Dad

On Tuesday February 25 I woke up to several text messages on my phone, which had been on silent mode overnight – my store has been instructed to call my landline after 10:00PM – one was from my brother Michael, which was unusual because we almost never call each other to chat, the other from my sister Patty. Both messages informed me that my father had experienced a stroke and was in the hospital. I was scheduled work go to work at 3:00PM, so I had plenty of time to digest this information and call my siblings. When I reached them they both told me, in no uncertain terms, that I should “come home”…now. Considering that this particular brother and this particular sister never agree on anything, I did not consider any other course of action other than going to New York.

After several hours of dealing with a series of un-empowered morons I booked my flight for the following morning. I arrived at the hospital at about 5:00PM Wednesday in a rental car after depleting my cell phone battery using the GPS directions function. All of my siblings, and eventually all but one of my father’s nieces and nephews and most of his grandchildren were on site. Dad was opening his eyes and appeared to be somewhat responsive to our presence, at one point meticulously rearranging his hair that one of us had absent-mindedly mussed up. At one point, as I sat at his side holding his hand and silently looking at him, he turned toward me and opened his eyes wide in what I interpreted as a sign of recognition. We all had those little moments. He seemed to be improving and we all held on to that little bit of hope.

On Thursday morning our hopes were proved to be wishful thinking.

It was soon evident that Dad would never fully recover, and any hope of even a partial recovery was at best a long shot. Conversations ensued and Mom informed the medical staff that Dad’s wishes, outlined in his living will, would be honored; no heroic measures. By Friday night Dad was transferred from Intensive Care to Hospice where we all gathered around be with him until the end.

Anyone who knew Dad knew that he had a crazy sense of humor, and was the source and subject of numerous hilarious stories. What I did not realize was the shear overwhelming number of funny incidents that he was a part of. We told stories for days, with hardly any repetition. There were many that I had never heard before, like when he was dozing on the subway on his way home from work and two thugs stole the hat right off his head. He was so angry, but everyone laughed about it, which made him madder! Or his set of “tools” that might have been brought over from Ireland in the 1800’s that Michael and my brother-in-law Scott jokingly argued about.

On Saturday night March 1^st, after several of us went to watch my niece Bridy win a talent competition at her school, we gathered in his room, telling more stories, playing Bridy’s winning song and Dixieland music on Pandora. Eventually everyone headed home, I decided to stay behind, since I had not had an opportunity to be alone with him since I had arrived. I pulled up “Making a Snowball” on my cell phone and read it to him. If you've read it, you know it’s as much a tribute to Dad as it is a recounting of the waning days of my first marriage. I then talked to him, assuring him that Mom would be taken care of, and thanking him for all that he had done for me…for all of us. I encouraged him to let go and accept the ride to the other side.

Just before 8:00AM the next morning Dad indeed let go of the physical and embraced the eternal.

For as long as I can remember Dad was a man on a mission, dedicated to taking care of those whom he loved. Uncle Tim described him as a dutiful older brother. We all saw how dedicated he was to taking care of his mother, despite her many provocations, taking her shopping and calling her every day. He was devoted to Mom and took care of her in so many ways. He was a loving and protective father to the five of us, and even as adults he was always there for us. He was a great help at his church, setting up for mass, which he attended every morning. He was also there for his grandchildren, babysitting when they were younger. He was diligent about his finances, and our family never wanted for anything. He is now at rest.

Resting is how I picture him now. If there is an afterlife, which he surely believed in and I am leaning toward myself, he is taking advantage of it by simply taking a break. Sitting on the back porch of The Summerland of Irish myth with a Scotch or a beer or a cup of coffee looking out on us all; content in the knowledge that we’re all fine, and that we’ll be fine in large part due to what he instilled in us. 

Is Historical Accuracy a Necessary Component of Religious Belief?

