into flames, whipped to a frenzy by those winds. It puts my planned topics into perspective--it's strictly for amusement. Worse things are happening right around me.
Fortunately out of harm's way, regardless of the smell and the ash that floated down like snowflakes, I spent the day napping like an aging cat, catching pieces of two football games between the fire coverage which, though urgent, can get tedious. A lot of ad-libbing broadcasters with nothing to describe (you can see the picture) and little fact to provide, start filling the air with a lot of needless verbiage. The one TV anchor who never failed to share incisive expertise during these events was Hal Fishman, who died unexpectedly, earlier this year.
To show you how immensely local television news depends on the physical appearance of its reporters, even I kept thinking that the stellar ad-lib work done by an early morning weekend anchor on KNBC-TV would be a major star if she looked like a less competent reporter on KCBS-TV, Channel 2. This same gorgeous Asian woman had been at different local station 15 years ago, reporting on yet another Santa Ana fire in Malibu. As I recall, she was with her news crew, beaming back pictures from Pacific Coast Highway, as flames licked close to Pepperdine University. The anchor asked her question after quest about the location of the blaze, where it was approaching, etc. To paraphrase what Johnny Carson once said of a would-be competitor, she couldn't ad-lib a fart. She bumbled and phumphered and stumbled along. But, she was so stunning in casual clothes (a jacket and, as country folk say, "tight-fittin' jeans), it almost took your mind off the fire.
I can't protest too much, because I've watched it affect my viewing habits. Without question, in Los Angeles, KCBS and KCAL, two stations co-owned by the same company, utilizing the same reporters, employ a cadre of Miss America contestants. They are so good looking you almost look past the fact there's not a story about sex, molestation, a car chase, kidnapping, or other violent act that doesn't fill up the late newscast. KABC employs attractive anchors, but seems to offset its tabloid stories with those less titillating. KNBC seems to not give a fig about looks. Fox 11 is...well, it's Fox. ..what can I add? Mind you, this is coming from someone who just wants to get the news. There's nothing scientific about what I've surmised. This is just how it looks to someone not associated with the world of TV Journalism.
*
In my youth, the World Series would be over by now, before weather turned inclimate around the country, making players not the boys of summer, but the Icicles of late fall. Two things happened today that were not necessarily unexpected: It snowed in Denver and the Boston Red Sox beat Cleveland for the American League pennant.
It's always an event when the Red Sox make the World Series because of the team's schlep-rock history as the most cursed of the cursed. they won the Series in '04. The curse is done, but their park is so steeped in tradition and quirkiness, and their fans so rabid, it's like you know the team. It also helps that ESPN, located in Bristol, Connecticut, positioned between NYC and Beantown, is so East Coast-centric, it's as if the Red Sox and Yankees play in your home town.
No one, however, could have predicted that Denver's Colorado Rockies would be the Sox' national League opponent. The Rocks have been sitting on their duff's since last Monday, having vanquished the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League Championship series. As a Dodger fan, this hurts like a glutial pimple...to see expansion teams vie for a Series spot. Yet, after having watched the Rockies step up and beat L-A with the skill of their name-less but sensational players, I respect them. It didn't hurt that Vin Scully, the legendary voice of the Dodgers, pointed out the talents of each sensational Rockie player has they planted a foot firmly in the ass of Dodger pennant hopes. It's not easy to listen to, but helps you appreciate your opponent. Announcers in other cities don't do that. I'm sure while Arizona was castrating the Chicago Cubs en route to their series with Colorado, the Cubs announcers weren't pointing out how talented the Diamondbacks were. Chicago broadcasters have a tendency to describe anything that goes against the Cubs like unsuccessful surgeons greeting an apprehensive family.
I can handle the Rockies in the series. It's more interesting to chew over how the World Series will turn out played in Denver, in that park where the ball flies far, where October snow can happen any minute, than to endure the teeth gnashing I'd experience had the Giants or Padres or Angels made it. Their fans gloat with too much relish when their teams are hot, and the Dodgers are not. Not appreciated by this writer.
*
Finally, I've spent a lot of spare time since October 5th, wrapped up in Journals: 1952-2000, the compiled journals of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the renowned historian. It's 858 pages long, and I've enjoyed 714 of them so far. His commentary and assessment of events as they happened over all those years is eye-opening and honest. Schlesinger passed away in February of this year(he'd have been 90 on the October 15th). Two of his sons assembled stacks of his typewritten journals that are a behind the scenes look at how politics , academia , and the society set functioned, and how all it evolved during one man's public lifetime.
Of his impressions of the politicians and Presidents, it's memorable to note that, as opposed to a memoir, a journal is related in real time. What Schlesinger thought of some of these men and women stands the test of time. He worked in the Kennedy Administration as historian, speechwriter, policy maker. He apparently knew nothing about JFK's celebrated indiscretions when they were happening, and later, after they were revealed, thought they were nothing more than titillation.
In one 196o's entry, Schlesinger shares that Kennedy often quoted a Chinese Proverb: "Many are on the stairs but no one's in the room ."
The author was prescient on most of his observations, but was wrong in 1980, when, distressed over the Carter Presidency, surmised that a Reagan Administration could be contained by a Democratic Congress. He was wrong, there. But he was quite right concerning another twice-elected President.
The biggest kick I've gotten out of this tome is that Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a scholar, professor, historian; a man of letters and a reservoir of words, would choose the following to put Richard Nixon in crystal-clear perspective: "He's a shit." Schlesinger was also prescient in his ruminations about Nixon's Administration. In an eerie way, they mirror the machinations of our current White House occupants.
I laughed out loud as I read that, in 1979, Schlesinger and his family got new neighbors on New York's East Side: The Nixon's. The author's descriptions are priceless, as Nixon douses the lights on Halloween to avoid trick or treaters. He's hilarious when he relates looking out his bedroom window to see "the unmistakable visage" of Nixon in profile, skulking around the house. One afternoon, Schlesinger's 8 year-old-son was climbing a jungle-jim in the backyard, and scaling the fence. Schlesinger's wife later reported that Nixon began waving feebly at the boy, who later told his parents Nixon was telling him to get off the fence. Soon, the secret service had established a presence, and installed cameras.
The descriptions of Nixon walking back and forth, lugging firewood, only to take it back for smaller logs, then locking himself out makes you think of Tricky Dick as Mr. Wilson of Dennis the Menace fame. Schlesinger looking out his window to see a semi-clad Nixon sunning himself, only to have his wife ad, "It looks like a sunbather in a Nixon mask," had me on the floor. That and Nixon playing catch with a grandchild in a three piece suit and tie. You can't make this sort of stuff up.
*
Speaking of Halloween, we'll try and jot down some notes before the holiday about the fun of fall. If I could just stop laughing about Nixon, jowls flapping, chasing kids off the backyard fence!
Fortunately out of harm's way, regardless of the smell and the ash that floated down like snowflakes, I spent the day napping like an aging cat, catching pieces of two football games between the fire coverage which, though urgent, can get tedious. A lot of ad-libbing broadcasters with nothing to describe (you can see the picture) and little fact to provide, start filling the air with a lot of needless verbiage. The one TV anchor who never failed to share incisive expertise during these events was Hal Fishman, who died unexpectedly, earlier this year.
To show you how immensely local television news depends on the physical appearance of its reporters, even I kept thinking that the stellar ad-lib work done by an early morning weekend anchor on KNBC-TV would be a major star if she looked like a less competent reporter on KCBS-TV, Channel 2. This same gorgeous Asian woman had been at different local station 15 years ago, reporting on yet another Santa Ana fire in Malibu. As I recall, she was with her news crew, beaming back pictures from Pacific Coast Highway, as flames licked close to Pepperdine University. The anchor asked her question after quest about the location of the blaze, where it was approaching, etc. To paraphrase what Johnny Carson once said of a would-be competitor, she couldn't ad-lib a fart. She bumbled and phumphered and stumbled along. But, she was so stunning in casual clothes (a jacket and, as country folk say, "tight-fittin' jeans), it almost took your mind off the fire.
I can't protest too much, because I've watched it affect my viewing habits. Without question, in Los Angeles, KCBS and KCAL, two stations co-owned by the same company, utilizing the same reporters, employ a cadre of Miss America contestants. They are so good looking you almost look past the fact there's not a story about sex, molestation, a car chase, kidnapping, or other violent act that doesn't fill up the late newscast. KABC employs attractive anchors, but seems to offset its tabloid stories with those less titillating. KNBC seems to not give a fig about looks. Fox 11 is...well, it's Fox. ..what can I add? Mind you, this is coming from someone who just wants to get the news. There's nothing scientific about what I've surmised. This is just how it looks to someone not associated with the world of TV Journalism.
*
In my youth, the World Series would be over by now, before weather turned inclimate around the country, making players not the boys of summer, but the Icicles of late fall. Two things happened today that were not necessarily unexpected: It snowed in Denver and the Boston Red Sox beat Cleveland for the American League pennant.
It's always an event when the Red Sox make the World Series because of the team's schlep-rock history as the most cursed of the cursed. they won the Series in '04. The curse is done, but their park is so steeped in tradition and quirkiness, and their fans so rabid, it's like you know the team. It also helps that ESPN, located in Bristol, Connecticut, positioned between NYC and Beantown, is so East Coast-centric, it's as if the Red Sox and Yankees play in your home town.
No one, however, could have predicted that Denver's Colorado Rockies would be the Sox' national League opponent. The Rocks have been sitting on their duff's since last Monday, having vanquished the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League Championship series. As a Dodger fan, this hurts like a glutial pimple...to see expansion teams vie for a Series spot. Yet, after having watched the Rockies step up and beat L-A with the skill of their name-less but sensational players, I respect them. It didn't hurt that Vin Scully, the legendary voice of the Dodgers, pointed out the talents of each sensational Rockie player has they planted a foot firmly in the ass of Dodger pennant hopes. It's not easy to listen to, but helps you appreciate your opponent. Announcers in other cities don't do that. I'm sure while Arizona was castrating the Chicago Cubs en route to their series with Colorado, the Cubs announcers weren't pointing out how talented the Diamondbacks were. Chicago broadcasters have a tendency to describe anything that goes against the Cubs like unsuccessful surgeons greeting an apprehensive family.
I can handle the Rockies in the series. It's more interesting to chew over how the World Series will turn out played in Denver, in that park where the ball flies far, where October snow can happen any minute, than to endure the teeth gnashing I'd experience had the Giants or Padres or Angels made it. Their fans gloat with too much relish when their teams are hot, and the Dodgers are not. Not appreciated by this writer.
*
Finally, I've spent a lot of spare time since October 5th, wrapped up in Journals: 1952-2000, the compiled journals of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the renowned historian. It's 858 pages long, and I've enjoyed 714 of them so far. His commentary and assessment of events as they happened over all those years is eye-opening and honest. Schlesinger passed away in February of this year(he'd have been 90 on the October 15th). Two of his sons assembled stacks of his typewritten journals that are a behind the scenes look at how politics , academia , and the society set functioned, and how all it evolved during one man's public lifetime.
Of his impressions of the politicians and Presidents, it's memorable to note that, as opposed to a memoir, a journal is related in real time. What Schlesinger thought of some of these men and women stands the test of time. He worked in the Kennedy Administration as historian, speechwriter, policy maker. He apparently knew nothing about JFK's celebrated indiscretions when they were happening, and later, after they were revealed, thought they were nothing more than titillation.
In one 196o's entry, Schlesinger shares that Kennedy often quoted a Chinese Proverb: "Many are on the stairs but no one's in the room ."
The author was prescient on most of his observations, but was wrong in 1980, when, distressed over the Carter Presidency, surmised that a Reagan Administration could be contained by a Democratic Congress. He was wrong, there. But he was quite right concerning another twice-elected President.
The biggest kick I've gotten out of this tome is that Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a scholar, professor, historian; a man of letters and a reservoir of words, would choose the following to put Richard Nixon in crystal-clear perspective: "He's a shit." Schlesinger was also prescient in his ruminations about Nixon's Administration. In an eerie way, they mirror the machinations of our current White House occupants.
I laughed out loud as I read that, in 1979, Schlesinger and his family got new neighbors on New York's East Side: The Nixon's. The author's descriptions are priceless, as Nixon douses the lights on Halloween to avoid trick or treaters. He's hilarious when he relates looking out his bedroom window to see "the unmistakable visage" of Nixon in profile, skulking around the house. One afternoon, Schlesinger's 8 year-old-son was climbing a jungle-jim in the backyard, and scaling the fence. Schlesinger's wife later reported that Nixon began waving feebly at the boy, who later told his parents Nixon was telling him to get off the fence. Soon, the secret service had established a presence, and installed cameras.
