Your 'Cantore loses his s***' post du jour

  It's official.

  Thundersnow . . .  

(Jump to the 3:20 mark)    is better . . .  

than sex.  

And better than winning 

the Powerball jackpot, too.

Stupid me. I just think "Well, crap. 

I'm gonna have to shovel more than I thought."

3 Chords & the Truth: Pro DJ. Do not attempt.

Don't try this at home. Even if you're in a mood.

Yes, I'm in another one of my musical moods here in the 3 Chords & the Truth studios in central Omaha, by God, Neb. But I also am a trained professional, more than qualified to act upon those musical moods and share the results with you.

In other words, leave this thing to me and nobody gets hurt. More importantly, nobody's gonna be transitioning from the Backstreet Boys to Metallica. Eww.

And blecch!

AS FAR as this week's edition of the Big Show goes, you'll be hearing lots of classic soul and lots of classic pop, jazz and easy listening, too.

Mood. Mine.

Fortunately, my little musical moods lead to good stuff on 3 Chords & the Truth pretty much every time. I would say "positively all the time," but everybody hates a braggart.

Oh . . . before I forget, we also have some excellent -- and absolutely free -- advice for you at the end of the program this week. Stay tuned for that.

AND THAT about covers it. Stream it or download it, it doesn't matter. The Big Show will be the same Big Treat for your ears.

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

Polly want a divorce lawyer!

Forget your Smart TV, watch what you say in front of your cockatoo.

The adoptive owners of this cockatoo now get to hear all about her previous owners' acrimonious breakup a couple of times a day.

According to Elaine Sigmon of North Carolina, her Moluccan cockatoo Peaches once belonged to a couple who has since broken up. Today, the bird often breaks into loud (and possibly expletive-laden) tirades, dramatically moving her head from side to side as she screeches and "argues."

Sigmon told The Huffington Post that she thinks Peaches probably picked up her penchant for bickering from her previous owners.

"We had Peaches for several days when one afternoon she began ranting and raving as if blessing someone out," she said. "My husband, Don, was sitting in the chair near her perch and she began to aggressively point her head toward him just like someone pointing their finger while arguing ... We're not sure what she is saying, but she is really giving her opinion."

ON THE one hand, I can't stop laughing at this. On the other . . . that poor, traumatized bird!

I hope the Bickersons feel really good about their legacy -- the breakup that never, ever ends. No, we're not laughing with you, toxic original pet parents, we're laughing at you.

Farewell, Radio Shack

If I had a dollar for all the stuff I've bought at Radio Shack over the last four decades or so . . . I'd still be so far in the hole on the deal, it wouldn't be funny.

I loved Radio Shack, especially when Radio Shack was still the Radio Shack I knew when I was young. And now it's going to be gone, with the "surviving" locations being Sprint stores with a "Radio Shack section" in them.

Sure, I can get everything I got at the Shack online now, but it's not the same. And it's not as convenient -- no more making a quick trip down the road for that part or connector I need right now.

ON HBO'S Last Week Tonight, John Oliver takes aim at the snarksters laughing at the demise of a 94-year-old company. Good for him. Double good for him in producing the farewell commercial he -- and I -- would like to see run on TV.

Take that, you hipster, Millennial scum!

For old farts like me, Radio Shack was where you went to drool over cool stereo and communications gear. It's where you went to get a new needle for your phonograph. It's where you, as a kid, bought cool Science Fair electronics kits. It's where, like the corner drug store, you could test the vacuum tubes from your radio or TV.

It's where you bought batteries and Supertape. Remember audio tape?

Radio Shack is where I bought those boxes that let you put several inputs into a single "AUX" imput on your stereo. Several VCRs or DVDs on the "video in" input on your television set.

If you needed it, Radio Shack had it.

AND IF YOU wanted to spend some quality time pining for all the cool stuff that you didn't have but wished you did, you pulled out your Radio Shack catalog. That's all gone now, relegated to blessed memory like all those other lost things from the lost youth of middle-aged Americans.

