TEA BAG THIS!
If I didn’t know any better, if this whole Tea Party protest thing that took place this week had been staged by Democrats/liberals, Fox News Channel would’ve been labeling the demonstrators as “unpatriotic” because they were protesting paying taxes. Instead, FNC was basically egging the protesters on, although they claimed “We don’t promote this—we merely report on it.” Yeah right, and the Holocaust never happened, either…
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD--WHAT THE FUCK?!?
The late Edward R. Murrow surely must be somersaulting in his grave since K.C. television station KCTV-5 was recently given regional awards named after him for Best Newscast and Best Investigation for their sleazy tabloid-y nightly crapfests that pass as TV news. Granted, all TV news outlets are pretty much caca anymore, but Channel 5 is easily the worst of the lot in this town. There was a time when this station produced a newscast they could be proud of, but that was before they fired all their long-time anchors and reporters and replaced them with a bunch of hacks who do nothing but tease-tease-tease and sensationalize everything. What an insult to Edward R.’s memory! Have I mentioned before how much I loathe TV news? No? I coulda swore I did…
BOOM! IT’S OVER
John Madden abruptly announced his retirement from broadcasting this week after 30 years in the booth. I have mixed feelings about it—it’s hard imaging NFL Sundays back in the ‘80s and ‘90 without Madden teaming up with my man Pat Summerall, and later on Monday nights and Sunday nights with Al Michaels, but just as with Chris Berman at ESPN, Big John’s act has gotten kinda stale over the years. Still, I’d much rather see Madden continue on as color analyst than endure his replacement, the ever-smarmy Cris Collinsworth. And sadly, this brings an end to my patented John Madden Drinking Game (i.e. take a drink every time he utters "those types of things", etc.), but like late Oakland Raiders announcer Bill King once said of Madden, “Get yer big butt outta here!” Apparently he will…
Funny story I’m reminded of about Madden: A dude I used to work with about ten years ago wasn’t even aware that John Madden was a highly-successful AFL/NFL head coach. He only knew of him via the broadcast booth and his video games!
MERLE HARMON, 1926-2009
For the second straight week, we lost another sportscasting legend as play-by-play man Merle Harmon passed away on Wednesday. Merle had K.C. connections as he worked with the Kansas City A’s and Chiefs in the ‘60s. I was too young to remember that, but I do remember him doing some games for NBC’s baseball coverage in the ‘70s. I also bought a jersey or two at his chain of Merle Harmon’s Fan Fare stores.
HOW ‘BOUT DEM YANKEES!
Let’s hear it for the high price of mediocrity as those dreaded Bronx Bummers lost to the lowly Cleveland Indians 22-4 today at new Yankee Stadium. Even funnier, they gave up two touchdowns in the second inning to the Tribe. Couldn’t happen to a nicer team…
SMILES, EVERYONE, SMILES!
I started in on Season 1 of “Fantasy Island” on DVD last week. Unlike it’s sister show “The Love Boat”, it took a little while for “Island” to attract big-name celebrities to appear, thus the first season featured such G-listers as John Schuck, Mary Jo Catlett (Mary Jo Catshit?), Mabel King, Jane Powell, Robert Clary and Bert Convy. Then again, it wasn’t totally wretched, as seeing Marcia Brady (Maureen McCormick) in a tube-top was totally worth the rental!
MORE CLASSIC DUMB LYRICS
It’s been a while since I did any of these, but here’s a couple more I dug up:
“Chevy Van”—SAMMY JOHNS (1975) “I put her out in a town that was so small…” Put her out?!? Sounds like something you’d do with a rabid dog or a cat in heat, not some chick you had sex with in your van the night before! He could’ve easily substituted “I dropped her off” instead. Dumb song, anyway...
“In The Mood”—RUSH (1974) “Hey, baby, it’s a-quarter-to-eight--I feel I’m in the mood/Hey baby, the hour is late--I feel I‘ve got to move…” Uhhh, Geddy, you hoser, how can the hour be late when it’s only 7:45?!? Or was it a school night for you? This lyric is a classic illustration of why Rush would surely have been “victims of venomous fate” if drummer Neal Peart and his slightly more advanced lyrics hadn’t come along to save the day after their first album came out.