The descriptions of Nixon walking back and forth, lugging firewood, only to take it back for smaller logs, then locking himself out makes you think of Tricky Dick as Mr. Wilson of Dennis the Menace fame. Schlesinger looking out his window to see a semi-clad Nixon sunning himself, only to have his wife ad, "It looks like a sunbather in a Nixon mask," had me on the floor. That and Nixon playing catch with a grandchild in a three piece suit and tie. You can't make this sort of stuff up.
*
Speaking of Halloween, we'll try and jot down some notes before the holiday about the fun of fall. If I could just stop laughing about Nixon, jowls flapping, chasing kids off the backyard fence!
Sunday, October 7, 2007
They open their traps, and yap!
When I was a kid, hilarious, countrified songs by Jerry Reed would come out of nowhere and waft out of the radio, in between The Rolling Stones, The Carpenters, Isaac Hayes, and whatever else was on the KHJ Top 30 survey ("Boss" had become passe by this time frame...1971-72). Funny, songs like "When you're hot yer hot," "Amos Moses," and "Alabama Wild Man," appealed to me because they were amusing. Reed's story-fueled records were rich with corn-pone accents, and characters who might easily have been from gene pools close enough to nudge each other at the elbow and ask to pass the grits. I'm pretty certain they missed the mark with my peers, but such was the nature of Top 40 radio, at the time. If it hit the top 40, a novelty hit would be there right next to Neil Diamond and The Staple Singers.
It's the title of one of Jerry Reed's comic send-ups that makes me invoke his name: "Lord Mr. Ford, what have you done?" The song was about air pollution, traffic accidents, all of what motor transport has brought us, despite the convenience of conveyance and the occasional back-seat soiree. I began to think of the title in terms of every other technological breakthrough that's delivered bad along with good. The medium I work in, for example.
Middle-aged Dave is not tuning around looking for funny ditties by the likes of Jerry Reed. And when playing music on the radio is your means of support, you don't go looking for music at all. I listen mostly in the car, and tune around for something that interests me. There's baseball, when in season. Without a local NFL team in greater Los Angeles, there's no local football broadcast that appeals to me (USC's success over the span of this decade has made college football a delight, though).
There is, increasingly, talk. Sports and politics, politics and sports. Regardless of the topic, it's talk. Just talk. Unfortunately for me, most of it is talk with little intelligence, profundity, insight or depth.
What about NPR, you might ask. If you want to be lectured to, and feel educated, how about public radio? Ehhhhh...not so much. I worked at an NPR affiliate just after college. Though there is earnestness, I couldn't get past the fact that all the news and information was disseminated with the delivery of a Kindergarten teacher reading "Dick and Jane," aloud.
That leaves a precious few, three or four hour shows of interest that may amuse or entertain. I'm fairly certain these are shows with listenership so thin, the accumulated audience could be invited over for Cheetos and Beer, during the broadcast.
Somehow, somewhere, sometime when content on the AM band was dying, and the rules and regulations administered by the FCC were loosened, Opinion took a stranglehold on all that was talk on the radio. In the past, commentary had been labled as such, and was pretty much limited to fifteen minute bursts of bombast. Dating back to what seems like the birth of the vacuum tube, a neanderthal like Paul Harvey would ramble during his time period each day, alternately relating his sunshiny homilies, and bemoaning things, like the fact a song called "I shot the Sheriff," was number one in the country. I used to think that had 'Ol Paul (decaying, even in 1974) been around at the advent of bathroom tissue, he'd have decried that real Americans , if they were Americans at all, would continue to use the good old corn cobb to cleanse their nether regions. That's an exaggeration, of course, but it's also how evolved he seemed to be.
The men and women who purveyed talk radio forty years ago, had to work within the limits of neutrality, while guests would take one side or the other. That's, of course, no longer the case. It's one ideology versus the other, with the lion's share of the mouthpieces being of one, vitriolic bent. My unique perspective, with a view from the inside, enables me to understand that as long as this creates ratings and profits, it will not change. That's fair. That's business, that's capitalism, that's American. It's entertainment, though a distressing number of listeners mistake it for news.
It also means, irrespective of topic, sports or politics, any loudmouth with a functioning larynx can wind up with a show. A cavalcade of cretins has emerged to bellow and coo for hours every day. Halitosis of the intellect with a big voice can impress and persuade, rile and incite, peak interest, compel, sell, and sustain the "numbers." Amidst those numbers are intelligent, grounded individuals who "get" the act and laugh, or listen simply to get an idea of what "the other side" is centered on for a particular day.
I don't listen to the political end much, because I find it sad to realize so many who are woefully uninformed, can't cut through the bull and form their own opinions. And I'm one of those who unfortunately allows himself (when my guard is down) to be riled by folks like the bloated beast from the Northeast, a particularly obese blowhard, one with a weakness for...concentrated tablets. Not just him, but a host of angry, verbose, largely uneducated zanies who have proliferated with his success, and replicated into a daily cacophony, all day and most of the night. And they've propagated their species faster than the guys in the NBA.
That leads me to sports. Again, formerly limited to post-game shows, engaging the faithful following some titanic (or less than stellar) team performance, you can now get your fill for 24 hours a day from two national networks, and in some major cities, two locally-manned stations focusing on local teams and sports issues. And, again, there were a couple of guys in particular who patented the 15 minute daily sports show. In 1940's and '50's Los Angeles, it was Bob Kelley, who broadcast "Sports at Six," until his death in 1966. He offered sports, opinion, and barbed shots at his crosstown competition, Sam Balter. One of Kelley's writers, Jim Healy, went on to his own 15 minute show that went from sports reports and opinion to a half hour of hard sports journalism and riotous commentary, laced with drop-ins and wild tracks of sports celebs and other noted figures caught in spontaneous moments. It was hilarious, though Healy was despised by many, he was listen to by millions, including me. He once did a talk show, but he'd never have had the same impact if he had to spread his material out over three hours. His show evolved from about 1970 until April of 1994, when he left the air, and died shortly thereafter.
That sports talk shows make me turn the radio off completely has to do with the template Healy set. By design, the host has to engage, and drag the listener through commercial breaks, and still compel the small percentage of those who will actually pick up the phone and participate. You can't do Healy for three hours.
This is why so much sports talk sounds like a couple of troglodytes full of beer and invective: because their employers demand it. A bunch of guys at the corner bar, belching platitudes and ale, simultaneously popping off and proving themselves intemperate, intolerant, raging dimwits. Add to that the fact that they have to spout political beliefs, sing songs, and sink to all manner of self-delusion outside the realm of sports to soak up three hours, and believe me, the reasons to turn off the radio are many.
It's probably unfair of me to just zero in on the bad and not talk about what I find fun and amusing. There are some great hosts who do appeal to my intelligence. You don't have to agree with their opinion or ideology to be entertained by a talented performer. In Sports, Big Joe McDonnell in Los Angeles is a journalist by trade, who never fails to keep you listening. He's out front with who he likes and dislikes, he doggedly supports his friends, and because he's a sports journalist, aside from his caustic humor, you get meticulously sourced sports news.
Late at night, Ray Taliaferro comes bolting across the ionosphere on KGO, eagerly taking on political hacks who call his show under assumed names, immersing himself in arguments so heated, the actual thought entered my mind that his heart might explode, right there on the air. He's fond of saying he prefers the nether hours, that his show on KGO is four hours, not three, and that he only requires four hours of sleep a day. This may account for his crankiness, but the man's in earnest--he said the following, after jousting some inane insomniac who no doubt wishes everybody not from his general DNA should leave the country, and they are words I wish were mandatory for every host, of every ideology, to reinforce (though they won't, because it would be bad for the bottom line):
"This is not the news. Use different sources--READ! Read newspapers, magazines, and other places to get your news, and try to separate it from supposition and opinion. O-PIN-ION!"
Unfortunately, for some, that would be like drawing back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz to find a guy who looks like the Janitor on "Scrubs," eating a donut and clipping his nails with mixed success.
It's the title of one of Jerry Reed's comic send-ups that makes me invoke his name: "Lord Mr. Ford, what have you done?" The song was about air pollution, traffic accidents, all of what motor transport has brought us, despite the convenience of conveyance and the occasional back-seat soiree. I began to think of the title in terms of every other technological breakthrough that's delivered bad along with good. The medium I work in, for example.
Middle-aged Dave is not tuning around looking for funny ditties by the likes of Jerry Reed. And when playing music on the radio is your means of support, you don't go looking for music at all. I listen mostly in the car, and tune around for something that interests me. There's baseball, when in season. Without a local NFL team in greater Los Angeles, there's no local football broadcast that appeals to me (USC's success over the span of this decade has made college football a delight, though).
There is, increasingly, talk. Sports and politics, politics and sports. Regardless of the topic, it's talk. Just talk. Unfortunately for me, most of it is talk with little intelligence, profundity, insight or depth.
What about NPR, you might ask. If you want to be lectured to, and feel educated, how about public radio? Ehhhhh...not so much. I worked at an NPR affiliate just after college. Though there is earnestness, I couldn't get past the fact that all the news and information was disseminated with the delivery of a Kindergarten teacher reading "Dick and Jane," aloud.
That leaves a precious few, three or four hour shows of interest that may amuse or entertain. I'm fairly certain these are shows with listenership so thin, the accumulated audience could be invited over for Cheetos and Beer, during the broadcast.
Somehow, somewhere, sometime when content on the AM band was dying, and the rules and regulations administered by the FCC were loosened, Opinion took a stranglehold on all that was talk on the radio. In the past, commentary had been labled as such, and was pretty much limited to fifteen minute bursts of bombast. Dating back to what seems like the birth of the vacuum tube, a neanderthal like Paul Harvey would ramble during his time period each day, alternately relating his sunshiny homilies, and bemoaning things, like the fact a song called "I shot the Sheriff," was number one in the country. I used to think that had 'Ol Paul (decaying, even in 1974) been around at the advent of bathroom tissue, he'd have decried that real Americans , if they were Americans at all, would continue to use the good old corn cobb to cleanse their nether regions. That's an exaggeration, of course, but it's also how evolved he seemed to be.
The men and women who purveyed talk radio forty years ago, had to work within the limits of neutrality, while guests would take one side or the other. That's, of course, no longer the case. It's one ideology versus the other, with the lion's share of the mouthpieces being of one, vitriolic bent. My unique perspective, with a view from the inside, enables me to understand that as long as this creates ratings and profits, it will not change. That's fair. That's business, that's capitalism, that's American. It's entertainment, though a distressing number of listeners mistake it for news.
It also means, irrespective of topic, sports or politics, any loudmouth with a functioning larynx can wind up with a show. A cavalcade of cretins has emerged to bellow and coo for hours every day. Halitosis of the intellect with a big voice can impress and persuade, rile and incite, peak interest, compel, sell, and sustain the "numbers." Amidst those numbers are intelligent, grounded individuals who "get" the act and laugh, or listen simply to get an idea of what "the other side" is centered on for a particular day.
I don't listen to the political end much, because I find it sad to realize so many who are woefully uninformed, can't cut through the bull and form their own opinions. And I'm one of those who unfortunately allows himself (when my guard is down) to be riled by folks like the bloated beast from the Northeast, a particularly obese blowhard, one with a weakness for...concentrated tablets. Not just him, but a host of angry, verbose, largely uneducated zanies who have proliferated with his success, and replicated into a daily cacophony, all day and most of the night. And they've propagated their species faster than the guys in the NBA.
That leads me to sports. Again, formerly limited to post-game shows, engaging the faithful following some titanic (or less than stellar) team performance, you can now get your fill for 24 hours a day from two national networks, and in some major cities, two locally-manned stations focusing on local teams and sports issues. And, again, there were a couple of guys in particular who patented the 15 minute daily sports show. In 1940's and '50's Los Angeles, it was Bob Kelley, who broadcast "Sports at Six," until his death in 1966. He offered sports, opinion, and barbed shots at his crosstown competition, Sam Balter. One of Kelley's writers, Jim Healy, went on to his own 15 minute show that went from sports reports and opinion to a half hour of hard sports journalism and riotous commentary, laced with drop-ins and wild tracks of sports celebs and other noted figures caught in spontaneous moments. It was hilarious, though Healy was despised by many, he was listen to by millions, including me. He once did a talk show, but he'd never have had the same impact if he had to spread his material out over three hours. His show evolved from about 1970 until April of 1994, when he left the air, and died shortly thereafter.
That sports talk shows make me turn the radio off completely has to do with the template Healy set. By design, the host has to engage, and drag the listener through commercial breaks, and still compel the small percentage of those who will actually pick up the phone and participate. You can't do Healy for three hours.
This is why so much sports talk sounds like a couple of troglodytes full of beer and invective: because their employers demand it. A bunch of guys at the corner bar, belching platitudes and ale, simultaneously popping off and proving themselves intemperate, intolerant, raging dimwits. Add to that the fact that they have to spout political beliefs, sing songs, and sink to all manner of self-delusion outside the realm of sports to soak up three hours, and believe me, the reasons to turn off the radio are many.
