3 Chords & the Truth: The hits in hi-fi

All I need is a nice vacuum-tube hi-fi, some nifty record albums and a record changer, and I'm in business, Hoss.

Well, and a time machine. That would be nice.

What do you think is on sale at the House of Hi-Fi this week? Let me jump in my Big Show time machine and find out.

While I'm there -- sometime around 1962 -- I'll see what kind of radio gig I can pick up to earn enough to keep me flush in LPs and hi-fi equipment. Food, too. Food is important.

AND YOU know what? While I'm back in the early '60s, buying neato electronic toys and spinning the hits somewhere or another, I'm going to see how 3 Chords & the Truth translates to "back in the day."

This should be fun -- or is that "koo koo, Pally"?

Ring-a-ding-ding, and all that jazz. Because I'm hep to all that, cats.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

The elite get to pica their poison

It seems that I've been retreating headlong into the past lately.

Part of it, I guess, is some sort of rebellion against the ugliness of today's prevailing culture . . . the ugliness of what passes for civilization today, period.

Another part of it is sheer weariness at the banality and stupidity of the popular culture that's actually popular.

Most of it is boredom. I find the present dull. Radio is dull. TV is dull, most of it. Too much of music is dull.

Drudge is tedious; cable news isn't. Isn't news, that is -- cable "news" is tedious with a capital "T."

Consumer products are boring, too, but it doesn't matter because they'll be obsolete in a year, anyway.

And whatever happened to great industrial design?

Maybe I'm not the only one bored, though. Maybe lots of people are, Maybe that's why typewriters are making a comeback. Vinyl records, too.

I just bought a 1959 Olympia manual portable typewriter. All it is is a printer with elbow grease, except that it doesn't "do" artwork, but it's a lot prettier than my computer. And unlike my computer, it will still be useful in another couple of years.

It doesn't crash unless I drop it, and it works just fine when the power goes out.

I can pound away at the keyboard with two angry fingers without worry. Nothing's going to splinter, and it sounds really cool.

I can feel my words going onto paper. I am connected. I am, quite literally, "in touch."

I can pound out a literary masterpiece much as I did three decades ago on a similar device in the ancient, clamorous and quite alive newsroom of The Daily Reveille, when all of Louisiana State University could marvel at all the news I saw fit to pound onto an 8½-by-11-inch newsprint sheet secure in the bowels of an ancient Royal.

Or Underwood. Or Olympia. Maybe Olivetti.

You'd be amazed how fast you can type with two fingers. (Or maybe you wouldn't be. It's like texting with your index fingers and not your thumbs. Only much more forcefully.)

You'd also be amazed at how typing on an old Olympia, or Royal, or Underwood, or Remington is no fit pursuit for sissified fingers.

The whole process is sooooooooo not postmodern. And that's my point. Postmodern is dull and vaguely uncivilized. We have become dull . . . and vaguely uncivilized.


WE ARE out of balance. We, somewhere in our moral BIOS, know this -- thus our boredom. Thus our youngsters' newfound fascination with the low-tech hi-tech of their elders' youth. Thus, I am happy I found my 1959 Olympia at an Omaha estate sale for $5, grabbing a piece of how I used to "kick it old school back in the day" in advance of hipster-inflated pricing.

If I were in New York, for example, I would be so screwed. Exhibit A is this New York Times article from March 30:

Shoppers peered at the display, excited but hesitant, as if they’d stumbled upon a trove of strange inventions from a Jules Verne fantasy. Some snapped pictures with their iPhones.

“Can I touch it?” a young woman asked. Permission granted, she poked two buttons at once. The machine jammed. She recoiled as if it had bitten her.

“I’m in love with all of them,” said Louis Smith, 28, a lanky drummer from Williamsburg. Five minutes later, he had bought a dark blue 1968 Smith Corona Galaxie II for $150. “It’s about permanence, not being able to hit delete,” he explained. “You have to have some conviction in your thoughts. And that’s my whole philosophy of typewriters.”

Whether he knew it or not, Mr. Smith had joined a growing movement. Manual typewriters aren’t going gently into the good night of the digital era. The machines have been attracting fresh converts, many too young to be nostalgic for spooled ribbons, ink-smudged fingers and corrective fluid. And unlike the typists of yore, these folks aren’t clacking away in solitude.

