We don't need 'realism.' We need Mrs. Cleaver

I don't know about you, but I'm taking this as a really, really bad omen.

Mrs. Cleaver is dead of rheumatoid disease, having departed this mortal coil with her alter ego, Barbara Billingsley, at age 94 in Santa Monica, Calif. Ward et June n'existent plus, and the Beaver -- and all the rest of us -- gently weep.

She is survived by Wally and the Beav . . . and about 72 million Baby Boomers steeped in all things Leave it to Beaver. The New York Times fills in the details:

From 1957 to 1963 and in decades of reruns, the glamorous June, who wore pearls and high heels at home, could be counted on to help her husband, Ward (Hugh Beaumont), get their son Theodore, better known as Beaver (Jerry Mathers), and his older brother, Wally (Tony Dow), out of countless minor jams, whether an alligator in the basement or a horse in the garage.

Baking a steady supply of cookies, she would use motherly intuition to sound the alarm about incipient trouble (“Ward, I’m worried about the Beaver”) in their immaculate, airy house in the fictional town of Mayfield. (The house appeared to have no master bedroom, just a big door from which Ward and June occasionally emerged, tying their bathrobes.)

Along with the mothers played by Harriet Nelson (“The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”), Donna Reed (“The Donna Reed Show”) and others, Ms. Billingsley’s role became a cultural standard, one that may have been too good to be true but produced fan mail and nostalgia for decades afterward, from the same generation whose counterculture derided the see-no-evil suburbia June’s character represented.

Ms. Billingsley, who had nothing but respect for June Cleaver, was a former model and career actress who was married three times and spent part of her career as a working single mother (of two boys, at that).

Yes, she acknowledged 40 years later, her role was a picture-perfect reflection of the times. “We were the ideal parents because that’s the way he saw it,” she said, describing the show as the world seen through the eyes of a child.

SO JUNE CLEAVER was an ideal, as opposed to "realistic." So what? We need ideals, but now we only have dysfunction as our guide.

We live in an age that ridicules the wholesome likes of Ward and June Cleaver. The thing is, once upon a time there were real Wards and Junes. Maybe not perfect, but if you watched Leave it to Beaver closely, neither were Ward and June.

But they were there; they tried hard, and they cared deeply. They believed in decency, in virtue, and they expected that Wally and the Beav would, too.

How naive. Successful civilizations, however, are built upon such naiveté.

Our present one, such as it is, has no such naiveté left. And I think losing the physical embodiment of that ideal -- a woman who worked hard, loved much and did the best she could in real life, as well as behind the TV screen -- is some sort of an omen.

OF COURSE, I can't prove that. That's how omens work; you're never sure till after something bad is in the rear-view mirror (along with the omen).

This one thing is sure, though. We need more June Cleavers -- more Barbara Billingsleys. But now we have one fewer.

That's ominous right there.

While we're waiting for whatever's going to happen to happen, here's the rest of the 1963 final episode of Leave It to Beaver.

3 Chords & the Truth: FALLing for tunes

It's fall.

The leaves are falling from the trees.

The temperature is starting to fall.

And we're falling for good music on 3 Chords & the Truth . . . because that's what we do.

Well, I think that about covers it for this week -- we're falling for music. How about you fall for the music, too.

And while you're at it, trying falling for the Big Show.

That . . . is all.

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

Your Daily '80s: Before KFC was KFC

Once upon a time -- 1980, for example, KFC meant something. Like Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Branding. I just don't get it anymore these days. Thank God hardening of the arteries hasn't changed a bit over the years.

Sick bastards = the new normal

See this billboard in Grand Junction, Colo.?

From what I can remember of my college American-history coursework, this would be at least as nasty as any cartoon ever drawn of an American president by an opponent who absolutely, positively hated his guts. Maybe a little more nasty.

It's as nasty as anything the Federalists aimed at the Democratic-Republicans. As over the top as anything the Know-Nothings threw at . . .well, anybody. As nasty as anything a South Carolina Democrat threw at Abraham Lincoln before South Carolinians unilaterally declared him Not Our President and shot up Fort Sumter.

By the time people hate their government -- and its leader -- so much that they're depicting the president of the United States as an Islamic suicide bomber, a stereotypical gay man, a gangster and a Pancho Villa-knockoff Mexican bandit, I think it's safe to say the country is sitting on a powder keg. And here comes a bunch of tea-party crazies knocking flint and steel together.