It's probably unfair of me to just zero in on the bad and not talk about what I find fun and amusing. There are some great hosts who do appeal to my intelligence. You don't have to agree with their opinion or ideology to be entertained by a talented performer. In Sports, Big Joe McDonnell in Los Angeles is a journalist by trade, who never fails to keep you listening. He's out front with who he likes and dislikes, he doggedly supports his friends, and because he's a sports journalist, aside from his caustic humor, you get meticulously sourced sports news.
Late at night, Ray Taliaferro comes bolting across the ionosphere on KGO, eagerly taking on political hacks who call his show under assumed names, immersing himself in arguments so heated, the actual thought entered my mind that his heart might explode, right there on the air. He's fond of saying he prefers the nether hours, that his show on KGO is four hours, not three, and that he only requires four hours of sleep a day. This may account for his crankiness, but the man's in earnest--he said the following, after jousting some inane insomniac who no doubt wishes everybody not from his general DNA should leave the country, and they are words I wish were mandatory for every host, of every ideology, to reinforce (though they won't, because it would be bad for the bottom line):
"This is not the news. Use different sources--READ! Read newspapers, magazines, and other places to get your news, and try to separate it from supposition and opinion. O-PIN-ION!"
Unfortunately, for some, that would be like drawing back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz to find a guy who looks like the Janitor on "Scrubs," eating a donut and clipping his nails with mixed success.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
For Your Enjoyment: Dodger Baseball is on the air!
Baseball moistens the eyes of middle-aged men. That's the brave way to put it. It reads more stoically than, "it makes you cry." I'm not referring simply to the heaving and sobbing of the men on the field who've blown the pennant (sorry, Mets), or the joyful masses in the stands, exultant in victory (those damned Angels!).
I'm talking about the long term gestation of love for the game, its traditions, its heroes, and what it can do to a middle aged man who views his youth in bits and flashes of memory. Bob Costas, puts this in better context than most contemporary broadcasters and, along with comedian Billy Crystal, waxes on about Mickey Mantle. The Mick, according to Billy and Bob, never grasped his impact on a generation of boys until his final years. Mantle would register surprise that 45 year old men would be reduced to tears upon meeting him.
It is a shared experience that is accepted but never spoken of at great length. I can tell you with absolutely no qualms whatsoever that it's happened to me. My emotional investment in baseball has gone on, as far as I can determine, since a Sunday afternoon in October of 1966, when a fly ball dropped into the glove of a center fielder named Paul Blair, his name emblazoned across the TV screen. Thus ended the Baltimore Orioles four game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and began the joy and pain of being a devoted fan.
Flash forward to about May of the next year. Another swatch of memory before passion truly took hold of my seven-year-old soul. As clear as a bell, I can hear Vin Scully incredulously telling us all, "...19 to 1...and now Banks scores and the Cubs lead 20 to 1!!" The next sound was some disgruntled gibberish from my brother.
It didn't matter to me...yet. By later that month, after a weekend series with the Giants--ON TELEVISION, I was hooked. Like any TV kid in 1967, I tuned to that very same KTTV Channel 11 to see the next series against the Mets, only to find Merv Griffin jawing with guests on his nightly talk show. I didn't know why at the time, but the Dodgers of the 60's only televised games from San Francisco, which meant a skimpy 9 telecasts a year. My brother showed me how to find the standings and broadcast information in the sports section of the Los Angeles Times, and how to adjust the radio dial near the 64 ("Clear Channel Station K-F-I, 6-40). In front of the Grundig Hi-Fi in the living room, the wall-mounted kitchen unit, or my father's seldom used Sony transistor, I'd wait patiently, inside the house or not, for the opening anthem, the Union Oil song:
You always get the finest! The very best, the finest at the sign of the 76!
It's Orange and Blue, so look for that U--nion,
sign of the finest...
The sign of the Seven-ty Siiiiiiiiiiix!
And Jerry Doggett would intone, "For your enjoyment: Dodger Baseball is on the air!"
And so the game would begin. In 1967, this most assuredly meant the Dodgers would lose. They finished in 8th place, as predicted by the sporting media. Sandy Koufax had retired, Maury Wills and Tommy Davis had been traded for the equivalent of a kettle of fish (but for propriety's sake I'll name the guys: Wills to the Pirates for infielders Bob Bailey and Gene Michael; Davis to the Mets for second baseman Ron Hunt and outfielder Jim Hickman).
When you're seven, turning eight, you think about rooting for your team, not the ineptitude that causes the loss. My eyes were open with wonder. I loved baseball so much, and the Dodgers were on TV so little, I watched the NBC game of the week on Saturdays and became acquainted with the Cubs of Ernie Banks and Ron Santo; the Cardinals of Lou Brock and Orlando Cepeda. In the American League, there were the Red Sox of Carl Yastrezmski and Jim Longborg; Eddie Stanky's White Sox, the Minnesota Twins, the Detroit Tigers, and the first fantastic pennant race I'd see. And I can't give short shrift to the California Angels, who televised twice as many games as the Dodgers did, so I saw many more teams.
I proudly wore my first Dodger cap on a train trip to northern California with my mom. The conductor, a portly man, asked me "Why do you wanna root for them, their way down in 8th place! You oughtta be rootin' for the Giants!" I shook my head no. And I rarely took that cap off. I wore it until the bill literally unraveled and fell off, and then I wore it like a yarmulke until my brother grabbed it off my head.
"All you need is a propeller, and people will think you're Beanie (from Beanie and Cecil)! Take that off!"
As an eighth birthday gift, my parents, my sister, and my grandfather took me to see the Dodgers play the Mets at Dodger Stadium. In later years, I've heard others describe the same sensations I felt see in the green grass, the orange brick infield, and the multi-colored seats. I had only seen baseball on a black and white screen, and the pallet of colors was breath-taking. The Hollywood Stars game was in progress, and there, from our seats in the Loge section (or second deck, for those who've never been to Chavez Ravine), were popular stars of the day playing hard-ball with reckless abandon. It was all too much!
My Grandfather stuck the earplug in and followed the game on his transistor, while I ate everything from every vendor that happened down the aisle. To top it off, Al Ferrrara hit a two run home run, and the Dodgers beat the Mets 2-1. Grandpops, as we called him, had been scribbling all night, and when the game was over, he took out his earplug, and handed me the scorecard, where he had meticulously kept score of the game.
It was a terrific way to turn eight. Of course, my first live baseball game was followed by my first ever weekend of violent gastro-intestinal misery (caused by too many ballpark treats). I look back on it as a way of learning that baseball was joy...and pain.
*
Following baseball on the radio was almost all we had 40 years ago, at least in Los Angeles. The difference was Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett. I was eight, what did I know? I thought every city had someone who described baseball in such a special and thorough way. For the length of my life, there are things Scully said on the radio I'm sure I would never have known had I not been a Dodger fan. The word "Facade," for example. "There's a line drive...FOUL...off the facade of the second deck and into the field level seats." Or, "Lined foul! Off the auxiliary scoreboard, just left of the Dodger dugout."
How else would I have known what a "Marching and Chowder Society," was? Or know the ecstasy of a banner day at the plate by a journeyman ballplayer? I'll never forget the enthusiasm of Vin's voice in a bad season, exulting, "Dick Schoefield! Three for Three!!"
I listened to as many games as I could that first summer. There were only two commercial sponsors, and the spots were a minute apiece. I can still sing one:
From Fresno to San Dee--ay--Go,
From the desert to the Sea,
Security bank has of-fices,
where-ever you may be...
For money-matters,
Here's the key:
Let your fi-nan-cial part-ner be
Security First National Bank!
Today's baseball broadcasts have so many multiple sponsors, local and network spots, there are often four or five short commercials before returning to action. The kids that do hear the game on radio would never remember a jingle like that 40 years later. It would whiz by too quickly.
*
There were few great moments in those early years, but I learned the game and it's history and the history of the Dodgers, driven by the fact they were so average in the late 60's-early 70's. I had just missed the Koufax Era, and the thrilling World Series victories in '55, '59, '63, and '65. I could feel the pain of the play-off loss to the hated Giants in 1962 (my brother, upon being reminded, said, "I was crestfallen!"). As much as I hated the Giants...and still do...a big thrill was going to a game with my dad and my mom's uncle in what used to be the Dugout seats at Dodger Stadium, literally between the dugouts. I looked up to see Willie Mays on deck and shouted "Hey Willie!" He actually looked over and said "Hey." You could hate the Giants, but you had to love Mays.
*
By my adolescence, Dodgers got good enough to bring some pain. They lost the Western Division pennant to the aforementioned Giants by one game, on the last day of the '71 season. By then, they were televising up to 20 games a years. That meant a game each Sunday, and, rarity of rarities, a telecast of that final game of the year versus Houston...live from Dodger Stadium. My first Dodger pennant race, and it ended in ignominy.
Two years later, they started easing what Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett called "The Dodger Youngsters" into the line-up over veterans Like Ken McMullen, and others whose names were familiar. It pissed me to the point that by spring training of '73,I swore off the team in disgust, and decided to follow the Angels (there's desperation for you!). 13 year-olds are allowed to be fickle as their world fills with angst and acne, and as soon as they started to storm the National League West, I came back into fold to stay.
Then the Cincinnati Reds, with their team of future Hall of Famers did some storming of their own, and overtook the Dodgers that September. Pain, but no tears.
The next season remains my favorite. When Billy Crystal talks about being 13 and having the time of his life watching the '61 Yankees, he's describing a team that stands out in baseball history as one of the games most powerful. With Maris and Mantle chasing Babe Ruth's record of 60 homers in a season, and with the Yanks holding off a Detroit Tigers team that also won a hundred games, Billy had a lot to cheer for (the Yanks weren't stingy with telecasts--every home game was on TV, I'm told).
I followed the 1974 Dodgers from Junior High School that spring, to High School that fall. With a G-E Color TV ensconced in my bedroom, and a blue, Radio Shack transistor, with a free battery card to continually replenish the power supply, I had a summer following baseball that every kid turning 14 should experience. Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, and Jimmy Wynn hit homers in abundance, Davey Lopes stole bases, Don Sutton and Andy Messersmith headed the pitching staff, and a kinesiology major named Mike Marshall pitched a hundred and six games in relief. It was a new dawn, a new day! The Dodgers were winners, and logged a hundred and two victories. They bested Pittsburgh in the League Championship series, and were set to face reinging champ Oakland in the World Series!
This would be the first Dodger World Series since being swept by Baltimore in 1966, when I witnessed Paul Blair grasp the last out. Funny thing: My brother, the same one who turned off the TV in disgust that day, was getting married at an elaborate Catholic Mass on the day the Series was to start. This same brother who showed me how to find the games on the radio. In those days devoid of Tivo or home VCRs, part of me wanted to reason with him that my presence in the Wedding party, hideous 1970's brown tux and all, was surely not needed. The other part prevailed, however. All these years later, I can tell you what you already may have guessed: the blue, Radio Shack transistor found its way into the pocket of that hideous brown tux...at least until my mom caught me.
Then the pain. Six days later Oakland had won the Series. Nine months later, my brother was separated from his wife, never to return. My great summer of baseball didn't end like Billy Crystal's, with a World Series championship, but you only turn 14 once. You follow the game with your heart, not your head when you're that young. That's why when you look back on it, you're suddenly that man in his forties who sees a clip of Steve Garvey homering, crossing the plate, being congratulated by Willie Crawford...who has since passed away from heart disease...and baseball begins to mist the eyes.
*
Pain. Losing to the Giants, yes, that brings pain, especially since beating the Dodgers means more to Giants man that being capable of rational thought. In later years losing to the Padres would be more a pain in the ass, and the Angels a BITE in the ass. But losing two straight World Series to the Yankees and Reggie Jackson was a stabbing pain! I frankly didn't want the Dodgers to have to duke it out with them again. It was 1981, the Baseball had just lost 50 games to a players strike, and an extra layer of play-offs had been added to determine who would play in the World Series. Garvey, Lopes, Ron Cey, et al, had been together since 1973. 8 seasons in the same infield, a record that, in today's era of peripatetic free agents, will never be equaled. Having been in first place when the strike started, they automatically had a place in the post season, and opened what was to be called the Division Series with two losses to the Houston Astros. Somehow, they came back to win three straight to earn a berth in the League Championship Series against Montreal.
Down 2 games to 1, they rallied, and faced off with the Expos in game 5. It was a chilly, rainy afternoon on that parking-lot textured astroturf in Montreal. It was a warm afternoon in Los Angeles, and I was a Senior in college, living at my folks house, taking early evening courses and working late into the night at KLON in Long Beach, Ca. This meant viewing the games upon waking. With one eye open. Hoping. The remarkable Fernando Valenzuela dueled through the cold of Quebec in October, by the 9th inning, the score was tied at one. Rick Monday stepped up to the plate as NBC's cameras panned to Donald Sutherland, the only recognizable celebrity to attended expos games.
