There's always an add in the land of --30--

Guelph

Favog

In the days of typewriters -- and of newsrooms that more resembled Clancy's Bar than they did an insurance-company cubicle farm -- you would start your story with a slug line and byline in the upper right-hand corner of the page. That way, the copy editors would know at a glance what the story was about . . . and what semi-illiterate wretch wrote it.

Then, when you got to the end of the first page of your copy -- and you never ever ended a page in the middle of a paragraph or, Hildy Johnson forbid, a sentence -- you would pick up your No. 1 soft pencil and scribble "MORE" at the bottom.

At the top of the next page, you'd put something like:

Guelph

add one

Today in Ontario, there are no more "adds" for the Guelph Mercury. There is only --30--.

End of story.

End of newspaper.

End of a 149-year history -- one going as far back as the confederation of Canada itself.

End of 26 jobs.

End of a love affair between a people and its hometown paper. At the urging of Guelph's mayor, scores of citizens came out to say goodbye. Some even hugged the building. It's enough to make a grown man cry -- especially an old onetime newspaper reporter and editor.

For those of us of a certain age, it's just another reminder that the we'll see more --30-- than we will adds. And that's as depressing as a front-page hed bust. (Ask an aging newspaper type what that means if you don't get the ink-stained slang.)

Anyway, I agree with the story on the Poynter website: This was the perfect front page for a final final edition of a newspaper, God bless its newsprint soul.

--30--

30 years

Three decades ago today, my wife and I were on the road somewhere on U.S. 60 in south-central Missouri, on our way to Washington, D.C., from Springfield, Mo.

We turned on the radio. There was network special coverage on. The space shuttle? What happened?

Then the punch in the gut. It's a cliché because it's true.

This just in from Nova Scotia

Well, crap.

That's it for us, then. So long, it's been good to know 'ya.

Frankly, I trust this guy more than The Weather Channel. That Frankie, he generally calls 'em, and in this case is aligning himself with the ECMWF model, which suggests Omaha, by God, Nebraska is in trouble deep Monday night and Tuesday. 

Christmas blizzard of '09

As in foot-of-snow deep. As in blizzard deep.

In other words, we're all gonna die.

That is all before I stock up on beer and gumbo fixins.

3 Chords & the Truth: The sad café

There's a new kid in town in rock 'n' roll heaven, and we're not feeling too good ourselves.

So, yes, we'll be playing some Eagles -- and, thus, Glenn Frey -- on 3 Chords & the Truth this week as we chug Geritol as the records play. Because old. And tired blood.

Apart from that, I just don't know what to say about the Big Show. There's the Eagles stuff, and there's lots of good music, as always, and we have a nifty set from the ladies of jazz.

THERE probably is more to be said about the program this go around, but I lack the energy to say it.

Really. I mean, are you unpoopular? Do you pop out at parties? Then pass the nutritional supplements from the left hand side. That is all.

No, really. I'm tired. And old. Just listen to the show, will ya?

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Life on Mars

It's on Amerika's tortured brow . . .

That Mickey Mouse
has grown up a cow
Now the workers
have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibeza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause I wrote it
ten times or more
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
 
GOOD QUESTION. I got no answer, but then again we've all been feeling a little lost this week.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, and this week we're all about what you probably think we're about. Remembering David Bowie. And wondering whether there's life on Mars.

Be there. Aloha.

Yesterday and today

Bostwick-Frohardt Collection/The Durham Museum

January 1905, 11th and Howard in Omaha's Old Market.

 

January 2016, 11th and Howard in Omaha's Old Market.

Where have all Papa's heroes gone?

Ain't there a pen that will write before they die?
Ain't you proud that you've still got faces?
Ain't there one damn song that can make me break down and cry?

One? 

Any more, yeah. Lots.

My generation ain't no young Americans no more, and David Bowie is dead.

"We live for just these twenty years
Do we have to die for the fifty more?"

3 Chords & the Truth: Take it easy

Re-entry's a bitch.