CLASSIC MISHEARD LYRIC #111
“Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”—CHER (1971) “Picked up a boy just south of Mobile/Gave him a ride, filled him with a hot meal…” Or as my six-year-old ears inferred, they “...filled him with a rotten meal.” I must’ve concluded since they were indeed tramps and thieves, the chow would be substandard…
REEEELY BAD CINEMA
Back in the halcyon days of “Saturday Night Live”, Dan Aykroyd’s Leonard Plinth Garnell could’ve easily done a bit on that 1976 cinematic classic Two-Minute Warning, which I watched on AMC last weekend. You had a sniper perched high atop the L.A. Coliseum during a Super Bowl-type football game between two teams who looked suspiciously like USC and Stanford and charmin’ Chuck Heston doing all his gun-toting macho-man histrionics as the police chief out to get the miscreant. This thing was a total waste of an all-star cast that included Jack Klugman, David Janssen, Beau Bridges, John Cassavettes and Howard Cosell as his humble self. A good example of the lameness of this thing are the scenes on the concourses of the stadium where there are absolutely no fans milling around or waiting in line at the concession stands while the main characters chat with each other. Heston and his boys finally nab the scumbag, but not after he kills and maims numerous people and causes a riot in the stadium. A better storyline might’ve had something to do with the sniper picking off ol’ Howie Cosell—he’d have been a hero instead!
REEEELY MEDIOCRE CINEMA
I rented Cadillac Records—the story of the legendary Chess Records label—last week as well, and was fairly underwhelmed by it. While I was rather impressed with Mos Def’s Chuck Berry impression as well as Beyoncé’s turn as the overrated Etta James, I was disappointed how the film seemed to play fast-and-loose with the facts. Then again, if you love the word “motherfucker”, this movie is for you, as they set a record for usage of it in a single film. Not that I’m offended by that kind of language, but it seems to me that the writers could come up with more imaginative dialogue than that. As for Beyoncé, she was great here, but I’d really like to see her play something else in a movie besides a singer like she did in the Austin Powers flick.
REEEELY GOOD CINEMA
I also threw in my special edition Fast Times At Ridgemont High DVD this week. Fast Times was the American Graffiti of the ‘80s, and it was of its time (1982) as opposed to looking back 10-12 years later like Graffiti did. I can’t think of any other film that ignited the careers of so many actors like this one did—Sean Penn, Judge Rinehold, Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Jason-Leigh, and Forrest Whittaker, as well as (to a lesser extent) Eric Stoltz and Nicholas Cage. If you blinked, you missed Cage, as he was in the film for all of two seconds during the scene where Rinehold threatens the asshole customer with physical violence at All-American Burger. And what heterosexual male didn’t get a stiffy watching the divine Ms. Cates removing her bikini top during the infamous masturbation scene? I know I had one!
A little trivia for you: the producers originally wanted the late Fred Gwynne (aka, TV’s Herman Munster) to play hard-ass teacher Mr. Hand, but he thought the film was a bit too risqué, so they gave it to the late Ray Walston, who as freakin’ brilliant in the role…The famed Galleria shopping mall, where much of Fast Times was filmed, was heavily damaged by the big earthquake in ’94, and eventually torn down altogether. However, the mall that was shown as its exterior still exists in Santa Monica…In the scene where Judge Rinehold gets embarrassed trying to impress the chick in the Corvette at the traffic light (while wearing his pseudo-Captain D’s get-up), that’s Heart’s Nancy Wilson in the Corvette. She’s married to author Cameron Crowe, who wrote the whole thing…According to Crowe’s commentary on the DVD, the inclusion of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” in the film was semi-intentional, given Mike Damone’s advice to Mark Ratner about playing Side 1 of Led Zeppelin IV, when of course, “Kashmir” was on Zep’s Physical Graffiti album. Evidently, they weren’t able to secure licensing from Zep for anything from the famed Zoso album, but somehow got the rights for “Kashmir”, and given Ratner’s penchant for ineptitude, it seemed kind of appropriate anyway that he’d put the wrong Zep tape in while trying to score with his girl…
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
The (Love) Life of Brian--Part III
If you're just joining me, this is a chronicle of my checkered past when it comes to relationships with women of the female sex. While totally self-indulgent and a bit lengthy on my part, it's been very cathartic to take out this mental garbage I've been dragging around for years. And again, it's not intended as a pity-party for yours truly, and it's not all gloom-and-doom, either, so if you choose to read on, I thank you, and if you choose to pass, that's fine too...