If you want to snark about that, go ahead. I hope one of the soon-to-be-unemployed employees of the fallen electronics giant knocks you into next week.

Portrait poses prob for Piyush

Somehow, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has found time to stumble into a huge controversy over his official (above) and unofficial portraits hanging in the state capitol. 

You'd think destroying an entire state wouldn't leave time for extracurriculars. Go figure.

3 Chords & the Truth: What we got

We got New Wave.

We got Latin jazz.

We got classic jazz.

We got Cugat.

We got Green Day.

We got Basie.

We got pop.

We got rock.

We got soul.

WE GOT IT ALL, and you won't believe how we get from there to here.

We are the Big Show.

We are 3 Chords & the Truth, the podcast for people who love music.

It's a journey -- yes, it is -- and it happens every week at this same Bat Time on this same Bat Channel.

Be there. Aloha.

The Great Leap Nowhere

If a corporation is too crooked and too big a polluter for China, and if it's likely that an African government won't put up with its guff . . . where do you open shop next?

Duh.

Obviously, you go to Louisiana, where the governor is more than happy to throw tax incentives at you to pollute Cancer Alley just a little bit more -- or maybe a lot more -- and not create that many jobs in the process.

Ah, Louisiana. If it looks like a Third World country, and it smells like a Third World country, and it does business like a Third World country . . . it just may be a Third World country. Unfortunately, this one happens to be an American state whose governor aspires to be president.

Of the United States.

AL JAZEERA AMERICA tells us all about China's latest industrial investment in the Third World, right here in the United States. Here's how the series of three articles begins:

A prominent Chinese tycoon and politician — whose natural gas company's environmental and labor rights record recently started coming under fire in the Chinese press — is parking assets in a multibillion dollar methanol plant in a Louisiana town. And he appears to be doing it with help from the administration of likely GOP 2016 presidential ticket contender Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Not many locals in a predominantly black neighborhood of St. James Parish — halfway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge — know that Wang Jinshu, the Communist Party Secretary for the northeastern Chinese village of Yuhuang and a delegate to the National People’s Congress, is the man at the helm of a $1.85 billion methanol plant to be built in their town over the next two years with a $9.5 million incentive package from the state. The details of the project are unclear, residents say, largely because they were not told about the project until local officials, amid discussions with state officials and Chinese diplomats, decided to move forward with the project in July 2014.

“We never had a town hall meeting pretending to get our opinion prior to them doing it,” said Lawrence “Palo” Ambrose, a 74-year-old black Vietnam War veteran who works at a nearby church. “They didn’t make us part of the discussion.”

The Chinese company has filed for expedited permits to construct and operate a plant on a sprawling 1,100 acres — situated between a high school, two churches and an assisted living facility for senior citizens — from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, which is set to study the impact on the local environment and deliver its decision on March 6, 2015.

The plant is part of a recent push by New Orleans–area officials to reach out to Asia’s growing economic powerhouse to redevelop communities still devastated by the effects of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Some of those projects, it appears, have since gone sour. In one instance, which Al Jazeera will explore in the third installment of this series, a company contracted by the city government stands accused of stealing millions of dollars from Chinese investors seeking U.S. citizenship in exchange for building businesses in an underserved neighborhood.

Local economic development authorities told Al Jazeera that St. James Parish is an ideal location for the methanol plant because of readily accessible deep water and cheap fuel from the shale oil boom that will help cut production costs. But it remains unclear what the impetus is behind a methanol plant that plans to send the lion’s share of its product back to China, which is struggling to find a market for the methanol already being produced.

What is clear is that there are links between Wang’s U.S. subsidiary — Houston-headquartered Yuhuang Chemical Inc. — and the Chinese government and the Jindal administration.

READ the whole three-part series -- here, here and here.

Apart from urging you to read the whole series -- which obviously is a non-assimilationist Islamic plot against Bobby the Truth Teller -- I have little to say about this thing. I'm talked out, written out and outraged out when it comes to my home state. To quote the Steve Taylor song from 1987, "Since I gave up hope, I feel a lot better."