ACCORDING TO The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, the billboard came from the “constitutionalist libertarian” mind of "artist" Paul Snover. He told the newspaper he wasn't "allowed to say" who bankrolled it.

The billboard, erected along the I-70 Business Loop between 28 1/2 and 29 roads sometime Monday, depicts the four “Obamas” sitting around a table with playing cards showing only sixes bunched in groups of three.

Also on the table is a copy of the Declaration of Independence, a liberty bell, a toy soldier and a statue of Justice holding a balance.

Beneath the Obama caricatures are numerous rats, some of which are labeled as the IRS, trial lawyers, the EPA and the Fed. Sitting above all that is a line, “Vote DemocRAT. Join the game,” which is positioned between two vultures, one of which is labeled the U.N. and the other with the name Soros, a reference to George Soros, a major national Democratic financial supporter.

THE ARTICLE in The Daily Sentinel also gives us some idea of the contempt Snover -- who has described himself as a supporter of tea-party organizations and Glenn Beck's "9/12" movement -- has for the country's duly-elected government:

“The Constitution has been thrown in the trash and burned by our very own government and we the people watched TV while America burned! The enemy is not at the gate, it is a cancer within our own borders,” Snover wrote on the Mesa County Second Amendment Task Force website. “From what I have learned of history and what I see going on in all levels of government, I can but conclude that there is no constitutional republic any more, only a sick tyrannical twisted dictatorship."

IS THIS what tea partiers see as "American values," as opposed to "Marxist" ones?

That Grand Junction billboard and its creator's paranoid screeds are what "patriots" think is appropriate public discourse today? Goodness, what would tea-party favorite John Adams say about this kind of thing?

I think I have the answer to that.

He'd call it sedition, and they'd all be in jail right now.

Be careful what you ask for when you "take back America," people. You just might get it.

Your Daily '80s: Earthquake!

When the Not-Quite Big One hit Los Angeles in October 1987, the eye that never blinks was there.

Here's the late news coverage from KNBC, Channel 4. And you can let go of your chair . . . it's not like this is in Sensurround or anything.

We hate us! We really hate us!

Well, this is discouraging.

Not surprising, not by a long shot, but discouraging nevertheless.

Last night, this account of the Delaware U.S. Senate debate went up on The New York Times website. It describes the knives-and-bludgeons gutter fight between tea-party pin-up Christine O'Donnell and her Democratic foe, Chris Coons, where we see the candidates defined, on one hand, as the Red Menace and, on the other, as a papist puppet ready to impose the will of the Vatican upon an oppressed American public.

I can't wait for Nov. 2, can you? From The Caucus blog on the Times' site:

Christine O’Donnell, the Republican Delaware Senate candidate, and her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, hurled personal attacks at each other in a nationally televised debate Wednesday night.

A feisty, aggressive Ms. O’Donnell called Mr. Coons a Marxist whose beliefs came from a socialist professor and said he would “rubber stamp” the policies of the Democrats in Washington. Mr. Coons raised questions about whether Ms. O’Donnell’s faith would drive her positions on social issues like abortion, prayer and evolution.

Pressed by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, Ms. O’Donnell refused to say whether she believed evolution was a myth, saying that “what I believe is irrelevant.” As she did throughout the first half of the debate, Ms. O’Donnell quickly tried to return the focus to Mr. Coons, saying, “I would argue there are more people who support my Catholic faith than his Marxist belief.”

THE DESPAIRING thing about this account isn't that politicians play fast and loose with facts. The despairing thing about this account is that it's, I believe, a pretty fair illustration of exactly how divided, embittered, hateful and raring for a fight we are in America.

Back in September, I thought Jimmy Carter probably was engaging in some slight hyperbole when he said the country is Civil War polarized.

"This country has become so polarized that it's almost astonishing," he told NBC anchorman Brian Williams. "Not only with the red and blue states, President Obama suffers from the most polarized situation in Washington that we have ever seen -– even maybe than the time of Abraham Lincoln and the initiation of the war between the states."


THE MORE I think about it, though, the less I think the former president was engaging in hyperbole.

We've gone through bad times in this nation since 1865. We've fought over communism and Vietnam and civil rights. We muddled through 1968. The constitution survived Watergate.