The best analogy I can think of to describe my relationship history is the excellent 1990 film Awakenings, starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams. Just as with Dr. Sayer’s encephalitis patients, my love life has only “awakened” from its dormancy for brief intermittent stretches (none lasting more than six months) over the past 25 years. I had my first girlfriend when I was 20, the next one nine years later, and the most recent one nearly ten years ago, with only a handful of scattered dates with other women the rest of the time. I realize that’s still better than nothing at all, but rather pathetic in my eyes, because I don’t think I’m such a bad guy. Admittedly, I’m no leading man like Tom Hanks or Burt Reynolds, but you can do a lot worse than me—I ain’t no Quasimodo or Peter Griffin either…
My first real girlfriend was a co-worker at my old restaurant gig named Lisa in the fall of 1984. Lisa and I probably would never have actually dated at all if it hadn’t been for my little personal mandate (or a MAN-date, if you will) to lose my virginity before I turned 21 the following June. It seems so silly now, but I think it had a lot to do with me watching one too many teen sex farce movies like Porky’s and Private School, et al, on Cinemax and Showtime during that era, thus it seemed like an appropriate rite of passage to me at the time. Anyway, I resisted Lisa for the longest time because I wasn’t all that attracted to her—she was semi-cute at best, with short curly brown hair and freckles, but her height and weight were in nice proportion and she did have nice legs and a cute tush. I eventually relented and asked her out when a couple meddling co-worker gals kept trying to play matchmaker for us, even though we had precious little in common. A nice enough person, Lisa was, but not exactly the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree of life and not terribly ambitious, either. Sadly, something tells me to this day she’s still waiting tables somewhere at an IHOP or a Denny’s. In spite of all that, we had a few enjoyable—if not slightly awkward—dates, and within a month or two, we got pretty good at kissing and fondling and fondling and kissing. More succinctly, to use the traditional baseball analogy, by Thanksgiving of ’84, I had a HUGE lead off second base…
Lisa’s 21st birthday was in early December, as was my last final exam at UMKC, so we went out to “celebrate” with some college classmates at a UMKC bar hangout (when underage drinking wasn‘t policed very well), and she offered to help me lose my virginity later that night. Unfortunately, the beer I’d consumed earlier (which wasn’t a whole lot, by my standards) rendered me—how shall I put it?—sluggish, therefore it was a no-go. As checkered as my love-life is, it seems only fitting that I couldn’t get it up the first time and had to take a rain check. I waited an additional three weeks to finally “pop my cherry” on Christmas Eve, 1984, and even then, the whole experience wasn’t all that earth-shattering to me. What’s worse, I was scared shitless for about a month afterward that I’d gotten Lisa pregnant, even though at the time she was taking birth patrol pills (as A. Bunker would call them). My paranoia about fatherhood aside, I knew deep down inside that something was missing—I just wasn’t all that attracted to this girl! Lisa was a good person, to be sure, but we shared no cerebral connection at all and had very few common interests. A good analogy is I was Hard Rock and she was Country (i.e., a bad mix), which made the Kiss concert I took Lisa to a fairly miserable experience for her, and I felt badly afterwards. Anyway, the whole relationship felt really hollow to me—what good was the physical relationship without some sort of emotional connection? What’s worse, it had gotten to the point where the meddling matchmaker gals at work (Hilda and Zelda, if you will) were more interested in our torrid little affair than either Lisa or I was, and it had become a sideshow.
