Showing posts with label youth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label youth. Show all posts

Friday, April 10, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em): Calcutta!


This influential LP came later in life -- as in, I-was-over-50 later in life. But influential is influential, a revelation is a revelation no matter how delayed, so here goes No. 9 on the list -- "Calcutta!" by Lawrence Welk.

As a Baby Boomer of a certain age, I absolutely was force-fed a diet of The Lawrence Welk Show every weekend. Saturday night on the network . . . Saturday or Sunday afternoon in syndication, you could count on Lawrence, Myron, Joe, Norma, Arthur, Bobby, Cissy, Gail and Dale to cheese up the living room TV set so much, all you really needed was a box of Ritz crackers for your evening to be complete.

Mama and Daddy loved The Lawrence Welk Show. And Mama and Daddy controlled the television when it counted -- the precise times for 1) Lawrence Welk on Saturday afternoons, 2) The Gospel Jubilee on Sunday mornings, and 3) whenever The Porter Wagoner Show was on -- maybe Saturday, maybe Sunday afternoon.

Unfortunately for my force-fed self, The Lawrence Welk Show was . . . was . . . was. . . .


A half century later, I am at a loss for words.

I, however, can show you:



NOW YOU KNOW why folks got one toke over the line.

In short, Lawrence Welk represented, for all of my youth, a big, lame joke. When it wasn't being the Abomination of Geritol Nation.

Well into married life, my wife -- subjected, in her youth, to the same Welk abuse as myself -- and I would watch reruns of the show on public TV for the sheer irony and hathos of it all. Sometimes, we still do.

Then at an estate sale one Sunday, one of the LP treasures of a passing generation presented itself to me. "Aw, what the hell," I told myself as I grabbed "Calcutta" for ironic listening enjoyment.

I cleaned the vintage 1961 vinyl, plopped it on the record player, and immediately a huge problem jumped right off the grooves and into my smug, superior little shit of a face.

The @#&%!$*!# album was good.

The Welk orchestra almost . . . Dare I say it? . . . No, I CAN'T! . . . Go on, say it, you little frickin' WIMP! . . . DON'T YELL AT ME!!!! . . . the Welk orchestra almost . . . uh . . . swung. It was really tight. And the "Calcutta" Welk was so much more fun than that Geritol- and Serutan-fueled weekly video constitutional might suggest.

YOU DON'T EXPECT, at least not in one's 50s, for it to be so earthshaking to discover one's parents -- well, at least kinda sorta -- were right. But on a matter involving such a deeply held principle? About something that strikes at the core of Boomer generational solidarity?

Consider my earth shaken, if not also stirred.


God help me, the title cut was fun. (I was already familiar with the "Calcutta" single, just not with the idea that it was "fun.") "Perfidia" was even better. Exquisite, even.

God help me, I had to give Lawrence Welk his due. I had been influenced.

And I wasn't even one "modern spiritual" over the line.


Monday, April 06, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em):
Never Mind the Bollocks



OK, back to the coal mine -- with my ghetto blaster.

The weekend intruded upon my recounting of 10 influential albums in my life. We resume the recounting with No. 6 in the series . . . the Sex Pistols' 1977 bombshell, "Never Mind the Bollocks."

I got stories about the Sex Pistols. I'll draw upon a 2006 blog entry to tell you about that anew.


But that story starts in the summer of 1977, when my Aunt Ailsa, an English war bride, flew home to Southampton to visit family. By that time, befuddled American foreign correspondents were sending back dispatches about this British phenomenon called "punk rock" and its antihero leaders, the Sex Pistols.

The current single by Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Paul Cook and Steve Jones was "God Save the Queen." It had been banned by the BBC. I was 16. Naturally, I had to have it.

And when Aunt Ailsa got back to Baton Rouge, I did. As far as I knew, I had the only Sex Pistols record in town. Maybe one of the few in the United States. You certainly didn't hear the Sex Pistols anywhere on local radio.

I preferred to think my aunt had to go in the back door of a Southhampton record shop and ask a cannabis-toking clerk "I say, do you have the stuff?" And then, in my teenage imagination, the clerk put down his bag of chips, slipped the 45 into a brown paper bag, and handed it to her. She then would have put a pound note into his resin- and grease-tainted hand, immediately lit a cigarette to mask the smell of second-hand marijuana smoke clinging to her clothes and slipped back out the back door.



