Sometime near the zenith of American culture

Do you know how awful a feeling it is to be pretty sure you were born a generation too late?

To be enthralled by a time and a popular culture you were born into -- barely -- but which exists no more?

To know there was a time when the grown-ups were in charge of it all, more or less, but to have lived all your life amid the Detereorata and see the barbarians not at the gate, but running the whole show? Today, we have Gaga and Nicki Minaj  -- not to mention Madonna and her pathetic and desperate attempts to remain relevant -- and we think that's entertainment.

Well, it is if you've just sacked and burned the Eternal City, but otherwise not so much.

TO ME, a fossil born 20 years shy of being fossilized enough for my own taste, this is entertainment -- Keely Smith on the Frank Sinatra Show in 1958. Sure, I love my rock 'n' roll, but if there's no room in your soul for something as beautiful and classy as Keely Smith casting a magic spell over a well-written popular song, you'd just as well go pillage, burn, loot and rape with the barbarians, busting a rhyme with Ms. I'm Gonna Cap Yo' Ass, Mariah Carey.

In my humble opinion.

By the way, no 3 Chords & the Truth this week. One, I'm pretty shot -- no sleep will do that to you -- and, two, I'm trying to make a dent in digitizing the 31 LPs and nine CDs I grabbed at The Antiquarium before its sad passing from Omaha's Old Market scene. And then there's the other bunch of LPs and CDs I have in the "Put Onto the Hard Drive" stack.

Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of jazz and classic pop in that number. Ring-a-ding-ding, pally!

Mormons, Quakers . . . they're all the same, right?

Go to 4:49 in the video for Whoopi's epic fail

There always have been idiots on television.

Thing is, they used to be limited -- on network television, at least -- to areas where their lack of intellectual prowess didn't really matter that much. Now, however, the mere fact that you're famous for something automatically means you must be qualified to talk politics, or science, or about any damn thing where the "little people" obviously need straightening out.

This cultural development, then, just had to lead to this moment on The View, where noted intellectual (snort, sputter)  Whoopi Goldberg tries to play gotcha with Ann Romney, wife of the Republican presidential nominee, about Mitt's lack of military service but apparently gets Mormons confused with Quakers or Jehovah's Witnesses or something.

Because all those religious freaks are all alike, no doubt. 

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: As first lady, if you get the job, it’s going to entail a lot of things, and one of those things is going to be talking to the mothers whose children are coming home in bags, you know, from wars. Now, I know -- I believe that your religion doesn’t allow you to go fight.

ANN ROMNEY: No, that's not correct. We have many, many members of our faith that are serving in armed services.

WELL, at least Whoopi didn't ask Mrs. Romney why Mitt didn't have a beard and why they had electricity and cars and stuff.

I guess that's not nothin'.

1948: Dewey doesn't defeat Truman

Ladies and gentlemen, you are watching here via the facilities of NBC television and Life magazine, coverage of the 1948 national elections, live and direct across the network.

This is looking more and more like a stunning reversal in fortunes for the Republican ticket headed by Gov. Thomas Dewey, a ticket that had seemed to be destined to coast to victory against a riven Democratic Party and a president whose popularity has steadily faded since he assumed the high office upon the death of FDR. And it is our privilege -- Life and the NBC network -- to bring this live coverage to you, the television viewer, thanks to this electronic miracle of our modern times.


IF YOU will indulge us ladies and gentlemen, as Ben Grauer fires up yet another Camel and we peer into the iconoscope through a smoky haze . . . just a moment, ladies and gentlemen, we are getting word that we have results in from Ohio . . . yes, the results are in ladies and gentlemen of the television audience across the East Coast from Schenectady to Philadelphia to here in New York City and down to our nation's capital, and President Truman has taken Ohio. We repeat, President Truman has won Ohio and thus has claimed the necessary electoral votes for re-election as president of the United States . . . this is extraordinary, a stunning reversal of fortune, television friends.

Now we understand the president may have a statement for the assembled press and supporters at his Kansas City hotel, and you will hear that right here on the NBC hookup, but you won't see it, because we can't do that yet because we don't have the coaxial cable running that far yet. But you will hear it over our NBC microphones, viewing friends as the camera pans wildly to and fro.

Now if you will bear with us as you squint at your 12-inch screen, we have a little confusion here, as it's just 1948 and no one has ever done this sort of thing before -- and frankly, kinescope compadres, we just have no idea what the H-E-double hockey sticks we're doing.