Now here’s the REAL kick in the head: during that time, Lisa was in the process of moving out of her parents’ house into her own apartment not far from our workplace, so I could’ve pretty much had sex with her just about any night of the week if I wanted to, but by the time she got settled in, I was already backing away from her and I never even set foot in her new place. The thing I’m least proud of is that I never actually had the balls to officially break up with Lisa—I just kinda became distant and drifted away and avoided her for a few weeks and was pretty relieved when she changed jobs a couple months later. To be brutally honest, I was like a drunk at the wheel of a stolen car with Lisa—I didn’t have a freakin’ clue what I doing with her from start-to-finish. Like the Bob Seger lyric goes, “I used her, she used me—neither one cared.” Lisa, if you’re out there reading this, what can I say? I should’ve been more of a man and handled things better than I did, and I apologize—you at least deserved better than to just be blown off like that.
And little did I know on that Christmas Eve of ‘84 that I would have to wait another 14-and-a-half years before having true sexual intercourse with another woman. In some strange way, it was kinda worth the wait, though…
The remainder of the ‘80s was mostly dead-ends and disappointments for me with women. I at least took a stab or two at asking girls out at school as well as an office girl at the first radio station I worked at, but met with the usual indifference I’d so often encountered with women. To my chagrin, even having front-row Kansas City Comets season tickets at Kemper Arena and my connection to the radio station weren’t sufficient-enough calling cards/chick magnet assets. By the time my radio career crapped out in 1989 and I was forced to get a real job at a major downtown KC bank, I’d pretty much given up trying to find a woman and didn’t really care anymore. I actually started buying into the lyric in the Monkees’ “I’m A Believer”: “I thought love was only true in fairy tales—meant for someone else and not for me.”
I finally hit bottom one day circa. late 1990 while attending an optional class sponsored by my employer about stress in and out of the workplace and how to relieve it during which we had to answer a questionnaire. I could only respond to “Do you feel anxiety in your sex life?” with “WHAT sex life?!?” Instead of relieving my stress, the bloody class only added to my misery, because I walked away feeling so depressed at being left-out of the whole dating/mating game milieu. Thankfully, long about that time, a savior of sorts came into my life—a beautiful co-worker named Susan. She was a transplant from the Springfield, MO area in her mid-‘20s with the prettiest big blue eyes I’d ever seen, the cutest curly brown hair and a warm, friendly smile and sweet, nurturing personality. Astoundingly, she even loved Hard Rock music just like me! She had two children from a previous marriage and was spoken-for again with a new boyfriend (who was kind of a schmuck), so I never tried to pursue her romantically (believe me, I wanted to!), but I credit Susan as much as anyone for inspiring me to get off my duff to do something about my flat-lining love/social life because she was very sympathetic and supportive of me. If nothing else, she gave me something to shoot for again, because apart from having kids and disliking sports, she was the template in so many ways of my ideal significant other in terms of looks, personality and intellect. Sadly, Susan is no longer with us, as she and her two children died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a freak house fire in early, 1995 (on her 30th birthday, no less). I still think about her a lot to this day, and ironically, the first and only time Susan and I ever hugged each other turned out to be one of the last times I ever saw her alive.