Re-entry, as in the holidays are done, pretty much, and it's time to get back to the daily grind . . . AND I DON'T WANNA!

That's where we are here in 3 Chords & the Truth land, so here's the game plan: Gonna ease into it. Gonna be mellow.

Have you never been mellow?

Have you never tried to find a comfort from inside you?

Have you never been happy just to hear your song?

Have you never let someone else be strong?

 

WAIT . . .  hang on. That's Olivia Newton-John, No. 1 on the pop chart, March 1975. Well, we're not playing Olivia this week. But we are chilling out to some  great, great music.

So, won't you join me on the Big Show? We can be mellow. Or whatever. Can't rush these re-entry things.

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

You can't take a selfie with a Super 8

First it was vinyl.

Then audiophiles rediscovered reel-to-reel tape decks. (I never forgot them.)

Some folks have fallen back in love with typewriters, (I have two . . . still.)

Gizmodo

And now Kodak is bringing back Super 8 movies. (Heh . . . I have two Polaroid instant cameras, some 35 millimeter cameras, a couple of Kodak Brownies and my late mother's 1930s box camera. Did you know no one makes flash cubes anymore -- or consumer-grade flash bulbs, for that matter. Ebay is my friend here.)

It would seem that we're discovering that our brave new digitized world is lacking a certain je ne sais quoi. That we're missing something. That maybe, just maybe, our digital, instantaneous, effortlessly expressed, omnipresent selves, thrust upon the world with nary a thought . . . maybe that's not our best selves.

MAYBE we're thinking that our music ought to be touched and not just summoned. Savored and not just hop-scotched through on a smartphone.

Maybe we think our words should be put onto paper with some effort -- and editing marks and Wite-Out -- instead of emoted onto Facebook with abandon and oftentimes without thought. (Dear World: Please stop oversharing. It really is none of my business.)

And maybe if videos, those things we used to call "movies," were a little harder to make, cost us the price of a film cartridge and took us a week to see, we'd be more hesitant to record ourselves at our worst and more likely to spend that time and effort on ourselves at our best.

Maybe, just maybe, we're coming to some sort of subconscious realization that nobody likes an egomaniac, and our instant-on world of digital proliferation is turning us all into narcissistic whack jobs. I admit, typing this with trembling fingers on a computer keyboard, that as I point a finger at the world, three more are pointing back at myself.

Let's call them Blog, Twitter and Podcast. You'll note that I've hyperlinked everything, because we're not only narcissists, but whores as well.

ON THE other hand, maybe I'm just bloody overthinking it all.

Perhaps folks find records a lot more fun than CDs or downloads. I know I do. And at my age, I certainly can read the liner notes a lot better on a great, big LP cover.

It could be that typewriters are just more aesthetically pleasing than your flippin' laptop, which has just frozen the f*** up yet again and I HATE WINDOWS I HATE WINDOWS I HATE WINDOWS!!! I must say that I never had to reboot a typewriter, nor reinstall anything more complicated than a ribbon.

And it could be that Super 8 just gives us all the warm fuzzies. (Though the missus does give YouTube props for Puppy Christmas, which is pretty damned adorable.)

And, thinking about reel-to-reel tape, it is a hell of a lot of fun, as evidenced by the video above from the electronic home of 3 Chords & the Truth. (WHORE ALERT: There will be a new episode of the Big Show this week.)

SO ENJOY, thanks to our digital world, the video of my 1969 reel-to-reel deck playing back the local AM oldies station, which I recorded on 50-year-old tape -- a tribute to the Wonderful World of Analog and times gone by . . . when expressing yourself took a little time, a little effort and a lot more thought.

Does anybody else think that Facebook  should force you to wad up a post and throw it in the garbage can, rewrite it, throw it in the garbage can, rewrite it, throw it in the garbage can and then rewrite it a lot less stupidly before the "Post" button will work?

Maybe that's just me.

Laughing ourselves to death

You think your editor is tough on you? You don't know tough. (from the wonderful vol.2 of @LettersOfNote) pic.twitter.com/N8Tke8xxce

— John Dalton (@johndalton) January 5, 2016

Click on the image for readable version

That I laughed and laughed and laughed at this letter from Hunter S. Thompson made me realize that I totally understand the political appeal of Donald Trump, mad as that might be.