Then he did it. Rick Monday, by then a part time player, stroked one that cleared the fence in right -field. Unbridled joy! I leapt up about the same time Monday did as he rounded first and watched the bail sail over the wall. This mighty blow was made even more intense by the silent silence with which it was greeted at Olympic Stadium! There I was, leaping out of bed, there were the Dodgers, going bananas in a veritable crypt.
They held on in the bottom of the ninth to win the pennant, and I went out side. I didn't want my mom to see that baseball made a 22 year old man's eyes mist...and mist heavily.
The World Series with those nasty Reggie Jackson Yankees started the next day. There I was, in radio, working at a public station on the Long Beach State campus, as an, albeit unskilled, disc jockey, but bringing in a radio (the blue Radio Shack transistor was long gone--this was a mono boom box of the time) to hear the Dodgers lose the first two games in New York. Game three was a nail biter I heard mostly in the car on the way home from class. I caught the conclusion of a gutty Fernando pitching performance once I got in the door. The next day, a Saturday, began so harrowing, I turned off the set and left the house in the first inning, just after ABC showed Dodger pitcher Bob Welch trudging from the mound after being chased by the Yanks.
To my surprise, when I got home, the Dodgers had rallied with a homer by Jay Johnstone, and with the considerable help of an error by Reggie Jackson. 8-7 Dodgers. Series tied 2-2. That meant Game Five on Sunday. The game on ABC-TV, and CBS's radio coverage on KNX 1070. Vin Scully was calling the game for CBS. It was a no-brainer to watch the game with the sound down on the TV, and Vin's voice coming through the clock radio in my room.
A taut struggle ensued. The Yankee lefty, Ron Guidry, Louisiana Lightning, who'd humiliated the Dodgers in '77 and '78, versus the Dodgers southpaw Jerry Reuss, who'd lost game 1. New York went ahead 1-0, and the due continued until the seventh inning. Louisiana Lightning took a bolt, himself--from Steve Yeager, with a game tying shot into the left field Pavilion at Dodger Stadium. They say lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place, but this time it did, thanks to the bat of Pedro Guerrero. His homer to the same spot where Yeager's landed put the Dodgers ahead to stay, and sent the series back to New York with the Dodgers ahead 3 games to 2. A win meant their first World Series Championship since 1965, which I may or may not have been aware of at the time. This would be my first since learning to love baseball.
I went into the garage and pulled out an ancient portable TV to take to work. I didn't think about it, but it had been the same set I'd watched so many games on in '67, only now it was old and afforded only a snowy black and white picture. I didn't care. Even though Vin was calling it on radio, I had to SEE it.
It was a cakewalk. 9-2, Dodgers. World Champs. No moist eyes, just sheer joy!!
*
Because not all teams have the remarkable record of the New York Yankees, you can feel more pain, following baseball than you can joy. You learn that, in the long run, the winning is the goal, but the hope is the rush. And even the Yankees can't win EVERY year. It would be 1988 before unbridled baseball joy would enter the life of Dodger fans again, after some close, frustrating seasons in 1982 (blew it down the stretch, knocked out on the last day by those damned Giants on Joe Morgan's crucifying home run), 1983 (they won the division, then the Phillies shut them down in the League Championship Series), and 1985 (a GREAT season, sullied by those fastballs straight and true, heaved by reliever Tom Neidenfeuer, and hit by Ozzie Smith and Jack Clark of St. Louis in games 5 and 6 respectively, in the LCS. PAIN).
I was a full-fledged, 29 year-old Top 40 Disc Jockey at Q-105 in Oxnard by 1988. I'd moved from Y-95, San Diego in mid summer. I'd seen L.A. (referred to in San Diego as "Smell-A") lose a couple of close ones at Jack Murphy Stadium. It was one thing to lose, and yet another to blow a games wearing road grays in a city hostile to the blue. Through the vagueries of my business (I had to get out of there--oddly enough it was a 5 and a half hour overnight shift I fled), I was now back close to my home city, in Ventura County, place that embraced the Dodgers. The only thing was, I'd hired on for the "teen-appeal" shift, from 7 to midnight. Add in a couple of hours for commercial production and preparation, and listening to or seeing the '88 Dodgers was out of the question. I'd set the VCR for TV games (up to 50 a year by then), but who has three hours to watch a game when you get home and already know the score? It's not the same. So I mainly kept abreast of what was going on through the Associated Press machine at the studio, the morning Times, and weekend broadcasts. Welcome to the grown up world of following baseball.
In 1988, I missed most of the beauty that was Vin Scully's descriptions of the pennant race, and a lot of Don Drysdale's heightened enthusiasm whenever purpose pitches (throwing inside) was needed. Big D had replaced Jerry Doggett, who had retired at the end of the '87 season. Jerry was aging, at least 70 by then, a jaunty wig alternating with the cold weather cap he'd clamp on his pate for TV games. Jerry wasn't Scully, but he was Dodger baseball, and sometimes he could be so real it was hilarious. There'd been a spring game in the early '70's when he marveled over an infield play, turned to someone in the booth and inadvertantly blurted to KTTV viewers, "A great play like that and you tell me you missed it? JEEEESUS!!" As far as I know, the first quasi-religious reference on a Dodger telecast. It was never spoken of again.
The VCR enabled me to enjoy 1988. Orel Hershiser ended a remarkable season by breaking Don Drysdale's record for consecutive scoreless innings, a record set 20 years before. My brother and I had sat in the dark in his room on a Friday night in May of '68, listening to the Giants-Dodgers thriller that brought Drysdale close to the record. For me, it was almost as thrilling as a World Series, because a Dodger was causing all the excitement. Drysdale pushed closer to the record on the first Tuesady of June, versus the Pirates. I listened until ordered to bed, and woke the next morning to the shocking news that Robert F. Kennedy had been shot. Big D broke the record the follwoing Saturday, a day of triumph lost in national mourning, a game played after the world watched another funeral and burial in the volitile year of 1968.
As a Dodger broadcaster, Drysdale was in the dugout when Hershiser broke his record.The game wasn't televised, regardless of the fact L.A. had cliched the Western Division title as well, so only news highlights were available to me after I'd gotten home. It was a touching moment. Even then, even with the leadership of hard charging Kirk Gibson on the field, I was nervous about the superiority of the teams they would have to face for a shot at the World Championship.
The Mets had beaten them senseless all year, and should they get past New York, there were the Bash (later 'Roid?") Brothers in Oakland who'd pounded the American League into submission. For the championship series, I'd been able to watch live TV, because I was filling in for the station's morning show that week. The teams split the first two games in Los Angeles, lost a controversial, rain spattered Saturday game three in New York. Reliever Jay Howell was tossed for having pine tar on his glove, and suspened for two games. It didn't look good.
The next night, a Sunday, I was home, relaxed, ready to watch game four, and found myself changing stations as the Dodgers got behind to Mets star right hander Doc Gooden. I couldn't take it. My lack of desire to watch them loose caused me to switch to a laughless comedy on NBC called "Sister Kate," starring a saucy British actress named Stepahnie Beacham...as a nun. The show was awful, but watching this woman who'd done nude scenes in feature films dressed in a habit made me chuckle at the possibilities for bawdy humor.
By the end of "Sister Kate," I flipped back to ABC coverage of the game, and a miracle had cccured, the first of many in '88. Kirk Gibson and shocked the Mets with a game tying homer in the ninth, and Mike Scioscia, the Dodgers durable catcher, clubbed one in extra innings to take the lead. To top it off, Hershiser himself volunteered to pitch the last half inning on 24 hours rest, put a the tying and winning runs on, and got a sensational diving catch by center fielder John Shelby for the final out. Shocking! The Dodgers tied the series at 2, with game 5 the next afternoon (exactly noon in southern California). I set the VCR, but woke up and watched, anyway. A rookie right hander named Tim Belcher kept the Mets in check as L-A easily prevailed. This was an unbelievable turn of events!
Games six and seven (if needed) were in L-A, with Hershiser available for a do or die final game. The Mets took game 6, so Hershiser had to work his magic and he did, shutting out the Mets in the seventh game and sending the Dodgers to the fall classic. I was on air and got the news via A.P., and shared the joy with my listing audience (mostly teens, probably the ones who weren't glued to their sets or weren't Dodger fans--we had the largest audience in Ventura County, small potatoes, but revelevant never-the-less).
Saturday, October 15, 1988, the World Series versus Oakland would begin at Dodger Stadium, 5pm Pacific Daylight Time, so the east coast would see the action at 8. No one thought the Dodgers could avoid being crushed to infintesimal particles of waste by the (we now assume artificially) muscle-bound, window breaking A's. Vin Scully, for six seasons also serving as NBC's national baseball voice, would be calling the games. Dame fortune had looked fondly upon Chavez Ravine...in ways of which we could only dream.
In my world, I had a Saturday shift playing the hits, taking calls for inane youngsters, and cracking wise, as my Top 40 idols had done between songs. Ordinarily, I'd be home to watch the Series opener, but I'd taken a side gig at the Camarillo Boys and Girls Club. For a hundred much needed bucks, I'd be spending the evening rolling records for high schoolers.
It was a difficult task. The kids bugged the hell out of me all night. The dance kids complained they couldn't dance to what I was playing, the surfer kids didn't want to hear the dance music, and when I finally aquiesed, and played "Beds are Burning," by Midnight Oil, some very apprehensive girls hurried up to me sand said everyone had moved to the lobbhy and weren't dancing. The little cretins who'd asked for Midnight Oil were seated at the top of the bleachers, buzzed on something, enjoying their song, while I was resolving never to do this kind of shit again.
Afterwhile, they guy from the station who'd tossed the gig tgo me arrived to help break down the equipment. "Hey, " he mentioned casually, "The Dodgers won."
"Great!" I said, thinking something had finally gone right, today.
"Yeah," he went on. "Kirk Gibson had a homer." He tossed it off with the nonchalance of someone who knew little about baseball. It wasn't until I got home and watched the game on that btrust VCR that I realized Gibson had hit one of the top three home runs in all baseball history, a cataclysmic blow that fractured the A's and altered the dynamic of the series. This injured entity, an inert force who drove the team all year, limped to the plate, smote a game winning blast, circled the bases to a wild cacaphony, and crossed the plate into baseball lore. By 4 the next morning, I had rewound and watched the homer seven times...and the eyes of a 29 year old man misted...misted plenty.
I would also miss game 2. I had a date. I had tickets to a concert I didn't want to see, by a man whose music I firmly believe induces insulin shock (Kenny G), with a woman for whom I lusted deeply, yet was beginning to sense was not a good human being.
What was wrong with this picture. At 29, lust, unrequited as it turns out, wins big, and the VCR was set once again, as I suffered this wildy attractive, intensely moody woman, and tolerated the dreck played by the syruppy Mr. Gorelick (the soprano saxophonist's real name). The highligh was Smokey Robinson coming out for a surprise song. Walking back to the car afterward, I said to my mikni-skirted date, "How about Smokey showing up."
"I'm not a fan." She said flatly.
"Oh," I said. Unrequited lust, indeed. All that was waiting for me at the end of this night was the VCR. Thank God it was Game Two of the World Series. Thank God Orel Hershiser had shut out the A's. Thank God I'd had the sense to buy a stack of VHS Tapes to preserve each series game.
I was back at work during games three, four, and five, with the VCR set, and the A.P. wire at the ready. Mark McGwire, who, at a future date who reign in both ecstacy and ignominy, won game three for Oakland in the ninth inning. Then a win in game four, and the remarkable Hershiser in game five, another shutout, and a World Series Clincher!
It was amazing. It was unparalelled. I went on the air and exulted between the hits. I recently discovered the tape of that broadcast, and I sound a lot like that 14 year old in 1974, full of glee that my team had prevailed at long last! I remember thinking that even if they didn't win the next year, it wouldn't matter, because this was so fantatstic.
*
The joy I just relived writing that package has had to last for almost 20 years. I still have the tapes from the '88 series filed away. I never watch them because the memory remains so fresh. The 2007 season has just ended with the Dodgers falling to pieces like a decaying milk bone. Clubhouse factions were revealed, tensions between the youngsters who will lead the team and the high priced forty year olds who were supposed to provide leadership. So what else is new?
Vin Scully spent the final game marking great moments of the past. He's soon to be 80, working home games and road games from Denver and all points west. Three innings simulcast on radio and TV, the rest of the game eclusively via video. He remains a true artist. His voice, his demeanor, his content between the pitches represnts the franchise as much as the color blue.
This past summer, I spent Sundays at the beach, probably the only human being there with a radio as opposed to a discman or Ipod (the subject for another commentary: radio is no longer a presence at the beach). Listening to those three innings of Vin Scully calling the game while sitting in the sand was like having memories and emotion wash ashore along with the waves. To be connected to a baseball team for the majority of one's life is, indeed to know joy and pain. The losing is pain, but winning is not the only joy. The team, the game and what it has meant is the joy in it's blue-hued entirety.