Somewhere along the line while getting to know Susan, a voice inside my feeble brain said, “Hey, dumbass—why NOT you? You see all these assholes out there who date nice women like Susan, doncha? Surely, a decent guy like you could score with SOMEONE out there…” At that point, I ratcheted up my efforts to get out of the penalty box of love and back on the ice and went into “Gotta find a woman! Gotta find a woman! Gotta find a woman!” mode—with very mixed results for the first couple years, anyway. However, one positive right off the bat was when I finally woke up and realized that my outward appearance needed a major overhaul. One of the first things I did was get my hair cut by a professional barber chick after decades (not years) of avoiding haircuts like Ricky Martin CDs because of the hatchet-jobs my old man used to do on me when I was a kid. That act alone got people’s attention, esp. women folk! I got a much-needed confidence boost in the elevator lobby at work one day when one of the pretty (married) teller gals started chatting with me and said, “You got your hair cut—I love it!” Then I set about to lose a few pounds, and by the summer of ’92, I got on a major roll and went from 260-plus pounds down to 190! With this weight loss came a major improvement in my wardrobe as well. It also helped immensely when I transferred departments and began working for my good friend Phil, who was sympathetic to my cause and took me under his wing and taught me a few things about how to deal with women of the opposite sex, not unlike how Hawkeye counseled Radar on “MASH”. As I mentioned in Part II, small-talk has always been a stumbling block for me, so one thing I learned from Phil early on was how to actually carry on a conversation with a woman about just plain “stuff” like the weather and such instead of going straight to “Ya wanna date?” Okay, bad analogy, but you get the idea. It was still far from smooth-sailing yet, though—I figured I’d just wave my magic wand and the women would come a-runnin’, but I quickly learned it didn’t quite work that way.
I did get fairly chummy with a kinda plain-Jane co-worker girl named Judy who I thought was pretty nice and seemed date-able at the time. I lowered my “standards” a bit since she was a smoker (one of my big no-no’s). She was a transplant from New Yawk, but was devoid of any Big Apple accent (or attitude), so at least we had a conversation piece there. We had a few nice lunch dates and I even got a little touchy-feely with her (hug-wise), but for whatever reason, she failed to interpret my overtures that I was interested in dating her, even though as Phil advised me at the time, “Women sense that very easily and it usually scares them off—most women can read that shit from a mile away.” How Judy failed to read my rather obvious signals is beyond me, and she also neglected to tell me that she was seeing some other guy at the time. It was very awkward when I confronted her about that, and she was all apologetic, but the damage was done and I was very distant with her for the longest time afterwards—whether I had the right to be or not. Judy did admit to me a couple years later that she regretted not going out with me at that time, as it turned out the other guy was a real creep (which I confirmed the one time I met him), so that was some consolation, anyway. I fully admit I didn’t handle that situation very well—attribute it to sheer inexperience on my part—and I learned a valuable lesson about what a dicey proposition dating a co-worker can be, and I’ve made it my policy not to pursue any since—with one exception.
When I changed departments at the bank in 1992 and started working with Phil, it opened a new world for me in terms of meeting women, not only because he knew practically everyone in the company (single gals in particular) but also because he played in a band (he’s a drummer), which lent itself to having lots of contact with women, and we got out quite a bit on weekends back then. Long about that time, a cute singer girl from another band named Holly started working as a temp. on the floor right above us, and we came in contact with each other quite a bit. She had a voice similar to Natalie Merchant’s, and Phil and I attended a few of her band’s gigs and I took quite a shine to her. After a while, I finally was able to get her all to myself for an evening when I took her to a Blades hockey game—not really a date, per se, but as friends—and the evening went better than I could’ve imagined. After the game, we stopped off at one of those beatnik-type coffee houses that were all the rage at the time in the pre-Starbuck’s era, even though I can’t stand coffee. I still had a wonderful time as Holly and I sat and just talked for the longest time—well over three hours—about our lives, work stuff and life in general. I had never connected with a woman so