Because bird brain

Who's afraid of the phony owl?

Phony owl?

Phony owl?

Who's afraid of the phony owl?

Tra la la la la.

Honk if you love the water

If it's June in Omaha, you'll find Canada geese nearly anyplace it's wet.

In this case, that would be the Little Papillion Creek along the Keystone Trail, where this caught my eye on my daily walk. It looks like the waterfowl are having themselves a little community swim.

I'll honk to that. Or they will. Somebody.

How high was the water, Mama?

A lot more than 5 feet high and rising.

In fact, it was about this high in Omaha's Little Papillion Creek last week after the big storm.

Let's just say that anyone who might have been tempted to do a little urban whitewater -- OK, muddy brown water -- rafting in the wake of the June 3 deluge would have been making a big mistake if they had succumbed to the urge. They likely would have . . . succumbed.

You don't want to get hit by a giant, fast-moving limb. Is what I'm getting at.

John Boehner is flying right down to see this

The people angry person has spoken.

Did you hear that, Congress?

This is what you call an old-school protest, just like disgruntled would-be activists did it before Al Gore invented the Internets. The scribbled sentiment is near the northwest corner of 72nd and Dodge streets in Omaha, right by the Mall With 7 Stores.

OF COURSE, to get your message out effectively, you might want to pick a location next to a Mall With 100 Stores. You know, one that people actually patronize and isn't scheduled to be torn down this fall.

And, for the record, the doomed Crossroads Mall  has more than seven open stores. It has at least 15 12 10 that are still in there.

Give or take.

No, there's not really a man in it, either

This is an Arizona man's brain.

This is his brain on drugs.

And when this is your brain on drugs, you think "shoot the moon" is something more than just an expression.

Cameron Read, 39, was arrested on June 6 and admitted to smoking marijuana before trying to shoot the moon.

The man's girlfriend called 911 and said her boyfriend fired several shots from a handgun and was still armed at a home in the 4400 block of Preston.

Police said a 49-year-old woman and her 15-year-old son were in the home when Read reportedly fired a round out of the window, and they reported hearing several more shots as they fled the home. No one was hurt.

Prescott Valley police said they needed to use force to get Read into custody. He was booked into the Yavapai County Jail for two counts of disorderly conduct, two counts of endangerment, one count of resisting arrest, one count of criminal damage and one count of unlawful discharge of a firearm.

SOMETHING tells me that Cameron Read doesn't much. Particularly about science or physics. You know, books and articles that cover the concepts of propulsion, gravity and escape velocity.

It's just a hunch, but I'll bet I'm pretty spot on. Another hunch is that the killer weed he partook of might have claimed his last brain cell. Alas, he didn't have that many to spare.

Calling all Cajuns: Save Matthew Stevens!

The Mississippi State beat writer who unloaded on Lafayette, La., and Cajuns in general got his.

The Columbus (Miss.) Commercial Dispatch canned Matthew Stevens. It was well-deserved.

Stevens

It's one thing to say, in your opinion, that someplace stinks. It is quite another to say that, then lay it on, employing stereotype after stereotype, and then sticking a turd on top by making fun of an entire people -- Louisiana Cajuns -- and the way they speak.

"I'm not going to go as far as to say that they're not people," Stevens said during the show. "But I don't know what they are because they don't speak English - and it's not French - but I don't know what it is."

Co-host Brian Hadad responded with, "They're the missing link - if you believe in evolution - between apes and humans, there's Cajuns."

That, cher, is beyond the pale. And now Stevens knows how far beyond the pale it was. Would that Hadad of Bulldog Sports Radio suffered the same fate, being that what he said was worse. As in straight-up bigotry against an entire people, a people who in the mid-1700s were "ethnically cleansed" from Canada by its British rulers.

Both Stevens and Hadad apologized, apperently sincerely, for their toxic Internet-radio rant. That's appropriate, but neither repentance nor forgiveness obviates the need for temporal consequences for bad actions.

WHEN I POSTED on this Friday, I was (needless to say) mad as a hornet. Perhaps I ought to have counted to 4,000 before hitting the "publish" button. Well, dat's da Internets for you. And, basically, I stand by what I wrote -- I wish I had fleshed it out a little more, but I stand by what I said then.