The reality of Louisiana is that Louisianians are basically incapable of effective self-government. The reality of Louisiana political life is that it's probably not too much worse than that of Guatemala, Honduras or some state in northern Mexico. The reality of the Louisiana economy and workforce is one where officials throw money at foreign companies to build plants that despoil the state's environment and poison adjacent communities (mostly poor and black ones, by the way) while state regulators look the other way and promises of many jobs become realities of not so much.

The reality of Louisiana is none of this is likely to change anytime soon. In fact, it's likely to get worse.

The reality is that Bobby Jindal's Louisiana -- just like Kathleen Blanco's Louisiana, Mike Foster's Louisiana and Edwin Edwards' Louisiana -- is that state government is likely to put up with a lot of Chinese corporate misbehavior that officials in . . . wait for it . . .  Zambia brought to a swift and dramatic end:

Last year [2013], Zambia's government seized control of a Chinese-run coal mine, saying Chinese managers had failed to address safety, health and environmental concerns.

In 2010, two Chinese managers at the mine were accused of shooting miners during a labour dispute, and clashes in August reportedly saw one Chinese worker killed and two others injured.

I THINK it is safe to say Louisiana will not be seizing control (or even much sanctioning) any industrial facility for failing to address pretty much anything. State government is much more accustomed to letting vested interests seize control of it. Billion dolla . . . cheap!

I can't change that. You can't change that. Short of a military invasion, street-corner firing squads and scores of re-education camps, the United States government can't change that.

Worst of all, Louisianians cannot -- or, more accurately, will not -- change that. I guess Third World is as Third World doesn't.

3 Chords & the Truth: Musical youth

Pass the New Wave from the left-hand side.

Pass the 30-something-year-old inside jokes from the top.

Ugh. At least this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth gets off to a better start than this week's post about this week's edition of the Big Show.

Now . . . where was I again?

I think I was going to mention just a couple of things about this week's podcast, which you can hear by clicking any of the BOLD RED LINKS. Or by pressing the little arrow on the PodOmatic player below. Or by clicking on the first episode on the 3 Chords & the Truth player over yonder on the right hand side of the page.

ANYWAY, one thing that you need to know about this week's Big Show is what you hear for about the first third of the show, give or take, is what your Mighty Favog was listening to a lot of in high school and college, back during his musical youth.  And I still love me some New Wave to this day -- my musical Not Youth.

Another thing you need to know about this week's 3 Chords & the Truth is that you may be witnessing the first-ever segué from Bob Dylan to Jeri Southern. Which totally works, by the by.

You also need to know that Garth Brooks' 1990 cover of The Fleetwoods' "Mr. Blue" kick the original's musical butt. And the original was pretty dadgum good.

And finally, you need to know that if the Big Show were a band, it would have played The Bayou (peace be upon it) on Chimes Street in Baton Rouge, just outside the north gates of Louisiana State University (peace be upon it once Gov. Bobby Jindal gets done killing it). The Bayou was the best bar ever, and all the best up-and-coming bands played there back in the day.

Ever heard of R.E.M.? Used to play The Bayou when I was in college.

SO YOU listen to this while I go grab me some cheap beer, put a quarter in the jukebox, grab me a pool cue and a table and hang out at my favorite hangout of my misspent youth. Even if it's only in my dreams.

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

Bigfoot lives, and he does social media!

The Boston Yeti enjoying #blizzardof2015 #Snowmageddon2015 #juno2015 pic.twitter.com/3uwTQ1gOZg
— Boston Yeti 2015 (@BostonYeti2015) January 27, 2015

Finally, a news organization not named The Star, the Enquirer or The Globe takes notice of Bigfoot, Yeti, Sasquatch, whatever you want to call him.

It's about time, CBS News!

In the midst of the potent wind and heavy snow, a yeti was spotted roaming around the streets of Boston Monday night.

As the blizzard of 2015 howled in, Bostonians were told to stay off the roads. But as tall figure dressed in a white, fluffy costume with grey gloves embraced the storm, documenting its trip and calling itself the @BostonYeti2015 on Twitter.