MORE LIKE IT, she went in the front door of HMV, grabbed "God Save the Queen" off the rack and paid the teenage clerk at the front counter.

I like my 16-year-old imagination's version better.

Anyway . . . the fine folks in Red Stick thought the Beatles were dangerous and the Rolling Stones were spawns of Satan. Little did they know.

For example:
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H-bomb

God save the queen
She's not a human being
and There's no future
And England's dreaming

Don't be told what you want
Don't be told what you need
There's no future
No future
No future for you

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves

God save the queen
'Cause tourists are money
And our figurehead
Is not what she seems

Oh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh Lord God have mercy
All crimes are paid
Oh when there's no future
How can there be sin
We're the flowers
In the dustbin
We're the poison
In your human machine
We're the future. . . .
MAN, I WAS a blue-collar kid in the Deep South. I was, for the first time in my life, at a school where ideas mattered and, like, thinking was encouraged and not reason to label you a weirdo or a "n****r-lover" -- or maybe "queer."

I mean, in the redneck corners of Louisiana, one did not lightly refer to thespians while among people who thought a thespian was other than what he or she actually was.


No, being at Baton Rouge Magnet High School blew a blue-collar kid's mind wide open in a Technicolor frenzy of Dreaming Big. Such was life at the Maggot School.

"The Maggot School" is what White Trash Nation called Baton Rouge High throughout my tenure there -- 1976-79. It was the place where all the geeks, brainiacs, musicians and thespians could be weirdos together in relative harmony and contentment. Hey, at BRHS, it was good to be a thespian.

If Student X had admitted to being a thespian at Broadmoor Junior High, I garon-damn-tee you someone would have beat him (or her) up and administered an enthusiastic version of the Toilet Water Taste Test. And the boys would have been even more vicious.

 
You just as well had put on an ascot and admitted to being a Homo sapiens. Or, better yet, called Junior Martinez (pronounced MART'un-ez) a Homo sapiens.

Anyway, Baton Rouge High, by the 1975-76 school year, was a struggling inner-city school whose halcyon days had gone the way of poodle skirts, B-52s (the hairdo, not the band) and "separate but equal." Then someone had an idea -- a magnet school for academics and the performing arts.

My parents were leery of this thing (I'll bet you can guess why), but I got to go. Miracle of miracles!

Well, Baton Rouge High had -- and still has -- a radio station. A real, honest-to-God, student-operated, over-the-air FM radio station -- WBRH. And thus, in high school, your Mighty Favog learned everything he needed to know.

The college education was for my liver.
 


ANYWAY . . . let me tell you about when WBRH introduced Baton Rouge to punk rock in 1977.

I found out about the Sex Pistols on Weekend, the NBC newsmagazine that preempted Saturday Night Live once a month back in the day. In this case, "back in the day" was, I reckon, spring 1977. Anyway, it seemed that the Pistols were about as pissed at the world as my teenage self, they could rock and -- best of all -- they terrified polite society as much as anything I had seen in my young life.

The fall of '77, I was enrolled in Radio I. I wasn't allowed an air shift yet; back then you first had to get a federal license -- by passing an exam. But I knew bunches of people in Radio II who had their third tickets (radio operator's licenses). Soon, the Sex Pistols were on the Baton Rouge airwaves, via the 20-watt blowtorch signal at 90.1 FM.

One fall afternoon, I was sitting in with Charles, a junior, during the afternoon rock show. He was skeptical of the Sex Pistols, but played it and asked for listener feedback. What feedback you get from a high-school FM blowtorch (that is, not a bunch) was decidedly mixed.

AFTER A WEEK or so of playing Baton Rouge's one copy of a Sex Pistols record, we did get some strong feedback. It was from the licensee of WBRH, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board. And it went something like this: We don't know what the hell that is you've been playing on the radio station, but we want you to cut it out. NOW!

The radio instructor and general manager, John Dobbs, liked his teaching gig. The 45 was confiscated, and the Sex Pistols faced the same fate at WBRH that the lads did at the BBC. Banned.