That said, I think maybe now is the time for grace. I think maybe now is the time to make Stevens' "teachable moment" truly teachable. I think maybe it's time to make something good come out of something so publicly ugly.

Right now, I'm thinking of Rabbi Michael Weisser, who in 1991 was the cantor and spiritual head of a Reform synagogue in Lincoln, Neb. The New York Times picks up the story in an article from 2009:

One Sunday morning, a few days after they had moved into their new house, the phone rang.

The man on the other end of the line called Rabbi Weisser “Jew boy” and told him he would be sorry he had moved in. Two days later, a thick package of anti-black, anti-Semitic pamphlets arrived in the mail, including an unsigned card that read, “The KKK is watching you, scum.”

The messages, it turned out, were from Larry Trapp, the Grand Dragon of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Nebraska, who kept loaded weapons, pro-Hitler material and his Klan robe in his cramped Lincoln apartment. Then 42, Mr. Trapp was nearly blind and used a wheelchair to get around; both of his legs had been amputated because of diabetes.

In a 1992 interview with Time magazine, Mr. Trapp said he had wanted to scare Rabbi Weisser into moving out of Lincoln. “As the state leader, the Grand Dragon, I did more than my share of work because I wanted to build up the state of Nebraska into a state as hateful as North Carolina and Florida,” he said. “I spent a lot of money and went out of my way to instill fear.”

Rabbi Weisser, who suspected the person threatening him was Mr. Trapp, got his telephone number and started leaving messages on the answering machine. “I would say things like: ‘Larry, there’s a lot of love out there. You’re not getting any of it. Don’t you want some?’ And hang up,” he said. “And, ‘Larry, why do you love the Nazis so much? They’d have killed you first because you’re disabled.’ And hang up. I did it once a week.”

One day, Mr. Trapp answered. Ms. Michael, the rabbi’s wife, had told him to say something nice if he ever got Mr. Trapp on the line, and he followed her advice. “I said: ‘I heard you’re disabled. I thought you might need a ride to the grocery,’ ” Rabbi Weisser said.

Then, one night, Rabbi Weisser’s phone rang again. It was Mr. Trapp. “He said, quote-unquote — I’ll never forget it, it was like a chilling moment, in a good way — he said, ‘I want to get out of what I’m doing and I don’t know how,’ ” Rabbi Weisser said.

He and Ms. Michael drove to Mr. Trapp’s apartment that night. The three talked for hours, and a close friendship formed. The couple’s home became a kind of hospice for Mr. Trapp, who moved into one of their bedrooms as his health worsened, and Ms. Michael became Mr. Trapp’s caretaker and confidante.

Mr. Trapp eventually renounced the Klan, apologized to many of those he had threatened and converted to Judaism in Rabbi Weisser’s synagogue.

LOVE trumps hate. Every time. The man the Klan leader called a "Jew boy" and tried to run out of town saw the tortured human behind the contorted mask of hatred, then responded to the human being -- not the hate. And then a miracle happened.

It seems to me that Matthew Stevens is way ahead of where the late Larry Trapp was on that grace-filled day 23 years ago. I wonder what a little grace might accomplish in the heart of the 29-year-old sportswriter.

That's why I'm hoping some newspaper in south Louisiana needs a sportswriter. Actually, I'm hoping some daily in south Louisiana needs a University of Louisiana-Lafayette beat writer. And I'd like to see an editor at a south Louisiana paper who needs a sportswriter reach out to Stevens and offer him a job . . . and find him a nice place in a good neighborhood. (They do exist down there. Louisiana has its problems, but it's not a wasteland, after all.)

And I'm hoping that if a paper has a job, and if an editor reaches out to the Prodigal Sportswriter, that Stevens takes that outstretched hand and begins what might turn out to be the education of a lifetime. One in humanity . . . and in grace . . . and in the unexpected joys and tender mercies of a place on the map where he'd least expect to encounter them.

THAT'S WHAT I'm hoping. Pray God that someone makes it so.

There might be a hell of a book in that, one to be written someday by a now-chastened, unemployed sportswriter. But first things first.

3 Chords & the Truth: Yes, it's on the exam

OK, all you hipsters and hepcats and cool cats and rockers and freaks and punks and longhairs . . . your Mighty Favog has a question for you.

This question will be on the exam -- this question is the exam -- and the answer can be found on 3 Chords & the Truth.