thoroughly like that before, and this turned out to be one of the better dates I ever had with a woman, albeit with hardly any physical contact apart from a goodnight hug and kiss. I really thought I was onto something here, but even though we’d really gotten to know each other, I was never able to get past the friendship stage with Holly. It took me a while to figure out that even if she liked you, she tended to keep everyone at arm’s length and wouldn’t let anyone get real close to her. She’s the kind of person who has lots of acquaintances, but very few people who you’d call really close friends, so that was as far as I got with her. Too bad, because she was a really sweet person, and if you’re out there reading this, Holly, I hope you’re doing alright now. Phil thought you and I would make a really cute couple. So did I…
In the early ‘90s/pre-Internet era, personals ads were very much en vogue, so I took my best shot at finding a woman via that avenue. It didn’t dawn on me right away that the majority of personals ads are fake, or that the respondents to them are merely shills for the publication they’re listed in, but I did manage to get a few nibbles here and there. One big mistake I made was once I established contact with someone, I would write these long-ass letters detailing everything I was looking for in a relationship and my turn-offs, turn-ons, et al—i.e., too much information. I mean I specified height, weight, hair and eye color, stopping just short of bra size and tax bracket! Anyway, one respondent whom I politely passed on was apparently desperate to get knocked-up, and offered to let me impregnate her with no strings attached—yikes! Another respondent seemed a lot more promising, a redheaded school teacher named Teresa who wasn’t unattractive—sort of a plainer Sarah Ferguson (I don’t mean that in a bad way)—and our correspondence resulted in two actual dates. We did a comedy club on the first outing, which was fun, and for the second date, I took her to a Blades game, during which I got the impression that I was boring her to death. But when we stopped after the game for a bite, it suddenly dawned on me that she wasn’t exactly the most scintillating company either. I thought to myself, “Who’s boring WHO here?”, and I realized we really weren’t hitting it off. Too bad, because she wasn’t bad-looking, and even as hungry as I was for a girlfriend then (not to mention my attraction to redheads), I had sense enough to know we just weren’t a good fit, and we never saw each other again.
There was one other gal I met via a personals ad, but we only went out once. She was a hairdresser about 25-ish, and we seemed to hit it off rather well, liked the same kind of music and TV shows, etc., and it didn’t even faze me that she had a deformity on her right hand (a birth defect, she explained). Hell, I even got to meet her mother on our one and only date! But I guess I got a little over-anxious about seeing her again when I broached the subject of a second date, and she more or less blew me off by saying she wanted to “keep her options open” and wasn’t looking to seriously date anyone then. I soooo wanted to reply “Then why did you place a personals ad in the first place and why are you wasting my time here?” but I remained a gentleman. Thanks for nothing, sweetheart! That experience soured me enough that I gave up on personals ads for good after that.
In a heroic attempt to help re-ignite my Mojo, my good friend/boss man Phil even took me to a gentleman’s club or two during 1992-93. We once hopped in my car with a couple other guys and drove to the new Million Dollar Fantasy Ranch 40 miles away in Warrensburg, which was a juice bar where you could actually touch the merchandise. During my $20 lap dance, I got lucky with a really cute brunette named Lori who was hotter than a snake’s ass in a wagon rut, and Phil told me later he was impressed with my handling of the female torso, so that gave me some confidence. I really appreciated the effort on Phil’s part, and I do realize it ain’t every day that one’s boss takes his employee to titty bars, but it was only semi-satisfying for me, at best. Yes, the girls were very hot and sexy and all, but you don’t feed a starving dog a rubber bone! I even toyed with the idea of frequenting an escort service several times, especially during my 1994 vacation to Toronto (where prostitution is legal), but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not to criticize anyone who frequents juice/topless bars or patronizes prostitutes—if that’s your scene, who am I to judge?—but, what does it say about me if the only way I can have sex with someone is to have to pay (lots of) money for it? I guess I’m a little old-fashioned here—I’ve always felt that sex is more meaningful when you earn it instead of buying it.
Fortunately, my long dry spell was about to end...
