Showing posts with label 1974. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1974. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Unfortunately, the judge believed in jail

Aug. 8, 1974: The front page of the Baton Rouge (La.) State-Times had the biggest headline I'd ever seen in my 13½ years on Earth: Nixon to Quit.
Inside, on Page 20-A, was this campaign ad for Gil Dozier, running for Public Service Commissioner that fall.

His campaign chairman, Dr. Billy Cannon -- local orthodontist and LSU's only Heisman Trophy winner -- paid for it. Dozier lost.
But the next year, Dozier got himself elected Louisiana agriculture commissioner. And in 1980, he got himself convicted on federal racketeering and extortion charges. After a failed appeal in 1982, he took up residence in the federal pen in Fort Worth, Texas.

In 1983, Cannon ended up in federal prison, too -- in Texarkana, Texas -- after being convicted of counterfeiting $6 million in $100 bills. Both got out of the pen in 1986.

I wonder how many folks ever think "Hey! Both of these guys went to federal pen -- funny how life works" when seeing an old newspaper political ad from their misspent youth. I'll bet a bunch . . . if they're from Louisiana.

Friday, June 07, 2019

Turning working girls into pretty women is our bidness


Baton Rouge: June 6, 1974.

The decision is made that if you cannot do anything about working girls downtown, you at least can turn them into pretty women.

Either that, or my hometown was the epicenter of unintentionally hilarious advertising during my youth.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Goodness, gracious, great balls of fail


Your daily 'Oops!'


Ooh la la!

The French would not have committed this doozy.

The Omaha World-Herald just did.

The case of The Nutty Webmaster began with a trip to the newspaper's archives to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of John Jones, a.k.a., Dr. San Guinary, the hilarious KMTV horror-movie host who was a local legend among untold thousands of a certain age who grew up in the Big O. So far, so good.

Then the World-Herald's webmeister waded into the deep end of the pop-culture pool. That's the end where you actually have to know something to avoid a lungful of heavily chlorinated water.

LIKE THE difference between Jerry Lewis, comedy star of stage, screen and Labor Day telethons, and Jerry Lee Lewis, noted for smokin' rock 'n' roll piano playin' and marrying teenage cousins. Glug.

Ze French, zey are not amused.

While I'm at it, one other thing. If this picture was taken during the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon -- as it appears to have been -- that's not Jerry (not Lee) Lewis actually in Omaha at the fishbowl, it's a backdrop. Jerry would have been in Las Vegas . . . on the telethon.

No word on where The Killer would have been.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Simply '70s: Lady Gaga, meinen Arsch


How sad is American culture today?

Let's take a look at the score sheet: Marxist East Germany (1974) gives us Nina Hagen und Automobil. Capitalist America (2008) gives us a pale imitation, Lady Gaga und blecch.

Advantage, communism.


OF COURSE, the totalitarian state had its limits. Thus, the First Fraulein of Punk (der punken?) was not perfected until she fled the dictatorship of the proletariat for West Germany, and then spent time in pre-Thatcherite England amid the emergence of The Clash and the Sex Pistols.

Advantage, democratic socialism.

Above, we see Hagen during a 1979 TV appearance.


CALL ME when Lady Gaga has the guts to do this one.

Of course, back when I worked in Catholic radio, the sight of Nina Hagen singing a punk version of "Ave Maria" would have been cause for an epidemic of the vapors. Trust me, the good God-fearin' folk would be going all Rick Perry on the sacrilegious Kraut faster than Mother Angelica could say
“Remember to keep us between your gas and electric bill.”

This is why I'm glad the good Lord got me out of there before I lost the rest of my faith. Trust me, it was close.
(As always, your mileage may vary.)