Ready? Cool.

How do you put together Azure Ray, John Fred, Dale and Grace, Jerry Butler, Jefferson Airplane, Men at Work, The B-52's, Feist, The Mindbenders, Harry Connick, Jr., Leon Redbone, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Art Garfunkel, Ian Gomm, Michael Nesmith, The Doobie Brothers -- among other stuff -- and not end up with a musical hot mess?

BEGIN answering whenever you're ready. Feel free to use the Big Show as a reference tool . . . you will have 90 minutes.

On the test, spelling will count against your grade, and I will know whether or not you listened to the program from the detail in your answer. Don't expect a passing grade if you say "It's magic!" -- although your professor and proprietor will be flattered.

Finally, you have been given multiple ways to access the relevant podcast, 3 Chords & the Truth, so not being able to listen will not be accepted as an excuse. That is all.

Oh . . . except for this.

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

You have nerve, and then you have nerve

A sportswriter from Columbus, Miss., thinks Lafayette, La., is "the worst place in America."

You read me right.

Somebody from Columbus, Mississippi -- as in Burning -- thinks not only that Lafayette is the worst place in America but, indeed, that "it's not in America." And not to be outdone by his guest, Matthew Stevens of The Commercial Dispatch, sports-talk idiot Brian Hadad of Bulldog Sports Radio opined that Cajuns really aren't human at all.

Stevens

"They're the missing link -- if you believe in evolution -- between apes and humans, there's Cajuns," Hadad, the station's general manager, said on the Internet outlet. Well, now that Mississippians aren't allowed to openly define African-Americans out of the human race anymore. . . .

FROM THE story in the Advertiser in Lafayette:

From somebody who has spent his career working to right wrongs for the Cajun people, local attorney and cultural activist Warren Perrin says the words are spoken from "utter ignorance, prejudice and contempt."

"They did exactly what the British and Col. Charles Lawrence did to the Acadians three centuries ago: They judge all by the actions of a few. How sad we still find this in humanity, next door," Perrin said.

Stevens, 29, spent Thursday through Sunday in Lafayette to cover the NCAA Regional baseball tournament at M.L. "Tigue" Moore Field, in which MSU fell to UL.

During his radio show, he said he drove around Lafayette for 90 minutes in search of a neighborhood where he might live and raise a family but found nothing.

He also said that the only thing Cajuns know how to do is cook and that America would be better off without Louisiana.

"I think what this should do," said City-Parish President Joey Durel, "is motivate us to open our arms and show how wrong he is rather than prove him to be right. This is just an opportunity for us to prove him wrong."

Stevens has since apologized through social media and media interviews.

"It's me saying it, not anybody else's voice, not a bad edit," Stevens said to The Advertiser. "But after proper reflection as to what kind of human being I want to be, that's not It. And I don't endorse what I said in that rant or the opinions I had in that rant."

Last weekend marked Stevens' first time in Lafayette, and he attributes most of his bad experience with the city to safety concerns from staying in a hotel on the north side of town.

"I did have a bad experience in Lafayette, but whatever kind of experience I had in Lafayette does not give me the right to say what was said in my radio program Wednesday," Stevens said. "I obviously hurt and offended and angered a lot of people, and I take full responsibility for that. That's on me, and I can't take it back."

Stevens is a native of east-central Illinois but has lived and worked in Mississippi for the past few years.

Hadad

ANSWER ME this: Do you think a couple of jokers who said such things -- one via Twitter and both on an Internet station -- about African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Mexican-Americans or Native Americans would still be employed, even after issuing non-apology "apologies" in the wake of such open bigotry?

Let me help you out. The answer is "no."

The managing editor of Stevens' newspaper said, basically, the whole thing was unfortunate. You think?

"I certainly hate that this has happened because it's not an accurate portrayal of the city or our paper," Slim Smith said. "What I was really disappointed in is his characterizing so many people in a city with such broad terms. It's not a fair assessment to make. This will be a teachable moment for Matt." 

No, a "teachable moment" would be firing his sorry ass. And that goes double for Hadad, who thinks Cajuns are "the missing link."

And did I mention the dud-namic sports duo reside in Mississippi, whose sordid history (not to mention census data) leave its residents no damn room to talk . . . about anything or anybody?

That, my friends, not only is outright bigotry but also stunning gall. Absolutely amazing nerve.