Back then, however, we had a center -- both socially and politically. We had some degree of bipartisanship, a working across party lines, in the nation's capital.

NOW, we have two extremes. The center did not hold, and there's no Abraham Lincoln in sight.

The economy is as bad as it has been since World War II, people are hurting, people are scared, we're post-9/11, we're at war, we're all going broke, and the sexual revolution has laid waste to the American family. And on top of all that, we're at loggerheads over mutually exclusive notions of "how shall we live, then."

And we hate one another. We really, really hate one another.

Hang on. It's going to get ugly before whatever happens, happens.

All we need is a spark. God only knows what that will be.

Your Daily '80s: The computer for the rest of us

In 1983, this was personal computing:

C:\>dir

C:\>dir "C:\audio files"

C:\Audio files>dir "revolution 21"

THEN CAME the Macintosh in 1984. It had something called a "graphical user interface." It also had something called a "mouse."

You could click on an icon representing what you wanted or where you wanted to go.

It was a miracle. Look!


TECHNOLOGY. What would we do without it?

That's a great question. Just don't ask Steve Jobs.

Twenty-six years after he made the world safe for personal computing, he'd rather that you just don't bug him. Or Apple.

A college journalism student learned this the hard way when Apple media relations screwed her around, and she sent an E-mail to the top of the pecking order. That would be Jobs.

After the Apple boss deigned to send her back a snotty-tot reply, a brief exchange ensued, and then Jobs got the last E-word: "Please leave us alone."

In a market economy, that can be arranged. Sigh.

Taking a bite out of the media landscape

OK, people, we're breaking some news tonight on the ol' blog.

Tribune seems to have moved quite quickly after the recent misfortune of its chief innovation officer, Lee Abrams. New to the post at Tribune Tower in Chicago is Scout the Dog, who did some thing or another for Revolution 21 in Omaha, Neb.

Scout wasted no time chasing his tail, and his paws hit the ground running in the Windy City. And we've obtained -- exclusively -- his first memo sent to all Tribune hands (and paws) this evening:

From: Scout the Dog
Date: 10/13/2010 20:32:37
To: Tribune Co.
Subject: WEDNESDAY EVENING WONDERING


IT Seems to me that we have to be much more relational with our mediaconsimer base, as we endeaver to AFDI in building a new-media paradime.

Why is it that we only target our media products (and they are producks, we seek to exchange media info and coolness for the consumers media dollars) at such a small smattering of our potensul audience? In this we are being elitist, and elitist aint gonna cut it in the new media age when you can learn everything you need to know on in the Twitter scape? This is whacko -- hello?!?!?!? -- people, and if you can't get out of the way of the Future, then it is gonna run you over like The Bad Car when you miss his tyre by just a little bit(e).

I've seen what happens when you get run over by The Bad Car, which is the revolutionary future, and you don't want to be the rodekilled, believe me. Lead the revolutionshary foreces and AFDI re: the Future New Paradime, or get the HELL OUT OF THE WAY!!!

SQUIRREL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So what Im proposing we actualkly start actually AFDI RIGHT NOW is aiming more content toward our canine readers and viewers. THSI IS AN ENTIRE MASSIVE UNDRSEVRED MARKET HERE!!! AND WE AR LEEVING DOLLARES ON THE TABLE BY NOT REACHING OUT TO FIDO. OR REX.

I know this subjecct intematntely. Somone with the name of Scout should.

I'm seeying a show on WGN AMERica called Who Let the Dogs Out? -- WOOF! -- and it would start with an actual f***ing stampede of dogs running straight at the camera barking and barking, and then we do a quick cut to picturees of bitches in Heat (uh oh . . . I hope I dont get in troubble like Lee Abrams . . . HAHA) and then we have the exercize segment where we put up pictures of cats and we all run and run and run and try to jump through the TV screen to get the.m

That would be an excellent cardio workout -- can we get federal heath-grqant money to partially fund the production of this. AFDI! Lets' get on it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And the we could introduce variety into this daily segment by substituting other prey for the very pedestrian feline scumsuckers. I'm thinking right noiw

SQUIRREL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

about rabbytes and other bad interlopers we find in our yards when Master lets us out!

