WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY FOR A DAYDREAM...
I had this wonderful dream today that Notre Dame went 0-5 after losing to Purdue. No wait—that really did happen!! Way to go, youse Boilermakers! And cheer up, all you Irish fanatics out there—I'm sure we can find a Pop Warner team out there for your gridiron heroes to open up a can of whoop-ass upon...
THE CUBS ARE IN THE SHOW!
Was most pleased that my favorite National League team made the playoffs yesterday. I became a Chicago Cubs fan in the summer of 1984 when I first got cable TV and enjoyed the work of everyone's favorite Cub fan/Bud Man, the late Harry Caray. I don't even give a rat's oblique that their record isn't all that impressive this year—no one else in the NL is exactly burning the world down this season either—Go Cubbies!
Just as an aside, last time I was in Chi-Town, I stopped by Wrigley Field to check out the Harry Caray statue outside the ballpark, and a woman was there with her little girl, the latter of whom asked, "Is that Drew Carey?" Freakin' priceless...
HEEEEERE'S JOHNNY!
I've been enjoying the newly-released "Johnny Cash Show" DVD set this week, and I'm most impressed. Not only have they restored this show (which debuted on ABC in 1969) to almost pristine condition, but I gotta give Cash credit (I just had to say that, sorry!) for the wide variety of singers he shared the stage of Nashville's Ryman Auditorium with for this show—everyone from George Jones to Louis Armstrong to (a beardless) Waylon Jennings to Stevie Wonder to Marty Robbins to Bob Dylan to Joni Mitchell to C.C.R. to Neil Young doing "The Needle And The Damage Done"—that song alone took some major balls to air on network TV in 1969! I also got a chuckle or two out of the red outfit the late and legendary Tammy Wynette wore, complete with silver boots, the likes of which weren't seen again until Shania Twain came along. Loretta Lynn was also quite a sight in her blatantly obvious wig, which probably had its own ZIP code. Still and all, this DVD set (narrated by singer Kris Kristofferson) is a wonderful time capsule from a bygone TV era that is well worth a look.
SHANGHAI-ED 120 MILES OR SO SOUTH OF SHANGHAI...
So much for my encouragement for the U.S. chick soccer team in the World Cup thang in China, as their head coach Greg Ryan surreptitiously replaced starting goalkeeper Hope Solo (no relation to Han, guitar or drum) in favor of Briana Scurry, who helped them win the Cup in '99, but is now like, really old, and Ms. Solo has won every fucking game this year so far. We lost to Brazil 4-zip, and while it's true that the U.S. team didn't exactly rack up any goals in this game, Coach Ryan violated one of the basic tenets of sports here: Dance with the one who brung ya! What a maroon...
CLAP FOR THE WOLFMAN!
I've been doing a little housecleaning this week, during which I unearthed this little gem (click pic to enlarge) from my personal archives, one of the few momentos I managed to smuggle away following the demise of "The Mighty 1030" KKJC-AM in Blue Springs, MO, the first (and best) radio station I ever worked at from November, 1986 until its untimely, albeit unavoidable, death on January 31, 1988 at 10PM, just after the Washington Redskins made John Elway and the Denver Broncos look like crash test dummies in the Stupor Bowl. This photo (and accompanying Raytown Post newspaper article) adorned the walls of our studio, detailing how the legendary Wolfman Jack dropped in for a visit in the Spring of 1985 (when the station was known as KBSM) in support of his syndicated Oldies show that aired on "Eastern Jackson County's Radio Station" at that time. It's a major honor to be able to truthfully say that I once actually operated the same control board (sometimes coherently) and spoke into the very same microphone as the mighty Wolfman! A brush with greatness, in a roundabout way—not unlike when I got to touch Jack Buck's mail slot during a tour of KMOX in St. Louis in the early '90s...OH NO—HERE IT COMES AGAIN...
I only wish I was merely quoting Ronnie James Dio's first line from Black Sabbath's 1980 classic "Neon Knights", but sadly, I'm referring to the (C)Rock And Roll Hall of Fame's finalists for their Class of 2008. Hold on to yer hats folks and get a load of this malarkey: Madonna, John "Cougar" Mellencamp, The Beastie Boys (a Rap act, as I seem to recall), Donna Summer, Chic (both Disco acts, as I seem to recall), Leonard Cohen (who?), some Rap person/thing/country who bought way too many vowels named Afrika Bambaataa, The Dave Clark Five and The Ventures. In my eyes (and ears), the latter two entries are the only ones even worthy of a sniff of the HOF, but not before the likes of Kiss, Paul Revere & The Raiders, The Moody Blues, The Doobie Brothers, Three Dog Night, ABBA, Neil Diamond, Motorhead, Judas Priest...oh, fuck it—why do I bother with this, based on this asinine voting process?
And I hereby quote: "Nominees are chosen by a 70-member committee of label execs, rock historians and journalists, with ballots mailed to an international voting body of 700 music industry types."
By my count, that's 770 people that don't have clue about what Rock 'N' Roll truly is if they're even considering turds like the Beastie Boys. And I guaran-fuckin'-tee you these 770 mongoloids would sooner see Michael Bolton and Kid Rock in the RNRHOF than Def Leppard and Cheap Trick.
Oh well, at least the Country Music Hall of Fame gets it right...
HANG IN THERE, DOC...
A shout-out to my good friend Dr. Sardonicus: I know you're anxiously awaiting the better half of my Top 50 Songs of the '50s countdown, but I've been up to my eyeballs in home improvement projects this weekend, not to mention just plain reacting to everything else I've reacted to above, so please bear with me. Trust me, it'll be worth the wait, since my opinion carries damn near as much weight as those Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame heathens...
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