As a south Louisiana native, I will admit that in many ways, no, Louisiana is not of the United States. Louisiana is more the northernmost Caribbean nation than it is American. After all, it was a French possession, then a Spanish possession, then a French possession again before it ever was part of this country.

MISSISSIPPI, on the other hand, has no such excuse. [Yes, what now is Mississippi, too, was variously French, Spanish or British -- the earliest French settlement on the Gulf Coast was where Biloxi is now -- but Louisiana was more heavily populated, under European rule for longer, for the most part, and New Orleans was a center of colonial government. -- R21] And as exemplified by Bulldog Sports Radio -- and the clowns it chooses to put "on the air" -- it still seems to be in the business of trashing anybody and everybody else in an effort to make itself feel better about its own shortcomings.

“If Obama wants to cut Louisiana from the union tomorrow, we are better off as people,” Stevens said. If excising states from the union will make us "better off as a people," perhaps the president should look a little bit more eastward than the Gret Stet.


HAT TIP: Romenesko.

 

UPDATE: Everyone's in full non-faux apology mode now. Well, that's something, though I wish experience hadn't led me to tend toward cynicism when it comes to things like this. It's easy to apologize if you think you might be facing a firing squad if you don't.

Me, I'd prefer to watch what young Mr. Stevens (and Hadad, too) does rather than immediately believe what he says. Louisiana-Lafayette broadcaster Jay Walker, however, is a more forgiving and generous soul than I am.
 
Such is the nature of so many who these two were so quick to trash in an attempt to look way cooler than they are.

Noah, call your office

We've had a little storm here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska.

Actually, we're still in the middle of a little storm -- or, more accurately, storms -- around these parts.

This is the typically Midwestern understated way of saying "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!" We've already smashed the record for rain in a day . . . which has fallen in about four hours.

So far. 

And in my part of town, we were lucky. There have been no rescuing people from houses in fire department boats, as there has been in northeast Omaha. There also have been no suspected tornadoes or baseball-size hail, as there have been north of town.
 
ABOUT 3 feet in the front of our garage got wet. So what -- it's a garage.

And nobody has had to rescue us with an airboat. That's something, at least.

I am, however, afraid to check out the basement.

Nighty night from windblown, hail-pocked, flooded Omaha. The College World Series starts at the end of next week -- let's hope there's something left for folks to visit.


UPDATE: Make that "smashed the record for rain in day for the month of in June." It was Omaha's fifth-highest all-time rain total for a single day.

3 Chords & the Truth: Nineteen seventy-one

 
¿Quién es más bueno, 1967 o 1971?

¿Quién es más bueno, 1967 o 1971? 

If you're on the early end of the Baby Boom generation, I'll bet you'd say 1967 when you're arguing the best year for music on the radio.

If you're on my end of the Baby Boom -- the late end -- I'll bet you'd argue that, no, 1971 was a better music-radio year than 1967. I don't know about you (and you might be a Millennial and thoroughly confused by the whole question for all I know), but I love me some 1971.

1971 WAS a great year for music -- particularly Top-40 radio. And if you don't believe me . . . brother, you need to be listening to this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

You. Have. No. Idea.

But lucky for you, the Big Show is here to give you one.

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

Louisiana's grand prix of political obscenity

In a state notoriously indifferent to the needs of its citizens and -- let's face it -- the idea of fundamental civic decency, Louisiana legislators have no problem with the short bus having to go up against Indy cars in the race for tax dollars.

Guess who won.

In the Gret Stet, it's a matter of the survival of the fittest -- and the richest. And state senators aren't shy about putting taxpayer dollars where they're not needed to make sure those who can fend for itself get an even bigger head start on those who cannot. But in a state where one former governor was known as "The Silver Zipper" before he went off to a federal penitentiary and a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard almost became governor, the obscene is nothing to lose sleep over.

The Advocate in Baton Rouge reports on the Senate Finance Committee stripping funds dedicated to aiding the disabled as just another thing during a day in the life of the Louisiana Legislature. Which, unfortunately, it is.

As LSU battled for the SEC Tournament Championship on Sunday, the Senate Finance Committee was at the State Capitol unraveling much of the Louisiana House’s work on the $25 billion state spending plan.

