Saturday, March 28, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Into the void together. Alone


A friend today summed up these officially interesting times perfectly. Absolutely perfectly.

"This is the Lentiest Lent I ever Lented," she wrote.

Yeah, that about covers it. Almost to the point where I have nothing else to add.


It would seem that we are flailing amid a world of hurt, a world of suffering and a world of fear. That's before we get to the religious obligations of prayer, self-denial and penance.

This is one hell of a Lenty Lent, all right. We even had to give up church for Lent. America's president and government would have given up common sense and competence for the penitential season, except for one niggling detail.

You cannot surrender what you do not possess.

AND HERE we are, with too many people unnecessarily giving up good health for Lent. People giving up a sense of security for Lent. People by the thousands giving up their very lives for Lent -- giving them to a virus that U.S. officialdom never took seriously until it was damned near too late. Whether some leaders ever take the coronavirus seriously enough to do any damned good remains to be seen.

Let's just say I'm not real optimistic as I sit in the 3 Chords & the Truth apocalypse bunker here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska.

That's about all the elaboration I can muster. It's hard staying at home. It's hard being isolated from friends . . . and the world. It's hard for me, and I'll bet it's hard for you, too.

So . . . we all do what we can to make it through, and to help one another make it through. The Big Show is what I do -- give you some music to listen to and maybe a thing or two to think about. Maybe that's helpful. I pray that it is.

Wash your hands, keep your distance, and be careful out there.

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


Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Let's see who's going to be 'hysterical' in two weeks


If I see one more social-media post about not listening to the "hysterical" media -- a group I was proud to belong to, and still do in my own way, and to which my wife, over in the dining room busting her ass for the Omaha World-Herald, still belongs -- I am going to go all Ray Nagin on WWL radio after Katrina.

If not for "the hysterical media," you wouldn't know what the fuck is coming at you like a freight train. You wouldn't know squat about "wash your hands" and how COVID-19 is spread. You wouldn't know that your health-care system is at risk of collapse if you don't stay the hell home and not cause yourself (or your loved ones, friends and random strangers) to be infected.

If not for "the hysterical media," no one would be sewing face masks for hospitals or trying to help out laid-off workers -- because they'd have no damned idea if they weren't hard hit themselves.


https://www.omaha.com/
IF NOT for "the hysterical media," you'd know jack shit about jack squat. (Which still, unfortunately, is too often the case in this country, despite the heroic efforts of "the hysterical media.")

Untold members of "the hysterical media" have given their lives to let unreflective and ungrateful people know the things they'd rather not know but damned well need to. On my darkest days, I don't know why "the hysterical media" bother.

Right now, there are hard-working folks in "the hysterical media" who have been infected by COVID-19 in the course of trying tell you about the threat of COVID-19 and how your fellow Americans are suffering under the plague of COVID-19.

Not that people fucking care. At least, won't care about until they're lying on a gurney in the hall of an overwhelmed hospital, gasping for breath, waiting for death because there's no respirator available.

Your governors have been screaming bloody murder about that shortage. You'd know that if you actually had been listening to "the hysterical media."

Now, please don't get all hysterical when you're blindsided by what you refused to believe was coming. It's a bad look, don't you know?

And please don't say the media didn't try to tell you. They did, and you called them all "hysterical."

Saturday, March 21, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Doing our level best


End of Week 2 in nearly total home sequestration: Mr. and Mrs. Favog have not killed one another.

So far, so good.

In the name of "flattening the curve" of COVID-19 cases, we certainly hope you're doing the same. Your health, your neighbor's health, your grandmama's health and the health of our American health-care system demand that middling sacrifice of us all.

The virus, it is real. And real bad.

SO, IN THE NAME of making your homebound state as pleasant as possible, here's another episode of the Big Show . . . 3 Chords & the Truth. As usual, it's a good one.

An eclectic one.

One that will make you, at least once (maybe twice . . . OK, maybe three times) go "WHOA!"

That is how we roll here in the Apocalypse Bunker in Omaha, by God, Nebraska. We're doing our level best.