We can make this happens ASAP if we just AFDI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm also envissionying making our daily news[papers more canine freindlee as part of our antielitist agenda this quarter. We all don't actually read the newspaper but we all can use the newspaper, and printing helpful targets on it for the young paper-trainers. This especially would start targeting our struggling newspaper business toward a much-needed younger demographic -- we have to start growing that demo people!

We can't rely on old humans forever if our properties like the Chicago Tribune are still going to be around in 2020. Dogs! Are! The! Future! AFDI! Make it so!

SQUIRREL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is onlyt a very very small part of the innovation that needs to be happening in the Tribune orgianization. We need to be forward thinking, outside the box thinking and antielitist thinking to achieve our goals for future growth and to once again lead the media world as we put our minds toward AFDI!!!!!!!

I will continnue this theme in next week's Wednesday Evening Wondering as we explore the concept --- and I think this will be a real winner -- of Dog Whistle Radio for our FM stations!!!

Now go out and

SQUIRREL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

just AFDI.

Or else, a-holes!

Friends don't let friends E-mail that

Once upon a time, Lee Abrams could program some mean radio.

Unfortunately, radio is finished. And so, it would seem, is Lee Abrams.

Lee's undoing was in trying to operate at a great big media company just like he would at Z-Rock. In 1976. Which is ironic, because Abrams' whole spiel at Tribune Co., and at XM satellite radio before that, was how everything had changed, it's a revolution out there, and you could either change or suffer the consequences.

Then Abrams, Trib's "chief innovation officer," goes and sends a Z-Rock memo -- circa Cheech and Chong and including links to some Not Safe for Work videos from The Onion -- to the whole company. Including the Chicago Tribune. With predictable results, as reported by the Tribune itself:

Lee Abrams, Tribune Co.’s chief innovation officer, has been placed on indefinite suspension without pay pending review of a company-wide memo he sent to staff Monday that spurred a rash of employee complaints.

Abrams apologized Tuesday “to everyone who was offended” by the e-mail that included a link to a video labeled “Sluts” that included female nudity. The incident followed by less than a week a New York Times front-page story that characterized Tribune Co. management as fostering a sexist “frat house” atmosphere.

“Lee recognizes that the video was in extremely bad taste and that it offended employees,” Tribune Chief Executive Randy Michaels said in the memo announcing the suspension. “But, this is the kind of serious mistake that can’t be tolerated; we intend to address it promptly and forcefully.”

Abrams may still face additional disciplinary action, Michaels said.

“As I said last week, a creative culture must be built on a foundation of respect,” Michaels said, referring to an Oct. 5 note sent to employees ahead of the New York Times piece. “Our culture is not about being offensive or hurtful. We encourage employees to speak up when they see or hear something that they find offensive, as a number of employees did with regard to this particular e-mail. I can assure you, you will be heard.

YOU WANT to know why some videos are called "Not Safe for Work"? It's because they're NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Included under NSFW are videos, no matter how pointedly satirical, that include a woman pouring booze over her bare breasts and an "anchor" saying “stay safe out there, and don’t f*** any of those sluts.”

Longtime Chicago media writer Robert Feder has to be soooooooo enjoying this:

Tuesday’s antics were sparked by a typically idiotic company-wide memo written the day before by Lee Abrams, chief innovation officer of Tribune Co. (and longtime crony of CEO Randy “Show Me Your Breasts” Michaels). Although it contained links to some videos that any normal person would consider outrageously inappropriate for the workplace — including one in which women identified as “sluts” were seen simulating lewd acts — Abrams’ memo was not much different than dozens of others he’d written since 2008.

But before the day was over, Abrams was forced to apologize publicly for what he called “poor judgment,” and ordered his offensive email deleted from company servers. What made this particular “think piece” from Abrams such a cause célèbre? Three things:

* Chicago Tribune editor Gerry Kern chose to make an issue of it, lodging complaints to the company’s human resources department and to Abrams directly, and then publicly declaring: “I thought it was offensive and I thought it was completely inappropriate to be sent out in a workplace setting to everyone in this company.”

* Tribune media columnist Phil Rosenthal broke the story of the controversial memo and of Kern’s reaction to it, further distancing the newspaper’s editorial department from the corporate suites of Tribune Tower. Embarrassing as it was, it also inoculated the paper from even greater embarrassment if the memo had been leaked elsewhere.