Out went $63 million in cuts to contracts, state government jobs, overtime and technology expenses. Out went reductions to economic development programs. Out went some of the extra money for the disabled community.

Additions included $4.5 million for a Verizon IndyCar Series race at the NOLA Motorsports Park in Jefferson Parish. Gov. Bobby Jindal had committed to find the money for facility and track improvements.

“We’re taking money away from the disabled community and giving it to motor sports?” state Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge, asked Sunday night as he thumbed through 47 pages of amendments.

The committee’s chairman, state Sen. Jack Donahue, jumped in when a Senate aide gave Claitor a vague answer about the funding being part of the overall plan.

“The answer to your question, Sen. Claitor, is ‘yes.’ Alright, any other questions?” said Donahue, R-Mandeville.

Claitor was the only committee member who voted against the sweeping amendments. On a vote of 10-1, the committee approved the changes to House Bill 1, the state operating budget for the fiscal year that starts in July. The bill now goes to the Senate floor for debate.

The state budget funds schools, hospitals, prisons and other public expenses. The House had to fill a number of funding gaps. Jindal didn’t include enough money for public schools or the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, also called TOPS.

OF COURSE, the NOLA Motorsports Park is a private facility, owned by a rich doctor whose family runs one of the world's leading builders and operators of offshore-service vessels for the oil and gas industry. If, as a lawmaker, you're going to be shameless, go big or go home.

Sadly, "go away" doesn't seem to be an option here.

The world, explained

In case you were wondering how the world works, this short video is as good an explanation as any.

All you have to do to get ahead is . . . the utterly impossible. Just, in this case, repeal the laws of mathematics and physics and give the customer seven red lines, each perpendicular to all the others. Some should be made with green ink, others with transparent ink.

By the way, could you make at least one line in the form of a kitten?

Don't forget the kitten. Market research shows that people love kittens.

Meow.


HAT TIP:  CNET.

Targeted ads for your garden-variety killer

You'd think sending out breaking-news email blasts wouldn't be brain surgery for a newspaper.

But sometimes at The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La., everything is brain surgery, and there are no brain surgeons on staff. And no one there plays one on TV, either.

Thus, this unintentionally hilarious Advocate news alert from three days ago.

A highly amused high-school classmate posted this on Facebook. That's The Advocate, not so good journalistically a lot of the time, but usually a pretty good reason to shake your head and chuckle.

The watchdog rolls over, plays dead

Nebraska Watchdog, a political-news website, is blazing a journalistic trail in the United States today.

Unfortunately for it and for the rest of us, the trail ends at the edge of a cliff, and it's a one-way thoroughfare.

In the name of "objectivity," the website said last August that "in order to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest," it wouldn't cover the gubernatorial race because Republican candidate Pete Ricketts is one of its major financial contributors.

Perhaps because we have publicized it on our website since our 2009 launch, many of our readers know Omaha businessman Pete Ricketts is a founding contributor to the non-profit Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, of which Nebraska Watchdog is a part.

As you may also know, speculation is growing that Ricketts may soon enter the 2014 Nebraska governor’s race.

It is important to note that no donor to the Franklin Center, and there are many, have any editorial control over Nebraska Watchdog’s content.

However because of Ricketts’ financial relationship with the Franklin Center, Nebraska Watchdog has decided not to report on the governor’s campaign while Ricketts is a likely or actual candidate.

AND THAT'S exactly what has happened. Nebraska Watchdog hasn't reported on the race. The gubernatorial race. Because a disclaimer at the end of every story on the governor's race wouldn't be sufficient?

Because scrupulously fair and balanced coverage, combined with a disclaimer at the end of every story on the Nebraska governor's race wouldn't be enough to quash scurrilous talk about the "appearance of a conflict of interest"?

When a "news" site abandons its fundamental mission -- covering the news, and voters deciding who will be the next leader of their state seems like reasonably big news to me -- it begs a couple of questions. First, is it really true that "no donor to the Franklin Center, and there are many, have any editorial control over Nebraska Watchdog’s content"? Or is Watchdog managing editor Joe Jordan merely really, really afraid of what would happen to his operating expenses (or his future employment) if his reporting on Sarah Palin's favorite Nebraska gubernatorial candidate went somewhere a major sugar daddy didn't want it to go?

Oh, did I mention that the notoriously right-wing Koch brothers also are major donors to the Franklin Center?

