Showing posts with label blog stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog stuff. Show all posts

Monday, January 23, 2012

What kind of geek am I?


Still this kind of geek.

Still the kind of geek who needs ancient test patterns to check out his computer monitor -- adapted to wide-screen proportions, of course.

And now, our national anthem.

Friday, December 30, 2011

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow


Posting has been light on the blog this week as we perform transmitter maintenance and eat Christmas cookies.

Maybe have a highball or three while we're at it.

And play old jazz records.

Regular programming will resume when I can figure out something sane (and perhaps interesting) to say about the insanity surrounding us. But right now, transmitter maintenance seems a lot more appealing to me.


That and Christmas cookies.

And a highball or three.

Not to mention old jazz records.

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Geeks 'R' Us


I was going to do something about the South Carolina newspaper that, gratuitously, dropped the F-bomb slap dab into the middle of a story about Saturday's LSU-Georgia football game (Geaux Tigers!).

And I was going to have a nifty segue in there about how whichever copy editor at the Gannett "regional editing hub" in Louisville, Ky., was responsible might be able to find work at Sir Richard's condoms (Richard . . . get it?), which is run by a guy whose last job was as a contributing editor for Editor & Publisher.
Then I was going to make fun of Sir Richard's being a socially conscious condom company, which has student "envoys" handing out free rubbers at the hometown University of Colorado.

I ALSO was going to really snark on one member of the Sir Richard's dormitory penis patrol who actually gave Westword this quote:
"We're encouraging freshmen to use a condom each and every time they have sex. Some people might consider a condom to be a barrier, but it's really a way of bringing couples together through enhanced trust. If you know your partner cares about protecting you, an increased level of trust comes along with it."
FUNNY, it used to be we thought that whole "enhanced trust" thing was what marriage was all about. Condoms? Not so much. Condoms are more like NATO taking Iran's word for it about not wanting nuclear weapons, then building a European anti-ballistic-missile system.

But that kind of s*** just bums me out. So I'm not blogging about it.

Instead, I thought I would show you what a complete geek I am. C'mon . . . whom else do you know with a 1947 television test pattern for his computer wallpaper? No one, that's who.

Whom else do you know with a crapload of 78 rpm records? No one, that's who.

Whom else do you know who so treasures little things like an original shellac 78 copy of Fats Domino's "Valley of Tears"
? Or "Blueberry Hill"?

No one, that's whom . . . er, who.

Because I'm a geek. Besides, I'd sooner die than pass out rubbers to perfect strangers in the name of "enhanced trust."

Friday, October 14, 2011

The Favog is . . . out


Your regularly scheduled blog will return in about two weeks, give or take.

I'm tired, and we're taking a vacation for the first time in a while.

If you start jonesing or something, go listen to 3 Chords & the Truth. There are several episodes to keep you entertained for a while.

Catch you later. And behave while I'm gone.

Monday, June 13, 2011

A river runs rampant


Here's some video I shot Saturday of the Missouri River just upstream from Lewis and Clark Landing, as well as by the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge in downtown Omaha.

In a couple of weeks, I won't have to climb down the levee hardly at all to reach the water's edge.

I recall that, a couple of decades or so ago, there was a movie called
A River Runs Through It. In this spring and summer of high water and high anxiety from the top of the Missouri River watershed to the bottom, maybe we could call 2011's thriller A River Runs Through, Across and Over It.

Glub.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

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 . . . .

Monday, February 07, 2011

Satan goes by 'Anonymous'

Click on E-mails to read.

Satan never sleeps.

That's because he's too busy leaving anonymous comments on blogs and websites.

If you're one of those people inclined to doubt the existence of hell and the devil , look at these comments I got today on what I thought was a fairly whimsical post on the Sex Pistols and the state of the Establishment, circa January 1978.



IT'S A HELL of a thing, no?

Obviously, "Anonymous" is one disturbed individual, and an angry one, too. Obviously, this is why I moderate comments to Revolution 21's Blog for the People. Obviously, these got deleted.

And -- obviously -- I'm now making an example of them . . . and the sick soul who has nothing better to say than this.

Where does such rage come from? How do you explain such an all-consuming, intense hatred of all humanity? And can anyone deny this poor soul exists in some very real, albeit private (for now), manifestation of hell?

Mental illness or some manner of deviant socialization can get you most of the way to an explanation, but not all the way to one. It doesn't -- at least not in my opinion -- get you all the way to that degree of nihilism, that level of hatred of the human race itself. Mental illness or sociological deficits can explain the brokenness, but neither can explain the phenomenon of evil.

What we have here is evil -- and all sociology or psychology can shed light upon are the fissures that allow evil to penetrate the soul and do what it will. This is what Satan looks like when he thinks the cameras aren't rolling; this is what he sounds like when he's at a loss for words.