Is historical accuracy a necessary component of religious belief? Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims would certainly argue that it is. I would argue that the teachings of most religions that apply to everyday behavior, to relations among people and communities, do not bear an inseparable link to divine guidance. In fact, the rules of everyday behavior do not vary much from one religion to another. The so-called Golden Rule can be found in most faiths, and even outside them in secular teachings. Outside of the Sabbath and "Don't worship other gods", the Ten Commandments are pretty much  good common sense rules for how people should demonstrate basic respect for each other. Most of what is in the Koran, other than all the circular logic about how the Koran is revelation because God revealed it, and the conquer the infidels stuff, is good solid advice on how to be a responsible adult. Outside of those two Abrahamic faiths the stories of the gods and heroes are, as far as I know, not taken seriously as historical fact; the god and heroes may or may not have literally existed, but their historicity isn't the point, the lesson that the stories are telling is the point. But when we get to Christianity and Islam, somehow the literal, physical, verifiable, historical accuracy becomes the point. When so much weight is put upon the truth that Jesus or Mohammed existed, or that the Koran or Paul's epistles were divinely inspired, the emphasis switches from how one should act to what one should believe. If one takes the teachings in the Christian Gospels at face value, then it really makes no difference whether the Jesus mentioned therein was an historical figure, an invented character, a distortion based on a real person, or an amalgam of several different people, because the teachings in the Gospels stand or fall on their own logic and practicability, without reference to who promulgated them. One very common logical fallacy is appeal to authority - which is saying that just because "an authority" said it, then it must be true. Jesus, if the accounts are true, is the authority, he is the son of God, so what he says must be true, so any logic, or self-evident truth must now be subordinated to the reign of the authority. But if what is contained in a holy book is true, then what is said will still be true, no matter who said it and who wrote it down. Within Christian belief, where we run into problems is the doctrine, promulgated in the Pauline epistles, that it was Jesus' death, resurrection, ascension bodily into heaven and future return that is most important, pushing the moral and behavioral teachings off to the side and making belief more important than action. In fact, the idea that it is "faith alone", as opposed to "works" that is at the core of Protestantism, initially put forth by Martin Luther. Interestingly, several, if not many, pagan traditions have stories of sacrificed gods killed and reborn. None seem to try to connect these characters to real historical figures and place the importance on the lesson, rather than attempt to prove that they are "true".

So, I suppose the answer is that it depends on what your religious beliefs consists of. If your faith is built on an appeal to authority and on the quasi-magical attributes of a specific human or demi-god, then it matters a lot. But if one is focusing on morals, ethics, behavior, community and relations among people, then no, it matters not in the least.

Using Religion to Justify Bigotry

While a rant against religion may be justified, that's not what I'm going to be doing this afternoon, rather ranting against those who use religion as an excuse for their bigotry and intolerance.

One of the big "headline" controversies these days is gay marriage. Many religious people resort to passages from their "holy" books to back up their view that gays are variously misguided sinners, poor souls apart from God or even abominations. Some even shake their head sadly, as if their bigotry wasn't their idea...they're just following God's instructions. Some are indignant that there are those who will criticize then for their bigotry, as if this criticism is infringing on their First Amendment rights of free speech and free exercise of religion. I'll start by looking at things from my own experience.

For many years I was part of a religious group that, among other things, preached that homosexuality was the most heinous of sins and that homosexuals were the "lowest of the low". This was interesting in that the initial teachings that you encountered with this group made a big point that there was no degrees of "badness" with sins: sin was sin. But somewhere along the line, preaching against homosexuality became a focus, even to the point of a purge of those who supposedly had "homosexual thoughts" or were, as the leader called them "homo sympathizers. Now, despite there being a  host of other non-biblical beliefs and behaviors that the leaders of this group classified as sin, homosexuality bore the brunt of their hatred and vitriol. The way that this translated down to the unwashed masses of this group seemed to depend on how homophobic they were to start off with. While I admit that I had swallowed the interpretation of the bible that condemned homosexuals and homosexuality during this time period, I had been friends with and associated with gays and lesbians before this became a major focus, and quickly repudiated this mindset after I left the group. Many people that I knew in the group seemed to take it to heart mucway too enthusiastically. From what I could see they had always had a revulsion against homosexuality, but now they had a divinely sponsored excuse to engage in their prejudice.

This doesn't mean that all religious people are like this. There are some, maybe even a majority, or at least a significant minority, who for one reason or another have not chosen to put their interpretation of the bible first and foremost - above common sense, reason, or even evidence to the contrary. These are people, absent anything that they heard in their churches, who would have no problem at all with their gay neighbors.

