'I'd like to buy a vowel, Pat'

"Can I have an 'E'?"

Oh, I'm sorry, there's no 'E.' Telstar . . . it's your spin.

"Can I have an 'S'?"

There is one 'S.'

"I'd like to solve . . . The Tornados!" With "Telstar" from the summer of '62."

A message from the It Had to Be Said department

Are we going to have to require people to get a permit -- with mandatory video-safety certification as a prerequisite -- before they can legally purchase or use a cell-phone camera or digital SLR? Probably.

Where's Michael Bloomberg when we really need him?

Miracles of technology

It's 1972, and through the miracle of modern technology, you can play tennis . . . on your television set!

Will wonders never cease in Space Age America? Surely, the world of Star Trek cannot be far away.

Someday soon, I'll bet we'll even have "communicators" and computers you can talk to!

Hank on 78

Take a 1952 Hank Williams 78 rpm record. Place it on a 1955 Webcor record changer. Watch and listen as magic occurs.

As you can hear, 78s could sound quite good. As a matter of fact, I have some that sound a lot better than this.

Before I go back to recording more of these old records onto the computer hard drive, though, I'll leave you with this bit of eerie trivia:

THIS RECORD -- "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" -- was the last Hank Williams single released before the country legend died, hitting the stores in November 1952 and debuting on the Billboard country chart at No. 9 on Dec. 20.

Williams died in the back seat of his Cadillac early New Year's morning 1953, somewhere between Bristol, Va., and Oak Hill, W.Va. Three weeks later, "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" hit No. 1 on Billboard the issue of Jan. 24.

Fifty-nine years later, the needle still drops onto the MGM 78. While the platter spins, Hank lives again, because it's always 1952 somewhere.

Right now, it's right here.

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.

Bob Dylan, take us away!

You turn on the news, you read the Internets to see what's goin' on, you get consumed by the hurt and tragedy of this vale of tears . . . and sometimes you just need Bob Dylan to take you the hell away.

Sometimes, you just need to be taken the hell away. Far away.


BOB DYLAN'S BEEN doing that for us -- and also bringing it all back home to shatter our complacency -- for a half-century now. God grant him many more years of doing the same before knocking on heaven's door.

Happy early birthday, Mr. Zimmerman.

The upside of the End of Days

Look on the bright side: Harold Camping could be right, and we might be raptured before a certain Omaha songwriter and YouTube maven can compose again.


Son of a bitch.

The Tribulation has started ahead of schedule, and there may be no saving us now.

'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.

How Omaha got its groove back

If all you know about the Omaha indie scene is Bright Eyes, Cursive, the Faint or the whole Saddle Creek Records scene . . . well, podna, you're missing out on a lot.

Like Iowa boy Adam Hawkins and It's True -- and a whole bunch of other artists and groups kickin' it truly indie amid one of the country's most vibrant music scenes.

Exhibit A is It's True's latest video, "Nothing at All" from the "Another Afterlife" CD (coming April 1) and shot in one take at an old school gym in Avoca, Iowa Neb.


OH . . . and there's this from their previous self-titled album.


HAT TIP: Hear Nebraska

Simply '70s: Boring myself to sleep at night

I'm bored, like Iggy Pop.

Now I'm sick.

Naw, I'll bore myself to sleep at night instead.

Definitely . . . I'm bored. I'm the chairman of the bored. I'm bored over being sick of 1979. No doubt the 1980s will be boring, too.

Whatever.

The better angels of the iPhone's nature

It takes indie band OK Go (of course) to show us how to use the iPhone -- and tech in general -- for artistic good and not evil.

Their iPhone project, using video, GPS and . . . you, is something called Dance Through Your City. Basically, what you do is plot out a course that spells out a message from a map's-eye perspective through whatever place you call home. Then you walk it, drive it, dance it or whatever, recording the sights and sounds along the way.

And then OK Go gets to create something really cool out of your handiwork. From the website:

Just download the free app and plan a journey through your city. You can walk, drive, cycle or skate. Take a friend or two and draw out something awesome. Spell out a word or name, write a message to someone, draw your spirit animal or just take a more creative route to work.

Take pictures or video while you do it. Then share the GPS image of your route and the footage with us. Then OK Go will compile the GPS drawings and the best moments of making them into one big celebratory video.

THIS, I imagine, will end up as a stark contrast to the four-letter Dadaism served up for iPhone the other day by the Flaming Lips. And good on Range Rover for sponsoring this bit of OK Go magic.

Simply '70s: Bam ba lam

I just needed to hear me some Ram Jam. 1977 wasn't half bad when you think about it.

Bam ba lam.

Life according to Facebook

There are two kinds of people in this world, and primo examples of each were just posts removed from one another on my Facebook feed this morning.

Above, we see People Who Tear S*** Up. People Who Tear S*** Up are pretty much good for just that and nothing else -- they don't know nothin' 'bout makin' nothin' decent.

They tear up property. They tear up people. They tear up institutions, and they tear up societies.