And the eyes of middle-aged men will be subject to mist.
*
Next time, I promise, funny stuff. yes, radio stuff. My take on talk...the opnionated, jibber-jabberers you only think are making you feel informed
I'm talking about the long term gestation of love for the game, its traditions, its heroes, and what it can do to a middle aged man who views his youth in bits and flashes of memory. Bob Costas, puts this in better context than most contemporary broadcasters and, along with comedian Billy Crystal, waxes on about Mickey Mantle. The Mick, according to Billy and Bob, never grasped his impact on a generation of boys until his final years. Mantle would register surprise that 45 year old men would be reduced to tears upon meeting him.
It is a shared experience that is accepted but never spoken of at great length. I can tell you with absolutely no qualms whatsoever that it's happened to me. My emotional investment in baseball has gone on, as far as I can determine, since a Sunday afternoon in October of 1966, when a fly ball dropped into the glove of a center fielder named Paul Blair, his name emblazoned across the TV screen. Thus ended the Baltimore Orioles four game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and began the joy and pain of being a devoted fan.
Flash forward to about May of the next year. Another swatch of memory before passion truly took hold of my seven-year-old soul. As clear as a bell, I can hear Vin Scully incredulously telling us all, "...19 to 1...and now Banks scores and the Cubs lead 20 to 1!!" The next sound was some disgruntled gibberish from my brother.
It didn't matter to me...yet. By later that month, after a weekend series with the Giants--ON TELEVISION, I was hooked. Like any TV kid in 1967, I tuned to that very same KTTV Channel 11 to see the next series against the Mets, only to find Merv Griffin jawing with guests on his nightly talk show. I didn't know why at the time, but the Dodgers of the 60's only televised games from San Francisco, which meant a skimpy 9 telecasts a year. My brother showed me how to find the standings and broadcast information in the sports section of the Los Angeles Times, and how to adjust the radio dial near the 64 ("Clear Channel Station K-F-I, 6-40). In front of the Grundig Hi-Fi in the living room, the wall-mounted kitchen unit, or my father's seldom used Sony transistor, I'd wait patiently, inside the house or not, for the opening anthem, the Union Oil song:
You always get the finest! The very best, the finest at the sign of the 76!
It's Orange and Blue, so look for that U--nion,
sign of the finest...
The sign of the Seven-ty Siiiiiiiiiiix!
And Jerry Doggett would intone, "For your enjoyment: Dodger Baseball is on the air!"
And so the game would begin. In 1967, this most assuredly meant the Dodgers would lose. They finished in 8th place, as predicted by the sporting media. Sandy Koufax had retired, Maury Wills and Tommy Davis had been traded for the equivalent of a kettle of fish (but for propriety's sake I'll name the guys: Wills to the Pirates for infielders Bob Bailey and Gene Michael; Davis to the Mets for second baseman Ron Hunt and outfielder Jim Hickman).
When you're seven, turning eight, you think about rooting for your team, not the ineptitude that causes the loss. My eyes were open with wonder. I loved baseball so much, and the Dodgers were on TV so little, I watched the NBC game of the week on Saturdays and became acquainted with the Cubs of Ernie Banks and Ron Santo; the Cardinals of Lou Brock and Orlando Cepeda. In the American League, there were the Red Sox of Carl Yastrezmski and Jim Longborg; Eddie Stanky's White Sox, the Minnesota Twins, the Detroit Tigers, and the first fantastic pennant race I'd see. And I can't give short shrift to the California Angels, who televised twice as many games as the Dodgers did, so I saw many more teams.
I proudly wore my first Dodger cap on a train trip to northern California with my mom. The conductor, a portly man, asked me "Why do you wanna root for them, their way down in 8th place! You oughtta be rootin' for the Giants!" I shook my head no. And I rarely took that cap off. I wore it until the bill literally unraveled and fell off, and then I wore it like a yarmulke until my brother grabbed it off my head.
"All you need is a propeller, and people will think you're Beanie (from Beanie and Cecil)! Take that off!"
As an eighth birthday gift, my parents, my sister, and my grandfather took me to see the Dodgers play the Mets at Dodger Stadium. In later years, I've heard others describe the same sensations I felt see in the green grass, the orange brick infield, and the multi-colored seats. I had only seen baseball on a black and white screen, and the pallet of colors was breath-taking. The Hollywood Stars game was in progress, and there, from our seats in the Loge section (or second deck, for those who've never been to Chavez Ravine), were popular stars of the day playing hard-ball with reckless abandon. It was all too much!
My Grandfather stuck the earplug in and followed the game on his transistor, while I ate everything from every vendor that happened down the aisle. To top it off, Al Ferrrara hit a two run home run, and the Dodgers beat the Mets 2-1. Grandpops, as we called him, had been scribbling all night, and when the game was over, he took out his earplug, and handed me the scorecard, where he had meticulously kept score of the game.
It was a terrific way to turn eight. Of course, my first live baseball game was followed by my first ever weekend of violent gastro-intestinal misery (caused by too many ballpark treats). I look back on it as a way of learning that baseball was joy...and pain.
*
Following baseball on the radio was almost all we had 40 years ago, at least in Los Angeles. The difference was Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett. I was eight, what did I know? I thought every city had someone who described baseball in such a special and thorough way. For the length of my life, there are things Scully said on the radio I'm sure I would never have known had I not been a Dodger fan. The word "Facade," for example. "There's a line drive...FOUL...off the facade of the second deck and into the field level seats." Or, "Lined foul! Off the auxiliary scoreboard, just left of the Dodger dugout."
How else would I have known what a "Marching and Chowder Society," was? Or know the ecstasy of a banner day at the plate by a journeyman ballplayer? I'll never forget the enthusiasm of Vin's voice in a bad season, exulting, "Dick Schoefield! Three for Three!!"
I listened to as many games as I could that first summer. There were only two commercial sponsors, and the spots were a minute apiece. I can still sing one:
From Fresno to San Dee--ay--Go,
From the desert to the Sea,
Security bank has of-fices,
where-ever you may be...
For money-matters,
Here's the key:
Let your fi-nan-cial part-ner be
Security First National Bank!
Today's baseball broadcasts have so many multiple sponsors, local and network spots, there are often four or five short commercials before returning to action. The kids that do hear the game on radio would never remember a jingle like that 40 years later. It would whiz by too quickly.
*
There were few great moments in those early years, but I learned the game and it's history and the history of the Dodgers, driven by the fact they were so average in the late 60's-early 70's. I had just missed the Koufax Era, and the thrilling World Series victories in '55, '59, '63, and '65. I could feel the pain of the play-off loss to the hated Giants in 1962 (my brother, upon being reminded, said, "I was crestfallen!"). As much as I hated the Giants...and still do...a big thrill was going to a game with my dad and my mom's uncle in what used to be the Dugout seats at Dodger Stadium, literally between the dugouts. I looked up to see Willie Mays on deck and shouted "Hey Willie!" He actually looked over and said "Hey." You could hate the Giants, but you had to love Mays.
*
By my adolescence, Dodgers got good enough to bring some pain. They lost the Western Division pennant to the aforementioned Giants by one game, on the last day of the '71 season. By then, they were televising up to 20 games a years. That meant a game each Sunday, and, rarity of rarities, a telecast of that final game of the year versus Houston...live from Dodger Stadium. My first Dodger pennant race, and it ended in ignominy.
Two years later, they started easing what Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett called "The Dodger Youngsters" into the line-up over veterans Like Ken McMullen, and others whose names were familiar. It pissed me to the point that by spring training of '73,I swore off the team in disgust, and decided to follow the Angels (there's desperation for you!). 13 year-olds are allowed to be fickle as their world fills with angst and acne, and as soon as they started to storm the National League West, I came back into fold to stay.
Then the Cincinnati Reds, with their team of future Hall of Famers did some storming of their own, and overtook the Dodgers that September. Pain, but no tears.
The next season remains my favorite. When Billy Crystal talks about being 13 and having the time of his life watching the '61 Yankees, he's describing a team that stands out in baseball history as one of the games most powerful. With Maris and Mantle chasing Babe Ruth's record of 60 homers in a season, and with the Yanks holding off a Detroit Tigers team that also won a hundred games, Billy had a lot to cheer for (the Yanks weren't stingy with telecasts--every home game was on TV, I'm told).
I followed the 1974 Dodgers from Junior High School that spring, to High School that fall. With a G-E Color TV ensconced in my bedroom, and a blue, Radio Shack transistor, with a free battery card to continually replenish the power supply, I had a summer following baseball that every kid turning 14 should experience. Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, and Jimmy Wynn hit homers in abundance, Davey Lopes stole bases, Don Sutton and Andy Messersmith headed the pitching staff, and a kinesiology major named Mike Marshall pitched a hundred and six games in relief. It was a new dawn, a new day! The Dodgers were winners, and logged a hundred and two victories. They bested Pittsburgh in the League Championship series, and were set to face reinging champ Oakland in the World Series!
This would be the first Dodger World Series since being swept by Baltimore in 1966, when I witnessed Paul Blair grasp the last out. Funny thing: My brother, the same one who turned off the TV in disgust that day, was getting married at an elaborate Catholic Mass on the day the Series was to start. This same brother who showed me how to find the games on the radio. In those days devoid of Tivo or home VCRs, part of me wanted to reason with him that my presence in the Wedding party, hideous 1970's brown tux and all, was surely not needed. The other part prevailed, however. All these years later, I can tell you what you already may have guessed: the blue, Radio Shack transistor found its way into the pocket of that hideous brown tux...at least until my mom caught me.
Then the pain. Six days later Oakland had won the Series. Nine months later, my brother was separated from his wife, never to return. My great summer of baseball didn't end like Billy Crystal's, with a World Series championship, but you only turn 14 once. You follow the game with your heart, not your head when you're that young. That's why when you look back on it, you're suddenly that man in his forties who sees a clip of Steve Garvey homering, crossing the plate, being congratulated by Willie Crawford...who has since passed away from heart disease...and baseball begins to mist the eyes.
*
Pain. Losing to the Giants, yes, that brings pain, especially since beating the Dodgers means more to Giants man that being capable of rational thought. In later years losing to the Padres would be more a pain in the ass, and the Angels a BITE in the ass. But losing two straight World Series to the Yankees and Reggie Jackson was a stabbing pain! I frankly didn't want the Dodgers to have to duke it out with them again. It was 1981, the Baseball had just lost 50 games to a players strike, and an extra layer of play-offs had been added to determine who would play in the World Series. Garvey, Lopes, Ron Cey, et al, had been together since 1973. 8 seasons in the same infield, a record that, in today's era of peripatetic free agents, will never be equaled. Having been in first place when the strike started, they automatically had a place in the post season, and opened what was to be called the Division Series with two losses to the Houston Astros. Somehow, they came back to win three straight to earn a berth in the League Championship Series against Montreal.
Down 2 games to 1, they rallied, and faced off with the Expos in game 5. It was a chilly, rainy afternoon on that parking-lot textured astroturf in Montreal. It was a warm afternoon in Los Angeles, and I was a Senior in college, living at my folks house, taking early evening courses and working late into the night at KLON in Long Beach, Ca. This meant viewing the games upon waking. With one eye open. Hoping. The remarkable Fernando Valenzuela dueled through the cold of Quebec in October, by the 9th inning, the score was tied at one. Rick Monday stepped up to the plate as NBC's cameras panned to Donald Sutherland, the only recognizable celebrity to attended expos games.
Then he did it. Rick Monday, by then a part time player, stroked one that cleared the fence in right -field. Unbridled joy! I leapt up about the same time Monday did as he rounded first and watched the bail sail over the wall. This mighty blow was made even more intense by the silent silence with which it was greeted at Olympic Stadium! There I was, leaping out of bed, there were the Dodgers, going bananas in a veritable crypt.
They held on in the bottom of the ninth to win the pennant, and I went out side. I didn't want my mom to see that baseball made a 22 year old man's eyes mist...and mist heavily.
The World Series with those nasty Reggie Jackson Yankees started the next day. There I was, in radio, working at a public station on the Long Beach State campus, as an, albeit unskilled, disc jockey, but bringing in a radio (the blue Radio Shack transistor was long gone--this was a mono boom box of the time) to hear the Dodgers lose the first two games in New York. Game three was a nail biter I heard mostly in the car on the way home from class. I caught the conclusion of a gutty Fernando pitching performance once I got in the door. The next day, a Saturday, began so harrowing, I turned off the set and left the house in the first inning, just after ABC showed Dodger pitcher Bob Welch trudging from the mound after being chased by the Yanks.