This rant is also not meant to suggest that homosexuality is the only area affected by this mindset or that Christians are the only people who practice this spiritually sanctioned idiocy. Look at the areas dominated by fundamentalist Islam. This part of the world is characterized by relegating women to, at best, second-class citizenship, or at worst, non-person-hood, without rights or recognition. Women in many of these regions are wrapped up in layers of cloth, sometimes with only their eyes visible, sometimes not even that, ostensibly to protect them from men who would be moved by lust if they happened to see any female flesh. In some situations, men who sexually assault a woman who is not dressed "modestly" are not at fault...the woman is. All of this in the name of some god.

While none of this would be reasonable under any circumstances, it would at least be consistent if the holy writings of these religions were unambiguously understood in the same way by all adherents. But as we all know, this isn't the case. Hard core religionists in both Christianity and Islam insist that the writings are plain and it is only the ungodly who come to conclusions and interpretations differently than they do. Those who come to different conclusions are not "real" Christians or "true" Muslims. No one really has a good answer to the question of why there are so many different interpretations, other than the damn things aren't as plain as the true believers think that they are.

Both the Bible and the Koran are claimed to be "inspired by God", which the fundamentalists in both religions understand to mean a word-for-word dictation by God to the writers. Much has been written about the origins of the Bible and the problems found therein, but there are just as many problems with the Koran, although most Muslim scholars are unwilling to question the myth of its origin. What many people do not know is that Mohammed, assuming that he existed in the fashion that Islamic history says he did, did not write down anything. He was apparently a combination religious-political-military leader, and it was only after his death that his successors sought to compile his sayings into one book. In the early days of Islam there were competing versions, until eventually all versions that did not have official sanction were burned.

So getting back to the competing versions of religious faiths, I believe that people gravitate toward versions of their religion that reflect what  they already believe, and mirror their pre-existing prejudices. For every scholar who insists that the Bible condemns homosexuality, another can make a perfectly good case that it does not. For every Muslim mullah who insists that women must be covered and prohibited from driving, another can make a perfectly good case that women should be treated as men's equals. So, with two interpretations of your holy book floating around, what would be the rationale for following the group that espouses the more hateful stance? In my view it's because the more hateful position "makes more sense" to you, because of your own predisposition to the hateful point of view.

You're not taking a principled stand against the ungodly and defending your religion from outside attack, you're using your version of religion to defend your myopic and unreasonable hatred.

Good luck with that

Nobody Likes Your Favorite Band

There's always a little bit of exaggeration, a little bit of creative fudging, of embroidering the facts in any good tale. This one contains slightly more imaginary parts than usual, but I won't tell you which parts!

Live music, there’s nothing like it! Music itself makes life a bit more pleasant, but live music is the habanero sauce on the red beans & rice of life. Early on, music was a relatively minor part of my life, Dad liked Dixieland jazz and Mom liked Engelbert Humperdink and I just listened to whatever came on the AM radio. Even as a high school freshman I was a bit behind the music curve, out of my depth while my fellow students discussed ‘The Who’, ‘The Guess Who’ and ‘Led Zeppelin’. Eventually I started listening to albums by the top groups of the time: Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer and others when during my junior year I fell in with a crowd that included some musicians, one of whom hosted Friday night beer drinking and music parties where I experienced the broad spectrum of rock music and lost my virginity.

One advantage of growing up in New York is the presence of Madison Square Garden, a destination for every arena-rock band. Another is the ubiquitous public transportation,[1] which abets concert going by teenagers. Rosedale, my home neighborhood, like many other neighborhoods in the borough of Queens boasted a Long Island Railroad (LIRR) station. Not to be confused with the subway, the LIRR was a bit more of an upscale railroad and was the commuting choice for many city workers who lived past the borders of New York City. Unlike the subway, where you used tokens to gain admittance to the platform, you either bought a ticket in advance or paid your fare while on the train, but you didn’t have to pay a fare just to get on the platform. This made the LIRR Rosedale station the cool hangout for bored pre-teens in the neighborhood. My buddies and I would walk up the concrete steps leading to the platform and watch the trains come and go. We also discovered a cave-like chamber underneath the platform that we turned into a clubhouse. As we got older (I almost said “matured” – but I’m still waiting for that to happen) the proximity of the station to the home of my buddy Alex, the unofficial jumping off point for our forays into the world of live music, made it an ideal mode of transportation from residential southeast Queens to the exciting world of “Da City”: Manhattan.