They’re fetishizing old Underwoods, Smith Coronas and Remingtons, recognizing them as well designed, functional and beautiful machines, swapping them and showing them off to friends. At a series of events called “type-ins,” they’ve been gathering in bars and bookstores to flaunt a sort of post-digital style and gravitas, tapping out letters to send via snail mail and competing to see who can bang away the fastest.

IT MAY HORRIFY many of these hip young folk that they could be well on their way to becoming Catholic. Praying with rosary beads. Going to old churches with lots of statues. Lighting prayer candles. Saving prayer cards. Eating Christ.

What?

You know, tangibility. Making abstraction tactile. Making it real.

Today, we have abstracted ourselves to death, in the sense of making everything theoretical and living one's life in a state of metaphysical detachment. Words, music, interpersonal communications . . . God. It's all the same.

They exist in the cloud. In cyberspace. As hypotheticals. Anywhere but here and now.

It's positively Protestant in the Calvinist-est sense, if not downright atheist.

MP3s and iPods and iPads and laptops are all very Protestant -- perhaps even megachurch in the Joel Osteen-est sense, only without the "praising" and stuff. They're functional, utilitarian, quite non-mystical (not counting the occasional incantation in hopes of warding off a Blue Screen of Death), promise you "your best life now," and we usually have a good explanation for how it all represents "progress."

Vacuum tubes, phonographs, records and typewriters, on the other hand, are Catholic. You have to touch them, and you get "smells and bells." Especially when you get to the right margin.

DING!

You can't hear your favorite music without first touching it. You have to do something tangible beyond trolling a menu. And you get to see what you hear -- the music goes round and round, then it comes out here.

You can't express your thoughts without touching them. They are literally without form until you strike a key, which then hammers your point home -- to a sheet of paper. Which you lovingly pull from the machine and send into the great beyond, out of which it emerges to be touched -- and read -- by another human.

All very Catholic, we ancient believers in the "communion of saints," "smells and bells," statues of our heroes in the faith . . . and in feasting on the body and blood of the Creator of the universe and Savior of us all.

Good Protestants have Jesus in their hearts. We Catholics have Him in our stomachs, too. See John 6.

iPods vs. phonographs. MacBooks vs. typewriters.

MY COMPUTER and my hard drives full of music are expediencies. Tools. Purely functional and utilitarian.

My typewriter and my old record changer -- my old records -- those are affairs of the heart. I've known that since I was 4. Some young folks are just discovering it.

Sometimes, being in touch requires being in touch.

Hunting thugs down like radar. . . .

I wonder what Osama bin Laden's last words were.

I'd like to think they went something like "Hmm . . . lots of helicopters headed this way. Looks like the raid's here.

"RAID!?!"

That's right, Raid, the new al-Qaida killer from Uncle Sam Whacks! It hunts thugs down like radar and kills them dead!

Well, whatever. At least justice has been done, no matter the aesthetics of it all.

At this late and long-awaited hour, I have only this to say:

God bless America.

God preserve the Constitution.

God save the president.

And may God do whatever the hell He wants with that bastard bin Laden.

Come listen with me

This not only looks right, but it sounds right, too -- vintage Sinatra on a vintage hi-fi record changer.

I've probably entered the realm of irrational antique audiophile fandom, but there's something about these old LPs that just sounds a lot better on an old turntable. Technically, it probably has something to do with a slightly vintage cartridge that carries a bit more "pop" (as opposed to pop and crackle) than usual, as well as running with a bit more tracking pressure than a new, expensive cartridge could handle.

Or maybe it's just '50s magic.

But let me leave you with this: I really, really wish the microphone in the upper right-hand corner of the photo was Frank Sinatra's beloved "Telly," a Telefunken (Neumann) U-47.

Blogger, thy name is Mudd

You know that commercial where the two guys escape from prison, but keep getting such awful customer service outside the barbed wire that they end up running back to the joint?

It's a tempting thought.

In other words, "Yeah, Blogger's at it again."

In this case, unless you have a Google account, you can't post a comment to this here blog. Or any Blogger blog, apparently. I don't know what the deal is, except that it ain't just me. And that the Blogger powers that be are maintaining radio silence.

Because why don't you have a Google account? Huh?

Ve haff VEYS . . . .

Unction Junction, what's your function?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Good Book says there is a time for everything:

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. . . ."

When Rachel Maddow was laying into Birther Nation, a doctor in Tuscaloosa, Ala., rightly had other things on his mind.