The Donald shows appropriate disrespect for our political system, the feckless weenies in charge of his own political party and the Stalinist pall of political correctness that's stifling our debate and rotting our minds.

Unfortunately, though, with the satisfying comes the strychnine -- the malicious stereotyping of Mexicans and Muslims . . . his willingness to ban people from the United States solely on religious grounds . . . egging on a mob mentality at his rallies and among his supporters . . . the nasty remarks about a female fellow candidate and a disabled journalist.


IT ALL demonstrates Trump's uncomfortable shouting distance to the over-the-top epithet Gore Vidal hung on William F. Buckley in an infamous 1968 television debate -- "pro-crypto-Nazi."

Hunter S. Thompson was entertaining -- warped and high as a kite but entertaining. Sometimes, he skewered those who sorely asked for the insertion of a spit. Sometimes, it all was quite satisfying. I can see how some might feel that way about Trump, taken out of his particular toxic context.

But it would have been a horrible mistake to let Thompson anywhere near political power on any national scale. Ditto for Donald Trump. Not all that entertains us is good for us, particularly when it feeds upon what's bad in us.

The waning days of Christmas

Around here at least, Christmas fades but is not gone.

We're Catholic. Christmas ain't over until Sunday, with the feast of The Baptism of the Lord. The tree stays until then.

I'm dreaming of a white, feathered Christmas

It may not be a Christmas miracle, but it's close enough.

This morning, I awoke to a) the white Christmas -- the very white Christmas, as it turns out -- we weren't supposed to have this year and b) an extremely excited spousal unit telling me there was a flock of turkeys in the front yard.

All told, there were seven gobblers out there. I think I'll have an extra little smile on my face this afternoon for the Making of the Christmas Gumbo.

Ho! Ho! Ho! And a very merry Christmas to one and all.

3 Chords & the Truth: Put a bow on it

It's the day before Christmas and all through this space, gorgeous music fills every little place.

Not a discordant note will be found on the show . . . not a stinker or a clunker or a misplaced fanfare.

3 Chords & the Truth has been uploaded with care, and if you love Christmas music, there's no cause to despair.

The Big Show nestles sweetly in your ear, and  good cheer will carry you to the New Year.

And out on the Internet you'll hear clever patter, and all the fine tunes that we can gather.

ON AARON, on Harry, on Tony and Bing . . . on with the songs that you sing! To the top of the charts, to the heights of our culture!

Spread holiday cheer . . . joy you will nurture!

Etcetera and so on, this poem grows more tortured. Lo, I'm painting myself into a corner!

So dash away, dash away, dash away all! Seek out the Big Show, oh, answer my call!

That's it . . . I'm done . . . no more shall I write. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

3 Chords & the Truth: Tunes and egg nog

Listen, it's almost Christmas. Give your brain a rest, your ears a treat and your egg-nog receptors what is necessary at this time of the year.

No, this isn't the official Christmas episode of 3 Chords & the Truth, but we're getting there. This is the warm-up episode for the Yuletide edition, but it's right nice in its own way.

That is why your Mighty Favog strongly recommends that you de-stress, chill out, don't think (too much, at least) and let the music wash over you this holiday season.

And that's  how we warm up for the big Christmas edition of the Big Show just days away from the event.

TRUST ME. You're gonna love the show this week.

And you're really gonna love it next week.

And if you haven't listened to the last show (or three), you'll bloody well love them, too.

So just do it. Egg nog. Good music. Chill . . . in a warm and cozy way.

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

The Donald has no hate but ours

Donald Trump's racket these days is outrage.

He keeps saying outrageous things. He keeps doing outrageous things. He keeps proposing outrageous things.

Downright un-American things. Downright inhuman things. And it's working for him -- big time.

Some say the Republican presidential candidate, reality-show host, Chapter 11 specialist and all-around boor is an American fascist. Others say he's merely George Wallace with a bad comb-over.