I did retrieve my record from The Iron Fist of the Oppressor, but only after I agreed never to bring it back. It sits, carefully preserved in its famous picture sleeve, in a plastic file box, along with all my other 45s from Back in the Day.

Now, Charles was -- is? -- an interesting guy. Think of Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties a good five years before there was a Family Ties. Only African-American.


It probably was in the spring of '78 that I was again hanging out with Charles in the radio control room, playing the likes of David Gilmour, The Fabulous Poodles, Toto, the Cars, Journey and Queen. Maybe some Commodores -- Brick House, baby! -- and Parliament/Funkadelic.

Well, that day, obviously not enough "Brick House" or "P-Funk."

(Flash. Flash. Flash. Hey, radio-studio phones flash; they don't ring. OK?)

Charles: WBRH!

Caller: Hey, man, why don't you play some n****r music, man! ("N****r" = Not Polite, Racist and Offensive Term for African-American -- then, now or ever.)

Charles: Uhhhhh, excuse me, but I happen to be black.

Caller: Oh, uhhh, oh . . . oh, I'm sorry, man! How about playin' some BLACK music for me, man!

Charles: I'll see what I can do. (Slams phone down.) Redneck son of a bitch!
I DON'T THINK the guy got his "n****r music" played, man.

Now, I think there was a point to this post when I started it. I'll see whether I can get back to it.

When the Sex Pistols' first LP, "Never Mind the Bollocks" -- you know, the point of this whole missive -- came out in November 1977, I made it to the Musicland at Cortana Mall in the manner of someone whose head was on fire and his ass was catchin'.


Is what I'm sayin'.

And it did not disappoint when I got it on the stereo. I was dangerous, too -- in both 45 and 33⅓.

I'd like to think I still am at age 59. My wife of almost 37 years might disagree.

Friday, April 03, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em): Meet the Beatles


Here's No. 5 of my magical mystery tour through the record albums that have influenced me greatly through the years -- "Meet the Beatles." DUH!

If one is of a certain age -- OK, Boomer! -- this one's probably on your list. And on the list of many in the generations that followed, even if indirectly. Why? It's because probably no rock band was more influential than the Fab Four.

My Beatles journey began in 1965, at age 4. My Aunt Sybil and Uncle Jimmy bought me "Meet the Beatles" for Christmas. I was hooked. Got my folks, I am sure against their better beatnik-hating judgment, to subsequently buy me some Beatles 45s from the record rack at the National supermarket in the Broadmoor Shopping Center.

Man, I was well on the way to wearing out those glorious singles by John, Paul, George and Ringo. Until. . . .

Until a British newspaper interview from March 1966 got reprinted in an American teen magazine in July that year. You probably know the one.

“Christianity will go,” John Lennon told journalist Maureen Cleave. “It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I know I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first – rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

Lennon was a notoriously complicated guy. Americans, for the most part, are a notoriously uncomplicated people with notoriously uncomplicated triggers for losing their shit. After what Lennon said hit newsstands in the United States, Americans' lost shit hit the fan. And how.

And then there was the South. Remember the South? I do; I'm from there.


RADIO STATIONS banned Beatles records. Radio stations burned their Beatles music. Kluxers were burning Beatles albums along with their crosses. Preachers were damning Beatles songs to the lake . . . of . . . fiiirrrrrrre.

No one was more outraged than Mama. Now, my parents weren't exactly churchgoers, but you had the principle of the thing. Or something like that.

So my Beatles singles and my copy of "Meet the Beatles" got busted up. Mama carefully explained how them Limey beatniks were sayin' terrible things about Jesus H. Christ -- who we weren't actually acquainted enough with to drop in on, like, ever -- but, you know, there was the principle of the thing.

Crack!


Rip!

Double crack!

Crunch!

Thunk!


HEY, IT WAS the Age of Batman. Who never disparaged Christianity or compared his popularity to that of Jesus Christ, who I am sure would have lost badly to the Caped Crusader, too.