I SUPPOSE my disturbed correspondent is some sort of punk who -- again, obviously -- takes issue with the aforementioned post. He, she or it is a cautionary tale of what can happen when one takes this punk thing entirely too seriously.

Especially that "I am an antichrist" part in the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." Not the Antichrist, mind you, but an antichrist.

The real Antichrist will be a much better writer with a much larger vocabulary.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

A TEAC-able moment


I've been away from the blog -- mostly -- for a while doing this delicate dance between my inner MacGyver and my inner MacGruber.

In other words, I was out accomplishing s***.
Despite myself.

The saga started Sunday, when Mrs. Favog and I bought an old TEAC reel-to-reel tape deck for $30 at an estate sale here in Omaha. Did it work? I didn't know, but I suspected I might be setting out on a journey to the Land of Fix-It -- a kind of road trip of the mind and soul that I'll detail in a bit.

But here's what's important right now about that trip:
It feels good -- and I needed that.

It's easy to sit behind the keys here and write about stuff. Some of that output, I hope, is insightful and decently written. Most of it, I fear, falls in the category of
"Well, DUH!"


OURS IS
an age where I have just committed a branding and self-marketing faux pas. Humility is out, and so is introspection that might lead to honesty.

What I ought to have told you is how dead-on right I've been about stuff, that this is important writing, and that you can't live without reading my take on things. This would be because I am smart, hip, happenin' and. . . .

That's right -- cool.

That's how, apparently, one "markets" oneself. I suck at that, probably because I think it's bull.
A lie. Immodest . . . particularly in a world where a little modesty might be refreshing.

Yeah, I could have been waxing eloquently about the bloody obvious fact that Shirley Sherrod got hosed, that the Obama Administration let itself get stampeded by the Big Lie, and that Andrew Breitbart is a far-right ideologue and twit whose actions over the last year or so just
may prove him to be objectively evil.

Or at least indifferent to the truth.


All of that, of course, would be bloody obvious, except to certain brain-dead constituencies who --
unfortunately -- have taken advantage of universal suffrage.

But I didn't wax eloquently about that, or any other stuff that might be rattling around the echo chamber this week. Instead, I've been doing something useful -- fixing up that beautiful old TEAC reel-to-reel tape deck, one about 40 years old.

Why?

WELL, for one thing, getting that thing running again -- put back into good use once more -- was something tangible, a sign of contradiction in this increasingly intangible world. I figured I could look at something restored to its former audiophile glory and feel like I'd accomplished something.

That's objective fact. It was broken.
Now it ain't. I accomplished something.

Being another schmuck opining on a blog?
Feh. Maybe that's an accomplishment, but you just might find it to be a first-class detriment to . . . whatever.

Making a tape deck live again -- making it once again able to pluck lost bits of music . . . and history . . . indeed, ourselves out of magnetized oxide particles stuck to a Mylar backing -- now that's something tangible, and your validation neither adds nor subtracts from the act.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
Or hear, as the case may be.

LIKE I SAID, my journey with the old TEAC started in west Omaha last Sunday. The ticket cost 30 bucks.

I don't know why --
I mean, apart from my general geekiness -- I love old reel-to-reel tape decks.

But I do love me some reel-to-reel tape deck, and I have even before I did my first air shift in a radio station, where once upon a time, you could play with top-end (or not) reel-to-reel tape decks to no end.

For its time -- the late 1960s and early '70s -- the TEAC A-4010S was quality stuff. A top performer. Built like a tank.

Today, geeks like me call it a "classic" -- classic in performance, in design and in quality of construction.

When I bought this one -- as I said -- I didn't know whether it worked. Turns out it didn't.

THE ELECTRONICS in the amplifier were fine, as I more or less discovered when I got it home and powered it up, but the tape transport was in bad shape. The pinch roller mechanism, part of what makes the tape move along at the correct speed, was as stiff as a board -- it moved only through brute force.

This was not by design. The whole thing needed cleaning and oiling . . . and a screw in back needed loosening (a little).

And the capstan drive belt? It had turned into tar balls. Really.

Ever tried cleaning tar off of all manner of metal moving parts? Not fun.

Slowly but surely, I got the old TEAC -- it of long-past better days in an Omaha home where its owner used it to listen to Latter-Day Saints conference sessions and some sort of music programming -- cleaned up, lubed up and loosened up.

I scavenged a drive belt and a better pinch roller from another old TEAC tape deck I wasn't using anymore. When I found the belt was too loose to stay where the tape-recorder gods intended, I cut it to fit and super-glued it back together.

And when the torque on the drive motors was too much in one spot and too little in another -- trust me, this can get real ugly, real fast -- I ended up doing some MacGyvering of the taps on a couple of resistors.