To my surprise, when I got home, the Dodgers had rallied with a homer by Jay Johnstone, and with the considerable help of an error by Reggie Jackson. 8-7 Dodgers. Series tied 2-2. That meant Game Five on Sunday. The game on ABC-TV, and CBS's radio coverage on KNX 1070. Vin Scully was calling the game for CBS. It was a no-brainer to watch the game with the sound down on the TV, and Vin's voice coming through the clock radio in my room.
A taut struggle ensued. The Yankee lefty, Ron Guidry, Louisiana Lightning, who'd humiliated the Dodgers in '77 and '78, versus the Dodgers southpaw Jerry Reuss, who'd lost game 1. New York went ahead 1-0, and the due continued until the seventh inning. Louisiana Lightning took a bolt, himself--from Steve Yeager, with a game tying shot into the left field Pavilion at Dodger Stadium. They say lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place, but this time it did, thanks to the bat of Pedro Guerrero. His homer to the same spot where Yeager's landed put the Dodgers ahead to stay, and sent the series back to New York with the Dodgers ahead 3 games to 2. A win meant their first World Series Championship since 1965, which I may or may not have been aware of at the time. This would be my first since learning to love baseball.
I went into the garage and pulled out an ancient portable TV to take to work. I didn't think about it, but it had been the same set I'd watched so many games on in '67, only now it was old and afforded only a snowy black and white picture. I didn't care. Even though Vin was calling it on radio, I had to SEE it.
It was a cakewalk. 9-2, Dodgers. World Champs. No moist eyes, just sheer joy!!
*
Because not all teams have the remarkable record of the New York Yankees, you can feel more pain, following baseball than you can joy. You learn that, in the long run, the winning is the goal, but the hope is the rush. And even the Yankees can't win EVERY year. It would be 1988 before unbridled baseball joy would enter the life of Dodger fans again, after some close, frustrating seasons in 1982 (blew it down the stretch, knocked out on the last day by those damned Giants on Joe Morgan's crucifying home run), 1983 (they won the division, then the Phillies shut them down in the League Championship Series), and 1985 (a GREAT season, sullied by those fastballs straight and true, heaved by reliever Tom Neidenfeuer, and hit by Ozzie Smith and Jack Clark of St. Louis in games 5 and 6 respectively, in the LCS. PAIN).
I was a full-fledged, 29 year-old Top 40 Disc Jockey at Q-105 in Oxnard by 1988. I'd moved from Y-95, San Diego in mid summer. I'd seen L.A. (referred to in San Diego as "Smell-A") lose a couple of close ones at Jack Murphy Stadium. It was one thing to lose, and yet another to blow a games wearing road grays in a city hostile to the blue. Through the vagueries of my business (I had to get out of there--oddly enough it was a 5 and a half hour overnight shift I fled), I was now back close to my home city, in Ventura County, place that embraced the Dodgers. The only thing was, I'd hired on for the "teen-appeal" shift, from 7 to midnight. Add in a couple of hours for commercial production and preparation, and listening to or seeing the '88 Dodgers was out of the question. I'd set the VCR for TV games (up to 50 a year by then), but who has three hours to watch a game when you get home and already know the score? It's not the same. So I mainly kept abreast of what was going on through the Associated Press machine at the studio, the morning Times, and weekend broadcasts. Welcome to the grown up world of following baseball.
In 1988, I missed most of the beauty that was Vin Scully's descriptions of the pennant race, and a lot of Don Drysdale's heightened enthusiasm whenever purpose pitches (throwing inside) was needed. Big D had replaced Jerry Doggett, who had retired at the end of the '87 season. Jerry was aging, at least 70 by then, a jaunty wig alternating with the cold weather cap he'd clamp on his pate for TV games. Jerry wasn't Scully, but he was Dodger baseball, and sometimes he could be so real it was hilarious. There'd been a spring game in the early '70's when he marveled over an infield play, turned to someone in the booth and inadvertantly blurted to KTTV viewers, "A great play like that and you tell me you missed it? JEEEESUS!!" As far as I know, the first quasi-religious reference on a Dodger telecast. It was never spoken of again.
The VCR enabled me to enjoy 1988. Orel Hershiser ended a remarkable season by breaking Don Drysdale's record for consecutive scoreless innings, a record set 20 years before. My brother and I had sat in the dark in his room on a Friday night in May of '68, listening to the Giants-Dodgers thriller that brought Drysdale close to the record. For me, it was almost as thrilling as a World Series, because a Dodger was causing all the excitement. Drysdale pushed closer to the record on the first Tuesady of June, versus the Pirates. I listened until ordered to bed, and woke the next morning to the shocking news that Robert F. Kennedy had been shot. Big D broke the record the follwoing Saturday, a day of triumph lost in national mourning, a game played after the world watched another funeral and burial in the volitile year of 1968.
As a Dodger broadcaster, Drysdale was in the dugout when Hershiser broke his record.The game wasn't televised, regardless of the fact L.A. had cliched the Western Division title as well, so only news highlights were available to me after I'd gotten home. It was a touching moment. Even then, even with the leadership of hard charging Kirk Gibson on the field, I was nervous about the superiority of the teams they would have to face for a shot at the World Championship.
The Mets had beaten them senseless all year, and should they get past New York, there were the Bash (later 'Roid?") Brothers in Oakland who'd pounded the American League into submission. For the championship series, I'd been able to watch live TV, because I was filling in for the station's morning show that week. The teams split the first two games in Los Angeles, lost a controversial, rain spattered Saturday game three in New York. Reliever Jay Howell was tossed for having pine tar on his glove, and suspened for two games. It didn't look good.
The next night, a Sunday, I was home, relaxed, ready to watch game four, and found myself changing stations as the Dodgers got behind to Mets star right hander Doc Gooden. I couldn't take it. My lack of desire to watch them loose caused me to switch to a laughless comedy on NBC called "Sister Kate," starring a saucy British actress named Stepahnie Beacham...as a nun. The show was awful, but watching this woman who'd done nude scenes in feature films dressed in a habit made me chuckle at the possibilities for bawdy humor.
By the end of "Sister Kate," I flipped back to ABC coverage of the game, and a miracle had cccured, the first of many in '88. Kirk Gibson and shocked the Mets with a game tying homer in the ninth, and Mike Scioscia, the Dodgers durable catcher, clubbed one in extra innings to take the lead. To top it off, Hershiser himself volunteered to pitch the last half inning on 24 hours rest, put a the tying and winning runs on, and got a sensational diving catch by center fielder John Shelby for the final out. Shocking! The Dodgers tied the series at 2, with game 5 the next afternoon (exactly noon in southern California). I set the VCR, but woke up and watched, anyway. A rookie right hander named Tim Belcher kept the Mets in check as L-A easily prevailed. This was an unbelievable turn of events!
Games six and seven (if needed) were in L-A, with Hershiser available for a do or die final game. The Mets took game 6, so Hershiser had to work his magic and he did, shutting out the Mets in the seventh game and sending the Dodgers to the fall classic. I was on air and got the news via A.P., and shared the joy with my listing audience (mostly teens, probably the ones who weren't glued to their sets or weren't Dodger fans--we had the largest audience in Ventura County, small potatoes, but revelevant never-the-less).
Saturday, October 15, 1988, the World Series versus Oakland would begin at Dodger Stadium, 5pm Pacific Daylight Time, so the east coast would see the action at 8. No one thought the Dodgers could avoid being crushed to infintesimal particles of waste by the (we now assume artificially) muscle-bound, window breaking A's. Vin Scully, for six seasons also serving as NBC's national baseball voice, would be calling the games. Dame fortune had looked fondly upon Chavez Ravine...in ways of which we could only dream.
In my world, I had a Saturday shift playing the hits, taking calls for inane youngsters, and cracking wise, as my Top 40 idols had done between songs. Ordinarily, I'd be home to watch the Series opener, but I'd taken a side gig at the Camarillo Boys and Girls Club. For a hundred much needed bucks, I'd be spending the evening rolling records for high schoolers.
It was a difficult task. The kids bugged the hell out of me all night. The dance kids complained they couldn't dance to what I was playing, the surfer kids didn't want to hear the dance music, and when I finally aquiesed, and played "Beds are Burning," by Midnight Oil, some very apprehensive girls hurried up to me sand said everyone had moved to the lobbhy and weren't dancing. The little cretins who'd asked for Midnight Oil were seated at the top of the bleachers, buzzed on something, enjoying their song, while I was resolving never to do this kind of shit again.
Afterwhile, they guy from the station who'd tossed the gig tgo me arrived to help break down the equipment. "Hey, " he mentioned casually, "The Dodgers won."
"Great!" I said, thinking something had finally gone right, today.
"Yeah," he went on. "Kirk Gibson had a homer." He tossed it off with the nonchalance of someone who knew little about baseball. It wasn't until I got home and watched the game on that btrust VCR that I realized Gibson had hit one of the top three home runs in all baseball history, a cataclysmic blow that fractured the A's and altered the dynamic of the series. This injured entity, an inert force who drove the team all year, limped to the plate, smote a game winning blast, circled the bases to a wild cacaphony, and crossed the plate into baseball lore. By 4 the next morning, I had rewound and watched the homer seven times...and the eyes of a 29 year old man misted...misted plenty.
I would also miss game 2. I had a date. I had tickets to a concert I didn't want to see, by a man whose music I firmly believe induces insulin shock (Kenny G), with a woman for whom I lusted deeply, yet was beginning to sense was not a good human being.
What was wrong with this picture. At 29, lust, unrequited as it turns out, wins big, and the VCR was set once again, as I suffered this wildy attractive, intensely moody woman, and tolerated the dreck played by the syruppy Mr. Gorelick (the soprano saxophonist's real name). The highligh was Smokey Robinson coming out for a surprise song. Walking back to the car afterward, I said to my mikni-skirted date, "How about Smokey showing up."
"I'm not a fan." She said flatly.
"Oh," I said. Unrequited lust, indeed. All that was waiting for me at the end of this night was the VCR. Thank God it was Game Two of the World Series. Thank God Orel Hershiser had shut out the A's. Thank God I'd had the sense to buy a stack of VHS Tapes to preserve each series game.
I was back at work during games three, four, and five, with the VCR set, and the A.P. wire at the ready. Mark McGwire, who, at a future date who reign in both ecstacy and ignominy, won game three for Oakland in the ninth inning. Then a win in game four, and the remarkable Hershiser in game five, another shutout, and a World Series Clincher!
It was amazing. It was unparalelled. I went on the air and exulted between the hits. I recently discovered the tape of that broadcast, and I sound a lot like that 14 year old in 1974, full of glee that my team had prevailed at long last! I remember thinking that even if they didn't win the next year, it wouldn't matter, because this was so fantatstic.
*
The joy I just relived writing that package has had to last for almost 20 years. I still have the tapes from the '88 series filed away. I never watch them because the memory remains so fresh. The 2007 season has just ended with the Dodgers falling to pieces like a decaying milk bone. Clubhouse factions were revealed, tensions between the youngsters who will lead the team and the high priced forty year olds who were supposed to provide leadership. So what else is new?
Vin Scully spent the final game marking great moments of the past. He's soon to be 80, working home games and road games from Denver and all points west. Three innings simulcast on radio and TV, the rest of the game eclusively via video. He remains a true artist. His voice, his demeanor, his content between the pitches represnts the franchise as much as the color blue.
This past summer, I spent Sundays at the beach, probably the only human being there with a radio as opposed to a discman or Ipod (the subject for another commentary: radio is no longer a presence at the beach). Listening to those three innings of Vin Scully calling the game while sitting in the sand was like having memories and emotion wash ashore along with the waves. To be connected to a baseball team for the majority of one's life is, indeed to know joy and pain. The losing is pain, but winning is not the only joy. The team, the game and what it has meant is the joy in it's blue-hued entirety.
And the eyes of middle-aged men will be subject to mist.
*
Next time, I promise, funny stuff. yes, radio stuff. My take on talk...the opnionated, jibber-jabberers you only think are making you feel informed
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Sweet Embraceable Lou: A Radio "Write."
An old-timer, amazed and bewildered by the technology at work here, might say "great and manifold are the blessings of this medium...that really affords us the opportunity to talk to you." I feel pretty much the same about keeping this blog. I have already written that I choose not to expound endlessly about my chosen vocation, which, depending on the events that transpire, could alternately bore, incite, or put my professional ass in a sling.
However, since it IS a part of my life, a little radio will find its way to the page, now and again--especially if it's funny. There will be no commentary or criticism of the business as it stands, but there will be remarks about greats and not-so-greats you may have listened to in the past. Greats who have influenced me, and maybe a couple who've offended my sensibilities...and yours. There's one whom I found so outrageous, I intended to to write a short story based on his peculiarities. I never found the time or energy, because, believe it or not, the radio work can burn you out.
I have enough, though, to provide a few laughs for those who don't need a plot or an ending to their stories. The first two full pages, and situational notes are here, plus a recently written preface that I hope will crack you up, without, of course, actually injuring ribs.