* Most significantly, it came just six days after a scathing, front-page story in The New York Times exposed the “bankrupt culture” of Tribune Co. under the ownership of Sam Zell and the leadership of Michaels and his cadre of radio rowdies, including Abrams. Reporter David Carr revealed in vivid detail what company employees (and, to a great extent, readers of this blog) had known for quite awhile — that the Tower had become a playground for management’s adolescent fantasies and a cesspool of “sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective.”

JUST A BIT AGO, I said Lee Abrams' undoing was trying to roll like he was at Z-Rock three-and-a-half decades ago. Actually, that was just one part of his undoing, and perhaps not the most significant.

A key part of his undoing was not believing in editing. Of any sort.

He spent his Tribune tenure spitballing ideas. Normally, this is good. But when every wet wad of random thought you're trying to stick to the wall begins its life cycle as a stream-of-consciousness, typo-riddled E-mail you send to the whole bloody company, you're going to get a reputation for being flaky.

People are going to stop taking you seriously. Not that Trib people ever took Abrams seriously in the first place, being that he came to a company built largely upon journalism from a gig as "chief creative officer" for a satellite-radio company. And before that, from creating radio formats like . . . Z-Rock, or whatever.

Traditional media is in a pickle these days. Incumbent upon any "chief innovation officer" trying to earn enough trust to actually begin innovating is, above all, not sounding like you took the pickle jar and turned it into a bong.

Or, as the Tribune-owned Baltimore Sun's tech reporter and blogger tweeted just after the news of Abrams' suspension broke:

Goodness.. spontaneous applause just broke out in the Sun newsroom on the news that Tribune's chief innovation officer was suspended.

OR . . . as one Tribune refugee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-Los Angeles Times columnist Dan Neil told Forbes today:

“No one could ever figure out what those Monday morning missives meant,” Neil told me today, referring to the “Think Pieces” Abrams regularly issued, the final one of which proved his undoing. “And all I can say is that at least one of them finally had a positive effect.”

“Abrams was supposed to be some sort of morale officer raising the spirits of the troops and rallying them to the cause, but the effects of his Monday morning missives was precisely the opposite,” he continued. “There was nothing more demoralizing than getting one of these badly written, garbled stoner notes and knowing that this guy was at the top of the organization you worked for.”

EXACTLY. Abrams was a dead man "innovating" long before he sent that highly ill-timed paean to inappropriateness and Randy Michaels threw him under the bus . . . which is kind of like Adolf Hitler indefinitely suspending Joseph Goebbels for being a Nazi.

This, of course, brings us to the A-No. 1 Bigtime Reason for the Undoing of Lee Abrams (and, by the way, this is NSFW):


LEE F***ED UP. He trusted Randy Michaels.

As a result, he became the noise everyone ignored.

Your Daily '80s: So much for the Iron Curtain

". . . and the Iron Curtain is probably no more."

The date: Nov. 9. 1989.

If you're too young to remember the Cold War, you can't possibly understand what an amazing sight this was. And how giddy we were.

Mr. Weatherwax, I'm ready for my close-up

Molly the Dog said she'd give me five (5) tasty dog treats if I posted a glamour shot of her magnificent self.

Hey! Don't knock it. Dog treats ain't bad, once you get used to 'em.

A little cardboardy, but just fine with salsa.

The campaign against epic a-holes

While gay and lesbian activists were busy politicizing bullying and telling America that stopping some bullying is more crucial than stopping the other 85 percent (or whatever) of bullying, this was playing itself out in Trenton, Mich.

Watch the video. Contemplate the sick, sick spectacle of the Neighbors From the Bowels of Hell ridiculing and harassing a dying 7-year-old girl, all because of a neighborhood feud. Consider going so far as to fill your yard with tombstones.

Picture hauling a fake coffin past the dying girl's house. In a pickup painted as a ghoulish hearse.

Imagine posting a picture of the dying child's dead mother in the arms of the Grim Reaper on your Facebook page. Which also features a picture of little Kathleen Edward's head replacing the skull in a skull and crossbones.

People all across the Detroit area, and all around the world, are outraged. They've been holding candlelight rallies at the girl's house.

And the tormentors, Scott and Jennifer Petkov, now are national pariahs.

FOR SOME REASON, the Petkovs now say they're sorry. Very, very sorry.




