You says you don't learn anything from TV?
Why, just this past weekend on Saturday Night Live, we learned that even Satan has his limits.
These are among the buttons on the jukebox of my musical formation -- eclectic selections that once spun on a 1948 Silvertone, that or a 1962 Magnavox. They spin still in my memory . . . and now on a couple of turntables in my Omaha studio.
There's a date on the back of this Jim Reeves album -- 6-9-1962. It seems to be in my mother's uneven hand. She was 12 years younger than I am now, and she lived in a different world. Different worlds, actually.
So did we all then.
THERE'S STILL a price tag from D.H. Holmes on it . . . several of them.
In 1962, D.H. Holmes department store -- D.H. Holmeses to Mama, Irene Reilly and half the people in south Louisiana -- was all that and a Dixie 45. D.H. Holmeses was where we bought our TV sets and records and other cool stuff . . . and, of course, your macaroons and tea cakes.
D.H. Holmeses ain't dere no more. The one on Canal in New Orleans now is a hotel, but Ignatius still waits under the clock in front for his mama. He's a good boy -- not at all like them "gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs and lesbians, all too well protected by graft" that New Orleans is so infamous for.
The big Holmeses in Baton Rouge -- our Holmeses, which still was little in relation to the big, old Holmeses some 80 miles south -- now is a ghost in the middle of what used to be the Bon Marché shopping center, which now is the Bon Carré bidness park.
And if you listen real hard, you can hear the new Jim Reeves album playing in the record department. Close by, Mr. Ruffino is selling a 21-inch Magnavox black-and-white console TV to my old man.
But not the color set. Color television is just a fad.
Might even be communiss. You never know nowadays.
Coach Paterno will go down in history as one of the greatest men. Most of you know him as a great football coach. I've had the privilege and honor to work for him, spend time with him. He's had such a dynamic impact on so many, so many — I'll say it again — so many people and players' lives.-- Tom Bradley,
Penn State interim coach
President Clinton was so darling to me, and as loyal and faithful a man as you can find. I remember he was so sweet about a blue dress I used to have. Before it was evidence. He said I was so pretty in it. He was always considerate of others that way.-- Monica Lewinsky,
former White House intern
Richard Nixon was always concerned about the law. Also, he was such a faithful and religious man. He was always talking about God and Jesus. I remember how it'd just pop out of the depths of his soul -- like, he was always telling me "Jesus Christ, Henry!" Or, "Goddamn it to hell!" He was always eager to see more divine justice in the world.
Once, in the Oval Office close to that unfortunate day, he even begged me to pray with him. Such a spiritual and holy man, he was.-- Henry Kissinger,
former secretary of state
Dolphie is a great, great man. He makes the trains run on time . . . and the autobahn! It's to die for.
Der Führer is such und sweethearten, auch! He always tells me, "Eva, Sie werden nie haff to worry at alles about beink senten to den Konzentrationslagern. We will be together for as long as we live."
Und he likes puppies, auch.-- Eva Braun,
Reichsmistress
(March 1945)
“I think the point people are trying to make is the media is responsible for Joe Pa going down,” said freshman Mike Clark, 18, adding that he believed Mr. Paterno met both his legal and moral responsibility by telling university authorities about Mr. Sandusky’s alleged 2002 assault on a boy in a school shower.
Demonstrators tore down two lampposts, one falling into a crowd of students. They also threw rocks and fireworks at police, who responded with pepper spray. The crowd undulated like an accordion, with the students crowding the police and the officers pushing them back.
“We got rowdy and we got maced,” Jeff Heim, 19, said rubbing his red, teary eyes. “But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend.”
An orderly crowd first filled the lawn in front of Old Main when news of Mr. Paterno’s firing came via students’ cell phones. When the crowd took to the downtown streets, it’s anger and intensity swelled. Students shouted “We are Penn State.”
Some blew vuvuzelas, others air horns. One young man sounded reveille on a trumpet. Four girls in heels danced on the roof of a parked SUV and dented it when they fell after a group of men shook the vehicle. A few, like Justin Muir, 20, a junior studying hotel and restaurant management, threw rolls of toilet paper into the trees.
“It’s not fair,” Mr. Muir said hurling a white ribbon. “The board is an embarrassment to our school and a disservice to the student population.”
(snip)
Greg Becker, 19, a freshman studying computer science, said he felt he had to vent his feelings anyway.
“This definitely looks bad for our school,” he said sprinting away from a cloud of spray. “I’m sure Joe Pa wouldn’t want this, but this is just an uproar now, we’re finding a way to express our anger.”
As the crowd got more aggressive, so did police officers. Some rioters fought back. One man in gas mask rushed a half dozen police officers in protective gear, blasted one officer with spray underneath his safety mask and then sprinted away. The officer lay on the ground, rubbing his eyes.
Paul Howard, 24, an aerospace engineering student, jeered the police.
“Of course we’re going to riot,” he said. “What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o’clock that they fired our football coach?”
At 2 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, during the first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, all television channels and radio stations in the United States were supposed to be interrupted by piercing emergency tones. Not a song by Lady Gaga.HERE IN OMAHA, otherwise known as Ground Zero with U.S. Strategic Command headquarters just south of town, the national EAS test started late and the audio was horribly garbled, like an aural Tower of Babel of static and overdubs. If this is technological progress in attack warning, perhaps it's time to resurrect Conelrad.But as tests often go, there were some failures, with viewers and listeners in many states saying they saw and heard the alerts at the scheduled time, while others did not. Some DirecTV subscribers said they heard Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” when the test was under way. Some Comcast subscribers in northern Virginia said their TV sets were switched over to QVC before the alert was shown.