*
In this, the seventh year of the new millennium, there are still veterans of the airwaves who will probably toil until their last, tobacco saturated breath. Guys who are so venerated, their gaffs, mistakes and idiosyncrasies are tolerated with no questions asked. Guys so inept, when they actually did things correctly, it was celebrated...even though their record at doing things right was like that of The Ancient Mariner: as was written in the poem, "He taketh one in three."
One of these gentlemen I called "Sweet Embraceable Lou," and these are some of his exploits, based on fact.
SWEET EMBRACEABLE LOU: Lou's Lucky Strike
Lou Fogg. His name suited him perfectly. Mentally, he had been a little foggy since the days of his misspent youth. An expansive ego had his head in the clouds, and the smoke from his omnipresent Lucky Strike cigarette made his skull truly appear enshrouded. Fog was the word that described him literally and figuratively.
His addiction to Lucky Strikes had him sneaking smokes in the damnedest places. One evening, while the hits of a generation played on , he shuffled around the radio station, looking for a place where he could toke-up without being detected. He chose a unisex restroom with one commode, and a fan that worked only if a second switch was flipped simultaneously with the lights.
In his haste to light up a Lucky, Sweet Embraceable Lou hit only the switch for the lights, put down the lid on the bowl, and fumbled through his pockets for a match. It vaguely dawned on him that he might take this time to use the room for its actual purpose. Alma, his 28-year-old girlfriend, has cooked another volatile meal of pinto beans, cheese and burritos, the kind of dinner that left the old man as plugged as a freshly spackled hole in the wall. His only relief would be to somehow force a moment of flatulence...which is exactly what he did, sitting there on a covered bowl, without ventilation, just as he was putting a light to his cigarette.
WHOOSH!!
Methane met match, and Lou's fuzzy, grey eyebrows went up in one quick POOF! The old man was so out of it, he thought someone had taken his picture with an old-fashioned powder-flash.
Moving with more speed than even he thought was possible, Lou swung over to the basin and splashed water on his smoldering brows, stubbed out his Lucky Strike, and tossed the butt into the trash can. He hastily dried himself, turned out the light, and doddered back to the studio.
Welcome to a night on the air with Sweet Embraceable Lou Fogg, a man not competent to tie his own shoes. One of those remarkable human beings who floated through life like an aerialist, falling once or twice, but always landing on his feet like a pixilated feline. He knew not how he survived--he simply had an instinct for it.
Even his choice of cigarette brands was touched by some aesthetic serendipity. How else would you describe the days and nights of a man who should have been, by all rights, sleeping in a cardboard box, or (at best) with reluctant relatives. His very existence was...a Lucky Strike.
Not that Good 'Ol, Sweet Embraceable Lou ever knew that. His sense of entitlement went back to the crib.
"They had cribs back then?" we would ask ourselves when the subject came up. Apparently so. Lou Fogg came into the world in as slippery a fashion as he would lead his life. One night, sometime in the 1920's (we were never sure which year. The older he looked, the younger he would tell us he was), Miss Fiona Fogg, an increasingly hefty former-flapper with a love for bathtub hooch and card players, staggered into her bathroom to do battle with a case of constipation that would bring Paul Bunyan to his knees. What she thought was the massive dump to end all dumps was nothing of the sort...and baby Lou entered the world with an accidental splash.
Literally baptized with the flotsam and jetsam, he would spend his boyhood around the curbs and gutters of pre-war southern California. Fiona doted on her unexpected bundle of joy. Obviously impervious to physical and emotional pain (consider her son's delivery!), she even endured the heckling of Lou's neighborhood pals. The mean little bastards would see the over-stuffed baba, recall the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk and chant, "Fee, Fi, Fo, FOGG!"
LOU-ICIDE: Life on the Streets
He grew up a lean boy, without much of an appetite for food (mother Fiona would routinely finish his plates with great gusto). Lou's earliest interests in life were stealing, and girls. As he entered puberty, it were as if an acetylene torch went off in his trousers. The depression era was known for its devastating poverty and its criminals, not its promiscuity. No one told Lou.
And here are remaining notes I made:
* That his last name was Fogg cannot be too strongly noted. It was more than coincidence. It were as if his surname were chosen to describe the musings that rumbled in his medulla oblongnotta.
* Sweet Embraceable Lou could not have withstood an actual embrace--a heart slap on the back would disassemble him like a house made of tooth pics. His gaunt frame was like an old TV antennae with swatches of hair and vital organs, precariously clinging to it.
* His voice put me in the mind of a the sound a goose would make while strangulating. As he entered his dotage, he would punctuate his speech with a nervous giggle that could be mistaken for the vocal response to a very unnecessary prostate exam--he squeaked like a rusty bird cage door, and mumbled like the rumble of loose gurney wheels. Somehow, the voice that emanated from that larynx had mesmerized an entire culture of the street.
* ...the song was a minute from ending when Lou opened the mike and thankfully groaned, "ahhhhhhh! That was wonderful! Embraceable!" Then he realized that the groan of delight was actually an involuntary response of relief. He'd suffered another moment of on-air incontinence. "Milton," he warbled distantly to his engineer, "...get a sponge."
* One evening, a fun-loving jock plopped a dollop of the prescription laxative Purge into Lou's coffee. The shit literally hit the fan...and the control board.
* A feral animal apparently took the brunt of the fusillade, as the angry listeners emptied two 45s from afar. Sweet Embraceable Lou traipsed blithely through the hail of lead, wondering only who had their TV on so loud...and if a sudden breeze had picked up.
* The on-air coughing spell had lasted nearly two minutes before Lou finally closed the mike and headed to the men's room. After ten minutes, he was at last able to prod a few voluntary drops from his uncooperative bladder. "Goddamn thing!" he mumbled to no one in particular. "it only works when it feels like it." Lou then heel-toed it outdoors to light up another Lucky Strike and puffed away.
"Hey...workin' when they feel like it! I'll say that on the air," Lou exclaimed as loudly as he could, only to himself. Barely ambulatory, he made his way back into the studio and keyed open the mike, forty seconds into a love song.
"This one's for my engineer, Milton, who works only when he feels like it." Still on the air, he began sniffing. "Hey, I smell smoke. Where's it coming from? Must be Milton's shoes: It's dinnertime! Heeeeeeeeeeee!! HEY! Milton! I didn't mean it! Don't beat me up!"
Milton was swatting Lou with his own jacket to douse the flames that had erupted from the pocket of Lou's ratty coat...the pocket where Embraceable Lou had put the still-lighted Lucky Strike when he had his brainstorm for the on-air bit.
* Growing more furious by the day, Milton sometimes wondered what it would be like to rid himself of his elderly meal ticket. However, babysitting the octogenarian was better than pumping gas--though the fumes from Lou's gas were just as noxious as anything billowing from a refinery.
After periodic expulsions, Lou would warble something like, "My girlfriend makes burritos and sends me to work with a box of Baby Wipes!" Milton thought a cork would be more useful and less expensive. the flatulence and his frequent smoking made Sweet Embraceable Lou's potential for spontaneous combustion greater than that of the Hindenburg.
*
That's it, that's all. Maybe it's peaked some curiosity. Maybe one day it'll yield a plot and a short story. For now, a guffaw or two will do.
Next week...my heart, my pain...40 years following the Los Angeles Dodgers.
However, since it IS a part of my life, a little radio will find its way to the page, now and again--especially if it's funny. There will be no commentary or criticism of the business as it stands, but there will be remarks about greats and not-so-greats you may have listened to in the past. Greats who have influenced me, and maybe a couple who've offended my sensibilities...and yours. There's one whom I found so outrageous, I intended to to write a short story based on his peculiarities. I never found the time or energy, because, believe it or not, the radio work can burn you out.
I have enough, though, to provide a few laughs for those who don't need a plot or an ending to their stories. The first two full pages, and situational notes are here, plus a recently written preface that I hope will crack you up, without, of course, actually injuring ribs.
*
In this, the seventh year of the new millennium, there are still veterans of the airwaves who will probably toil until their last, tobacco saturated breath. Guys who are so venerated, their gaffs, mistakes and idiosyncrasies are tolerated with no questions asked. Guys so inept, when they actually did things correctly, it was celebrated...even though their record at doing things right was like that of The Ancient Mariner: as was written in the poem, "He taketh one in three."
One of these gentlemen I called "Sweet Embraceable Lou," and these are some of his exploits, based on fact.
SWEET EMBRACEABLE LOU: Lou's Lucky Strike
Lou Fogg. His name suited him perfectly. Mentally, he had been a little foggy since the days of his misspent youth. An expansive ego had his head in the clouds, and the smoke from his omnipresent Lucky Strike cigarette made his skull truly appear enshrouded. Fog was the word that described him literally and figuratively.
His addiction to Lucky Strikes had him sneaking smokes in the damnedest places. One evening, while the hits of a generation played on , he shuffled around the radio station, looking for a place where he could toke-up without being detected. He chose a unisex restroom with one commode, and a fan that worked only if a second switch was flipped simultaneously with the lights.
In his haste to light up a Lucky, Sweet Embraceable Lou hit only the switch for the lights, put down the lid on the bowl, and fumbled through his pockets for a match. It vaguely dawned on him that he might take this time to use the room for its actual purpose. Alma, his 28-year-old girlfriend, has cooked another volatile meal of pinto beans, cheese and burritos, the kind of dinner that left the old man as plugged as a freshly spackled hole in the wall. His only relief would be to somehow force a moment of flatulence...which is exactly what he did, sitting there on a covered bowl, without ventilation, just as he was putting a light to his cigarette.
WHOOSH!!
Methane met match, and Lou's fuzzy, grey eyebrows went up in one quick POOF! The old man was so out of it, he thought someone had taken his picture with an old-fashioned powder-flash.
Moving with more speed than even he thought was possible, Lou swung over to the basin and splashed water on his smoldering brows, stubbed out his Lucky Strike, and tossed the butt into the trash can. He hastily dried himself, turned out the light, and doddered back to the studio.
Welcome to a night on the air with Sweet Embraceable Lou Fogg, a man not competent to tie his own shoes. One of those remarkable human beings who floated through life like an aerialist, falling once or twice, but always landing on his feet like a pixilated feline. He knew not how he survived--he simply had an instinct for it.
Even his choice of cigarette brands was touched by some aesthetic serendipity. How else would you describe the days and nights of a man who should have been, by all rights, sleeping in a cardboard box, or (at best) with reluctant relatives. His very existence was...a Lucky Strike.
Not that Good 'Ol, Sweet Embraceable Lou ever knew that. His sense of entitlement went back to the crib.
"They had cribs back then?" we would ask ourselves when the subject came up. Apparently so. Lou Fogg came into the world in as slippery a fashion as he would lead his life. One night, sometime in the 1920's (we were never sure which year. The older he looked, the younger he would tell us he was), Miss Fiona Fogg, an increasingly hefty former-flapper with a love for bathtub hooch and card players, staggered into her bathroom to do battle with a case of constipation that would bring Paul Bunyan to his knees. What she thought was the massive dump to end all dumps was nothing of the sort...and baby Lou entered the world with an accidental splash.
Literally baptized with the flotsam and jetsam, he would spend his boyhood around the curbs and gutters of pre-war southern California. Fiona doted on her unexpected bundle of joy. Obviously impervious to physical and emotional pain (consider her son's delivery!), she even endured the heckling of Lou's neighborhood pals. The mean little bastards would see the over-stuffed baba, recall the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk and chant, "Fee, Fi, Fo, FOGG!"
LOU-ICIDE: Life on the Streets
He grew up a lean boy, without much of an appetite for food (mother Fiona would routinely finish his plates with great gusto). Lou's earliest interests in life were stealing, and girls. As he entered puberty, it were as if an acetylene torch went off in his trousers. The depression era was known for its devastating poverty and its criminals, not its promiscuity. No one told Lou.
And here are remaining notes I made:
* That his last name was Fogg cannot be too strongly noted. It was more than coincidence. It were as if his surname were chosen to describe the musings that rumbled in his medulla oblongnotta.
* Sweet Embraceable Lou could not have withstood an actual embrace--a heart slap on the back would disassemble him like a house made of tooth pics. His gaunt frame was like an old TV antennae with swatches of hair and vital organs, precariously clinging to it.
* His voice put me in the mind of a the sound a goose would make while strangulating. As he entered his dotage, he would punctuate his speech with a nervous giggle that could be mistaken for the vocal response to a very unnecessary prostate exam--he squeaked like a rusty bird cage door, and mumbled like the rumble of loose gurney wheels. Somehow, the voice that emanated from that larynx had mesmerized an entire culture of the street.
* ...the song was a minute from ending when Lou opened the mike and thankfully groaned, "ahhhhhhh! That was wonderful! Embraceable!" Then he realized that the groan of delight was actually an involuntary response of relief. He'd suffered another moment of on-air incontinence. "Milton," he warbled distantly to his engineer, "...get a sponge."