They even tear up perfectly good record albums and phonographs.

SOMETIMES, People Who Tear S*** Up try to convince you they're actually "reforming" something. This is bunk -- don't listen to what they say, watch what they do. Which usually involves s*** that used to work, but now is torn up.


THEN THERE is the other kind of people, People Who Make S*** Work.

The folks behind The Fun Theory are examples of this second, more useful, brand of human being. Basically, People Who Make S*** Work see something that ought to be -- something whose implementation would benefit humanity -- and they find innovative ways to make it so.

For example, there's the case of the Stockholm engineers who set out to convince folk to take the cardio-friendly stairs instead of the sedentary escalator. And look how they pulled that one off.

After all, any moron can set an LP on fire. It takes a genius, though, to make us gleefully take the stairs in the subway station.

If Neanderthals had electricity

I don't know what you do with someone who calls himself DJ Dog Dick.

I'm pretty sure you don't let him play with the YouTubes.

I'm double sure you don't let him team up with someone from "the Iowa City noise scene." I'd bet my life that whatever the melding of "the Iowa City noise scene" and DJ Dog Dick is (Dog Leather? Really?), it's not something people who have mastered fire and the wheel should call a supergroup.

WHEN YOU HAVE weirdness in the hands of someone like Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart (peace be upon their souls), you might have something. When you have weirdness in the massively less talented hands of a former member of "the Iowa City noise scene" and someone who stage names himself after a male dog's junk, you just have one more laughable moment in the anticulture.

I am reminded of beatniks laying around half a century ago smoking dope and listening to Miles Davis, thinking they were the revolution, man. Only this lacks good music . . . and some "really good s***, maaaaaan," to destroy whatever part of the brain this knuckle-dragger crap might get stuck in.

Good God.

Meantime, I'll have an Old Fashioned and some Tony Bennett on the jukebox. Quick.


P.S.: Nice T-shirt on some half-wit in that shot DJ Doggy Style (or whatever) tried to sneak in with a subliminal quick cut. Not.

Perverted morons.

Get a job. Take a bath. Find Jesus. Something.

Simply '70s: Missing Nilsson

If you don't think you've ever really and truly seen a genius at work, click the "play" button.

Then you will have.

Here's the late, staggeringly great Harry Nilsson from a 1971 BBC television special.

Put the lime in the coconut and drink 'em all together,
Put the lime in the coconut and you feel better,
Put the lime in the coconut and drink 'em all up,
Put the lime in the coconut and call me in the morning.

Happy Boxing Day!

Here's a little something that's appropriate viewing for sitting back and reflecting on a most excellent Boxing Day.


Now . . . on to New Year's!

Your Daily '80s: Me, myself and I yi yi

In 1982, Charlene wanted to take a very short, very annoying journey to herself. Because she'd never been there.

You think she would have made it there after the original release of "I've Never Been to Me" in 1977, but she didn't. So there she was again five bloody years later, vowing she'd really make it this time. You go, girl.

No, really. Go.

Frankly, I think she started out there and never left. Oh, goody.


OF COURSE, having been to himself in 1981, Billy Idol could serve as Charlene's guide to that particular destination.

While they're doing some trip planning, you can go to the comments on SongMeanings and watch people argue over whether or not "Dancing With Myself" is about playing with oneself. Which would be a whole other kind of futility.

Wasting your time debating that, I mean. Or reading about debating that.

Or, yeah, for that matter, that.

Your Daily '80s: True

Spandau Ballet was all over the charts with "True" the summer and fall of 1983 -- it hit the Billboard Top 40 on Aug. 27 and stayed there for 10 weeks, peaking at No. 4.

Not only is "True" a great pop song, it also forever will take me back to being a newlywed; it hit the Top 40 exactly one week after Mrs. Favog and I were married.

We had just moved across the country, from North Platte, Neb., to Baton Rouge, and I was heading back to LSU to finish my degree.

Good times, and a fitting soundtrack.

Your Daily '80s: Here we go again

If you were alive in 1987, I don't think there was any way you didn't hear Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again."

If you were male in 1987, there probably wasn't any way you were going to forget Tawny Kitaen, either.


AS A MATTER of fact, this was a pop-culture reference that made it -- big time -- into Bowling for Soup's 2004 video for "1985." (And, no, that's not an older Tawny Kitaen in the video. The actress' name is Joey House.)

I'm with Debbie in the video. There are worse places to be stuck than 1985. Or 1987, for that matter.

OK, this is addictive

In case you missed it the first time around . . . 29 years ago . . . here's how the rest of that first hour of MTV went.

As we learned on Sunday's edition of Your Daily '80s, the first video played was from the Buggles. The first VJ was Mark Goodwin, but not really, because the videotapes of the VJ intros got mixed up, making Alan Hunter the first to introduce himself. But Goodman was the first to sit down and talk awhile.

Is that clear? Well, nothing has been too clear since 1981 anyway, so don't sweat it.

And you'll notice that the VJ intros weren't the only thing to get out of order that first hour. Keep watching.