Many agree Donald Trump is a problem.

I disagree. Donald Trump is a rich blowhard with more money than scruples . . . and seriously bad hair. The problem is us.

We're the ones cheering his Mexicans-as-rapists-and-drug-lords meme.

We're the ones treating his "I'll build a 2,000-mile wall" twaddle as an actual policy proposal on illegal immigration.

We're the ones roughing up a campaign-rally protester when The Donald orders the mob -- er, crowd -- to “Get him the hell out of here, will you please?”

We're the ones who believe Trump's regular exaggerations, swear to the veracity of his outright lies and laugh and nod when he disparages the appearance of a woman candidate and makes fun of the physical disability of a newspaper reporter.




WE'RE THE ones who cheer when he proposes a religious test for entry into the United States, advocating banning Muslims from entering this country "until we figure out what the hell is going on." Well, I have some thoughts on that.

Donald Trump has no army or paramilitary force at his disposal -- yet. He's not putting a gun to anyone's head to force their complicity in his David Duke act. That, we're doing of our own free will -- because we are the problem.

We are the one feeding the monster with our fear, our hatreds, our paranoia and our sheer stupidity.

We are the ones giving the devil his due, and a lot more. Indeed, we're the ones doing the devil's bidding and calling it the Lord's work. We bury hope and replace it with fear. We banish love from our hearts and replace it with hatred. We can find no room for empathy with our fellow man, but we have plenty of heart-and-mind space for petty resentments, rampant stereotyping and rank selfishness.

The all-American clusterf*** that is Trump 2016 is powered solely by the devil sitting on our shoulder. It is an all-out war on the better angels of our nature. Donald Trump's bad behavior is feeding off our own, not the other way around.

TODAY, for Catholics, is the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's the national feast day of the United States of America. The first reading my wife and I heard this afternoon at Mass was from Genesis 3:9-15, 20:

After the man, Adam, had eaten of the tree,
the LORD God called to the man and asked him, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden;
but I was afraid, because I was naked,
so I hid myself.”
Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked?
You have eaten, then,
from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!”
The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me,
she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”
The LORD God then asked the woman,
“Why did you do such a thing?”
The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”

Then the LORD God said to the serpent:
“Because you have done this, you shall be banned
from all the animals
and from all the wild creatures;
on your belly shall you crawl,
and dirt shall you eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike at your head,
while you strike at his heel.”

The man called his wife Eve,
because she became the mother of all the living.

THE BLAME GAME has been with us from the beginning. Eve knew better than to eat the forbidden fruit, but the serpent gave her an excuse. So she did.

Adam knew better, too, but Eve gave him an excuse.

Eve blamed the serpent, Adam blamed Eve, Trump blames the Other, and pundits blame Trump. We, meantime, pretend to be blameless.

So, go ahead. Vote for the fascist . . . or the demagogue . . . or the fascist demagogue . . . whatever the hell Donald J. Trump is, that monster of our own making in this land of malcontent. Vote for him. On your belly shall you crawl to the polls.

And dirt shall we all eat all the days of what life is left for what used to be a great nation. May God have mercy on us, for history will have none.

3 Chords & the Truth: Dead on target

This week on the Big Show, we take dead aim on who and what we are as Americans.

And I think we've picked some songs that hit the target.

Of course 3 Chords & the Truth, hits the musical bullseye every week, but this episode draws a bead on something specific about American culture these days. Something we just love to death.

Or is it that we love death? Oh, well. Whatever.

ALSO ON the program this week, we have a little of this and a little of that, and we also start rolling out the Christmas music now that we have achieved bleak midwinter-ish.

And that's all we have to say about that. The Big Show, that is.

So. . . .

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

If LSU didn't exist, Freud would have to invent it

If you're not from Louisiana, you might find this crazy. And you'd be correct.

Louisiana State University is about to fire the winningest football coach it ever had because he hasn't beaten Alabama lately. That's right, Les Miles is about to get canned after winning 80 percent of his games for LSU because he's hit a bad patch in November, dropping three straight for the first time as a Tiger.