The federal agencies charged with testing the alert system found that there were flaws, particularly in the system’s connections to cable and satellite distributors. In some cases, the test messages were delayed, perhaps because they were designed to trickle down from one place — the White House in this case — to thousands of stations and distributors.
In Los Angeles, some viewers said the alert, intended for 30 seconds, lasted for almost half an hour; in New York, some viewers didn’t see it at all. But many others reported that the alert arrived right on time and ended right away.
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.3TO THE chanting rabble of much education and no perspective, Penn State football is a modern-day golden calf. The idol pushing not only God out of their hearts, but also justice and rightly ordered compassion.
It is written: "You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve."
I am forever grateful to L.S.U. for the opportunities given to me and countless other rural children, many of us the first in our families to attend college or graduate. Yet, 35 years after leaving campus, I worry that football success has obscured L.S.U.’s escalating academic ambition and its struggle to maintain excellence over the past three years in the face of about $50 million in state appropriation cuts and the loss of a tenth of its faculty.DO GEAUX NOW and read the whole thing.
“If we sent the football team out with only 10 players, how would people feel?” said John M. Hamilton, L.S.U.’s executive vice chancellor and provost.
Let’s be clear: budget cuts are not the football team’s fault. L.S.U. has one of the few self-sustaining athletic departments. It does not use state tax dollars or student fees. Instead, the athletic department contributes 5 percent of its budget to the university annually — about $4.25 million at this point — and has spent millions to help finance a band hall and business school.
There is nothing like Saturday nights at Tiger Stadium. Tailgating summons the best of Cajun culture — geniality, cooking and storytelling. And football success buoys a state sagging under the weight of poverty, educational lethargy and high rates of cancer, obesity and infant mortality.
“When we’re No. 1, it’s usually for something bad,” an L.S.U. fan named Rudy Penton once told me.
Oh, and there we were all in one placeALL MY LIFE I have watched the pillars of society crumble. The lesson seems to be this: If you believe in something, if you put faith in a person or an institution, you will live to regret it. You ultimately will feel like a chump.
A generation lost in space
With no time left to start again
So come on Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack Flash sat on a candlestick
'Cause fire is the devil's only friend
And as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in hell
Could break that Satan's spell
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the music died
ADDITIONALLY ALARMING is that some vocal pro-life supporters have been clergymen accused of molesting minors. We always knew those damned pro-lifers were up to no damned good, right?The Occupy Wall Street movement has become the subject of public skepticism after numerous well-documented cases of anti-Semitism, sexual assault, drug abuse, public masturbation, public defecation, vandalism and violence. Among the movement’s supporters and sponsors are the Communist Party USA, the American Nazi Party, Socialist Party USA, Industrial Workers of the World, International Bolshevik Tendency, Marxist Student Union, 9/11 Truth groups and more.
The fact that Planned Parenthood would encourage its supporters to attend a rally “in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the larger Occupy movement” despite the widely known abuses taking place at Occupy sites and ties to such disreputable organizations, just further calls into question Planned Parenthood’s credibility. It’s unconscionable that an organization, which receives millions of American tax dollars each year, would encourage supporters to rally alongside groups like the American Nazi Party.
Additionally alarming is that by participating in a rally in solidarity with the nationwide Occupy movement, Planned Parenthood, which purports to be pro-woman, has turned a blind eye to widespread cases of sexual assault at Occupy sites. On Sunday, a 24-year old Occupy Dallas protester was arrested after sexually assaulting a 14-year old girl.
Another round of arrests is under way at Legislative Plaza, where just after midnight some 20 Occupy Nashville protesters linked arms, awaiting arrest in violation of the Capitol's newly enacted curfew. A 10-minute warning was issued at approximately midnight, and some 60 to 75 Tennessee state troopers stood ready to enforce it.BENITO MUSSOLINI'S Blackshirts, no doubt, were scarcely less professional than this.
Among those under arrest is evidently Scene reporter Jonathan Meador, who has been covering the protests. A fellow reporter asked the trooper arresting Meador if he really intended to lock up a journalist there to cover the events. According to the reporter, the trooper replied, "You want to be next?"
Baton Rouge was clothed in flowers, like a bride - no, much more so; like a greenhouse. For we were in the absolute South now - no modifications, no compromises, no halfway measures. The Magnolia trees in the Capitol grounds were lovely and fragrant, with their dense rich foliage and huge snow-ball blossoms. The scent of the flower is very sweet, but you want distance on it, because it is so powerful. They are not good bedroom blossoms-- they might suffocate one in his sleep. We were certainly in the South at last; for here the sugar region begins, and the plantations--vast green levels, with sugar-mill and negro quarters clustered together in the middle distance--were in view. And there was a tropical sun overhead and a tropical swelter in the air.HOW VERY "sivilized" of Mr. Clemens . . . Twain . . . whatever.
And at this point, also, begins the pilot's paradise: a wide river hence to New Orleans, abundance of water from shore to shore, and no bars, snags, sawyers, or wrecks in his road.
Sir Walter Scott is probably responsible for the Capitol building; for it is not conceivable that this little sham castle would ever have been built if he had not ran the people mad, a couple of generations ago, with his mediæval romances. The South has not yet recovered from the debilitating influence of his books. Admiration of his fantastic heroes and their grotesque "chivalry" doings and romantic juvenilities still survives here, in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the wholesome and practical nineteenth-century smell of cotton-factories and locomotives; and traces of inflated language and other windy humbuggeries survive along with it. It is pathetic enough, that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things--materials all ungenuine within and without, pretending to be what they are not-- should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place; but it is much more pathetic to see this architectural falsehood undergoing restoration and perpetuation in our day, when it would have been so to let dynamite finish what a charitable fire began, and then devote this restoration-money to the building of something genuine.