At all.

BUT at least we're not the Chicago Daily Tribune.

Phonies leave us in the soup

The country's secular intelligentsia has gotten its knickers in a twist because GOP veep candidate Paul Ryan, in our betters' eyes, went all Taliban when he -- correctly, I think -- said he didn't "see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith."

"Our faith informs us in everything we do,” he continued, causing The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, among others, to wet himself. Figuratively, of course. I don't want to know whether he did literally -- TMI and all that.

Still, one must beware of such philosophical musings from a politician. That would be like putting your faith in Otis Campbell's eloquent pronouncements on the joys of teetotalism.

This dispatch from the Romney-Ryan campaign trail in Ohio (speaking of "Do as I say, not as I do") suggests, perhaps, that the congressman from Wisconsin might want to take a closer look at his Catholic faith, his own heart or -- ideally -- both.

BEARING WITNESS to ugly here is the Youngstown Vindicator:

The president of Mahoning County’s St. Vincent de Paul Society is “shocked” and “angry” that Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan used the soup kitchen for a “publicity stunt.”

Brian J. Antal, who runs the society, said the campaign “ramrodded themselves in there” without getting proper permission for the visit Saturday that followed Ryan’s town-hall meeting at Youngstown State University.

“They said they got permission from the right people, but that would have been me, and I never would have given them permission,” Antal said Monday.

Juanita Sherba, St. Vincent’s Saturday coordinator for the dining hall, said she gave the Ryan campaign approval that day for the visit by the candidate and his family.

Sherba say she now realizes it wasn’t her call to make.

The event “was a photo op,” she said. “It was the phoniest piece of baloney I’ve ever been associated with. In hindsight, I would have never let him in the door.”

When an advance person from the Mitt Romney/Ryan campaign asked about the visit, Sherba said it took her by surprise.

“I didn’t know it was my place to say ‘no,’” she said. “I made a mistake.”

The event was completely staged by the campaign, she said.

“They couldn’t have cared less,” Sherba said. “The advance man said Paul Ryan wanted to come and talk to our clientele, but he didn’t."

(snip)

Despite some media reports, Sherba said Ryan and his family washed a few dirty pots and pans, but it wasn’t necessary.

It was all about him coming in and doing dishes for publicity,” Sherba said. “We had to save dishes. We would have gone home by the time he arrived. We didn’t need him to do the dishes. It was getting late, and I said that we were closing in five minutes. I waited longer than that, and he finally arrived.”

I SAY that Mr. Gopnik, from his enlightened (ahem) perch somewhere that matters, would be far better served to worry a lot less about some pending Jesus-freak mullahocracy in America and worry a lot more about the American a**holeocracy that's already in place.

King of all he surveys

Michael Holton is a popular guy. So it's no surprise that he's homecoming king at his Georgia high school.

Not only that, but by all accounts, Mikey has been both a blessing and an inspiration to his classmates, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a single one of them with a bad word to say about their new king. He did win with 97 percent of the vote, after all.

Michael Holton has Down syndrome. That he became homecoming king, has earned scores of friends and been an inspiration and a blessing to modern-day American -- teens desperate for both inspiration and blessing -- is because his mom, Amy, was among the 8 percent of women who don't abort their unborn child after receiving a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis.

Think about that for a minute.

Obey your betters, not that God guy

 

 

In the smugly provincial universe of America's intelligentsia, the only thing we have to fear is acting on that which you believe.

And Adam Gopnik . . . he's a-skeered!  Blogging on The New Yorker website  last week about GOP vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, the writer freaked out a little -- OK, a lot -- over Ryan saying that a person's faith influences every aspect of life, both private and public.

That, apparently, is unacceptable. That, apparently, makes the committed believer a crazy-ass mullah . . . or ayatollah . . . or something else Really Bad.

Not to mention un-American.

Emoted Gopnik on the magazine's News Desk blog:     

But beyond the [Expletive deleted. -- R21] something genuinely disturbing and scary got said last night by Paul Ryan that is, I think, easily missed and still worth brooding over. It came in response to a solemn and, it seemed to some of us, inappropriately phrased question about the influence of the Catholic Church on both men’s positions on abortion. Inappropriately phrased because legislation is made for everyone, not specially for those of “faith.” (And one would have thought that, at this moment in its history, the Catholic Church would not have much standing when it comes to defining the relationship between sexual behavior and doctrinal morality. However few in number the sinners might be, the failure to deal with them openly casts doubt on the integrity of the institution.)