IN BRIEF,
thank God for old service manuals found on the Internet, an unused tape deck to scavenge from, WD-40, Super Glue and electrical tape. Not necessarily in that order.

And thank God for the tangible things in a self-promoting, subjective and intangible world. Thank God for old tape decks, craftsmanship that stands the test of time, working with your hands and the visible fruits of one's labor.

Thank God for these things, because sometimes they're what keep us sane. And sometimes, they point the way toward what's really important in life.

Monday, April 19, 2010

No. 2,000


Exactly 2,000 posts ago, on Oct. 8, 2006, your Mighty Favog set out on a new-media adventure.

It began here.

Almost four years ago, I was pretty sure where
Revolution 21 -- in both its podcast and blog permutations -- was headed. But life happens, the world keeps turning, and you continually reassess your assumptions and re-evaluate what the hell you think you're doing.

Today, April 19, 2010, I think the basic aim is the same.
Revolution 21 is still a gumbo comprised of both the sacred and the secular. And blues in the night.

But I think the focus has changed from trying to force some Catholic-secular-topical-musical mashup into being, then calculatedly foisting it onto a world determined to compartmentalize and segregate everything, dammit, to just being myself and saying screw the consequences. For better or worse, what I am is an undistillable compound of the sacred and the secular, which influence one another and result in . . . this.

Among other things.

And that is the constant, through 59 episodes of the
Revolution 21 podcast and 98 (so far) of its successor, 3 Chords & the Truth.

Two-thousand posts.
Damn. I wouldn't have figured this thing would last 200 when I started out in 2006.

Go figure.

Well, you kids play nice for a while. I think I'm gonna go celebrate on the grittier side of NoDo at the Happy Bar.


Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Everything's a critic


It's a bad thing when even your keyboard begins to rebel against what you type on it.

I made this unfortunate discovery last night, when I happened to look down upon the aforementioned keyboard -- the one on the studio computer -- then noticed exactly what it thinks of me. Or of my blog posts, at least.

Just when you think you're on a bit of a roll . . . just when you think something you've written may, just may, have made a little sense, comes a rebuke from an inanimate object?


THE RIGHT shift key worn just so that "shift" is turned into crude and blunt commentary on he who shifts? Really?

What gives a cheap Dell keyboard the right?

LISTEN, YOU SON OF A BITCH! TELLING ME WHAT I DO IS S*** WAS MY OLD MAN'S JOB!

And he's dead.

No, that's mighty big talk for a half-worn, dirty keyboard. Mighty big talk.

Perhaps someone with more keyboard credibility than myself would like to inform Dell-boy that the Douglas County landfill is chockablock with his kind.


Punk.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

3 Chords & the Truth: Merry Christmas!


'Twas the day before the night before Christmas, when all through the house, the dogs were barking, which scared the dang mouse.


I've done the Big Show with the utmost of care, so at a mere click, 3 Chords & the Truth soon will be there.

The sleet and the snow are blowing, by Ned, while visions of chiropractors dance through my head.

And Bing in his sweater and Elvis in his leather, live again in tunes that fend off the weather.

I PUT ON a record and heard such a clatter . . . they're rocking around the tree, that's what's the matter! So to the hi-fi I ran like a flash, and turned the thing up for the big bash.

It's blowing outside on this white Christmas, but you can have your tropical isthmus. I'll take the cold and the wind and the snow, so long as I can just do the Big Show.

But it's time to stop with the useless chatter, it's music we need -- that's what's the matter. So I'll leave you 3 Chords & the Truth -- Yule cheer, Yule dance, Yule cry . . . just like a youth!

And as I leave you to shovel, here's a wish for 'ya -- that your Christmas is merry, and you'll "Be there. Aloha!"

Friday, December 18, 2009

3 Chords & the Truth: Unwrap THIS!


It's getting closer to Christmas, and we at 3 Chords & the Truth have a present for you.

Good music.

This week, we start with a vintage Yuletide classic from Elvis Presley, and then we roll from there. Meaning that on this pre-Christmas edition of the Big Show, you'll be hearing stuff like Stepp. . . . Hey! I'm not telling you what you're getting!

SOME PEOPLE just don't care about ruining the surprise for everybody.

So, listen, Buster . . . you'll have to open your present like anybody else to find out what you got. Fortunately for you, all you have to do to open your present is start the player on click on one of the links.

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

Saturday, December 12, 2009

3 Chords & the Truth: We got it good

The word of the week on 3 Chords & the Truth is "Good."

Then again, that's the word of the week every week on
the Big Show. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is.

PART OF ME
wants to be modest and just not blow my own horn when it comes to the weekly music program of the Revolution 21 empire. But All of Me thinks you need to know the score. And the score is that you need to listen to 3 Chords & the Truth.