Second, has Jordan's no-coverage stance made him boss of a news outlet which will end up with little to do and less reason to exist? If Pete Ricketts wins in November -- which he likely will in this bright-red state -- will Nebraska Watchdog, by that no-appearance-whatsoever-of-a-conflict-of-interest reasoning be unable to cover any political story to which Ricketts is somehow connected? Will there be zero coverage of the executive branch of Nebraska's state government, no reporting on the governor's legislative agenda, no mention of bills the governor has threatened to veto . . . or bills the governor says he'll sign?
 

Joe Jordan

WHEN EVERY story dealing with a major donor is too hot to handle, and when that major donor happens to get himself elected governor, what then? If logic and consistency is as important to the Nebraska Watchdog chief as not looking bad (no matter how bad that makes you look), he may have backed himself into an inescapable corner.

And we thought there was an inherent conflict between business and editorial functions in the advertising-supported media. Now it's looking like the non-profit mode -- when it relies on corporate or individual sugar daddies -- may be even more problematic.

That's a fine mess Joe Jordan has gotten himself into.

If this is how Nebraska Watchdog rolls, and how it will continue to roll, perhaps the Watchdog has had its day already. And perhaps the time has come to quit while it's behind . . . the eight ball.


HAT TIP: Romenesko.

3 Chords & the Truth: Satisfaction guaranteed

Look at the Big Show as being kind of like the Monkey Ward catalog long ago and far away -- we have a little bit of everything.

This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth  will prove that to you. Just like last week, and the week before that, and the week before that, and the week before that, and the week before that. . . .

And we even have a little David Rose off of that 1962 Montgomery Ward promotional LP, in honor, of course, of the ex-department store's 90th anniversary some 52 years ago. So there you go.

Make sure you check out all the other departments in our audio store, though. Lots of good stuff around every corner and down every aisle.

We're sure you'll like what you find on the Big Show, and that's a proposition we stand behind 100 percent. As our slogan goes, "Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back."

OF COURSE, every episode of 3 Chords & the Truth comes to you absolutely free of charge, but you know what we mean. When it comes to our hand-picked variety of the world's greatest music, 'satisfaction guaranteed" means just that.

Even if no money changes hands.

Oh, God, I'm rambling. Don Draper, get me out of this!

What?

Oh, right -- brevity. Wrap it up. Gotcha.

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Vintage vinyl o' the day

You don't have to ask me twice whether I want to buy -- $2.50 . . . cheap! -- some flaming red vinyl.

I almost don't care what's on it, though in this case, I lucked out. It's classic David Rose, from a 1962 promotional album put out by Montgomery Ward in honor of the venerable department store's 90th anniversary.

This was one of nine put out that year by Ward's, which called the special releases the Nine Top Artist Series. Obviously, with artists like Rose and his orchestra, Lawrence Welk, Artie Shaw, The Ink Spots and The Three Suns, these LPs did not represent the Nine Top Artist Series for Teenyboppers.

Click on album covers to enlarge

But speaking as someone who was a toddlerbopper in 1962, I still think it's all pretty jake . . . er, cool . . . er, groovy . . . er, exemplary.

WHAT I ALSO think is pretty exemplary are my memories of great old department stores like Monkey Ward's, as everyone called the late, great company back then. It was one entity of what I guess you could have called the Holy Trinity of Retailers -- Sears and Roebuck, J.C. Penney and Montgomery Ward, founded (if you do the early-'60s math) in 1872.

Ward's succumbed to modernity in 2000 but was sort of resurrected in 2004 as an online retailer by a company -- itself since acquired by yet another company -- that bought the name and intellectual property of the gone-bust giant. Meantime, Sears and Penney's are hanging on by their fingernails, mere shells of what they once were commercially and as cultural icons.

THE MUSIC with which Montgomery Ward celebrated its success once upon a time remains, though. Music, unlike institutions, never dies.

Though time marches on and memories eventually fade, the music plays on. The music plays on.

And it plays on 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there this weekend. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Stacks of wonderful wax

'S wonderful, music is.

That's why yours truly does this little thing called 3 Chords & the Truth.

That's why yours truly also will scour the used-record bins in any thrift shop, antique store, record store -- you name it -- in search of something . . . well . . . 's wonderful. And I bet you wouldn't be horribly surprised to find out how much of the Big Show consists of those estate-sale, used-LP-bin and thrift-store gems, many from years before I was on this earth.