AS FAR as I know, the swift end to those bullies' reign of terror was not the work of the National Coalition to Stop the Torment of Dying Children. It was the work of "You don't do that to children. Period. Much less dying ones."

It was the work of "How dare you treat people that way?"

It was the work of "You're a couple of cruel scumbags, and now we're going to kick your miserable asses."

IT WAS the work of common human decency. Remember that?

If we want to stop bullying -- if we want to prevent tormented kids from killing themselves and all manner of societal awfulness -- maybe what we need is just a single campaign . . . a single advocacy group. Call it the Campaign for Common Decency.

Because, face it, common decency needs all the help it can get these days.

Your Daily '80s: It's a modern miracle, I tells ya!

Behold the Tandy 4000, available only at Radio Shack!

It's a price breakthrough for a business-class personal computer! Just $2,599!

A powerful 386 processor!

Runs at a blazing 16 MHz!

Ready for next-generation operating systems, like OS/2!

Will wonders never cease in this George Jetson world of 1988!

Igor's not allowed

Because you just don't get quality local TV like Dr. San Guinary and Creature Feature anymore, you just don't get quality outtakes like this one anymore, either.

In this clip from 1977, Doc explains why Igor is not allowed to associate with certain horror-movie monsters. It would be untoward, at a minimum.

Suicide: It's an equal-opportunity killer

In case you've forgotten, America -- and given the state of the American hype machine the past week or two, I think you may have -- being gay is not the only reason youth get bullied.

It is not the only reason they kill themselves.

And, frankly, I'm starting to get scared that people are getting the message that gay-bashing is the only bullying going on out there. I'm afraid everything else is going to get overlooked.


HOW ABOUT this, America? How about we stop the bullying -- and suicides -- of all youth? Gay, straight, fat, thin, geeky, brainiac, spazzy, dorkish, gimpoid, stuck-up, slutty, virginal, lame-o, klutzy, doofus and religious fanatic.

Let's help them all.

Let's protect them all.

Let's save them all.

At its root, teen bullying -- or any bullying, for that matter -- isn't because kids are gay (or fill-in-the-blank). It's because kids are different in some way, and adolescence is hell on "different."

It's easy as hell to become the Other when you're 15. Hell, it's easy enough when you're 50. We humans don't "do" Other very well.

I've seen kids catch hell for all kinds of reasons. And oftentimes, kids who catch holy, unrelenting hell end up hating themselves enough -- or wanting the pain to stop badly enough -- that they embrace the most permanent solution they can think of . . . for themselves, or for the pain.

THERE WAS a rash of teen suicides in Omaha about five years ago, bringing wider attention to a deadly trend across Nebraska. The deaths led the Omaha World-Herald to publish a huge, and excellent, series on the subject -- not that our short attention spans let us recall this.

Or recall that the teen deaths, while sometimes linked to bullying, rarely had anything to do with homosexuality.

I don't mean to minimize how badly gay kids get treated -- they often are treated horribly, and that is horribly wrong. And, indeed, sometimes the specific illustration can give us a good idea of the general picture.

Sometimes, the "little" story tells the bigger one in a manner we can wrap our brains around.

But in this case, I think it's possible that the smaller picture might end up obscuring the larger one.

And the life that costs may be your kid's.

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.

Your Daily '80s: Video kills the radio star

Nah . . . just kidding.

Radio, as we all know, committed suicide. And you'll have to go to some lengths to find a music video on MTV today.

At any rate, we present a flashback to the launch of MTV on Aug. 1, 1981. OK, everybody knows the first video played on MTV was the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." But what was the second?

Stay tuned and find out.

Your Daily '80s: Weird . . . even for Al

Mix "Weird Al" Yankovic and Japanese television . . . and you might -- might -- have the weirdest thing that happened in 1984.

My magic box . . . in search of magic

You want to hear some heavy metal?

Try going back to the fall of 1935. You'll find some heavy metal nestled inside the art-deco wooden case of the Zenith 5-S-29.

This heavy metal, though, was made to fill a room with dance-band remote broadcasts. With soap operas and farm reports. With news, and with exotic broadcasts from across the sea.

Today, an iPod will give you music. Yesterday, this old Zenith filled your house with magic.