But again, it was the South. One of the Southiest parts of the South. And I'm sure it didn't help that Paul McCartney was a "n****r lover." After all, in those same Beatle profiles that made John an Enemy of God, Paul showed himself to be an Enemy of the Southern Way of Life (TM).

“It’s a lousy country where anyone black is a dirty n****r,” McCartney told Cleave, the author of the London Evening Standard's original profiles -- a quote that also made it into the teen mag Datebook, the periodical that sparked the all-American freak-out. In the white, Southern working-class world into which I was born, them was fightin' words.

And Mama was fightin' mad. Or at least browbeating-your-5-year-old-kid-into-letting-you-bust-up-his-prized-Beatles-records mad.

To paraphrase a musical selection from Hee-Haw, that hillbilly artistic endeavor that came to CBS television three years later, "
Thppt! They was gone!"

It wasn't until years later, after I myself had become a certified beatnik, that I started rebuilding my Beatles stash, which decades later is considerable. Yes, I have multiple copies of "Meet the Beatles."

And I still love "I Want to Hold Your Hand," though I think the German version, "
Komm, gib mir deine Hand," on "Something New" is even better. I'm funny that way.



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.

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

The shack by the track

The shack by the track . . . from above (Google Maps)

I would have thought the "shack by the track" off of "beautiful Choctaw Trail" would have been long gone by now. After all, I've been long gone from Baton Rouge for more than 31 years.

But no. The shack -- a rather forlorn-looking Quonset hut even when it was still home to WIBR radio a half century ago -- still stands at what once was 600 Neosho St. in north Baton Rouge . . . at least according to the latest view available to Google Maps.

Google Maps street view
Back in the day -- my day -- it was hard to miss WIBR when you were driving down Choctaw, about a quarter mile off River Road on the north end of Capitol Lake. You can make quite the impact on a Quonset roof with enough black paint, a giant W, I, B and R's worth of black paint.

Time has worn away the giant WIBR on the roof, revealing the previous "1220 kilocycles" painted up there. To my generation, WIBR always was Radio 13, but when the brand-new station signed on in July 1948 -- Baton Rouge's seventh or eighth, counting all the FM stations its AM predecessors were opening before they closed them in just a few years -- it was WCLA, with 250 not-so-booming, daytime-only watts at 1220 on your radio dial.

In that Quonset hut, with a tower plopped down right in Capitol Lake. That right there had to have helped coverage, and with 250 watts, WCLA needed all the help it could get.

Morning Advocate, July 18, 1948

THAT Quonset hut, stuck between a contrived lake, a grimy industrial park and a "Choctaw Trail" that was beautiful only in the supreme irony of the WIBR announcers having dubbed it such, nevertheless was a tin-can incubator of Baton Rouge broadcasting royalty. Pappy Burge. Bob Earle. B.Z. (Bernard Zuccaro). "Ravin' Dave" Davison.  J.C. Politz.

That Quonset hut was the first radio station I'd ever been in -- the first time I got to glimpse what was on the other end of the radio waves energizing my transistor radio. It had to have been 1969, and I was an 8-year-old geek with mad telephone skillz -- mad enough to be quick enough on the rotary dial to score a MAJOR-LABEL LP from the then middle-of-the-road station.


OK, so the record album was Jimmy Roselli's Let Me Sing and I'm Happy and not the Beatles. Or even Bobby Sherman.

But it was a MAJOR AWARD . . . and it wasn't a leg lamp. ("The soft glow of electric sex" would have been lost on my prepubescent self.)

Yes, I still have that LP today.

When I encountered "the shack by the track" somewhere on the cusp of the '60s becoming the '70s, it was a weekend. I'd won this record album from a big-time radio station in a small-time structure in a city that sometimes confused big-time and small-potatoes, my parents had difficulty with the concept of "regular business hours," and so the old man steered the 1967 Mercury Park Lane off "beautiful Choctaw Trail," through the lovely meadow of Quonset, concrete and quiet despair, then up to the gravel parking in front of 600 Neosho St.

There were two cars there -- ours and the weekend disc jockey's.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

A young man answered the door. Long hair, blue jeans, bare feet.

"My boy here won a record album."