Back before there was Ozzfest, before chickens and bats lived in fear of having their heads bitten off, before Ozzie’s reality show, there was Black Sabbath.[2] Then, like now, Black Sabbath didn’t get much radio airplay, but there was a vast underground of Sabbath fans out there, my friends and I among them. Periodically Black Sabbath would appear live in concert at Madison Square Garden and early in our senior year in high school we’d gotten tickets to see our heroes. This show was to be the first concert of any kind that I would attend, and if I remember correctly, the tickets were $15 for seats in about the twentieth row. This was the most that I ever paid for a ticket in those days, but it was also the closest to the stage that I ever sat. A typical ticket, either in the nosebleed section, or even behind the stage, cost eight or ten dollars. The evening began with our gang of guys gathering at Alex’s house, from whence we walked the quarter mile to the LIRR station. At the foot of the stairs, next to the taxi stand, was an important stop on our journey: the liquor store.

Back in those days, when the memory of the 60’s was still fresh and disco began to raise its glittery head, the drinking age in most places was only eighteen. Even when we were as young as sixteen years old we still managed to walk into liquor stores and delis and buy our beer. This was due partly to the rather lax enforcement of the laws against selling to minors. In fact, for a time, while it was illegal for a minor to possess alcohol, there were no legal penalties for selling it to them, a little loophole in the law (long since closed) that left little incentive to pass up sales to the little tykes. The other factor was that prior to 1980 New York State drivers licenses did not have the operator’s picture on them. Not only that, but they were not laminated, were printed on cheap pasteboard and could be altered with ridiculous ease, facilitating I.D. swaps by those over eighteen to their under-eighteen buddies.

So here we are at the foot-of-the-LIRR stairs liquor store trying to decide who looks old enough to go in and buy. Usually it came down to either me or John M, (known for some unfathomable reason as “LaRuc”), mainly because we both sported long, bushy sideburns, giving the illusion that we were a few years older than we actually were. Now normally, the boys and I were beer drinkers, Budweiser[3] especially, which was usually was very effective at getting us drunk. But this was a special occasion, this was Black Sabbath! We were also going to be sneaking alcohol into Madison Square Garden, so a six-pack apiece wasn’t going to cut it, since MSG security didn’t allow you to bring alcohol into the venue and performed pat-downs to ensure compliance. For the occasion we had purchased what was then known as “wine sacks”, plastic bags covered in suede, made to sort of resemble a Middle Eastern goatskin, and purchased non-carbonated beverages such as Boone’s Farm wine and Tango (a pre-mixed screwdriver) so they wouldn’t expand and explode. The wine sacks had a cord attached which could be utilized to carry it over your shoulder; we slung them across our backs, concealing them under our shirts. Since we were also wearing jean jackets and down vests the sacks were well hidden. We had about twenty minutes before the train arrived so we invested in a few six packs to tide us over on the train station. A half hour train ride into Penn Station and we were in “The City”, ready to party. First on the agenda: a stop for dinner at “Burger & Brew” where we loaded up on burgers and salad and then headed over to The Garden.

Best seats I ever had for a concert, row 20 and here comes the opening act, a new band on the national scene called Aerosmith. We’ve finished our beer, are most of the way through our wine sacks, and did I mention the bag of weed? I can’t say that I remember too much about the concert, but I was having fun, and continued drinking and smoking throughout the intermission until…here they are…Black Sabbath! They started out with “Paranoid”, I remember that much; we were all standing on our chairs cheering for our heroes when the alcohol, the weed, the noise and other still unknown variables all came together resulting in severe dizziness and even more severe puking…all over the girl in front of me. The last thing that I remember before passing out was my buddies preventing her boyfriend from kicking my ass. Why we weren’t thrown out I’ll never know, but Alex, John, John, Anthony and Patrick carried me to the men’s room so that I could puke some more…and some more after that. After Patrick attempted to revive me by slapping me around they left me in the bathroom. I’ll never know why MSG security didn’t take me into custody, but I spent the rest of the concert there. So, after looking forward to this concert for weeks, I spent it in a toilet stall. Good friends that they were, the boys made sure that I got home, dragging me out of the bathroom, propping me up between two of them, getting me to the train and home to Rosedale.