Now turn us on and listen to the music. And wash your damn hands.

So . . . is anybody else disinfecting groceries? Yesterday's gobstoppering paranoia is today's mere prudence, I suppose -- here in Coronavirus Nation.

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


Saturday, March 14, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Well, here we are


You can't say the Big Show is a laggard in having an apocalypse bunker, now, can you?

And I'll bet you're scrambling to construct one of your own, now, aren't you? Complete with microbial air filtering capabilities.

Well, that's why 3 Chords & the Truth is a leader, in musical entertainment and disaster preparedness, too. That's why you're here -- you want the best in entertainment while you get ready for God only knows what next.

THIS WEEK on this here program, we're going to keep it light and relaxing, because God knows we've all had about as much anxiety and heaviness as we can stand. So prepare to be mellowed out . . . and to have a little joy infusion into this present viral-induced joy deficit.

And that's about it. We're going to try to chill as best as we can. We need all the chill we can muster for the times ahead.

As you're hunkered down.

In your own apocalypse bunker.

Remember this, though. We'll get through it. It won't be easy, but we will.

Somehow.

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



Tuesday, March 10, 2020

If you can't win a Pulitzer, at least try not to win a Darwin

Click for full size

If marijuana -- hell, crystal meth -- isn't legal in Nebraska (it's not), you'd be hard-pressed to divine that from the Omaha World-Herald's website tonight.

This fails every possible journalistic test. It fails in newsworthiness. It fails in "what folks are worried about." It even fails the Internet Age test of "What story is gonna get the most page views?"

PUTTING "Creighton looks to spruce up 24th Street" in the lead-story slot over, oh, coronavirus fast getting a foothold in the Omaha area even fails a basic tenet of the news business that every first-year journalism student learns in college -- if not on their high-school newspaper: The most important story gets the most important slot.

I can't say I know exactly what the hell is going on here, but whatever it is, it's seriously messed up.

The World-Herald hasn't won a Pulitzer Prize since 1944 (and probably won't under the bleed-it-dry ownership of Lee Enterprises) but at least you'd think it wouldn't be too much to ask that it not try for the newspaper version of the Darwin Awards.

Friday, March 06, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Watch your step


The covid-19 thing, the "novel coronavirus," is getting real here in the United States. So far, 15 are dead. Total confirmed American infections are north of 300.

One case was confirmed at the Omaha hospital a block from where I write.

And this is what the president of the United States said -- amid health officials praising him in Dear Leader terms -- during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta today: "People are really surprised I understand this stuff,” he said. “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”

Believe me, Donald John Trump's only "natural ability" is for being a liar, an ignoramus, a buffoon and a flim-flam man.

SO . . . what does this have to do with this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth? Well, this week's edition of the Big Show is all about WATCH YOUR STEP. That's what we all have to do now, because we're pretty much on our own -- watch your step.

Part of watching your step, besides washing your hands -- a lot -- and substituting a wave for a handshake, and staying out of large crowds, and making sure you have enough provisions to hole up at home for a while if need be . . . is keeping a level head and keeping your spirits up.

The aim of 3 Chords & the Truth is that last thing. The aim is to play some good music, make you think a little bit . . . and to keep spirits up. We're going to need that. A lot.

Besides, this here program would serve as excellent entertainment if you're homebound and eating lots of beans, soup and tuna fish.

That . . . is all.

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


There's a spot on Donald's head where all the crazy flows

NASA
This is the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. It's a helluva storm that's been there a long, long time.

It's the biggest storm, the yuuuuuugest storm in the solar system. You wouldn't believe what a storm it is -- and it extends 200 miles into the gas giant's atmosphere.
Fox News
THIS IS the Great Gray Spot on Donald Trump's head. It's a helluva . . . well, we don't know exactly what the hell it is.

But given its similarity, except in color, to the massive storm on that other gas giant in the solar system, some might infer that the Great Gray Spot also is a massive storm, which may account for much of the erratic behavior, lack of focus and general covfefe of America's head case in chief.
Fox News
Other possible explanations for the unnatural phenomenon include a horrendous comb-over or a Russian remote-control device.