OHMYGAWDOHMYGAWDOHMYGAWD . . . IT'S STEVE ST. JOHN! I JUST HEARD HIM ON THE CAR RADIO!

The young man let us into the reception area, from which you could see EVERYTHING through the big studio window. They could launch Apollo 8 from that control room.

If you somehow didn't get electrocuted by all the technology in there, you might could get yourself to the damn moon. I did not say "damn", though "damn" was the least of the colorful language I learned from Ralphie's -- uh, my -- old man. Daddy would have whipped my ass; I would have learned a few new terms for future reference, no doubt.

WIBR handout, circa 1955

THE FAMOUS weekend DJ, Steve St. John, apologized for his casual attire and bare feet amid the musical merry-go-round of Andy Williams, Jerry Vale and whatnot. He explained that things were pretty cas on weekends at WIBR, and he was gracious about our lackadaisical attitude toward Monday-Friday, 9 to 5.

And I got my Jimmy Roselli album, which I expect to fully musically appreciate any year now.

Later, I figured out that Steve St. John (who by this time had advanced well beyond "weekend guy" in the WIBR and Baton Rouge-radio pecking order) was Steven Robert Earle, son of Bob Earle, who ran the joint.

Yours truly, a former "overnight guy" himself, also figured out that radio was one of the coolest things ever, in the sense that one "figures out" what one knew all along. Quonset-hut studios, as it turns out, only add to the mystique.

And they're apparently damned durable -- more durable than the major station that gave out major awards to majorly geeky little kids. WIBR, decades past its MOR and Top-40 heyday, is (at best) an afterthought today, something a major radio chain doesn't quite know what to do with. In recent years, it's been off the air a lot more that it's been on the air.

Now, it rebroadcasts KQXL, the big urban station in Baton Rouge. In my mind's eye, WXOK is the big urban station in Baton Rouge, but that's another memory of faded glory . . . in my hometown.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Still Shocked after all these years


I'm 11 again.

After 40 years, I'm watching Shock Theater and reveling in the snark and camp that was Dr. Shock, Igor and the merry band of creepy idiots that was must-see TV when I was a kid in Baton Rouge.

Saturday-night routine: Turn on TV set about 10. Adjust the loop antenna during the 15 minutes of the ABC late news on WRBT to get a good picture on Channel 33. Because UHF.

SETTLE IN for a couple of hours of the oddball antics of Dr. Shock, along with a classic(ly bad) horror flick.

Wait for next Saturday at 10:15 so I could do it all again.


Truly, Shock Theater helped to make me the (extremely warped) man I am today. Today's kids should have had it so good.

But they didn't. And poorer are they for the absence of bad horror movies and smart-assed, tongue-in-cheek offerings from local TV.

They also would have learned patience from adjusting that #$&*!@%!! UHF antenna.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Real radio, real gone


Don't bug me. I'm busy being 15 again.

This truly, for me, is a blast from the past -- an aircheck of a radio station that's lived only in my memory since 1979. Stumbling upon this snippet of "Real Radio" WAIL from 1976 on YouTube, I am transported. Transported to my youth, and to a time when AM daytimers -- those stations that run down at sundown -- kinda still mattered.

Still played the hits.

Still had actual humans on the air.

These were the days when, sadly, WAIL was struggling. Soon would come the brief time when WAIL was kinda cutting edge (but still struggling). Too soon came the time when WAIL's struggle was over.

WHEN I was two months from emerging from the womb, Mama won a General Electric table radio from WAIL. When I was a child, WAIL (then a full-timer at 1460 on your dial) was the station that often came from that GE table radio that lived on the kitchen counter.

Mama loved her some "Pappy" Burge. Mama also loved to bend the ear of the receptionist, Marge.

When I was a preteen and then a teenybopper, WAIL got drowned out by the Big Win 910, WLCS. When I was a teen suddenly too cool for Top-40, WAIL was the "backup" station to "Loose Radio."

When I was finally old enough to vote, WAIL was gone, replaced by middle-of-the-road WTKL -- "Tickle." Yeah . . . right.

And now, here's a slice of unexpected bliss -- a song for the September of my years on a chilly October day.
Hello, old friend,
It's really good to see you once again,

Hello, old friend,
It's really good to see you once again.
(Cue Eric Clapton guitar solo.)