The mythical abdominal snowman started its journey in Somerville at 10:48 pm.

HOWEVER, I strongly object to the use of the word "mythical."

3 Chords & the Truth: By the numbers

Here is this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth by the numbers.

26.

There are 26 songs on this week's edition of the Big Show.

5.

Five distinct sets of music on this 3 Chords & the Truth.

72.

Times your host says "ummmm." Ummmm . . . I just made that up.

I . . . ummmm . . . don't . . . ummmm . . . think it was nearly that many . . . ummmm . . . times.

5.

Five straight records on the Big Show that happen to be vintage 78 r.p.m. singles. A whole set consisting of 78s, as a matter of fact.

Furthermore, one of them probably will surprise you.

3.

Three songs about magic.

1.

One song -- OK, probably three songs -- that had to have been staples on Omaha's supremely middle-of-the-road KFAB radio back in the day, back when the station actually played music.

4.

Four country records on the program this go 'round.

99 44/100.

Ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent pure fun this week on the show. The other .56 percent is just you being a bloody crank.

SO THAT'S IT. This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth by the numbers. Your mileage may vary, but probably not.

Of course, the only way to know for sure it to give it a listen. He says, cajolingly.

Anyway. . . .

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

A whore by any other name . . . is just as screwed

Here's the thing about being a whore: No matter how sweet-talking the john -- no matter how apparently solicitous the man who's bought and paid for you is -- you will never, ever be allowed to forget exactly what you are.

A whore.

Because it's not about you. It's about Not You.

Yes, Pro-Life Movement (TM), I'm talking to you. The institutional "movement," the one with D.C. offices and PACs and endorsements of candidates. The one that, at some point, may come to realize that it's the whore of whores -- Republican whores.

THE A-NO. 1 fact of political life in our nation's capital is this: Politicians can be bought. The A-No. 1 reality for groups like National Right to Life, the American Life League, yadda yadda yadda is this: You're not the highest bidder.
 
Unfortunately, Pro-Life Movement (TM), your Plan B was to prostitute yourself to the very people who you couldn't afford to buy, but who sometimes would smile and greet you in the hall -- if not too many people would notice. And you paid them for the dubious "privilege."

But someday . . . someday! Someday, you'd end up just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman!

Boy, that's sure worked out well.

You want some assimilation, Governor?

Louisiana's embarrassment-in-chief is at it again.

This time, Gov. Bobby Jindal went all the way to London to say deeply stupid things, making his state a laughingstock internationally as opposed to scandalizing just a domestic American audience, as Louisiana has done time and again.

In a speech to the Henry Jackson Society, a British think tank named for the late U.S. senator from Washington state, Jindal took discredited Fox News assertions about Islamic "no-go zones" in the United Kingdom and France, then ran with them in decrying immigrant Muslims' failure to assimilate into Western societies. After all, what is truth, anyway?

According to an Associated Press  report:

In a speech prepared for delivery at a British think tank, Jindal said some immigrants are seeking “to colonize Western countries, because setting up your own enclave and demanding recognition of a no-go zone are exactly that.” He also said Muslim leaders must condemn the people who commit terrorism in the name of faith as “murderers who are going to hell.”

Jindal aides said he did not make significant changes to the prepared text.

The claims on “no-go zones” are similar to those a Fox News guest made last week about places where non-Muslims were not welcome in parts of the United Kingdom such as Birmingham, and “Muslim religious police” enforce faith-based laws.

Steven Emerson, an American author who often is asked about terror networks, told Fox News that in Britain “there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.”

Prime Minister David Cameron responded by calling Emerson a “complete idiot.”

Emerson later apologized and said his comments “were totally in error.” Fox News also issued apologies for broadcasting the comments.

Jindal, however, used similar rhetoric during a speech, warning of “no-go zones” in London and other Western cities. Jindal’s remarks come in the wake of the massacre by Islamic extremists at a Paris magazine’s offices and subsequent attack on a kosher supermarket in the city. Three gunmen killed 17 people in the attacks.