Sometime the next morning, or more likely the next afternoon, I slowly awoke, inching back to the land of the living. When more or less fully awake, I noticed that my jean jacket, where I had secreted a  bag of weed, was gone. Had my mom picked it up from the floor and taken it to the laundry? Had my NYPD cop dad found it? Was I in trouble? I was pretty sure that I was until my brother Mike stuck his smirking face into the bedroom, waving the little bag that he had taken out of my pocket.

In addition to the “big events” at Madison Square Garden and other big venues, there were also our regular weekend outings at area bars such as Speaks,[4] Hammerhead’s, Oak Beach Inn and Beggar’s Opera. Most of these places featured cover bands such as Rat Race Choir, Swift Kick, and the soon-to-be famous Twisted Sister. Oak Beach Inn or OBI as it was affectionately known, was originally located on Oak Beach on Long Island’s south shore and soon spawned satellite locations, OBI West, North and East. OBI West, in Elmont neighborhood of Nassau County, right past the city limits of New York, went through numerous changes of ownership, from Oak Beach Inn West, to Hammerheads, to Popeye’s, but never changed the décor, so the name always had some kind of nautical theme! Just about every Saturday night, my friends and I would head out to one these bars to enjoy one of our favorite bands or to check out a new one. Alex, the unofficial leader of this particular pack, had a knack for picking good bands, and we usually deferred to his choices. The group of us: Alex, Anthony, John M (LaRuc), John H (Deadman) and I went to different schools and worked different jobs and each had our secondary circle of school and work friends with whom we shared our band selections; those friends in turn had their own circles to whom they passed on band recommendations, so that oftentimes a crowd at a Saturday night concert could in large part be traced back to Alex’s band choice. One particular evening when the band was on break one of us requested that the band play “Crossroads”, mainly because we were from Rosedale and the songs hook included the phrase “goin’ down to Rosedale…” The band didn’t want to play “Crossroads”, so Anthony suggested that when they took the stage they ask the audience how many had come to see them tonight at the recommendation of “The BudvMen from Rosedale” (Yes that was what we called ourselves – we consumed a lot of Budweiser). About ¾ of the people there raised their hands. They played “Crossroads” (badly, but they played it).

The BudMen and I were mainly hard rock guys, but I started branching out to other forms of music in those days. Ray was a co-worker at the hardware store where I worked and would bring his electric guitar with him and play it on breaks. He introduced me to the world of jazz-rock fusion with Heavy Weather, a Weather Report album; another work buddy started me listening to southern rock like The Outlaws and Lynyrd Skynyrd. My musical horizons were expanding and a few years later, when I moved to Nebraska, I was ready for KZUM Radio.

My first exposure to the world of non-profit community radio came on a Wednesday as I was trimming lettuce in the back room of the produce department of Food 4 Less. Spinning the radio dial [5]I came across the sounds of jazz fusion, and thinking that I had found a jazz station I continued to listen, later finding out that KZUM played not only jazz fusion, but blues, folk, reggae and other varieties of music that ordinarily weren’t played on the commercial stations. What I really fell in love with was the blues. While working overnight delivering newspapers I began to listen to Jim Anderson’s “midnight-Thursday-‘til-whenever-Friday-morning” blues show and realized that blues was more than just pickin’ and frownin’ – but it was the source for much of the music that I listened to back in the seventies. When I heard “Travelling Riverside Blues”, “Crossroads Blues” and “One Way Out” and it wasn’t Led Zeppelin, Cream or The Allman Brothers I was hooked. Eventually, after changing jobs and not working overnights, I started hanging out down at the KZUM studios with Jim and his beer-drinking crew.