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Why I'm not the next Jack Germond


The great political reporter -- he hated being called "journalist" -- and columnist Jack Germond has died at 85.

He'd been covering politicians and the messes they made from the 1950s until he retired in 2001, first with Gannett and then the Washington Star and later The Baltimore Sun. He was a fixture on The McLaughlin Group on public TV, got parodied on Saturday Night Live and wrote a bunch of books.

Not bad for a member of the Baton Rouge High Class of 1945.

I'm a member of the Baton Rouge High Class of 1979, but I am not now nor ever will be as accomplished as the late Mr. Germond. I do like martinis as much as he did, though.

THE REASON why I'll never be as accomplished at, well, anything as Jack Germond was at committing journalism . . . er, reporting is that I was committing smart-assed crap like the drawing above when I ought to have been studying or paying more attention in class. I found this, as I found all kinds of other stuff that has been or soon will be featured in this cyberspace, when cleaning out the home of my misspent youth in Baton Rouge.

The above drawing, however, may have been a little clue to my later avocation. In other words . . . get the net!

I suspect my mom never threw it out because she wanted evidence to back up "I told you so!"

Rest in peace, Jack. Your stellar legacy will face no competition from this fellow Bulldog alum.

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Mr. Music, please!


What is happening to me?

This is PARENTS music! Old-people stuff. Like, it's completely L7, maaaaaan! And it's what I'm listening to this evening.

Well, I like it. I think it's cool. And, in case you haven't looked in the mirror in the last 20 years or so, Self, you're old people now. And according to, well . . . everybody . . . you're pretty L7 yourself.

Because that just sounds pretty Dobie Gillis right there, Maynard.

On the other hand, you want to know one of the benefits of advancing age? It neuters the stranglehold of "cool" on the brain, thereby freeing the mind to consider things that once would have cost one no small measure of social status.

And chicks.

So screw it. I'm middle aged, and I'm married . . . and reliably informed by She Who Must Be Obeyed that I don't need to be getting any more chicks. Do they still call the fairer sex "chicks"?

Don't answer that, because I don't care.

Now back to Henry Mancini and, perhaps, an adult beverage.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

My huckleberry friend, Moon River, and me

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
2  And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
4  And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
-- Revelation 21:1-4


Kids today have their computers, iPads and smart phones that bring the whole world into their grasp and into their eyes, ears and minds.

In the 1960s, I had a 21-inch, black-and-white Magnavox console television for my window on the world and, likewise, its accompanying radio and phonograph for the soundtrack of my life.

I always think of that old Magnavox, itself long consigned to sepia-tinted memory, when yet another piece of my youth has passed away as heaven and earth is aborn anew. It brought me the world; that world is no more, the new Jerusalem has yet to come down from on high, and I, in the September of my years, must wander the metaphysical neutral ground.

Andy Williams was someone that old Magnavox brought into our Baton Rouge home, and into my young life -- "Moon River" . . . The Andy Williams Show on TV . . . another appearance by the Osmond Brothers . . . "I Can't Get Used to Losing You," (one of my absolute favorite songs to this day) . . . years of Christmas specials amid freshly waxed floors, a newly decorated spruce tree and a cardboard fireplace with a festive, light-bulb fueled "fire."



IT'S BEEN decades since a live spruce tree graced my childhood Louisiana home, and the new laminate living-room floor doesn't need waxing. Mama is 89 now, and Daddy has been gone for 11 years. God only knows what happened to the 15-watt cardboard fireplace that held my Christmas stocking and strained under the dead weight of woolen hosiery stuffed with apples, oranges, candy canes and "D" cells.

Now, the Santa-festooned stocking I've had ever since I saw my first Christmas Day hangs on our Omaha Christmas tree, and last night, Andy Williams died. Bladder cancer. He was 84.