But then you take a look at the translation of the German lyrics Hagen put to Franz Schubert's famous melody:
Ave Maria, Maria of whom I sing
We are asking you for mercy
For people who have already been waiting so long
Totally without hope
Totally without hope

See there, their unhappy lives
It hungers deep, from fear of death
Millions live here on the earth
Still yet, in greatest need

Ave Maria
Ave Maria, Saint Maria
Hear my prayers Maria
Where much suffering has already occurred
Why always does more hurt follow more hurt
Let the people have faith again
Let them understand and forgive
Then all peoples could become friends
And all the races could be brothers
Ave Maria
LIKE I SAID, let's see Gaga have the gu-guts to go onstage and belt out that one.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Now it's just tone deaf as a cauliflower


I remember those days, fossil that I am.

Those days when Top-40 was king of the radio . . . and on AM. When FM stations were different -- and trying harder.

You know, when "stereo" was a selling point for an FM station.

When people were blind as carrots because there was nothing new on the radio. When people cared that there was nothing new on the radio.

When people said "radio" and not
"Radio???"

YEAH, this 1974 ad for KGOR, taken from the pages of the North Star, Omaha North High School's student newspaper, is rather, er . . . esoteric. That's the point -- radio broadcasting at a time before a station such as KGOR had no selling point other than "Superhits."

That's it.
Superhits. Or, "tone deaf as a cauliflower."

And if you get lucky, there might be a real person behind the microphone, reading liner cards that say "Superhits."

Well, I may be as blind as a carrot, but radio is as dead as a doornail.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Simply '70s: Hard-won wisdom born of sin


I always thought this was the best speech Richard Nixon ever gave.

Nearly 37 years on, I still remember watching it. And I remember being incredibly sad, though not as sad as my mother, who thought Nixon was the bee
's knees and got railroaded by the communists.

But it was sad. It's never a happy affair when a man is brought to his knees, no matter how richly deserved and no matter how much his own doing.


IN AUGUST 1974, the republic was saved because the Constitution worked. Back then, no man was above the law. Even the president.

What was remarkable about this, Nixon's best speech, is that he could not have given it just days before. This was the speech of a broken man, a hated man, one who deep down inside knew he had done wrong.

It was a speech born of the wisdom of a sinner. It was the same wisdom David found after Nathan confronted him with his murderous sin -- the same grief later born of a heart broken by Absalom, the son who died in rebellion against him.

The wisdom of sin. And a heart softened by its brokenness.

We are a nation presently full of tragedy, and one that has seen much worse. We, however, are a nation with little sense of the tragic, but plenty taste for anger, strife, hatred and alienation.

We have yet to learn the one hard lesson Richard Nixon learned from the bitter fruit of his own sin:

"Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself."

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Simply '70s: Showing his shortcomings


Hello, everybody, this is your action news reporter with all the news that is news across the nation, on the scene at the 1974 Academy Awards. There seems to have been some disturbance here. Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?

"Yeah, I did. I's standin' overe there by the paparazzi, and here he come, running across the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, behind David Niven, nekkid as a jay bird. And I hollered over t' Ethel, I said, 'Don't look, Ethel!' But it's too late, she'd already been incensed."

Monday, February 14, 2011

Simply '70s: The real TV spiel


You say it's Feb. 14, 2011. I say your clock is fast.

Way fast. Thirty-seven years fast.

According to my clock, it's May 1974. Bell bottoms are all the rage. Platform shoes, too.

And we like to settle in on the living-room couch in front of the big console television set and watch all the cool kids dance to the top hits on
American Bandstand.

Or
The Real Don Steele Show on KHJ-TV out in Los Angeles.

Sorry, I meant Boss Angeles.



Hey, man, can you get that open flame away from my shirt? Please?

If you don't, I'm a cut you up bad with the big, big comb I got in my back pocket for my big, big hair.


Think I'm not serious? Maybe I'll introduce Gary Glitter to your 12-year-old sister, man. I hear he gives lip-syncing a whole new meaning.

Or maybe I'll make you watch Don's "Show Biz News Stuff" skit twice. Tina Delgado may be alive, ALIVE, but that bit just died, DIED.

Rock 'n' roll, man.