Dr. David Hinson was working at the hospital when the tornado hit. He and his wife had to walk several blocks to get to their house, which was destroyed. Several houses down, he helped pull three students from the rubble. One was dead and two were badly injured. He and others used pieces of debris as makeshift stretchers to carry them to an ambulance.

"We just did the best we could to get them out and get them stabilized and get them to help," he said. "I don't know what happened to them."

WHEN the Rachel Maddow Show took to the air Wednesday night, scenes like this were playing out all over Alabama and Mississippi. They would be playing out shortly in Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky.

None of this registers, however, in a special place where politicos and ideologues can rage against the machine unmolested by real life or real people. I call it Unction Junction.

Yes, we need to speak out against the birthers, not that anyone's mind will be changed at this point. But "there is a season and a time unto every purpose under the heaven," and last night wasn't the time for that.

Another thing we need to worry about -- and this might be as good a time as any to do it -- is an ideologically obsessed and hyperventilating media culture that doesn't know its Ecclesiastes.

While we were otherwise occupied. . . .

Wednesday evening, all the cable-news chatterers were chattering away about President Obama, birthers, evil Republicans and evil Democrats.

They were losing their minds over Donald Trump losing his mind.

Well, not Piers Morgan, it must be said. Cable News Network's resident Brit was giddy over the someday-heir to the throne's impending marriage to a commoner way too good looking for Himself.

As far as we know (and the ranks are growing by the minute), 269 would-be viewers in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky were otherwise occupied. They were dying -- being bludgeoned, sliced, impaled or crushed as massive tornadoes turned the world around them into rubble.

Of course, you would have been hard pressed to notice if you were watching CNN, MSNBC or the Fox News Channel. Lawrence, Rachel, Eliot, Ed, Bill and Sean had bigger fish to fry, better "Others" to hate on than to focus on a bunch of Bubbas being ground up in the worst tornado outbreak since 1974.

SEE, to the media elite -- and to Washington . . . and to the think tanks . . . and to the entertainment industry . . . and to the eternally outraged activists whose continued existence depends upon staying eternally outraged (and making sure Lawrence, Rachel, Eliot, Ed, Bill and Sean do, too) -- we're all The Other, pretty much.

We don't matter, just our money or our votes. And if we're dead, there's no percentage in noticing that 269 of us just got bludgeoned, sliced, impaled or crushed to Kingdom Come.


ON THE other hand, video like this is da bomb. Pretty dramatic stuff here. Stuff's getting blowed up good, and you can cut the dramatic tension with a knife as the meteorologists' voices grow ever more urgent as the milewide Swirling Wall of Death (TM) approaches.

Yeah, with video like this, and with daylight views of all this rubble, 269 dead Bubbas might be worth a second look. Cable "news" might have an opening between the more urgent political contretemps Wednesday and the more pressing royal wedding Friday. Let's see whether CNN, MSNBC and Fox can shoehorn it in.

Rachel can blame it on global warming and the GOP. Sean can blame it on an angry God who's had it with the godless Democrats.

And Anderson can keep the tornadic supercells honest. Might work.

Videotape at 5:30, analysis at 8.

Pray for Alabama

This may sound odd coming from an LSU graduate, but pray for Alabama. It's important.

Early reports have parts of Tuscaloosa and Birmingham devastated by a massive wedge tornado -- one about a mile wide and estimated to be either an EF-4 or EF-5 storm, meaning winds likely in excess of 200 m.p.h.

This is bad. Really, really bad.

FROM MSNBC:

A violent storm system spawned tornadoes that destroyed buildings and killed at least one person Wednesday afternoon in Alabama, following severe weather overnight across the South that killed at least 17 people.

Tuscaloosa officials reported at least one fatality from a tornado that then tracked north of downtown Birmingham. The metro area has a population of 1 million.

Local TV channels showed a massive black cloud, estimated at a mile wide, moving into Birmingham's northern suburbs and just missing the airport, where flights were delayed and travelers kept away from exposed areas.

The tornado had been moving along the ground for two hours after touching down near the Mississippi border.

In Tuscaloosa, cars were tossed along a commercial street and dozens of stores were destroyed or damaged.

"At first I thought it was a rain cloud, but then the tornado dropped right by the apartment complex. It was one the scariest things I've ever seen," Taryn Cook was quoted as saying by Alabama Live.

Another resident, Phil Owen, said only one store was left standing at a shopping center. "Big Lots, Full Moon Barbecue. Piles of garbage where those places were," he said. "Shell gas station across the street — all that's standing is the frame of the store."