I know. I sound like a broken record (another lost metaphor only fossils like me get). But if you ask me -- and you didn't . . . tough -- one of the tragedies of our age is the absence of magic.

Where is the magic in an iPod? Where is the magic in YouTube? Sure, YouTube is a great tool . . . and, in some cases, a forum for all manner of tools.

And sure, You Tube can offer up stuff you never could have imagined -- or perhaps imagined that you'd never see again.

But it's not magic.

Kind of like the iPod, a zillion websites, Facebook, Twitter and whatever they'll think of next. All useful. All interesting. All with the potential to while away countless hours.

But magic? No, not magic.

MAGIC IS a multicolored dial glowing in the dark. Magic is the five tubes inside an old Zenith tombstone radio casting a backlight glow, silhouetting the angles and curves of a wood-veneer case.

Magic is the rich sound of a six-inch speaker fed by heavy metal and hot filaments.

Magic is the smell of ozone wafting through the room

Magic is sitting by yourself, listing to mellifluous voices on distinguished radio stations in distant cities, each with its own distinctive "sound." Each beaming the life of a far away place, a distinct local culture into the ionosphere and then back to earth, into a long-wire aerial, through the circuitry and out the cone speaker of a 1936 model-year Zenith radio set.

Made in the U.S.A.

Sitting in a darkened room. Singing into your ear and speaking to your soul.

Your soul -- where the magic lies.

Messages from the souls of men and women of the mellifluous voices in far-away cities speaking into microphones and putting turntable needles into the grooves of discs filled with music. Wonderful music.

Once, there was music in the air. Once, real people played it. Once, real radio stations communicated to "radio neighbors."

Once, magic ruled the air. Once, magic came to you on a Zenith "long distance" radio.

Once. Once there be magic. Now . . . "T'aint so, McGee."

Now, my old Zenith searches for ethereal magic in the still of the night. It searches in vain.

Your Daily '80s: Original Omaha punks

On this edition of Your Daily '80s, we see the evolution of some original Omaha punks -- R.A.F.

Remember, they're not getting older; they're getting balder.

First, we see R.A.F. from a cable-access program, Underground Omaha, in 1985. Think of it this way, what we have here is a time capsule of old-school punk, second generation.


Then, we see R.A.F. in concert in 1991.


And, finally, a couple of years ago at the My Generation Punk Reunion Show, held at The Waiting Room in Benson. I wonder what their teenage kids thought?

F***in' A. Rock 'n' roll!

3 Chords & the Truth: Any damn thing

OK, we took a week off here at the Big Show, but now we're back playing any damn thing.

Look. Here's our business card. See?

Right here. It says "We play any damn thing." And that pretty much sums up 3 Chords & the Truth, with this week's episode being no exception to the "any damn thing" rule.

For example, this week, we play. . . . Hang on. That would ruin the surprise -- the whole sense of audio adventure, would it not?

THERE WOULD be no sense of discovery, no sense of unknown delights lurking just around the next segue, would there? If you knew every single thing that was coming, it would just be one 90-minute long anticlimax.

And if that's what you want, you can just listen to your local commercial FM station.

No, here at the Big Show, we're all about surprises and "any damn thing." Any damn thing, so long as it's good.

The bad, we don't mess with.

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

Your Daily '80s: High school radio, 1982

Do you remember rock 'n' roll radio?

Here's a little of how it went at North High School in Torrance, Calif. Or, we can put it this way . . .

Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go
Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go
Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go
Rock'n, rock'n'roll radio Let's go . . .

. . . to the wonderful world of 1982 at KNHS.

SADLY, KNHS left the airwaves in 1991. About all that survives of the voice of Torrance's North High -- at least that survives in cyberspace -- is this video. And the cache of a now-deleted history of the station on the school's entry on Wikipedia:

KNHS, was an FCC licensed FM radio station transmitting on 89.7 MHz, serving the Torrance, California area with a variety music format. KNHS was first licensed in the mid to late 1950s and ceased when a short-sighted TUSD allowed the station license to expire in 1991. The station originally broadcast with only one Watt and did not transmit with its full licensed power until 1972 when its studios and transmitter were moved to the second floor of the Industrial Arts building according to the High School newspaper The North Wind.

There was no professional management for the station and students of North High School ran the station, therefore the programming, educational value and financial earnings potential of the station was never realized. There was no engineer for the station except for a contract engineer who was only called on when something was known to be wrong.