Unfortunately, a more precise answer concerning the origin and effects of Great Gray Spot requires better data than we have with these images. That will have to wait until NASA can send another interplanetary probe to that region of head space.

Saturday, February 29, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Hard times


Hard times are us.

Really, it's just one damned thing after another. Now it's a looming pandemic and a crashing stock market because of the looming pandemic, which has pretty much shuttered China and threatens to do the same to the rest of the world.

Investors also weren't exactly comforted by the realization that the president of the United States is a mentally unwell half-wit who thinks the whole coronavirus (or"caronavirus" if you're reading Donald Trump's tweets) thing is just being exaggerated by the evil liberal media and the Democrats to crash the economy and cost him re-election.

To summarize: We are f*cked.

THIS EDITION of 3 Chords & the Truth is an attempt to internalize that . . . and be as much a musical balm as we can. It may not be much, but it isn't nothing.

The Big Show also is a fine way to pass the time once we're all too afraid to venture out of our homes for fear of infection. Or are quarantined -- one or the other.

Who knew that the 3C&T Apocalypse Bunker might end up being something other than a metaphor, a mere semi-witty saying? But that's where we are in the Land of One Damned Thing After Another.

Good night, and good luck. And may all your infections be mild.

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


Friday, February 21, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Carnival in the bunker


Just because you're hunkered down in an apocalypse bunker in the Trumpian States of Amerika, that doesn't mean you can't spruce the place up a bit and celebrate Mardi Gras.

Let's just call Carnival time the bright spot between secular, never-ending Lent and religious Lent plus the ongoing secular, never-ending Lent in this national vale of moonbattery.

That's where we are on this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

But . . . the music's great, the music is fine, and the music on the Big Show (one hopes) will get us through every form of Lenten mortification.

And dat's the name of dat tune.

Period.

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


Friday, February 14, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Looking back to our better selves


Let me be direct: I often find myself looking backward, embracing the anachronism, because the present is too much to take straight up.

Sometimes, anachronistic ain't such a bad thing to be -- like less vitriolic, more accepting of grace and redemption . . . having a longer attention span.

For example, 3 Chords & the Truth is a big time throwback to another age, totally out of step with postmodernity. First off, this is a freeform music program. Where the hell do you even find such a thing anymore?

Not many places, that's for certain.

ANOTHER THING . . . the only computer that puts together any playlist for any episode of the Big Show resides inside the head of your Mighty Favog. It's somewhat larger than your smartphone, and I'm pretty sure it's hand-wired and runs on vacuum tubes.

Too, this here podcast embraces the quirky, the eccentric and holding more than one thought in one's head at one time. Talk about anachronistic.

3 Chords & the Truth has a soft spot for old music, old electronic equipment, old politics and old notions of what we used to know as "radio." We have no damn clue what the hell folks think they're doing on several fronts today.

And we feel sorrow and sympathy for those too young to remember the good things we do, too young to remember, and be wary of, the old bad stuff we've seen and lived -- and which keeps coming back around every so often.

That pretty much sums up the aesthetic of Revolution 21 and the Big Show.

That also helps to make this, in my humble opinion, a damn good radio program. Even if it's not actually on what passes for radio these days.

Try it. You'll like it, this anachronistic thing here.

YEAH, call us an anachronism. We like it like that.

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


Thursday, February 13, 2020

If you wigged out, Luzianne had you covered

Baton Rouge State-Times, Feb. 12, 1970

Maybe it's the caffeine.

Well, switching to Sanka might've been one cup over the line, so 50 years ago in coffee-loving Louisiana, Luzianne had a plan for when the ladies might get a little jacked up and tear their hair out -- buy our coffee, get wigs cheap.

Works for me. So, did they have any toupées?

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

The best thing about outmoded technology


Fifty years ago, in February 1970, Polaroid Land Cameras were a big thing.

In fact, Polaroid represented instant photography -- pull the undeveloped film out of the camera (and the film was the picture) -- wait a minute (or 2 minutes for color), and you could see what you just took. Will miracles never cease.