The best analogy I can think of to describe my relationship history is the excellent 1990 film Awakenings, starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams. Just as with Dr. Sayer’s encephalitis patients, my love life has only “awakened” from its dormancy for brief intermittent stretches (none lasting more than six months) over the past 25 years. I had my first girlfriend when I was 20, the next one nine years later, and the most recent one nearly ten years ago, with only a handful of scattered dates with other women the rest of the time. I realize that’s still better than nothing at all, but rather pathetic in my eyes, because I don’t think I’m such a bad guy. Admittedly, I’m no leading man like Tom Hanks or Burt Reynolds, but you can do a lot worse than me—I ain’t no Quasimodo or Peter Griffin either…
My first real girlfriend was a co-worker at my old restaurant gig named Lisa in the fall of 1984. Lisa and I probably would never have actually dated at all if it hadn’t been for my little personal mandate (or a MAN-date, if you will) to lose my virginity before I turned 21 the following June. It seems so silly now, but I think it had a lot to do with me watching one too many teen sex farce movies like Porky’s and Private School, et al, on Cinemax and Showtime during that era, thus it seemed like an appropriate rite of passage to me at the time. Anyway, I resisted Lisa for the longest time because I wasn’t all that attracted to her—she was semi-cute at best, with short curly brown hair and freckles, but her height and weight were in nice proportion and she did have nice legs and a cute tush. I eventually relented and asked her out when a couple meddling co-worker gals kept trying to play matchmaker for us, even though we had precious little in common. A nice enough person, Lisa was, but not exactly the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree of life and not terribly ambitious, either. Sadly, something tells me to this day she’s still waiting tables somewhere at an IHOP or a Denny’s. In spite of all that, we had a few enjoyable—if not slightly awkward—dates, and within a month or two, we got pretty good at kissing and fondling and fondling and kissing. More succinctly, to use the traditional baseball analogy, by Thanksgiving of ’84, I had a HUGE lead off second base…
Lisa’s 21st birthday was in early December, as was my last final exam at UMKC, so we went out to “celebrate” with some college classmates at a UMKC bar hangout (when underage drinking wasn‘t policed very well), and she offered to help me lose my virginity later that night. Unfortunately, the beer I’d consumed earlier (which wasn’t a whole lot, by my standards) rendered me—how shall I put it?—sluggish, therefore it was a no-go. As checkered as my love-life is, it seems only fitting that I couldn’t get it up the first time and had to take a rain check. I waited an additional three weeks to finally “pop my cherry” on Christmas Eve, 1984, and even then, the whole experience wasn’t all that earth-shattering to me. What’s worse, I was scared shitless for about a month afterward that I’d gotten Lisa pregnant, even though at the time she was taking birth patrol pills (as A. Bunker would call them). My paranoia about fatherhood aside, I knew deep down inside that something was missing—I just wasn’t all that attracted to this girl! Lisa was a good person, to be sure, but we shared no cerebral connection at all and had very few common interests. A good analogy is I was Hard Rock and she was Country (i.e., a bad mix), which made the Kiss concert I took Lisa to a fairly miserable experience for her, and I felt badly afterwards. Anyway, the whole relationship felt really hollow to me—what good was the physical relationship without some sort of emotional connection? What’s worse, it had gotten to the point where the meddling matchmaker gals at work (Hilda and Zelda, if you will) were more interested in our torrid little affair than either Lisa or I was, and it had become a sideshow.
Now here’s the REAL kick in the head: during that time, Lisa was in the process of moving out of her parents’ house into her own apartment not far from our workplace, so I could’ve pretty much had sex with her just about any night of the week if I wanted to, but by the time she got settled in, I was already backing away from her and I never even set foot in her new place. The thing I’m least proud of is that I never actually had the balls to officially break up with Lisa—I just kinda became distant and drifted away and avoided her for a few weeks and was pretty relieved when she changed jobs a couple months later. To be brutally honest, I was like a drunk at the wheel of a stolen car with Lisa—I didn’t have a freakin’ clue what I doing with her from start-to-finish. Like the Bob Seger lyric goes, “I used her, she used me—neither one cared.” Lisa, if you’re out there reading this, what can I say? I should’ve been more of a man and handled things better than I did, and I apologize—you at least deserved better than to just be blown off like that.