In 1967, Mr. McKenzie managed KNHS activities, to include the broadcast operations, setting up and running the audio system for plays, and calling play-by-play for Saxon football games, sometimes even broadcasting from remote locations (other high schools). KNHS also had speakers at various parts of the campus, including the "quad," cafeteria, and other areas. During breaks and lunches, the speakers were turned on to let students hear the station. A "landmark" is the tower with the two omni-directional "halo" antennas at the top. The tower originally was above the old broadcast area by the cafeteria (a sound booth, the operations booth with a Gates audio console and Ampex tape recorders, and a music storage room). The theme song for basketball games was “Sweet Georgia Brown.” When KNHS moved in to the (then) new 2-story industrial arts building (with the auto repair area on the first floor), the antenna tower was also moved to the roof of the industrial arts building. Mr. Fields took over for Mr. McKenzie around the time KNHS moved to the industrial arts building. KNHS conducted monthly tests by turning on the transmitter and letting it stabilize, then a monitoring company was called to measure the frequency to comply with FCC regulations.

Can a Catholic swill that kind of tea?

Think Jesus Christ was a tea-party patriot?

Think again. And think about how much of Jesus' teaching you have to toss in the circular file in order to become a smaller-government, individual liberty above all and f*** the poor kind of political activist.

Unfortunately, lots of Catholics aren't thinking much at all. Many probably are even buying into Glenn Beck's raging phobia about social justice, this while claiming membership in a church centered on our oneness in the Body of Christ and a command -- not a suggestion -- that we exhibit a "preferential option for the poor."

To be succinct, polls indicate that bunches of Catholics are buying into the notion that everything they are obligated to believe -- and to put into practice -- is the kind of "socialism" that's bringing our country to ruin. Ironically, many of these conservative Catholics are just the sort of folk quick to condemn their liberal coreligionists as "cafeteria Catholics."

WELL, who's in the serving line now? Our Sunday Visitor shines some light on this:

Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America, said that Catholic voters have been known for their propensity to switch party allegiance, but their strong show of support for the tea party comes as a surprise.

“What strikes me is that even though Catholics are attracted to this movement, there really is a pretty sharp tension between some of the basic teachings of the Church in regards to politics, the role of government and what we owe to the poor, and what these tea party advocates are promoting,” Schneck told Our Sunday Visitor.

Church teaching, he explained, has an inseparable link between rights and responsibilities for both the citizen and the government, with both having an eye toward promoting the common good. The tea parties, however, have argued for rights based on liberty, not responsibility.

“From that perspective it’s all about getting the government out of our lives and about citizens being free from the demands and needs of the country as a whole,” Schneck said. “Much as we might like otherwise, the Catholic argument is that government and citizen are equally expected to be our brother’s keeper.”

While the U.S. bishops have supported the idea of universal health care, tea party activists have commonly called for the repeal of Congress’ health care legislation. And positions argued by tea party activists on issues such as immigration, Social Security and the government’s regulation of racial discrimination by businesses don’t fit within the principles of Catholic social teaching, Schneck said.

“That kind of thinking is at odds with Catholic thinking about solidarity, about the common good and about the role that the political order should be playing in regards to the dignity of the human person,” he said. “So there’s actually quite a distance between what the tea party is advocating and the Church’s general understanding of how politics and governance should work.”

OF COURSE, there is dissent on the right.

According to Father Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, the radical extremists in the tea party represent only a small percentage on the fringes of the movement. At its heart, Father Sirico said, the tea party and its view of government are very close to the Church’s social teaching on the principle of subsidiarity, which favors doing things on a simplified level rather than leaving them to a more complex, centralized organization.

“I think the majority of the people who are involved in the tea party movement prefer things to be done at the most local level possible,” Father Sirico told OSV. “They are not against government in principle, they are against the excessiveness of government that we see, and that’s expressed in the principle of subsidiarity.”

AND WHILE Sirico allows that the tea party movement could learn something from Catholic teaching, he starts to sound like what Catholics on the right are so quick to condemn when it comes from the left. You've heard it before, as have I -- "How can a Catholic be a Democrat?"

It's a big cafeteria, people. Funny how tea-party "Catholics" could miss being right in the middle of it.

Please make sure you put away your tray when you're finished.