Oh, don't forget the flashcubes or flashbulbs if you're going to be taking pictures indoors.
 
Omaha World-Herald -- Feb. 12, 1970
THE TECHNOLOGY of my youth was much more advanced than what we have today, what with taking film-free, electronical "pictures" on one's telephone, which hasn't even the decency to be attached to a phone outlet by a long cord.

With the Polaroid and its Colorpack film, by God, you got 10 exposures, and that film wasn't cheap -- because People Smarter Than Yourself didn't want you wasting time and resources taking pictures of stupid things.

Like yourself.

In 1970, if you tried to take a selfie with a Polaroid camera, it would not go well for you. For one, you would be seeing spots -- still -- in 2020. And that's
assuming you didn't have a bad flashbulb that . . . how shall we put it . . . blew up.

Now, it wouldn't matter at all that the selfie would be completely out of focus. That's because all you would see would be the bright white of the flash bathing your now blind-ass self.

Of course, you could try taking a selfie as people did back then -- in a mirror. In a very well-lit room so you could avoid shooting a flash into a mirror . . . which, again, probably would not go well.  

FUN FACT: Did you know that until, in historical terms . . . yesterday, all selfies showed backward people pointing backward cameras much like the one in our Calandra Camera ad, a


I had a Polaroid camera in 1970, and I am happy to report there are no blurry, washed-out selfies of my Ernie Douglas-looking self. If you know who Ernie Douglas was, you remember the blessed days when taking a selfie was a process involved enough to deter people vain and unserious enough to want to take one.

History giveth, the present taketh away.

Saturday, February 08, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Easy, right?


It's been a week, hasn't it?

Seems like we've had a lot of those, right? A week. A month. Three years. We've had a three years.

It's easy to lose hope. It's easy -- and probably correct -- to think things are just going to get worse. It's even easier to not know what the hell to do.

It's really hard to see the bottom, mainly because there may not be one. The president is a deranged cult leader, and cruelty is is specialty -- which is what many, including the allegedly religious, see as a feature and not a bug.

TORMENT WHOM you will and despoil what you will, Mr. President. Just give us some right-thinking judges, and save the faith we've mocked from them what hate us. Whom we likewise hate, for Jesus said we ought.

It's in the Bible -- somewhere in the back. No? But they said on Fox News.

Three years ago, we knew this present darkness would be hard. But we thought it'd be easier.

Right.

WHAT DOES this have to do with 3 Chords & the Truth? I don't know. Nothing? Everything?

What will we do on the Big Show? The answer is . . . what we can.

We'll play great music. We'll endeavor not to be dumb. We won't insult your intelligence, and we'll try to be a light, however small, in the darkness that has overtaken this land.

It started in 2008, and it continues right now. Vive la résistance! Long live "What we can"!

And this week particularly, you're gonna love "What we can."

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


Saturday, January 25, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Can we be America again?


Hi there! Remember me?

We're back with this little thing called 3 Chords & the Truth after a month off . . . about three weeks of that due to the viral crud that's been going around these parts and your Mighty Favog's not having enough voice to do the show. At least not enough until right now, and that's a generous assessment of the state of my vocal cords.

Winter stinks.

But not as badly as the last three years, which have been rather like attending the world's longest, saddest funeral. 

For your country.

AND NOW, as the president is on trial in the Senate, and the outcome is just as foreordained as the trials of white supremacists who killed black folk in 1963 Mississippi. . . .

Yeah, it kind of puts the viral crud in perspective as we head to the graveyard to shovel dirt onto the casket of the United States of America.

I'm guessing right now that you kind of wish I still had the crud. On the other hand . . . it is what it is, and we're well past the point of being measured or polite.

Down here in the 3C&T apocalypse bunker, bluntness is standard operating procedure. The music is pretty sweet, though.

In dark times, we need all the cold comfort we can muster.

Subversion is just about all that we have left in our political and cultural arsenal, and good music, smartly presented, is the Big Show's way of subverting the bad hand -- the dysfunctional culture, politics and government -- we've been dealt. Turn the music up . . . loud . . . as you find your way to throw a spanner into the gears of fascist Amerika.