But mostly, he's being shown the very expensive (for LSU, at least) door because he can't beat Nick Saban -- the Alabama coach who was Miles' predecessor in Baton Rouge.

It would seem the entire state of Louisiana -- which should have much bigger fish to fry, being that it's a mess on almost every front -- has gone absolutely insane due to a bad case of Nick Saban Envy, which is a lot like penis envy. As in totally.

(Insert your own joke here.)

In fact, Nick Saban Envy has left Louisiana so delusional that a bunch of LSU "boosters" are willing to piss away $17 million -- and that's just for starters -- to run off a coach most schools would kill to have. For LSU, this probably will end up Bobby Petrino Bad.

BUT THAT'S NOT what fries my egg. What fries my egg is that not a damn person in Louisiana, it seems, has Stuart R. Bell Envy. No one, particularly in state government, is throwing insane sums of money at LSU President F. King Alexander with the barked order "Beat that sonofabitch Bell! Victory or death!"

Of course, if you're the typical LSU football fan, you probably have no damn idea who Stuart R. Bell is. Well, to be fair, you probably have no idea which is Allen Hall and which is Coates Hall, either, because you can't play football in either of them.

OK, listen up. Stuart R. Bell is president of the University of Alabama which, according to the national rankings -- You understand rankings, of course. After all, rankings are part of why everyone's having a Miles-ocardial infarction now, right? -- is a hell of a lot better school than LSU.

And over the years, 'Bama's been getting better. And over the years, LSU's been getting gutted. Compared to the red-hot, cuss-out-your-mama, shoot-your-neighbor furor over football this week, the systematic academic crippling of LSU has been met with relative crickets over the past eight years.

Well, not totally. In the spring, the university's executive vice president and provost laid out a particularly bold course of action that resulted in immediate results. He quit to take a new job.
 
Who is this can-do ex-LSU administrator?

Stuart R. Bell, president of the University of Alabama.

3 Chords & the Truth: Le fleuve de la vie

This edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is rather like life, which flows like a river. It goes where it will, swelling and ebbing, its current carrying us on its journey toward destiny.

Today, the music ebbs and flows. It goes where it will, and we're just along for the ride.

Just like every time, the Big Show is a trip worth taking. The mighty flood of good music breaks through every barrier, and it goes where we do not anticipate it going. We listen in wonder.

Just listen.

ALSO this week, we stand in the shadow of Paris, pushing back against the darkness of hatred and violence. We fight terror with joy.

Aujourd'hui, nous sommes tous français. Nous prions pour la paix de Paris.

The river of life -- le fleuve de la vie -- she sometimes carries us into darkness. She will carry us back into the light soon enough. We must have faith in the journey. . . .

And in the music. Musique joyeuse.

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

Ein volk. Ein reich. Ein furor.

The more I see of Ben Carson, the more my mind's eye flashes back to Cleavon Little disguised in a white robe and hood in Blazing Saddles.

Blazing Saddles was hilarious. Ben Carson is just weird . . . and scary. And he's leading the Republican presidential field.
 

At any rate, it's come to this in America 2015 as we embark yet again on the quadrennial farce, er, campaign -- a black dude using a picture of the collapsing World Trade Center on 9/11 to race-bait Syrian refugees. You can't make this stuff up.

I WISH someone had as some sort of sick joke. Instead, the joke is on human decency and American democracy, and it's no laughing matter.

Demagoguery such as this ought to automatically disqualify any politician who stoops to it as a serious candidate not only for the presidency, but for anything. Voters who fall for it are unworthy of the responsibility placed upon them by the dictates of democratic self-government.

Meanwhile, for Ben Carson's next act, he'll stampede some cattle through the Vatican. That'll show them papists for helpin' to resettle them A-rab terrorists in 'Murica.

NOW they're worried about homelessness

The good news: American right-wingers are focused on homelessness now.

The bad news: I think the Republican Congress is about to eliminate welfare, food stamps and the rest of the "social safety net."