“I knew that by speaking the truth we were going to make people upset,” Jindal told CNN during an interview from London.

“The huge issue, the big issue in non-assimilation is the fact that you have people that want to come to our country but not adopt our values, not adopt our language and in some cases want to set apart their own enclaves and hold onto their own values,” said Jindal. “I think that’s dangerous.”

Jindal’s parents immigrated to the United States from India. As a young man, Jindal converted from Hinduism to Catholicism.

TO HIS CREDIT, the governor did not tell his British audience that he was "a recovering wog."

"My dad and mom told my brother and me that we came to America to be Americans. Not Indian-Americans, simply Americans. If we wanted to be Indians, we would have stayed in India," Jindal, who is seen as a potential Republican Presidential candidate, is slated to tell the Henry Jackson Society in London on Monday, according to an advance transcript of his speech released by his office.

"It's not that they are embarrassed to be from India, they love India. But they came to America because they were looking for greater opportunity and freedom," Jindal maintains, adding that he does not believe in "hyphenated Americans."

"They like to refer to Indian-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, Italian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and all the rest. To be clear - I am not suggesting for one second that people should be shy or embarrassed about their ethnic heritage. But, I am explicitly saying that it is completely reasonable for nations to discriminate between allowing people into their country who want to embrace their culture, or allowing people into their country who want to destroy their culture, or establish a separate culture within," Jindal argues. 

THAT IS a fair point. But exactly what is "establish a separate culture within"? And exactly how credibly can the governor of Louisiana say such a thing?

For example, you have the United States of America. And then you have Louisiana. Technically, the state is part of the United States. Practically, not so much.

In Louisiana, you have an entire tourism infrastructure predicated upon how not typically American the state is. And if Louisiana ever were to be assimilated to the Borg level Jindal seems to advocate for immigrants to Western nations, it would cease to be anything one might recognize as Louisiana -- both for good and for bad.

If tomorrow, the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government woke up and decided to make Bobby Jindal and his constituents eat a big heapin' helpin' of what the governor feels free to preach to Europeans, I doubt that would go down well. In fact, it might go down something like this:

You want assimilation, Louisiana Governor Boy? We'll give you some damn assimilation.

First off, the United States Army arrives tomorrow to resume Radical Reconstruction, thanks to Louisiana's woeful non-assimilation on matters of race, poverty, education and official corruption. Your whole high-functioning Third World vibe continues to give the United States of America an international black eye. Furthermore, your election -- twice -- proves that the Louisiana electorate is in need of some radical re-education and, frankly, an attitude adjustment.

Also, because David Duke.

About that civil-law, Napoleonic Code thing that screws up your legal dealings with the rest of the country and makes it quite difficult for attorneys educated elsewhere to practice in Louisiana . . . we'll be sending a Justice Department legal task force within the month to rewrite your statutes and begin the rewrite of your constitution. Two words for you, Governor: Unassimilated and un-American.

And you now have counties, not "parishes" . . . and all your remaining "police juries" will be known as either "county boards" or "county commissions," effective immediately.

Now, while we're at it, about your state flag and state seal. . . . 

WE DETECT medieval Catholic symbolism for the Eucharist there. They'll have to go. Separation of church and state, don't you know?

What, Governor? You are displeased by our heavy-handed, totalitarian cultural imperialism? Just the kind of thing we have come to expect from unassimilated, un-American separatists like yourself. If you people do not wish to live as Americans, we certainly won't make you stay, Governor. Comprenez-vous?

Listen, Gov. Jindal -- May we call you Piyush? -- you quite publicly have made your and your state's bed. Now lie in it.

We are America. You will be assimilated.

Love and kisses,

The United States of America

The content of our character

Martin Luther King Jr., lived for the proposition that "all men were created equal," for the vision "that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

He also died for that proposition, that vision, that dream.

And it is for that "last full measure of devotion," to quote Abraham Lincoln, another great American who died because of a noble vision, that we honor Rev. King this time every year. To again borrow from our 16th president, King called us to heed "the better angels of our nature."