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


Thursday, January 23, 2020

The abomination of Trumpolation


It has been many years since I've wanted a goddamned thing to do with the professionalized, politicized "pro-life" movement. Why? Because it's God-damned.

That sad fact becomes clearer by the day, if not by the minute.

Any organization that isn't wouldn't mock the Almighty by saying, with apparently straight faces -- both of them -- that Donald John Trump was "a voice for the unborn and continuously working to build a culture of life." That is a whopper of Trumpian proportions, at least.

Trumpian, hell. Orwellian.

Having Trump speak at an alleged March for Life is like having the ghost of Joseph Goebbels keynote an Anti-Defamation League convention. This most vile and dangerous of American presidents is building some kind of culture, alt-right all right, and it is anything but a "culture of life."

A CULTURE OF LIFE does not see ripping children from their parents at the border, then placing them in squalid and overcrowded Border Patrol stations as a feature and not a bug.

A culture of life's stance on the treatment of women does not include "grab 'em by the pussy."

A culture of life does not celebrate war crimes, it does not threaten war crimes, and it does not tolerate peacetime assassinations of foreign leaders.

A culture of life seeks to ease the struggles of the poor -- it does not cut their SNAP benefits.

A culture of life takes a dim view -- a really dim view -- of referring to women as "dogs."

A culture of life does not claim there's "some very fine people" among neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.

A culture of life does not celebrate someone who's told 16,241 public lies in his first three years in office.

A culture of life is not racist.

A culture of life is not anti-Semitic.

I could go on, but it's late and I'm tired.

WHEN I SAW the March of Life's tweet, the first thing -- literally -- that came to mind was "abomination of desolation." That's Bible speak, roughly describing something horrific and defiling. Apocalyptic, even. Think of erecting pagan monuments on the ruins of the temple in Jerusalem, as the Romans did.

Think of building an altar to Satan in a Catholic church.

Think of having Donald John Trump speak at a March for Life.

I'm thinking of the Archdiocese of Omaha sending busloads of teenagers to the March for Life -- and all of its hyperpoliticized Trumpdolatry -- like lambs to the spiritual and ideological slaughter. One of three things is likely to happen to each poor soul, and none is good:

* The kid might die of irony overload right on the spot.

* The kid might become a MAGA enthusiast, endangering his or her immortal soul and causing much harm to others somewhere down the road.

* The kid might be unusually perceptive, see this for the evil, blasphemous bullshit that it really is, take note of who and what brought him or her into this moral clusterfuck . . . and be lost to the Church (or Christianity, period) forever.

What an amazing witness for Christ. America -- and the church -- will have much to suffer because of such sulfurous subversion from the depths of hell.

I'm also imagining Jesus on one of those buses full of Nebraska teens as it crosses the Potomac River. It is written, "As he drew near, he saw the city and wept over it."

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Somewhere in Hastings, Nebraska in 1958

Courtesy of eBay
"Good news, Emil!"

"What's up, Verl?"

"I found the money in the budget for a half-page ad in the TV Guide!"


"That's fine, Verl."

"There's a rub, though, Emil."

"And. . . ."


"Well, there's not enough money to get anything printed up at Hasenpfeffer's Print Shop."

"Jesus, Verl, that's not good."

"No, Emil, but dollars don't grow on trees, y'know."

"That's my line, Verl."

"Sorry, Emil. I got carried away with frugality."


"There's hope for ya yet, son. So, what do you propose we do for this TV Guide advertisement, then?

"Well, we still got the picture for Fran's cooking show that we put on the poster in the Hinky Dinky produce aisle that time."


"And. . . ."

"Well, Emil, I been goin' with that gal, Willa -- you know, the new art teacher at the high school."
Courtesy of eBay
"I think I know where you're goin' with this, Verl. Not a bad solution."

"I think it'll work out. But I think all she has would be pens and those new itsy-bitsy kinds of Marks-a-Lots."
"That'll be just fine, son. It'll look just as good as those ads for KETV in Omaha."