Paul Ryan did not say, as John Kennedy had said before him, that faith was faith and public service, public service, each to be honored and kept separate from the other. No, he said instead “I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do.” That’s a shocking answer—a mullah’s answer, what those scary Iranian “Ayatollahs” he kept referring to when talking about Iran would say as well. Ryan was rejecting secularism itself, casually insisting, as the Roman Catholic Andrew Sullivan put it, that “the usual necessary distinction between politics and religion, between state and church, cannot and should not exist.” And he went on to make it quietly plain that his principles are uncompromising on this, even if his boss’s policy may not seem so:

All I’m saying is, if you believe that life begins at conception, that, therefore, doesn’t change the definition of life. That’s a principle. The policy of a Romney administration is to oppose abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

Our system, unlike the Iranians’, is not meant to be so total: it depends on making many distinctions between private life, where we follow our conscience into our chapel, and our public life, where we seek to merge many different kinds of conscience in a common space. Our faith should not inform us in everything we do, or there would be no end to the religious warfare that our tolerant founders feared.

THE FIRST thing that comes to mind is that Gopnik ignores history -- that the United States thus far has avoided ayatollahocracy, despite the presence of millions of Americans for whom religion informs every aspect of life. Mental-health professionals would call this a raging case of projection -- and I'd submit that what Gopnik indeed is doing here is projecting his class' absolute intolerance for devout religious belief.

Oh, sure, religion is kind of quaint and perhaps can be grudgingly tolerated so long as it remains some sort of vague therapeutic creed that soothes the savage breast of the booboisie but isn't taken so seriously that it might affect someone's politics or endanger the societal acquiescence to the secular Holy Trinity of the Baby Boom -- sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. In political terms, this works out to something closer to free sex, free birth control and abortion on demand.

In the world of Adam Gopnik and the rest of our "betters," the only religion that's fit to hold is one that's no damned good at all -- a feckless creed in service of a powerless deity.

To quote a more politically correct scripture:

Verily, a decree went out from on high above midtown Manhattan, proclaiming that thou shalt have no god before us, for we are a jealous and culturally refined god, and thou shalt not taketh our holy orgasm in vain. If I say a fetus is a non-human bean, medammit, it is what I say, you mullah, you.

Yea, thou art white trash, and resistance doth prove futile. Tempt not thy god to go all Sodom and Gomorrah on thy ass. Not that anything going on in those fine cities was wrong in any respect and deserving of the nuclear option, of course.

THE NON-PATRIARCHAL Inclusive Equivalent of the Lord hath spoken.

Behold! All are equal. Some are more equal than others.

3 Chords & the Truth: Quand ça balance

Quand ça balance, you're in for a hell of a show on 3 Chords & the Truth.

Quand ça balance?

Mais oui, mon ami.

Quand ça balance -- or translated from idiomatic French, when it balances . . . when it's right, when it's all good, when it rocks -- the Big Show is gonna knock your socks off. This week especially, ça balance.

FROM AN exploration of travelin' music to a set featuring the glories of France, 3 Chords & the Truth . . . ça balance.

But that's what you've come to expect from our little weekly podcast, isn't it?

Let me put it this way: If you're not up dancing and having your own private disco-a go-go during large chunks of this week's edition of the Big Show, you may want to have a medical professional check your pulse and respiration.

Is what I'm saying, cher.

It's all about quand ça balance, and that extends to you, too.

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

Ready for the end of the world

Summer had given way to fall in October 1962, and WAVA radio in Arlington, Va., rolled out its plan for dealing with The End of Everything.

In the Oct. 15 edition of Broadcasting magazine, the station's owner outlines how he and his staff will deal with a nuclear attack on the United States until everything got back to normal. In 1962, wild optimism and massive denial was as good a game plan as anything, particularly for WAVA owner Arthur W. Arundel.

"The announcer on duty will remain at his post," the Broadcasting article went, explaining that "all other employees are excused to follow individual or family civil defense plans and to report back to the station after the attack is over and there is no danger of radioactive fallout.

"Payday will be Friday as usual," Mr. Arundel states.

Halfway through October 1962, Arundel had no idea how close he would be in mere days to implementing WAVA's not-so-doomsday plan. On Oct. 16, the Cuban Missile Crisis began. And on Oct. 22, President Kennedy went on national television to give Americans the fright of their lives.

Don't you know? It's the end of the world. Payday's on Friday.