“Moon River” was written by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, and Audrey Hepburn introduced it in the 1961 film“Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” but it was Mr. Williams who made the song indisputably his own when he sang it at the 1962 Academy Awards ceremony and titled a subsequent album after it. When he built a theater in Branson, he named it the Andy Williams Moon River Theater.
“Moon River” became the theme song for his musical-variety television series “The Andy Williams Show,” which, along with his family-oriented Christmas TV specials, made him a household name.
“The Andy Williams Show” ran on NBC from 1962 to 1971 and won three Emmy Awards for outstanding variety series. But its run also coincided with the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960s, and with a lineup of well-scrubbed acts like the Osmond Brothers (whom Mr. Williams introduced to national television) and established performers like Judy Garland and Bobby Darin, the show, at least to many members of a younger, more rebellious generation, was hopelessly square — the sort of entertainment their parents would watch.
Despite that image, “The Andy Williams Show” was not oblivious to the cultural moment. Its guests also included rising rock acts like Elton John and the Mamas and the Papas, and its offbeat comedy skits, featuring characters like the relentless Cookie Bear and the Walking Suitcase, predated similar absurdism on David Letterman’s and Conan O’Brien’s talk shows by decades.
Mr. Williams’s Christmas specials, on the other hand, were entirely anodyne and decidedly homey, featuring carols and crew-neck sweaters, sleigh bells and fake snow, and a stage filled with family members, including his wife, the telegenic French chanteuse Claudine Longet, and their three children. The Osmonds were regular guests, as were his older brothers, Bob, Don and Dick, who with Mr. Williams had formed the Williams Brothers, the singing act in which he got his start in show business.

Although Mr. Williams’s fame came from television, movie themes were among his best-known recordings, including those from “Love Story,” “Charade,” “The Way We Were” and “Days of Wine and Roses.” Decades after he had stopped recording regularly, his old hits continued to turn up on movie soundtracks: “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” in “Bad Santa,” for instance, and his version of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” in “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”

Mr. Williams earned 18 gold and three platinum albums and was nominated for Grammy Awards five times, but he never had a gold single. (His version of “Moon River” was not released as a single, although versions by Mr. Mancini and Jerry Butler reached the Top 20.) His biggest hit single — and his only No. 1 — was “Butterfly,” an uncharacteristically rocklike 1957 number for which he was instructed to imitate Elvis Presley.

His more mellow hits included “Canadian Sunset,” “The Hawaiian Wedding Song,” “Lonely Street,” “Can’t Get Used to Losing You,” “The Shadow of Your Smile” and “Are You Sincere?” He continued to record into the 1970s.
HERE'S THE THING. Pop culture worms its way -- being culture and all -- into your brain, your soul and your heart. In many ways, it defines us. It is a signifier -- who are you? Well, what music do you like? What do you read? What's your favorite movie?

What are your memories of childhood? How do you mark the passing years . . . note the chapters of your life?

Likewise,  those who create pop culture, like Andy Williams, worm their way into your life, too. They guest star in your memories and can cause a middle-age man to slip the sure restraints of time and space. And it's not just "your" pop culture that's capable of such magic.

The New York Times obituary says that my generation, the Baby Boomers, found Williams to be "hopelessly square -- the sort of entertainment their parents would watch." That's too simplistic to pass the smell test . . . or the test of time.

Yes, peer pressure would dictate that he fell into the category of Stuff Parents Like and thus was uncool. Of course, peer pressure is merely the difference between saying what you think you must and knowing what you believe in your heart. And if you have any integrity whatsoever, what you believe in your heart will win out eventually.

Look at it this way: Your favorite uncle may have been "hopelessly square," too. Did you disown him because of that? Did you slip out the back door when you saw his car turn into your driveway?

And as the years passed, did you erase him from your memories? Of course not. Did his presence cause them to be any less fond? Of course not. Did you stop loving it when he sang that song he always sang? Is the memory of that hopelessly soiled because a certain someone was a "hopeless square"?

Of course not.

I THINK that's kind of how my generation has come to deal with that -- and those -- deemed "hopelessly square" by others just as young as stupid as ourselves back in the day. Me, I have come to long for the days when hopeless squares ran the world. We the Hip, frankly, ain't doing such a bang-up job of it right now.

Long have I, and have people like me, mourned the passing of things like The Andy Williams Show from our collective pop culture, just as we lament a present culture that has banished Andy Williams and his successors from even the consciousness of today's tragically hip.