This trait in national leaders today is so rare that we are obligated to celebrate those who called us to transcend our fallen human nature all the more. It's important that we acknowledge that spark of the divine within us during an age when so much of the world seems to have gone to the devil.

Sadly, because we humans are a sad, sinful and petty lot overall, King's dream has yet to be fulfilled. Things are better, yes, than when an assassin cut down the civil-rights leader, but they're not good enough. Far too often, we judge one another by the color of our skin, not the content of our character.

That recently has been brought home right here . . . at home, in Omaha, Neb.

ENTER A small-time local Republican politician, Pat McPherson, recently elected to the state education board. McPherson seems to be one of those politicians who just can't help himself, or stay out of trouble. The content of the man's character seems to be, well, questionable.

More than a decade ago, there were allegations of groping a teenage girl dressed as the Red Robin mascot at a chain hamburger joint. McPherson, after a criminal trial, got out of that scrape, though not before he was pressured to resign as Douglas County election commissioner.

Now, after being elected to the Nebraska State Board of Education in November, McPherson is in trouble over his blog, The Objective Conservative. Several posts -- and McPherson has denied authorship or knowledge of the screeds . . . on his own blog -- refer to President Obama as "a half-breed," the latest coupling that derogatory reference with one to "our great Black Leader."

McPherson

Obama was described as a “half breed” in five separate postings on McPherson’s Objective Conservative blog — postings that McPherson said he did not author and that he disavowed after critics drew attention to them.

McPherson, a Republican, said they were posted by a contributor he would not name.

Three of the postings are written as if they reflect the opinion of the blog itself, which McPherson founded and said he co-edits. The three postings are listed as posted by Objective Conservative and are written with the pronoun “we.”

The three postings begin, “Frankly, we’ve had enough ...,” “We think Ted Nugent is cool ...” and “We are tired ...”

In one posting, the author jokes that the article may be their last because “we suspect the NSA has forwarded it to (Attorney General) Eric Holder for potential prosecution under hate-crime laws.”

The postings date back to May 11, 2011. McPherson said he deleted them from the site Tuesday. He declined to identify who wrote the blog posts, but he said he has expressed his disappointment to that person.

The chairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party said Tuesday that Ricketts “just flunked his first test as governor as he failed to ask for McPherson’s resignation.”

“How will Mr. Ricketts explain to schoolchildren and teachers why it’s OK with the governor for a State Board of Education member to have a racist blog?” Vince Powers asked.

Powers said McPherson either wrote the posts or is covering for the person who did.

He described the posts as “garbage.”

McPherson said Tuesday that he will “absolutely not” resign. He said he plans to shut down the blog and has blocked any new postings.

McPherson is a former Republican Party chairman in Douglas County who served as director of administrative services under former Omaha Mayor Hal Daub. He ran for the State Education Board on a conservative platform.

The blog, which claims to present a conservative view, is a hodge-podge of photos, articles and opinion. Much of the content needles Obama, Democrats and their policies.

ONE REFERS to an animal as a "half-breed." One does not respectfully refer to a human being that way. That, you could presume, goes double when the subject of your remarks is the president of the United States.

The term is biracial, one that could describe any number of McPherson's own constituents.

The temptation here is to launch into a grand dissertation about the wrongness of McPherson's views, the brazenness of his bile-spewing (and, seriously, no one really takes McPherson's disavowal of the contents of his own blog seriously) and how tragic it is that we Americans no longer can disagree with our fellow Americans without resorting to branding them as The Other. That ought to be bloody well self-evident.

The extent to which the obvious no longer is in this society is a direct indicator of how untenable it has become. Translation: We well may be on our last legs.

What else is self-evident -- or should be self-evident -- as this King Day winds down in Omaha is that Omaha-area voters messed up badly in electing not only a racist to public office but a man who didn't even have the decency to be a hypocrite about it on the Internet. A man whose public past ought to have given the electorate a pretty good idea about his public future.

Sadly, American voters oftentimes are just as foolish as those they put into office. Or bigoted, as the case may be.