Last time on the program, I asked folks to tell me about their greatest used-vinyl find at a thrift store, the used-record section of their favorite music store or perhaps even an estate or garage sale. (That's "boot sale" for you Brits.) And dadgum if listener Russell Wells of Clarksville, by God, Indiana, didn't tell me about the near-mint, 1950s pressing of Ray Conniff's "'S Wonderful" album he found for a buck in a thrift-shop bin.

Well, your Mighty Favog of Omaha, by God, Nebraska, found himself a near-mint copy of that very same LP . . . and we're playing a cut off of it on the Big Show this week. It may have set your benevolent host back more than a dollar bill, however. That's just how the record spins, alas.

ANYWAY, that bit of the vintage Conniff sound is just one of many memorable musical moments on 3 Chords & the Truth  this revolution around the ol' turntable, and you'll be sorely deprived if you miss a single one.

And can someone please pull me back close enough to the present so I can get the ol' postmodern needle back in the groove and stop writing all aw-shucks glib just like I was stuck in 1953? Pretty soon, somebody's gonna enter me in a jitterbug contest at the ol' soda-fountain hep-cat hangout . . . and don'tcha know . . . I can't bop my way out of the ol' proverbial paper sack.

Well, that's about it for the ol' blog scribblin' about this latest episode of the show. Check it out, to hear your host with the most patter between the platters with the best stacks of wax in the ol' US of A!

Enough ramblin' for today, kiddos . . . I'll be diggin' you on the flip side Daddy-O!

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Damn! Missed it by this much

Dammit, I missed the deep-fried meteorological cataclysm that laid (burp) waste to eastern Tejas the middle of last month.

To see this sort of display of extreme weather, I could become a storm chaser yesterday. All you need is a camera, the local radar on your smartphone and a carload of ketchup, salt, pepper and mustard.

And wet wipes. Lots of wet wipes to deal with the storm's (burp) aftermath.

Obviously, the ideal position to take as an onion-ring storm chaser would have been Wac(k)o, where I could have hunkered down in not-so-safe shelter with a case of Dr. Pepper.

I do love me some Dr. Pepper.

Obviously, I need to pay more attention to the World's Best Weatherman up yonder in Nova Scotia.


HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

This was an entertainment center

Did you know there were wireless remote controls in 1940?

There were -- for your top-of-the-line Philco radio-phonographs.

Did you know there were phonographs that worked kind of like modern CD players?


IN 1940, there were -- on your deluxe Philco radio-phonographs. The electronics giant's Beam of Light record players were as easy on your 78s as they were hard on your bank account at the end of the Great Depression.

When you dialed up the phonograph on your radio-frequency remote, the tone arm would come down on the record, a lightweight sapphire stylus with an attached mirror would lower onto the record and reflect a light beam off of the moving mirror to a photovoltaic cell, which would modulate electric current into electrical impulses that would be amplified and . . . voila!

Music.

If you love old electronics like I love old electronics, it doesn't get much cooler than this. The miracle of modern technology -- 70-something years ago!

And the glowing tone-arm head just looks cooler than hell. The whole thing is just cooler than hell.

From the mouths of babes

Hi, I'm Ben Sasse, and I want to destroy shit. Here, I'll let my little girls Alex and Corrie tell you about how badly I want to destroy shit.

I'm a Republican. That's what we do.

Because we despise shit. Especially shit with Obama's name on it. 

BLAMMO!

That's the sound of me destroying Obamacare. Because we have to destroy this village to save it from Obama. I despise saying Obama. Even if tens of millions of people have No Care after we destroy Obamacare, at least No Care sounds better than Obamacare.

Exclusive video: State GOP strategy meeting

I DESPISE that shit. That Obama shit.

And since I understand that you despise that shit and want to destroy that shit, I despise that shit worser. And I'm here to let my sweet little girls tell you all about the shit I despise and will destroy for you . . . because that's how I roll.

That pinkobama shit's gonna get blowed up. Blowed up good.

Remember . . . the family -- no doubt before a hearty breakfast of human entrails and gunpowder -- that prays for the opposing candidates (to be destroyed) stays together.

On the Group W bench. Next to Sarah Palin.