But mostly, we today mourn the passing of a legendary singer and an entertainment icon. Andy Williams may or may not have been "hopelessly square" and he may or may not have been popular with all the "wrong" people, but he sure as hell sang like a dream.

And he was as comfortable as a crew-neck sweater on a cold December day.

Mr. Williams, I just can't get used to losing you. Rest in peace.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Madea for bus monitor!


You know who we need to be a junior-high bus monitor? Madea.

Surely, there must be some real-life approximations of Mabel "Madea" Simmons who can be tasked with straightening out America's feral youth. Give the newly minted monitors a school-bus version of a 007 license so the po-po will leave them the hell alone to do what needs to be done.

Can I get a witness, y'all?

Friday, June 22, 2012

The feral youth of Bus 784


Here's what I think of this Not Safe for Work video that's gone viral around the world, thanks to YouTube.

Here's what I think of little smart-ass, bullying seventh-grade s***s who pick on a 68-year-old grandma, who also happens to be the monitor on Bus 784 in Greece, N.Y.

Here's what I think. Here goes.

Do you remember those little bitty baseball bats common back in the day?

In my youth in the segregated South, they had a common name (common in every sense of the word) I shall not repeat, but I suspect sons and daughters of the Deep South know exactly what I'm talking about.


ANYWAY, this is why God invented those. (And your old man's thin leather belt.) I suspect just nearly connecting with one of the little darlings with a billy club-size Louisville Slugger would have been sufficient to put the fear -- if not of God -- of serious bodily harm into their profoundly undeveloped little brains.

Unfortunately, if the poor woman had done what most any adult would have done when I was a kid, she would have been arrested, and then she would have been sued into pauperism by the wolves who obviously have been "raising" these little monsters. That's because brats like that don't come from nowhere.

There is almost no reason sufficient to administer a serious ass-whipping to a child. Almost. But this is a damn good one.

This kind of behavior toward a senior citizen by a child used to be unthinkable, especially in the South of my youth, unless you were talking about a serious juvenile delinquent who'd be penitentiary bound soon enough. There were reasons for that.

Someone needs to exercise "the nuclear option" against the whole lot of these feral youth on that bus. Now.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Lord of the Fritos


When I was a kid, there was always the same public-service announcement before the late news.

"It's 10 o'clock. Parents, do you know where your children are?"

Boy, is
that so 40 years ago. There are so many other questions TV stations could ask "parents" today.
"It's 11:30. Parents, did you know that your little thugs are cleaning out the Kwik-E-Mart?"

"It's 6 o'clock. Parents, did you know your little darlings will be on the news in just a couple of minutes?"

"It's 10 o'clock. Parents, do you give a flip where your children are?"

"It's 3 in the morning. Parents, are you really worthless pieces of s***, or is that an unfair inference on our part?"
MAYBE that's something KATU television in Portland, Ore., might want to consider. It would be a nice complement to stories like this:
Police are hoping the public can help identify several kids who stormed a local gas station this past Saturday night and stole everything they could grab.

On the surveillance video, one person came into the Chevron convenience store on SE 92nd and Foster. Then a second person came in and pretty soon, a large group of kids was packed into the shop. Soon, they were stealing anything they could, from drinks to gum to candy

Carlos Garcia was working Saturday night at around 11:30 p.m. when the incident happened. He said there were 16 kids in the store. Garcia said the kids grabbed anything they could and shoved items into their pockets or simply carrying them in their hands and out the door.

"My first reaction was call police because I can't do more," he said. "I don't want to hurt them -- they're kids. I called the police. They don't stop they're just picking picking as much as they can."

Friday, February 10, 2012

Because someone had to do it


Some of the language here is NSFW. But Dad is just reading
what his 15-year-old wrote about him on Facebook.


This is the best reason I've ever seen for not enacting stringent gun control.

Personally, though, I would have gone for either buckshot or slugs in a 12-gauge shotgun. At least three shells' worth, maybe more. Sometimes, you need to kick a little ass -- or blow up a laptop -- to stem the rising tide of entitled barbarianism.

Oh . . . save the .45 and the hollow-points for the little princess' smart phone. That would be AWESOME.