“Nothin’ But the Blues” was an open invitation blues party that took place from midnight until at least 4:00AM every Thursday night into Friday morning. Bands from the nearby Zoo Bar would stop by after the bar closed, third shift workers would pop in after work and blues lovers from all over Lincoln made a point of being in the KZUM studios when it was all happening. Jim, the programmer (what KZUM called their disc jockeys) had a huge collection of vinyl that he dragged down to the station for his two blues shows, the other one being “Another Blue Monday” on Monday afternoons. Jim, who was fluent and literate in Russian, never seemed to have a paying job but always put his heart and soul into spinning blues records as well as educating us all about the music and the musicians. One of the attractions of hanging out at the studio during Jim’s shifts was being entrusted with reading PSA’s (Public Service Announcements) and SPA’s (Station Promotional Announcements) over the air. For me this was a great thrill. Back in high school I was part of a group that put together a mock radio station for English class and had a hankering to be an “on-air personality” someday. This was my introduction to the big time. Eventually I not only read PSA’s and SPA’s, but learned how to operate the equipment. One Thursday night, seeing Jim passed out in his chair as a record spun to a close, I took over. Seeing how easy this was, I soon applied for my own show, part two of “Another Blue Monday” from 4 – 6PM on Mondays, which I soon renamed “Old, New, Borrowed and Blue”.

Building on my earlier fascination with the modern rock renderings of old blues songs, pairings of originals and cover versions became the foundation of my show, liberally mixed with music influenced by the blues and contemporary blues bands. After a few months I moved to Sunday nights at 10:00PM and called the show “Shades of Blue”. For several years I got to introduce bands at The Zoo Bar, and interview travelling blues acts in the afternoons on the air.

Being a community, i.e. non-profit radio station we engaged in periodic fund-raising marathons, with minimal regular programming and a lot of on-air begging for money. Since my regular job was just a few blocks from the station and my home was a mere five minute’s drive from downtown, I participated on and off in the fundraising efforts during all hours of the day. One of the most interesting was with a high school senior by the name of Kyle Umland. [6]

My first encounter was during my first shift for a Sunday night blues show where I was to follow Kyle’s two-hour jazz program. Programmer etiquette dictated that you would end your show by playing a song long enough to let the person coming after you get into the studio, cue up his or her own first song so that there would be a smooth transition. If you wanted to say a last minute “goodbye” to your listeners you would allow the next programmer to set up and say your farewells from a secondary microphone while the new deejay presided from the main chair. On this particular night Kyle went right up to the last second, said his goodbyes and then got up and walked out of the studio, leaving the mike “live” and no music cued up! I raced in, threw a record on the turntable and ad-libbed my introductions. After I got everything going, I walked out into the common area where Kyle still hung around. At the time I wore my hair fairly long, had a thick beard and was dressed more or less like a biker. I let Kyle know in no uncertain terms that if he ever pulled a stunt like that again, he could be assured that I would, with great pleasure, seriously injure him. A week later I came to the station straight from work. I wore a jacket and tie, had trimmed by beard and my long hair was smoothed down and tied back in a ponytail. Due to my very different appearance Kyle did not recognize me. While preparing for the deejay handoff, cuing up a final song and switching chairs, he told me about the “nut-job” who had threatened him the week before, expressing his relief that I had showed up instead!

After this encounter Kyle and I got along very well, subbing for each other on occasion and helping each other out during fundraisers. During one particular fundraising “marathon”, we were an hour into his show with absolutely no calls. Now, just like NPR, KZUM would interrupt regular programming to berate our listeners with pitches designed to make them feel guilty and send us money. On this Monday night, the approach was just not working, so Kyle had the brilliant idea to be proactive and call people at home and ask them for pledges, rather than wait for them to call us. This was the era just before cell phones had almost completely replaced land lines, so there were many prominent people listed in the local phone book. We called dozens of them and received pledges from about half, including a generous donation from then City Councilman Mike Johanns, later mayor of Lincoln, governor of Nebraska, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and US Senator.

Another aspect of KZUM was its openness and the accessibility to the public, due largely to its volunteer nature. Fans of the various programs were always popping in to say hello and we often let some of these people make on-air announcements and help pick out records the way I got started). Most were not as wild and crazy as the aforementioned shows hosted by Jim Anderson, but there were some moments. It seems that no matter how minor a celebrity one is, no matter how small one’s fame is, there are always those who seek to latch on to it…groupies. Usually these people were pretty harmless, like the guy who was incarcerated at the state prison who wrote me letters every week making song requests, or the woman from eastern Europe who on my last night as a programmer gave me a painting as a thank you for years of enjoyable music. And then…there are the nut jobs.