"Oh . . . Emil?"

"What now, Verl?"


"Did I mention that Willa has a little bit of palsy?"

Tuesday, January 07, 2020

War is over. (If you want it.)


"The battle is always lost within the castle."

Well, John Lennon got that one right. We elected Donald Trump president -- or at least voters in states comprising a majority in the Electoral College elected Donald Trump -- and what seems to be a nearly inevitable war with Iran already is lost.

It didn't -- doesn't -- have to be fought. The fuse was lit when Trump pulled the United States out of the multinational nuclear agreement with Iran, then ramped up sanctions in an attempt to destroy the Iranian economy.

After a year or so of tit-for-tatting with the mullahs, Trump poured jet fuel on the burning fuse by ordering the (nominally) peacetime, extralegal assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, said to be the second-most powerful member of the Iranian government. The Iranians will strike back -- hard.

When they do, Trump, who has blown up any plausible deniability that he is a madman, has threatened to respond by committing war crimes on an epic scale -- airstrikes against 52 Iranian targets including civilian sites and cultural treasures.

THE IRANIAN regime is not innocent in this, and Suleimani had much blood on his hands, including American blood. Then again, so does North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Trump considers him a friend . . . at least for the time being.

Tomorrow, who the hell knows?

No, Iran is not innocent. But after years of neocon warmongering, Trump's diplomatic duplicity, foreign-policy recklessness and -- now -- an illegal assassination of a foreign official that pretty clearly was an act of war, the United States stands before a global jury guilty as charged.

We are a deeply wrong country set to embark on a clearly illegal and unjust war.

And we are guilty of putting the madman who's about to pull the trigger in just the position to do it. With impunity.

As we say during the Roman Catholic Mass, "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

But . . . perhaps if getting into this catastrophic mess is our fault, maybe we also can get out of it. Somehow, like we eventually did in Vietnam. 

"War is over. (If you want it.)"

Friday, January 03, 2020

Proverbs 16:18


For God's sake . . . as opposed to whom or what evangelicals are worshiping these days.

Just saw this in The New York Times, and my disgust and revulsion know no bounds:
In his first public appearance since the strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran, President Trump rallied his evangelical Christian base of supporters on Friday, portraying himself as the restorer of faith in the public square and claiming that God is “on our side.”

Mr. Trump brought to the stage Cissie Graham Lynch, a granddaughter of Billy Graham, the founder of Christianity Today, to offer an implicit rebuke of the magazine’s recent editorial calling for his removal from the White House.

Ms. Lynch’s appearance underscored how sensitive Mr. Trump was about any signs of fracturing in his base; many evangelical allies denounced the editorial, and Ms. Graham Lynch vowed on Friday to help Mr. Trump win re-election. She then welcomed a supporter to the stage who told attendees that they could not trust what the news media wrote about the president.
REALLY, why worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph when you can go all in for a Golden Calf Orange Ass. Willful delusion is the worst kind of delusion.
Ass, Orange
Outside the rally, supporters said they came to offer their unblinking support for the president. In a city where Hispanics make up 70 percent of the population, many supporters chatted with one another in Spanish as they waited for hours in the blazing Miami sun.

“He’s talking from his heart,” said Michelle Hoff, who came to the rally with two other women from her prayer group. “I can’t remember when we had a president who was honest like he is. Like everyone else, he’s a sinner saved by grace. A lot of people say stuff that they don’t do. He’s doing it.”

Asked if she opposed anything the president said or did, Ms. Hoff said that she only wished he would appoint judges to fully overturn Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage.

The rally inside the massive church began with energetic Christian rock, with many supporters clad in red M.A.G.A. hats dancing and lifting their hands in prayer.
GOD is not mocked. And if you know anything about the Old Testament -- which Donald Trump doesn't -- you suspect it probably isn't a good idea to f*** with the Persians at this juncture.

Proverbs 16:18, y'all. Proverbs 16:18. And to America's Orange Ass evangelicals . . . good riddance.