"Please pray for us," Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox said on The Weather Channel as crews fanned out to search for victims.

Socialized swing

Today, the tea party would call this "socialized music."

And if you recognize what "this" is, you're either over 80 or a certified geek.

(No, I am not over 80. Therefore, draw your own conclusion.)

Suffice it to say that during World War II, the government was in the music business in a big way with V-Discs, special recordings of popular music that went to the troops -- and which couldn't be sold or broadcast in this country.

Even during a full wartime mobilization, socialism in popular entertainment only went so far.

Today, this morale-boosting service likely would be performed by the military-industrial complex -- Halliburton Records, anyone? -- and would consist of bad knockoffs of popular acts. These compact discs, sold to the Pentagon for $99.95 per, would contain only eight songs and would tend to fly apart when played.

The first CD to be released would be Melvin Klingman's cover of Cee Lo Green's "F*** You."

How great this is

If you're a Southerner of a certain age (say mine and up) there are a few things that hit you where you live. And it doesn't matter whether you're Catholic, Protestant, heathen . . . whatever.

One of them is "How Great Thou Art." Every person not born a sociopath has -- somewhere -- a button that can be pressed, one that bypasses the brain and everything else and makes a direct connection to the soul.

"How Great Thou Art" presses that button for those of us born and raised in the South. Well, let's just say it does for me, and I'd wager that I'm a pretty typical specimen of the species.

CARRIE UNDERWOOD nails the church classic above, but if you're like me -- 50ish and born Southern -- this is the version you hear in your mind's ear:


AND LET ME say this while I'm at it:

A million Marty Haugens sitting at a million keyboards and scribbling on a million notation sheets couldn't come up with one "How Great Thou Art." Not in a million years.

M'm! M'm! Good!

Martha's widening her appeal, apparently.

Today on The Martha Stewart Show, it's an easy-to-make recipe she picked up from the culinary professionals at Club Fed, where she spent some serious time doing, uh . . . research.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Good Friday

Psalm 22
1 To the choirmaster: according to The Hind of the Dawn. A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer; and by night, but find no rest. 3 Yet thou art holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. 4 In thee our fathers trusted; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5 To thee they cried, and were saved; in thee they trusted, and were not disappointed. 6 But I am a worm, and no man; scorned by men, and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads; 8 "He committed his cause to the LORD; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!" 9 Yet thou art he who took me from the womb; thou didst keep me safe upon my mother's breasts. 10 Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God.

11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help. 12 Many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me; 13 they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast; 15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; thou dost lay me in the dust of death. 16 Yea, dogs are round about me; a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet-- 17 I can count all my bones--they stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots. 19 But thou, O LORD, be not far off! O thou my help, hasten to my aid! 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog! 21 Save me from the mouth of the lion, my afflicted soul from the horns of the wild oxen!

22 I will tell of thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee: 23 You who fear the LORD, praise him! all you sons of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel! 24 For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him. 25 From thee comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him. 26 The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD! May your hearts live for ever! 27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. 28 For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations. 29 Yea, to him shall all the proud of the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and he who cannot keep himself alive. 30 Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation, 31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it.

(Revised Standard Version)

The Campagna blue jay

In the summer of 1950, in a kitchen somewhere in south Omaha, I know why the caged bird sang.

The Campagna blue jay was having breakfast, courtesy of his human friend, Sam. And, believe me, you haven't heard anything until you've heard a hungry blue jay. 

I know all this because Sam's son, Anthony, was recording it all, cutting a slice of life from a different America -- a different Omaha -- into the acetate blank locked onto the spinning turntable of a home disc recorder.

So, who were Anthony and Sam Campagna . . . and why did Sam have a blue jay in his kitchen?

I don't know.

Neither do I know why a couple albums of Campagna-family home recordings were there for me to find at an Omaha estate sale last year. I guess it's the same reason I saw an unwanted album of family photos -- some dating to World War I -- at another estate sale on Sunday.

I DO know this -- there's the story of America in that recording.

You can hear it in Sam's Italian-immigrant accent. You can hear it in Anthony's unadorned, typically unaccented Midwestern accent.

You can hear the story of the American Dream on that 61-year-old recording, because la famiglia Campagna had enough disposable income to buy itself a fancy disc recorder. Not everybody did -- such things were not cheap in mid-20th-century dollars.

You can hear that there still was an American Dream back then.