Lorraine (not her real name) started out just calling in requests to a few (male) programmers. After a while, certain deejays could expect to hear from her every time they were on the air. Next she began flirting with us over the phone and began having long conversations that we could only end by pretending that the connection was cut. After a while Lorraine began coming up to the studios just before the building was locked down for the night and hanging around for hours. One night, during one of the semi-annual fundraisers, Kyle and I were again manning the phones and on the air pitching the glories of non-profit community radio when Lorraine, having having somehow entered the building, appeared in the studios. At first we put her to work answering the phone and making a few on-air pitches which seemed to keep her busy and out of trouble. Everything seemed fine until one of the breaks for music when I visited the restroom and Kyle left the air studio to pick out some additional music and we left Lorraine alone in the room. Kyle returned first and got halfway into the room before he realized that Lorraine was completely naked. He put the engineering console between him and the naked girl and started screaming for me. I came running in and spotted the trouble just as the record ended and we had to get back on the air and make another appeal for money. This did not go at all well, because in addition to the initial shock, Lorraine began doing things which I will euphemistically call distracting while Kyle and I tried to look at anything else. There were several problems with the whole scenario: I was married, we were reasonably sure that Lorraine was under aged and the prospect that some FCC regulation was being broken into little bits and crunched into dust was a distinct possibility. So we called for help.

Fortunately another KZUM programmer, a woman and a friend of ours, lived about a block from the KZUM studios, so we called her for assistance. Within five minutes she burst into the studios, picked up Lorraine’s pile of clothes, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her toward the elevators, favoring Kyle and me with a look that communicated her disdain for the problem-solving skills of men in general and us in particular. We were plagued for months with prank calls from other programmers requesting that we “play ‘Misty’ for them”.

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[1] It’s difficult to get too far away from public transportation in New York City. There are the subway and city busses and the Long island Railroad, as well as several private bus lines, like the Jamaica Bus Company. Most people were within a reasonable distance from a bus or train.

[2] One of the great ironies of life is that although Ozzie was fired from Black Sabbath, he went on to great mainstream fame, even among those who don’t know or like his music, while you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone outside of Sabbath fans who know the names of the other three original members of the band.

[3] We were serious about our Budweiser – we all could recite the slogan on the can that began with “This is the famous Budweiser beer…”

[4] Formerly a disco until disco died a merciful death. Speaks still had a giant mirror ball on the ceiling.

[5] In those days, before digital tuners radios had a literal dial, which could be “spun” to change stations.

[6] Kyle’s father wrote a book back in the seventies attempting to cash in on the “Ancient Astronauts” craze. The premise of his book was that the Mayans were space aliens. This is 100% true. It's called Mystery of the Ancients. It used to be in the downtown Lincoln library

Bespoke and Other Irritating Things

There are three things that have been irritating me lately: people who mindlessly re-post things on Facebook that are not true, people who post controversial things on Facebook and then either refuse to discuss their post or get offended that someone has a differing opinion, and third, the word "bespoke".

Let's start with the third: bespoke. There was a time when, if you wanted a suit (or anything else) made to your personal specifications, you'd say it was "custom", or "custom made" or made even "personalized" or "tailor made". "Bespoke" just sounds pretentious.

Now as to the other two, perhaps I shouldn't be too concerned about what shows up on Facebook and spend less time there, but the modes of interaction on Facebook are not somehow separate from "real" life, but are just one aspect of it.

One common aphorism that I disagree with is that you should not talk about religion or politics. I think that the reason most people believe this is that most people are too immature or opinionated to be able to have a respectful conversation with people with whom they disagree. This has always been true to a certain extent, but the instant "connectedness" of the internet has made it easier to insult those that are standing right in front of us. Why is it bad etiquette to have a discussion about comparative religious beliefs, to ask someone the reason for their beliefs? Why is it a a social faux pas to express an opinion about the current administration? Of course if your version of discussion and expression includes demonizing the other side of the political spectrum and belittling those who believe differently as heretics or mindless or "insert your favorite insult here" it would be socially awkward to have that discussion at Sally's birthday party. But surely two (or more) intelligent people can compare the pros and cons of any political issue without calling each other extreme and insulting names I've seen it done, I've done it myself. It's not that tough...if you respect the other person.