If you had to write a song about the program, it probably would be "Embraceable You." Or something like that.

I'm not one to brag, but after listening to the Big Show just once, nine out of 10 supermodels refer to your Mighty Favog simply as The Man I Love. Again, not bragging, just saying.

Because, you know, God Bless the Child that's got his own. And that's no Strange Fruit.

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

Friday, December 04, 2009

3 Chords & the Truth: Cold comfort


With the weather being what it is as we roll into December on the Plains, consider this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth . . . cold comfort.

Here in Omaha, it got up to all of 26 degrees today. Right now, it's 18. Saturday, it might hit 40.

That will make it the "hot" day of the next week.

WHAT I'D RECOMMEND doing right now, if you're experiencing similar conditions, is putting on a kettle of water on the burner and some tea bags in the pot. Or perhaps some hot chocolate mix in your mug.

Then again, maybe it's just time to make a pot of fresh coffee.

As you curl up under something warm, it's your hot beverage of choice -- along with the music offered up on this edition of the Big Show -- that will keep you warm. That's what I call a game plan because, baby, it's cold outside.

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

Friday, November 20, 2009

3 Chords & the Truth: Black coffee & blues


Whatever gets you through the night (or the day) is all right . . . is all right.

Lots of the time, it's coffee. Coffee made with love, patience and an old, old pot -- because it's better that way.

OTHER TIMES, it's the blues.

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, however, we're putting together the blues with a little black coffee and seeing where it gets us. No doubt, somewhere that's all right . . . is all right.

Of course, there's lots of other tasty stuff on the Big Show this go around as well, so you'd just as well stick around and give it a listen. You just might have your horizons expanded amid the musical fun.

Well, that's about all for now. Go grab yourself a hot cup of joe and meet me back here at the Internet connection.

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

Friday, February 06, 2009

3 Chords & the Truth: It's not paranoid if. . . .

This is a time when nefarious forces have seized the levers of power in America, and they're working toward the Clampdown.

AT LEAST that's the word today from talk radio. Perhaps these shadowy forces of doom have their sights set on 3 Chords & the Truth. This is worrisome.

Gotta keep moving. Don't know where they are or if they're after me yet.

In that light, I don't have time to tell you much about the Big Show this week. I hope you'll understand.

I CAN TELL YOU, though, that this episode's music is electric -- and that a good time will be had by all. It's 3 Chords & the Truth . . . but keep that on the QT around people you're not sure about.

Be there. Aloha. (The password is "Phone Cops.")

Saturday, January 31, 2009

3 Chords & the Truth: Will podcast for food

Because we couldn't afford Cloud 9.


It's brutal out there. And the economy is even worse.

I guess you've figured out -- and, boy, are you sharp! -- that we're taking a musical look at the signs of the times this week on 3 Chords & the Truth. Of course, the music will be great (that's a given, he says modestly), but whether your response to it is to enjoy the aesthetics or to howl in rage at the shape we're in . . . well, that's entirely your own choice.

ME, I GO back and forth between wanting to raise the red flag and get revolutionary on Wall Street's arse . . . and thinking, "What you gonna do?" while trying to make the best of what's going to be some hard, hard times.

Perhaps there's room for a little of both responses, you know? But, ultimately, we all do have to make the best of it, no matter what "it" might be. Like the ubiquitous "they" say, the flip side of crisis is opportunity.

Perhaps, like Tony Bennett sings about on the Big Show this week, we're all being called to live "the simple life" . . . because it's good for us. There's something absolutely biblical (in the good sense, not the "of biblical proportions" sense) about that notion.

MAYBE THAT'S the question we're ultimately exploring on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth. Not just "How do we get through this colossal mess?" but, indeed, "What is life?"

A lot of baggage for one weekly music show, eh? That's why the blog is here -- on a music show, you need to have time for the, er . . . music. That we do.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. It's just like radio -- except for it doesn't suck.

Be there. Aloha.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

3 Chords & the Truth: It's getting hot in here



This week's edition of
3 Chords & the Truth is hot.

It's smokin'.

It's burning-up, smokin' hot.

On cold, gray days like one is wont to find this time of the winter, that can be a good thing. So why don't you cozy up next to your computer -- or snuggle up with your iPod -- and warm yourself in the glow of the Big Show.

It might even warm your heart. Or something.

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

Friday, January 16, 2009

3 Chords & the Truth: Change has come


You can mark the coming of "change" to Washington by watching this video over and over and over again.

That would be a serious mistake. Perhaps a fatal mistake.

OR . . . YOU CAN take note of the inauguration of our new president, Barack Obama, by checking out this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. I would strongly recommend this second option but, after all, it is your choice.

Just make sure you choose wisely. Is what I'm saying, Cap.

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