MOST OF ALL, you hear an old man, a son and a moment of levity sent via acetate disc far into the future. Oh, yeah . . . you hear a hungry, squawking blue jay, too.

A message etched in shellac

It's kind of like a message in a bottle, only on a record.

It's kind of like it's been bobbing atop the storm-tossed seas for 66 years, only it probably was in someone's basement.

It's definitely a message from 1945, someone committing something he or she thought important to a Presto transcription disc -- someone reaching out to a future and to Omahans then unknown, conveying a slice of what was then into what someday would be.

Message received.

Welcome, fellow survivors of the postmodern age to a time of America triumphant and evil vanquished . . . at least for a brief moment in time. Welcome to Nov. 22, 1945. It's Thanksgiving Day, and this is the world news over radio station WOW, Omaha, Neb.

Really, Piyush? Really?

If ever you make your way down to the Gret Stet uh Loosiana, you got to go see its biggest attraction -- Piyush Jindal, the Self-Hatin' Furriner.

That Piyush Jindal is gubna uh da Gret Stet only makes him more of a must-see. Listen, Hoss, the boy hates himself and his un-Americanness so bad that he refuses to call himself by his Christian (Hindu?) name, Piyush.

Back in the day, when the future governor was just another brown-skinned, funny-looking lad with a weird name -- and stuck in the middle of Baton Rouge, by God, Louisiana, where the rednecks run headlong into the Cajuns -- he did the only thing a geeky little kid embarrassed by his un-Americanness could do.

He named himself after Bobby Brady. As in The Brady Bunch.

On television.

Actually, it probably wasn't a bad call. For my bottom AMERICAN greenback dollar, Piyush is even weirder than Barack.

THAT WORKED OUT pretty well for ol' Piyush Jindal as the years rolled by. He went to an Ivy League college, became a wunderkind, got into state gummint. And then federal gummint. And then into electoral politics.

He went around touting what an all-American success story he was. Talked a lot about his conversion to Christianity -- which doesn't feature monkey gods or anything too un-American . . . except for that Pope in Rome feller. Well, at least he's white. And homo sapiens. (Sapiens, dammit . . . S-A-P-I-E-N-S. Not the fruity kind of "homo.")

And like I say, it all worked out pretty well. That is, until 2003, when he up and ran for gubna and needed to pick up every Caucasian vote he could muster in the deepest backwater of the Deep South.

I'LL LET this article in the conservative American Spectator (dated Nov. 18, 2003) pick up the story from there:

But there's a less savory reason that Blanco made inroads in northern Louisiana. This is where former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke got the votes in 1991 that propelled him into the run-off election against the corrupt former governor Edwin Edwards. (The latter is now serving time in jail for taking bribes; this was the race that gave us the classic bumper sticker, "Vote for the Crook. It's Important.")

"If there was a racist backlash against Jindal anywhere, it would be in north Louisiana, in Duke country," Louisiana political analyst John Maginnis told Rod Dreher of National Review Online after the race. To some extent, Blanco laid the groundwork for a such a backlash herself. She dusted off her maiden name and campaigned as Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Voters encountered the full name on the ballot, where her opponent was listed as "Bobby" Jindal, complete with quotation marks (Jindal's given name is Piyush). Appealing to tribal instincts in the only state where Frenchness is still considered a virtue, Blanco's packaging of herself was designed to make it clear who had the deeper roots in Cajun country.

Such tapping of identity politics for ethnic whites is nothing particularly unusual or scandalous. The shamrock incorporated into Irish-American candidates' names is a staple of local politics across much of the Midwest and Northeast. It would be unfair to suggest that Blanco ran a racist campaign. At the same time, isn't it worth noting that the usual suspects, to whom unfairness rarely gives pause, haven't so much as raised an eyebrow?

It might be useful to file this case away as a yardstick for the future. There was a small amount of coverage of northern Louisiana's racial politics during the race -- Adam Nossiter's AP dispatch from last Friday, a set of quotes culled to make the town of Amite, Louisiana, sound as awful as possible (sample: "Really, you got a foreigner and a woman. So it's a hard choice to make"), was typical -- but the "Babineaux Blanco" appeal to "Duke country" has gone mostly unnoticed. The next time Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or Kweisi Mfume or any similar rabble-rouser announces a whiff of racism (or "racial insensitivity"), measure the grievance cited against this non-event. The comparison might be illuminating.