Vive la France!

I had a religious experience Tuesday. It involved neither religion nor sex.

Let me explain.

My favorite used-record shop in Omaha is closing, and I’ve made a couple of trips so far to buy everything I could. With all vinyl half off and CDs for a buck, I’m taking the opportunity to buy some vintage jazz by artists I’ve heard of well enough but haven’t really explored yet.

Sunday's haul of old LPs included a French pressing of jazz singer, pop legend and movie-music composer Michel Legrand’s “Chante et s’accompagne,” released in 1965. The American version’s title is “Sings,” but that's one you're not gonna find on iTunes.

ANYWAY, I put the Legrand album on the turntable last evening, and when the needle dropped. . . .

Transcendence. That might be the word for it. The result of it was a middle-age man being blown out of his chair and onto his butt by a rapturous gale of Gallic jazz magnificence.

Lord have mercy on me, I dearly wish I could have such a transcendent experience at Mass every week. But no. In a church that really has no excuse, given 2,000 years of culture, hymnody and all, worship of the transcendent God usually involves descending into the Haugen-Hass fever swamp of dreary dinner-theater ditties and calling it liturgy.

This is why we must take our religious experiences wherever we can find them -- in this case, France, via the used-record bins of a dying music shop. Vive la France! Vive l'Antiquarium!

Et vive M. Michel Legrand, chanteur transcendant.

www.TwoWeeksO'Chaos.org

If you type "www.revolution21.org" into your web browser now, something will happen.

That's an improvement over what's been going on here -- or not going on here, actually -- for more than a week. About that, I have just two things to say:

● Never assume that pointing your Internet domain name at this website instead of that will be anything but a harrowing, drawn out, overly complicated and crazy-making experience.

● Avoid Network Solutions as a host for your website or as a registrar for your domain name.

Revolution 21's long not-so-national nightmare began as the web-hosting contract ended. Basically, I didn't want to pay significant green just for Network Solutions, may a camel pass gas in its tent, to host a website that did little other than point you to this blog, 3 Chords & the Truth and where to buy R21 swag. That and a couple of email addresses.

The plan was to leave the domain name -- revolution21.org -- registered at Network Solutions (pretty cheap and the contract had yet to expire) and just have the web address point right here to Revolution 21's Blog for the People. After all, the blog is where all the website action is anyway and, as you've no doubt noticed, it now has several pages for all the same destinations and explanations.

And the hosting is free on Blogger. That, my friends, is a big monetary and operational "Well, DUH!"

EXCEPT. . . .

To redirect your domain name, Google/Blogger gives you one set of instructions and Network Solutions gives you another. Blogger's won't work with Network Solutions -- indeed, the web host rejects one of the DNS addresses Blogger says you must enter -- and Network Solutions' do nothing on the Blogger front.

So you call the technical support at Network Solutions late one night -- actually, early, early one morning -- and the Guy Somewhere in Timbuktu gives you a third set of instructions that turn out to be somewhere on the bad side of bulls***.

So later that day, you send a help request in writing with a detailed summary of the problem and "27 8x10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what it is." They say they'll get back to you within a business day.

A business day passes. Nada.

Another half a business day passes. Nada.

You're doing a slow burn, and you do some research on the Web. And from running across many of Network Solutions' unhappy customers who became grateful ex-customers, and from seeing rave reviews of DNS hosting companies that actually can get your domain to work with Blogger, you decide to just transfer your domain to a better place. In this case, that better place is easyDNS in Toronto. Even between the devalued American dollar and the strong Canadian one, the price is what I was paying at That Whose Name I'm Done Uttering.

OF COURSE, after you've signed up with easyDNS -- which will redirect your domain name for you . . . for free -- then TWNIDU starts trying to rekindle the geek romance when you call up to inform them of the coming tech divorce. And then . . . then you hear back from tech support regarding that written help request you sent.

The service rep writes that he's sorry about the delay, and won't you please give him another chance or he won't be able to live with the shame and the loneliness and the regret, that he'll do something drastic if you don't take him back, he swears to God!

ACTUALLY, that's not exactly true. He wrote to apologize for my request being sent to the Group W bench, and to say that TWNIDU could just go ahead and reconfigure my settings and redirect the domain name for me.

For a minimum of $99.

Sorry, dude. The tech support from north of the border is fast, friendly, personal and free . . . and now everything works just fine. And we also find time to chat about beer a little.