FINALLY, it is self-evident that Pat McPherson is just another boil on the buttocks of American democracy. Worse, he is a cancer on the administration of Nebraska elementary and secondary education. It is a pity -- a tragedy, really -- that public disorders like McPherson are too often tougher to excise from the body politic than they are from the human body.

Martin Luther King's dream lives. But his work remains unfinished, thanks to human frailty, hearts of darkness and the politicians who exploit both.

In the name of King's dream and our future, we cannot afford to be content with characters like Pat McPherson. Either their day is done . . . or ours will be soon enough.

3 Chords & the Truth: More fun than 'procedures'

Let me assure you . . . this edition of the Big Show is funner than having medical implements of cauterization shoved up your nose.

Don't ask. Not my nose, per se, but just don't ask anyway.

It's also more fun than navigating around the remodeling of your kitchen, which will keep me out of the studio this week when I'm usually in it to do each excellent episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. Thus, this edition of the podcast is up and posted on the Internets a bit early this go around.

I guess that could be called a good thing.

Though the putting together of the Big Show might be a wee quick and dirty this week -- though one hopes not terribly so -- it's here. Right now. So there you go.

Did I mention that this week's edition of the Big Show is funner than having medical implements of cauterization shoved up your nose? Again, don't ask.
ACTUALLY, this week's 3 Chords & the Truth is pretty damned spiffy, if you ask me, an admittedly biased source. We have some tasty Top-40 goodness from years gone by. We have some beautimous Americana. We have some country. We have some rock.

And we have some roll, too.

Alas, I am rambling. Je suis fatigué.

C'est la vie, mon ami.

Anyway . . . good show this week, despite everything. I mean, you have no idea. Buy me a drink or six, and I might tell you. And give it a listen -- while you're buying me those drinks.

Sooooooooooo. . . .

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

Get your ice-cold cup of mortification here!

Oh, sweet Jesus!

Omaha native Jim Connor was mobbed Monday at the college football championship game, but not for scoring a touchdown.

He was cheered, applauded and even pawed. Not for making plays but for whom he plays — the latest icon in national TV commercials, concessionaire “Larry Culpepper.”
“I couldn’t walk through a public place without people stopping me, taking pictures and grabbing me,” Connor said Tuesday. “For some reason, this campaign really caught on. People love Larry Culpepper.”

In football-season commercials, the comedic character has hawked soft drinks for Dr Pepper. AdWeek magazine estimated the company has invested at least $35 million as an official “championship partner” in the College Football Playoff. And Larry is the TV spokesman, a guy with a deep love of college football, shouting “Ice-cold Dr Peppa HEAH!” and telling people that he invented the four-team college football playoff.

Two of the commercials appeared late in Monday night’s ESPN telecast, a game viewed by a cable-TV record of about 33.4 million people.

In Omaha, relatives, friends and former Creighton Prep classmates have delighted in Connor’s many TV commercials and other acting roles over the years. But his Larry Culpepper gig might top them all.

“Larry is similar to the guy we knew in high school,” said clothier John Ryan, a fellow member of Prep’s class of 1978. “Jim was a character, but he was also a tremendous debater and he was good in theater.”

EFFECTIVE immediately, the City of Omaha has changed its name to the City of Ahamo. We're hoping no one will notice that Ahamo is this "Omaha" place Larry Culpepper says he hails from.

Meanwhile, Creighton Prep must be stopped before our fair city is forced to again change its name to something like, I don't know . . . Hoboken.

3 Chords & the Truth: Give peas a chance

And carrots, too.

That's because the music on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth goes together like peas and carrots.

Forrest and Jenny.

Mutt and Jeff.

Pancakes and syrup.

Smith and Jones.

Oscar and Felix.

Black and white.

Big and Show.

Rum and Coca-Cola.

Gin and vermouth.

Pimentos and olives.

War and peace.

Rock 'n' roll. 

And . . .

3 Chords & the Truth.

GET the picture? Good . . . good to know.

And good listening to 'ya.

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