I RECKON about now you may be thinking "Well, that's interesting enough, but so what?"

Here's what. And in this case "what" comes in this article from the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Gov. Bobby Jindal would sign a bill requiring presidential candidates to provide a copy of their birth certificate to qualify for the Louisiana ballot if it reaches his desk, a spokesman said Monday.

"It's not part of our package, but if the Legislature passes it we'll sign it," press secretary Kyle Plotkin said.

House Bill 561 was filed last week by two Republican lawmakers. President Barack Obama's citizenship has been challenged by some groups, derisively called "birthers," despite numerous independent investigations finding that documents and contemporary news reports show that Obama was born in Hawaii.

The bill by state Rep. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, and Sen. A.G. Crowe, R-Slidell, would require federal candidates who want to appear on Louisiana ballots to file an affidavit attesting to their citizenship, which would have to be accompanied by an "original or certified copy" of their birth certificate.

The requirement also would apply to candidates for U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives.

A similar bill was recently passed by the Arizona legislature.

THUS you have the only-in-Louisiana spectacle of Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, the self-hatin' foreign-ish fellow who fought against prejudice and overcame his Otherness to, in 2007, be elected the Gret Stet's first non-white governor since Reconstruction . . . only to throw his support to a "birther" bill that's aimed squarely at people just like him.

Now let me say that I believe Piyush Jindal was born in this country. I have no doubt about that -- despite all the talk about monkey gods and burnin' girl babies because they ain't as good as boy babies. I believe the man is just as American as the next funny lookin' dude with an oddball name who gets elected to high office.

Which means that I believe -- believe with all my heart -- that Piyush "Bobby" Jindal is an all-American tool. A self-hating tool . . . but an all-American self-hating tool nonetheless.

And, no, you can't make this s*** up.

America today

In case you had any doubt there's a class war going on, and that the middle class and below have giant targets on their backs, read on.

What the Stamford (Conn.) Advocate doesn't mention is that you at least get fed regularly in prison, which also serves as a permanent address. Look for Norwalk officials to spin their arrest of a homeless woman for sending her kid to one of their schools as actually being a compassionate act:

A homeless woman from Bridgeport who enrolled her 6-year-old son at a Norwalk elementary school has become the first in the city to be charged with stealing more than $15,000 for the cost of her child's education.

Tonya McDowell, 33, whose last known address was 66 Priscilla St., Bridgeport, was charged Thursday with first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for allegedly stealing $15,686 from Norwalk schools. She was released after posting a $25,000 bond.

McDowell's babysitter, Ana Rebecca Marques, was also evicted from her Roodner Court public housing apartment for providing documents to enroll the child at Brookside Elementary School.

The police investigation into the residency began in January after Norwalk Housing Authority attorney Donna Lattarulo filed a complaint alleging McDowell registered her son at Brookside, but actually lived in an apartment on Priscilla Street in Bridgeport.

As part of the evidence presented in the complaint, police received an affidavit of residency signed by McDowell and dated last September attesting that she lived in the Roodner Court public housing complex on Ely Ave.

When she was interviewed by police in the case, McDowell admitted to living in Bridgeport at the time she registered her son in Norwalk schools.

She said she knew a man who owned a home on Priscilla Street and he allowed her to sleep at the home at night, but she had to leave the home during the day until he returned from work.

She also acknowledged that she stays from time to time at the Norwalk Emergency Shelter when she has nowhere else to stay.

McDowell also admitted that Marques was her son's babysitter from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. after the boy got out of school.

JUSTICE without mercy is no justice at all.

Maybe ol' Jeremiah Wright was right, after all. Maybe God will damn -- indeed, is damning -- America.

Even God's mercy has its limits -- eventually -- and sooner or later the unrepentant sinner (or country) finds out exactly what dangerous a thing we do when we mindlessly pray "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Hang on to your hats

Now that I have this new addition to the 3 Chords & the Truth studios, God only knows what's going to start showing up on the Big Show.

"This" is a 1955 Webcor component record changer. Back then, this would have been part of your expensive and cutting-edge "hi-fi system."

I just call it my "midlife crisis" purchase.

But now that I can play 78 RPM records in the studio just like anything else (in glorious monophonic sound, might I add) . . . watch out.

Is what I'm saying.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

One of these things is not like the others

It never fails. When you see a bunch of vinyl at an estate sale, it falls into two categories.