Did you know that beer on tap is unheard of in Ontario, and you have to go to the provincial bottle shop to pick up a six-pack? Bien sûr, there are no such stabs at prohibition across the border in Quebec, for the Gallic heart (mine included) requires an unregulated sip, snort, quaff or blast every now and again.

Tonight, when I typed in "www.revolution21.org" and, lo, the blog appeared, I just may have hoisted a couple of cold ones in sudsy tribute to the good people of Canada . . . and their technology sector.

To TWNIDU, I merely say "FU."

Yep, this is Bo's team, all right

You know how a football team ostensibly takes on the personality of the head coach?

Well, I think this little moment at Saturday night's 63-38 Husker implosion at Ohio State explains a lot -- about both the personality thing and why Nebraska's big-game meltdowns just keep coming and never get fixed. Long story short, this is Bo Pelini's team, and Bo's boys are just as clueless as their coach.

Who, for pity's sake, goes out on the field to warm up while the marching band is still playing . . . and marching? 

Who in the world takes the field to practice field goals when the Buckeye marching band is doing the sacred "Script Ohio" to close its halftime performance?

Who, for the love of Johnny Rodgers, is that clueless? Or maybe arrogant? Or, most likely, arrogantly and willfully clueless?

Bo's boys.

WHAT'S a little interfering with your opponent's most revered tradition on its home field when your coach can say this about the hiring of Nebraska's new athletic director: "You know, I've been concentrating on Ohio State. I don't know anything about that."

No, why should Bo know anything about that after serving on the chancellor's AD-search advisory committee? More importantly, though, what kind of clueless idiot fails to even fake some sincere enthusiasm for the guy who will have the power to fire his underperforming self?

That would be Bo Pelini. I'm a little surprised it took the Omaha World-Herald's Lee Barfknecht until this morning to put in print what Husker fans have been saying since Clueless Bo stepped in it Thursday afternoon.



I SWEAR, letting that man in front of a live microphone is like handing Barney Fife a loaded gun. Or letting Bo's boys on the field for a big game on national TV. Or, for that matter, letting 'em anywhere near Ohio Stadium when the Buckeye band is practicing its scarlet-and-gray penmanship.

"Look, Daddy! Teacher says every time a gunshot's fired, one of Bo's boys needs a new pair of shoes."

Tonight's night music

My favorite used-record store in the world is closing, so I've been stocking up the past week.

And it is from this new/old and growing stash that tonight's "night music" comes -- Warren Covington and the Commanders with "Shall We Dance?" The label: Decca. The year: 1957.

Here's what the Billboard reviewer had to say in the weekly's edition of Feb. 2, 1957:

Pleasant dance set devoted mostly to slow fox trot tempos. Selections are nearly all standards, with sweet trombones given featured billing. Covington solos for ear-easy effect instrumentally, and similarly and supplies vocals by a group at intervals. There are more kicks here for mom and dad, probably, than for the kids, but enough, in any case, to make a fair seller. Attractive cover.

I'M NOT SURE, but I think the reviewer is saying, four years before I arrived on the scene, that I would be born much, much too late.

As I say . . . to be a young man in New York in the 1950s.

Nighty night.

What's on your mind?

Who needs the Eyewitness Action Live news team?

In this social-media age, disturbed threat-makers and hostage-takers post their own running Facebook updates on their ongoing police standoffs.

Now it's happened three times within a month. Thursday, it was a 23-year-old man updating his Facebook friends on the progress of his heavily armed freak-out, and on Sept. 21, a guy about the same age was explaining how he "cant take it no more im done bro" as he held a businessman hostage in a Pittsburgh office building.

ON SEPT. 8 in Denver, one holed-up Facebook gunman even posted pictures of himself and his alleged partner in crime during the standoff.

Of course, then there was the Utah one in June and some others last year. To put this recent phenomenon in sociological terms . . . WTF, dude?

I'm afraid to check how many folks have live tweeted their tactical staredowns with the men from SWAT.

The latest standoff, the Washington meltdown with an firepower at hand, is reputed to have a shameless hussy at its root. Of course.

And Levi Matthew Tucker (use of the middle name here is gratuitous -- if he had killed someone, it would be mandatory) apparently is a big fan of both guns and the tea party.

For what it's worth.


HAT TIP: Romenesko.

Celebrities today

I reckon you could tune in to the new season of American Idol in January to see more of this kind of thing but, personally, I'm just waiting for the upcoming AI drive-by to come out on DVD.