But in a weird kind of mirror universe way, people who would never utter a hateful, bigoted, opinionated word in the company of those who hold differing opinions think it's alright to post hateful, bigoted, opinionated words on Facebook where they are in virtual company with those who hold differing opinions. And then claim that they will not discuss, not debate, sometimes claiming that it's their page and telling others to back off. This is not isolated to some fringe group of Facebook users, but seems to be the prevailing culture. People want to trumpet their opinions, but don't want to be challenged, so what happens is people talk past each other. One person posts a meme about how squirrels are a menace to a free society, but those who love squirrels don't dare argue, but post their own memes in support of squirrels. No one listens to the other person, no one considers that there might be truth in the other's position, shots are just traded across the other's bows.

Add to this insularity is the propensity of many to just re-post something that backs up a pre-existing opinion, whether true or not. There is so much information available on the internet that it's pretty easy to determine whether something is factual or not, or at least to find out if there are differing points of view on a subject. One could spend all of one's time just debunking the crap that's easy to discredit, let alone the things that take a little time to research. And I'm not just talking about snopes.com, which some people mistakenly believe is bankrolled by some shadowy liberal cabal, but just some basic fact checking. It's frustrating.

This could all be fixed if I could just create a bespoke world.

Music is Alive

The last time I was in an arena of any kind for a musical performance Jimmy Carter was the president. Granted, I had some good times attending concerts in those cavernous spaces designed, not for music, but for basketball and hockey, enjoying performances by the mega-acts of my youth. I much more prefer my music in small, intimate settings. As for my choice of musicians, I'd rather see a local or regional group than a national act any day. More often than not when I tell acquaintances about a band that I went to see I encounter blank stares. Dweezil Zappa, Return to Forever, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Chris Duarte, Tinsley Ellis, John Hiatt and Dave Alvin are all musicians that I have seen perform in recent years - I am astounded at how little their names are recognized. Now I still have affection for the bands of yesteryear, and some of the names I mentioned were popular in the past, but they are still thriving artists who are not just recycling their "hits", but still creating new material.

During a business trip with some colleagues we got to talking about music - several people complained about how they don't like it when a band they go to see plays "their new shit" instead of just sticking to the hits. Sad.

With so many artists of so many styles out there, why stick with the same old stuff all the time. Expand your musical horizons. Go to The Bourbon Theater, to The Zoo Bar; listen to KZUM; pick up Josh Hoyer's newest recording; fill your ears with some new stuff .

Music is alive, don't mummify it.

Home

The bar top was a replica of (or perhaps not) of an old-style shuffleboard table, of the type that one upon a time inhabited the bars, pubs and taverns of America. At semi-regular intervals, abandoned newspapers, dinosaur-like in their non-digitalness, sprawled sadly, crying for attention and relevance. Dick Dale, who also cried for attention and relevance, shredded surf-redolent notes from the jukebox. State of the art flat screen televisions, a counterpoint to the many Post-it Notes™ and handwritten signs, lit the interior with a ghostly light. Home, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

He sat at the bar, equidistant between the off-sale cooler, stacked high with beers-for-the masses, and the giant bag of popcorn which invited speculation about bacteria and mass-produced faux butter. It was close to empty, as it often was on a Thursday afternoon, populated only by the white guy who insisted that he was one quarter Cherokee (why is it that white people who claim Indian ancestry are always Cherokee?) and the guy in the waist-length black ponytail who announced at regular intervals that he was the illegitimate son of Anastasia Romanov. Regulars. At home. Like him.

Fairly easy it is to call a bar home when the usual definition doesn’t apply; after all, home is where you go when you’re done doing all the things that you have to do, where the day ends, where your stuff is. When you don’t have any stuff, when the day doesn’t ever really end, when it’s not just metaphorical, you enjoy your illusions wherever you can get ‘em. Especially when reality doesn’t quite measure up. And why should it? He knew that reality would kick in quite smartly at 2:00AM, when ready or not, it was time to leave his home and descend into the nightmare. Not exactly “livin’ the dream”.

What is madness? Some might say that it’s the recognition that the world isn’t what we want it to be…and it never will be. That it’s the railing against the unfairness of “the way things are” and the creation of a reality that fits our sense of right and wrong. That it’s a howling – knowing that “what’s real” will never, ever be the same as “what should be”. He knew madness, he knew the howling, he knew the emptiness.

Away from home, away from the nine-to-five, as the howling died down, reality was the back seat of an unheated car, wrapped in layers of goose-down and a woolen hat.