You have the now-elderly (or dead) parents' music. All this stuff dates from the '40s, '50s and '60s, along with a smattering of later "remember when" types of long-playing offerings.

This stack is chockablock with Lawrence Welk and Mitch Miller offerings, usually, but if you're lucky, there'll also be lots of jazz. Particularly Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

Or, in this case, a bit of "Late Music" -- purchased by Mom and Dad sometime around 1957, based on the LPs Columbia was hawking on the inner sleeve.


THEN YOU HAVE the stack comprised of the now-elderly (or dead) parents' kids' music, which for one reason or another was left with Mom and Dad to serve as both a source of parental confusion ("Are Johnny and Jill going to pick up their record albums, dear? They've been here 30 years now!") and an eternal middle finger to the folks' bourgeois staidness, as befitted their leading roles as Unhip Conformist Tools of the Fascist Establishment.

The beauty of a complete and total geek such as myself is that I buy from both piles of albums, thereby giving the middle finger of cultural revolt to both sets of conformist tools of the Establishment repression.

In other words, I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll, but now she's just my melancholy baby.

'I make my living off the evening news'

April 9, northwest Iowa. The day 60 percent of
Mapleton, Iowa, disappeared beneath one of these.

You want to know what I hate?

I hate it when storm chasers shoot video of tornadoes -- which they peddle to the evening news, because nothing sells better than video of s*** getting blown to Kingdom Come -- and all you hear on the soundtrack of the tape is these "meteorological professionals" yelling stuff like "Awesome! Look at that! Beautiful . . . we got a beautiful funnel here!"

Listen, I know it's exciting and all, almost getting yourself killed for 30 seconds of video you can sell for big bucks. I get the adrenaline rush.

Still, I think there's a point I need to make here. That being "F*** you!"

SEE, in the middle of that "awesome, beautiful" vortex, s*** is getting blowed up good. Decades of blood, sweat, toil and tears is disappearing in a matter of seconds. Gone with the wind, as it were.

In many cases, underneath those "awesome" storms, people are being hurt. Some killed.

Killed dead. And dead is forever, which goes on a lot longer than the minute and a half any particular annihilation of worlds (and trailer parks) gets on the network news. In the latest tornado outbreak across the South on Thursday and Friday, 17 people are dead so far.

Awesome. Beautiful.

One can only hope a storm chaser got long-range footage of their deaths, so at least these poor souls will not have died in vain . . . right? It's kind of like the thrilling end of Howard Beale in Network, only without the moral complication of paying Maoist guerrillas to deliver the ratings.


HERE'S ANOTHER thing wiped out by the savage winds last week -- history. Physical manifestations of a region's culture. A man's life work. Maybe jobs, too . . . for good.

Never heard of Malaco Records in Jackson, Miss., that chunk of history and culture that bought the farm in the big wind? I'll bet you've heard what came forth from there.

WLBT television in Jackson reports:

A piece of Mississippi history was virtually blown away by Friday's destructive storms. Internationally acclaimed Malaco Records on Northside Drive in Jackson was almost reduced to rubble and now the owners are wondering whether they will rebuild after 44 years.

It was 3 years ago this month that Malaco Records was honored with an official marker recognizing it as a Jackson landmark along the Mississippi Blues Trail. The company was founded in 1962 and located on Northside Drive in 1967.

Now, that marker is almost the only thing left standing. A powerful tornado shredded two of the three buildings in the compound. Wolf Stephenson, one of Malaco's founders, was inside with about 15 employees, winding down for the weekend.

Stephenson said, "We started seeing limbs and debris flying through the air and decided we better take cover."

(snip)

Stephenson says the warehouse can probably be saved. As for the rest of Malaco Records:

"Well, the buildings are old. It's a real tricky question as to whether or not it's worth rebuilding.", said Stephenson.

IT'S just awesome when we get a whole tornado outbreak to make our day, right?

Cue Don Henley. Again.

3 Chords & the Truth: Here's to the music!

A 3 Chords & the Truth musical toast:

Through the Internet and into the ears,
Look out brain, the Big Show is here!
With music and other stuff that's hard to describe,
Its entertainment value is hard to deride!

So here's 3 Chords & the Truth, for better or worse,
It's like a drink that you'd rather not nurse!
And here's to you, you dear, loyal listener,
We guarantee it's better than French kissing your sister!

So listen long and listen often,
The show's not bad, with minimal coughin'!
Raise your glass and button your parka,
The show's as smooth as K&B vodka!

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.