Thanks, Nicki Minaj, for all your classiness. Ahem.

Is it just me, or has anybody else utterly had it with today's Barbarians Gone Wild popular culture -- particularly what passes for a pop-music scene? All I want -- and, sadly, this is impossible -- is to be a young man in New York in the 1950s.

But I'll bet you could have guessed that.

MAD strikes again

Leave it to MAD to come up with the ultimate spoof of Crapple Maps . . . uh, I mean Apple Craps . . . er, Apple Maps.

At least that's the way I see it sitting in my houseboat here on Park Avenue in Omaha, by God, South Dakota.

Dear a-hole: You've just been owned

Here's one guy in La Crosse, Wis., who's going to think twice about writing a local TV morning-show anchor to tell her how fat she is.

Unfortunately, the jerk probably still won't hesitate to belittle others who don't have a television station at their disposal. Still, Jennifer Livingston of WKBT rocks.

And so does her outraged husband, Channel 8 evening news anchor Mike Thompson.


HAT TIP: Romenesko.

3 Chords & the Truth: Here's to the 'squares'

 

The New York Times said Andy Williams was "hopelessly square" . . . at least in the eyes of my generation, back in the '60s.

I wish to point out that the same people who found Andy Williams "square" in their youth have spent their middle age doing "a heck of a job" -- in the Brownie sense -- with the American family, the American economy and American politics. In other words, what the hell do the Boomers know?

Squat, that's what. Trust me on this. I am one.

So call this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth a loving tribute to contrariness. Also call it a tribute to Andy Williams, who died Tuesday night at 84. He was a hell of a singer.

LIKEWISE, being that this week's edition of the Big Show will be featuring his music, you can safely say that it's going to be a hell of a show.

That will be obvious to you shortly . . . assuming, of course, that you evaluate music -- and singers -- on individual merit and not one's particular geometry. Remember, the young, hip trendsetter of today is the totally discredited investment banker of tomorrow.

But Andy Williams is now forever.

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

Your Thursday evening culture report

Listen to Bobby Lounge. He's from Mississippi and has an iron lung. 


And a perverted Squirrelsquatch. 

 It's a Southern thing.

My huckleberry friend, Moon River, and me

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

2  And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

3  And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

4  And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

-- Revelation 21:1-4

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

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

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

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



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

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

“Moon River” was written by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, and Audrey Hepburn introduced it in the 1961 film“Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” but it was Mr. Williams who made the song indisputably his own when he sang it at the 1962 Academy Awards ceremony and titled a subsequent album after it. When he built a theater in Branson, he named it the Andy Williams Moon River Theater.

“Moon River” became the theme song for his musical-variety television series “The Andy Williams Show,” which, along with his family-oriented Christmas TV specials, made him a household name.

“The Andy Williams Show” ran on NBC from 1962 to 1971 and won three Emmy Awards for outstanding variety series. But its run also coincided with the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960s, and with a lineup of well-scrubbed acts like the Osmond Brothers (whom Mr. Williams introduced to national television) and established performers like Judy Garland and Bobby Darin, the show, at least to many members of a younger, more rebellious generation, was hopelessly square — the sort of entertainment their parents would watch.

Despite that image, “The Andy Williams Show” was not oblivious to the cultural moment. Its guests also included rising rock acts like Elton John and the Mamas and the Papas, and its offbeat comedy skits, featuring characters like the relentless Cookie Bear and the Walking Suitcase, predated similar absurdism on David Letterman’s and Conan O’Brien’s talk shows by decades.

Mr. Williams’s Christmas specials, on the other hand, were entirely anodyne and decidedly homey, featuring carols and crew-neck sweaters, sleigh bells and fake snow, and a stage filled with family members, including his wife, the telegenic French chanteuse Claudine Longet, and their three children. The Osmonds were regular guests, as were his older brothers, Bob, Don and Dick, who with Mr. Williams had formed the Williams Brothers, the singing act in which he got his start in show business.

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

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

His more mellow hits included “Canadian Sunset,” “The Hawaiian Wedding Song,” “Lonely Street,” “Can’t Get Used to Losing You,” “The Shadow of Your Smile” and “Are You Sincere?” He continued to record into the 1970s.

HERE'S THE THING. Pop culture worms its way -- being culture and all -- into your brain, your soul and your heart. In many ways, it defines us. It is a signifier -- who are you? Well, what music do you like? What do you read? What's your favorite movie?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course not.

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

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

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

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

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