* One evening, a fun-loving jock plopped a dollop of the prescription laxative Purge into Lou's coffee. The shit literally hit the fan...and the control board.
* A feral animal apparently took the brunt of the fusillade, as the angry listeners emptied two 45s from afar. Sweet Embraceable Lou traipsed blithely through the hail of lead, wondering only who had their TV on so loud...and if a sudden breeze had picked up.
* The on-air coughing spell had lasted nearly two minutes before Lou finally closed the mike and headed to the men's room. After ten minutes, he was at last able to prod a few voluntary drops from his uncooperative bladder. "Goddamn thing!" he mumbled to no one in particular. "it only works when it feels like it." Lou then heel-toed it outdoors to light up another Lucky Strike and puffed away.
"Hey...workin' when they feel like it! I'll say that on the air," Lou exclaimed as loudly as he could, only to himself. Barely ambulatory, he made his way back into the studio and keyed open the mike, forty seconds into a love song.
"This one's for my engineer, Milton, who works only when he feels like it." Still on the air, he began sniffing. "Hey, I smell smoke. Where's it coming from? Must be Milton's shoes: It's dinnertime! Heeeeeeeeeeee!! HEY! Milton! I didn't mean it! Don't beat me up!"
Milton was swatting Lou with his own jacket to douse the flames that had erupted from the pocket of Lou's ratty coat...the pocket where Embraceable Lou had put the still-lighted Lucky Strike when he had his brainstorm for the on-air bit.
* Growing more furious by the day, Milton sometimes wondered what it would be like to rid himself of his elderly meal ticket. However, babysitting the octogenarian was better than pumping gas--though the fumes from Lou's gas were just as noxious as anything billowing from a refinery.
After periodic expulsions, Lou would warble something like, "My girlfriend makes burritos and sends me to work with a box of Baby Wipes!" Milton thought a cork would be more useful and less expensive. the flatulence and his frequent smoking made Sweet Embraceable Lou's potential for spontaneous combustion greater than that of the Hindenburg.
*
That's it, that's all. Maybe it's peaked some curiosity. Maybe one day it'll yield a plot and a short story. For now, a guffaw or two will do.
Next week...my heart, my pain...40 years following the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Things that make you go "Ha!" Part Duh
It's appropriate to end this little chapter on what makes me laugh by turning to the keyboard right after the opening minutes of the MTV Video Music Awards. I'm not sure who was funnier: Britney Spears or Sarah Silverman. Or, if you look at the glass half full, you might wonder who's effort was more tragic? A bloated Britney, no longer a nymphet, now a mother of two, her body better suited for a baggy,"Property of Haagen Dazs" sweat shirt; Sarah, the pretty-potty-mouth, and comic dujour for awards shows, with an acerbic edge that didn't exactly have her all-star audience in stitches. To me, her humor is better suited for small groups who guffaw at the expense of the rich, famous and slutty. Before a large audience, though, it seems to cause squirming of hemorroidal proportions, and nervous giggles from those embarassed to laugh in public at something shocking.
I haven't always been keen on "Comics dujour." As a teen, I considered my sense of humor more sophisticated than that of my peers. I didn't understand the concept of appealing to the lowest common denominator (I still don't get it, and it's had a chilling affect on my radio career).
For example, I could not abide by the 70's era Steve Martin. The bunny ears, the "wild and crazy guys," loved to distraction by so many others my age, was lost on me. I knew him as a comic whose hair used to be black...a fellow who'd play the banjo on The Tonight Show. Compared to the comedians who made me laugh until I cried, this white-haired, white-suited silly man was a waste of time. Only the witless ninnies (neither my friends or me) lined up to buy his albums, see his show at the Universal Amphitheatre, and memorize the gags from his movie, The Jerk.
It was a classic mistake, on my part. Associating the artist with the audience that embraced him. 10 years later, with the movie Roxanne, I came to appreciate a renaissance performer, who was stealthily hilarious. He'd moved on past establishing himself with "the lowest common denominator," at least in my opinion. I rate him as one of the most gifted performers the country's seen in the last 50 years...movies, TV spots, his books. He always knew exactly what he was doing.
The same was true of Robin Williams. At the outset, "Mork" eluded me completely because the folks I knew, the ones who'd go around repeating "Nanu, Nanu," were humorless people. On their own, they couldn't get a laugh if they experienced an especially loud moment of flatulence at a Wedding Mass--leg lifted and all.
It was the mid-80's by the time I recognized the artist minus his early, easily amused audiences. His TV appearnces and guest shots were electric. Not since Rickles had I seen anything like it. And Good Morning, Vietnam became only the second movie I paid to see twice (the other was Animal House". I went to all his movies after that, until The Fisher King, which was so depressing, I recognized he was truly the clown (the clown can make you laugh and cry, they say). His Late Show, guest spots would have to suffice for just the laughs, and suffice they do.
Knowing that I judged rather poorly in the late 1970's maybe I should give current teen favorite, Dane Cook a break. Maybe he touches something in what they call "the 12 to 24 demographic" that I left behind years ago. Or perhaps I would dislike him as I did Steve Martin when I was in that age group? Will I, one day when I'm pulling my pension, hee-haw with raucous abandon at the work of Dane Cook?
Naaaaw. Not unless I'm dead wrong...again.
This leads me to the last comic on my list. A former favorite who just cracked me up, and still can when he's not pontificating. Dennis Miller was on my list of the funniest people in the world. It would figure that I'd get the obscure references, the "40 dollar" words, and the smerkiness. His "Weekend Updates," on Saturday Night Live were the highlight of some of those 1980's episodes. His 1988 album (and HBO special culled from the same gig) is still a riot, to me. He was hipper than anyone else, an acquired taste, and a lock to say something that would leave me wheezing.
As Dennis' career took off, it put him in places that didn't suit his talents. His syndicated late night show was uncomfortable to watch because he tried to do what Steve Martin had done: appeal to that dreaded Lowest Common Denominator. You have to in TV. Ratings dictate it.
His next series, on HBO, fared much better, because there were no advertisers or affiliates to please. And, man was he funny. Who else would call those who run with the bulls at Pamploma, "A bunch of guys dressed like Topo Gigio, willing to get gored in the ass?"
God yes, Dennis Miller was funny. Then something happened. He says it was 9/11 (the sixth anniversary of which, we are observing this week). Suddenly the smartest of the smart comics, who fired his lasers in all directions, became the cranky heir to William F. Buckley's throne of pomposity.
The man who once scored with lines like, "Ronald Reagan. 76, this last election. With his finger on the button. My grandfather's 76, we won't let him touch the remote to the TV," is now an ideologue who saves his bromides and broadsides for only one side of the political spectrum. Somehow, the references and big words don't score as well when they're not aimed at fellow travellers. And it's too bad. Both sides deserve a skewering at the expense of somebody so funny and so smart.
You could say this is true, also, of John Stewart. I get the impression, though, that the right "gets" John Stewart, and that when it comes to disemboweling the left, Dennis is coming from a place of self satisfaction rather than satire.
I vividly remember one of his syndicated shows in 1991, when Dennis covered all fields, and he zeroed in on Shannen Doherty, then at her Beverly Hills, 90210 peak. Shannon has never made a secret of her political bent. Unlike Dennis, hers comes via upbringing, rather than epiphany.
On one of those shows, Shannen pointed to a nervous Dennis and asked, "Why's your eye twitching like that, " a cruel and bitchy thing to do to the host of a new show.
Dennis got his revenge when her 90210 action figure was introduced. Dennis splayed its legs, hurled it across the stage, cleaned a shelf with it, and eventually dismembered the doll with a madman's sense of glee. It was a highlight show piece of work for a program that didn't last long enough to have a show of that sort. Memorable, 16 years later. Especially since he and Shannen could conceivably bump into each other at the RNC, next year.
Politics does make strange bedfellows.
Next week, an unfinished bit of fiction based on fact... one of just a few glimpses I'll offer, backstage on the 'ol radio ranch.
I haven't always been keen on "Comics dujour." As a teen, I considered my sense of humor more sophisticated than that of my peers. I didn't understand the concept of appealing to the lowest common denominator (I still don't get it, and it's had a chilling affect on my radio career).
For example, I could not abide by the 70's era Steve Martin. The bunny ears, the "wild and crazy guys," loved to distraction by so many others my age, was lost on me. I knew him as a comic whose hair used to be black...a fellow who'd play the banjo on The Tonight Show. Compared to the comedians who made me laugh until I cried, this white-haired, white-suited silly man was a waste of time. Only the witless ninnies (neither my friends or me) lined up to buy his albums, see his show at the Universal Amphitheatre, and memorize the gags from his movie, The Jerk.
It was a classic mistake, on my part. Associating the artist with the audience that embraced him. 10 years later, with the movie Roxanne, I came to appreciate a renaissance performer, who was stealthily hilarious. He'd moved on past establishing himself with "the lowest common denominator," at least in my opinion. I rate him as one of the most gifted performers the country's seen in the last 50 years...movies, TV spots, his books. He always knew exactly what he was doing.
The same was true of Robin Williams. At the outset, "Mork" eluded me completely because the folks I knew, the ones who'd go around repeating "Nanu, Nanu," were humorless people. On their own, they couldn't get a laugh if they experienced an especially loud moment of flatulence at a Wedding Mass--leg lifted and all.
It was the mid-80's by the time I recognized the artist minus his early, easily amused audiences. His TV appearnces and guest shots were electric. Not since Rickles had I seen anything like it. And Good Morning, Vietnam became only the second movie I paid to see twice (the other was Animal House". I went to all his movies after that, until The Fisher King, which was so depressing, I recognized he was truly the clown (the clown can make you laugh and cry, they say). His Late Show, guest spots would have to suffice for just the laughs, and suffice they do.
Knowing that I judged rather poorly in the late 1970's maybe I should give current teen favorite, Dane Cook a break. Maybe he touches something in what they call "the 12 to 24 demographic" that I left behind years ago. Or perhaps I would dislike him as I did Steve Martin when I was in that age group? Will I, one day when I'm pulling my pension, hee-haw with raucous abandon at the work of Dane Cook?
Naaaaw. Not unless I'm dead wrong...again.
This leads me to the last comic on my list. A former favorite who just cracked me up, and still can when he's not pontificating. Dennis Miller was on my list of the funniest people in the world. It would figure that I'd get the obscure references, the "40 dollar" words, and the smerkiness. His "Weekend Updates," on Saturday Night Live were the highlight of some of those 1980's episodes. His 1988 album (and HBO special culled from the same gig) is still a riot, to me. He was hipper than anyone else, an acquired taste, and a lock to say something that would leave me wheezing.
As Dennis' career took off, it put him in places that didn't suit his talents. His syndicated late night show was uncomfortable to watch because he tried to do what Steve Martin had done: appeal to that dreaded Lowest Common Denominator. You have to in TV. Ratings dictate it.
His next series, on HBO, fared much better, because there were no advertisers or affiliates to please. And, man was he funny. Who else would call those who run with the bulls at Pamploma, "A bunch of guys dressed like Topo Gigio, willing to get gored in the ass?"
God yes, Dennis Miller was funny. Then something happened. He says it was 9/11 (the sixth anniversary of which, we are observing this week). Suddenly the smartest of the smart comics, who fired his lasers in all directions, became the cranky heir to William F. Buckley's throne of pomposity.
The man who once scored with lines like, "Ronald Reagan. 76, this last election. With his finger on the button. My grandfather's 76, we won't let him touch the remote to the TV," is now an ideologue who saves his bromides and broadsides for only one side of the political spectrum. Somehow, the references and big words don't score as well when they're not aimed at fellow travellers. And it's too bad. Both sides deserve a skewering at the expense of somebody so funny and so smart.
You could say this is true, also, of John Stewart. I get the impression, though, that the right "gets" John Stewart, and that when it comes to disemboweling the left, Dennis is coming from a place of self satisfaction rather than satire.
I vividly remember one of his syndicated shows in 1991, when Dennis covered all fields, and he zeroed in on Shannen Doherty, then at her Beverly Hills, 90210 peak. Shannon has never made a secret of her political bent. Unlike Dennis, hers comes via upbringing, rather than epiphany.
On one of those shows, Shannen pointed to a nervous Dennis and asked, "Why's your eye twitching like that, " a cruel and bitchy thing to do to the host of a new show.
Dennis got his revenge when her 90210 action figure was introduced. Dennis splayed its legs, hurled it across the stage, cleaned a shelf with it, and eventually dismembered the doll with a madman's sense of glee. It was a highlight show piece of work for a program that didn't last long enough to have a show of that sort. Memorable, 16 years later. Especially since he and Shannen could conceivably bump into each other at the RNC, next year.
Politics does make strange bedfellows.
Next week, an unfinished bit of fiction based on fact... one of just a few glimpses I'll offer, backstage on the 'ol radio ranch.
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