Broadcasting, the way it was

Let's jump into our Internet time machine and travel back to a time when television was an event and radio mattered.

Let's set the controls for Austin, Texas, in December 1960 and take a look at a time long gone and KTBC radio and TV the way it was. The way we were. Before the bean counters and their fancy machines took over and turned  the broadcasting world upside down and inside out.

Enjoy.

When Aspies do social activism

I'll take the Third World, please.

Once upon a time, before Hurricane Katrina washed away much of New Orleans, I'll bet this man was known to all as Mister Clarence. Mister Clarence probably didn't have much, but he had a home . . . and he had the dignity of being Mister Clarence.

Back before le déluge, New Orleans was as Third World as it gets in what we fancy as the First, but at least it still had the dignity -- more or less -- of hearth, home and red beans and rice on Monday. Folks also had the dignity of being a someone instead of a something.

After Katrina, though, Mister Clarence ended up without a house, and he ended up in Austin, Texas. And he ended up homeless, just another nameless and unwelcome face.

AT THIS WEEK'S South by Southwest Interactive conference, though, Clarence is a hot commodity. To be precise, he's a hot-spot commodity -- desired not as a person but, instead, as Clarence the Homeless Hotspot.

Believe it or not, this is supposed to be pro-homeless activism of some sort. Many were not amused. Neither was I.

Well, I suppose it's a step up from being Clarence the Homeless Public Restroom and having to carry a urinal on your back all day. Praise God for small blessings -- like geeks not being much attracted to the plumbing-fixtures industry.

And praise God for our Third World enclaves. After we have forgotten, at long last, everything about what it was like to be human, we still will have these benighted places where we might rediscover -- as we dodge the gunshots in the ruins -- the things we used to know.

What a difference nine years makes

Howdy, neighbor, howdy!

Welcome to The Porter Wagoner Show, in wonderful black and white, with your guest star, Willie Nelson. It's 1965.

Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.

THEN . . . the 1970s happened. And Austin, too.

Here's the Red-Headed Stranger a mere nine years after he was twangin' in Nashville and singin' on The Porter Wagoner Show. It's 1974, Willie's a hippie, and he's starring on the pilot episode of some public-television show.

Austin City Limits, they call it.

Enjoy.