And little did I know on that Christmas Eve of ‘84 that I would have to wait another 14-and-a-half years before having true sexual intercourse with another woman. In some strange way, it was kinda worth the wait, though…
The remainder of the ‘80s was mostly dead-ends and disappointments for me with women. I at least took a stab or two at asking girls out at school as well as an office girl at the first radio station I worked at, but met with the usual indifference I’d so often encountered with women. To my chagrin, even having front-row Kansas City Comets season tickets at Kemper Arena and my connection to the radio station weren’t sufficient-enough calling cards/chick magnet assets. By the time my radio career crapped out in 1989 and I was forced to get a real job at a major downtown KC bank, I’d pretty much given up trying to find a woman and didn’t really care anymore. I actually started buying into the lyric in the Monkees’ “I’m A Believer”: “I thought love was only true in fairy tales—meant for someone else and not for me.”
I finally hit bottom one day circa. late 1990 while attending an optional class sponsored by my employer about stress in and out of the workplace and how to relieve it during which we had to answer a questionnaire. I could only respond to “Do you feel anxiety in your sex life?” with “WHAT sex life?!?” Instead of relieving my stress, the bloody class only added to my misery, because I walked away feeling so depressed at being left-out of the whole dating/mating game milieu. Thankfully, long about that time, a savior of sorts came into my life—a beautiful co-worker named Susan. She was a transplant from the Springfield, MO area in her mid-‘20s with the prettiest big blue eyes I’d ever seen, the cutest curly brown hair and a warm, friendly smile and sweet, nurturing personality. Astoundingly, she even loved Hard Rock music just like me! She had two children from a previous marriage and was spoken-for again with a new boyfriend (who was kind of a schmuck), so I never tried to pursue her romantically (believe me, I wanted to!), but I credit Susan as much as anyone for inspiring me to get off my duff to do something about my flat-lining love/social life because she was very sympathetic and supportive of me. If nothing else, she gave me something to shoot for again, because apart from having kids and disliking sports, she was the template in so many ways of my ideal significant other in terms of looks, personality and intellect. Sadly, Susan is no longer with us, as she and her two children died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a freak house fire in early, 1995 (on her 30th birthday, no less). I still think about her a lot to this day, and ironically, the first and only time Susan and I ever hugged each other turned out to be one of the last times I ever saw her alive.
Somewhere along the line while getting to know Susan, a voice inside my feeble brain said, “Hey, dumbass—why NOT you? You see all these assholes out there who date nice women like Susan, doncha? Surely, a decent guy like you could score with SOMEONE out there…” At that point, I ratcheted up my efforts to get out of the penalty box of love and back on the ice and went into “Gotta find a woman! Gotta find a woman! Gotta find a woman!” mode—with very mixed results for the first couple years, anyway. However, one positive right off the bat was when I finally woke up and realized that my outward appearance needed a major overhaul. One of the first things I did was get my hair cut by a professional barber chick after decades (not years) of avoiding haircuts like Ricky Martin CDs because of the hatchet-jobs my old man used to do on me when I was a kid. That act alone got people’s attention, esp. women folk! I got a much-needed confidence boost in the elevator lobby at work one day when one of the pretty (married) teller gals started chatting with me and said, “You got your hair cut—I love it!” Then I set about to lose a few pounds, and by the summer of ’92, I got on a major roll and went from 260-plus pounds down to 190! With this weight loss came a major improvement in my wardrobe as well. It also helped immensely when I transferred departments and began working for my good friend Phil, who was sympathetic to my cause and took me under his wing and taught me a few things about how to deal with women of the opposite sex, not unlike how Hawkeye counseled Radar on “MASH”. As I mentioned in Part II, small-talk has always been a stumbling block for me, so one thing I learned from Phil early on was how to actually carry on a conversation with a woman about just plain “stuff” like the weather and such instead of going straight to “Ya wanna date?” Okay, bad analogy, but you get the idea. It was still far from smooth-sailing yet, though—I figured I’d just wave my magic wand and the women would come a-runnin’, but I quickly learned it didn’t quite work that way.
I did get fairly chummy with a kinda plain-Jane co-worker girl named Judy who I thought was pretty nice and seemed date-able at the time. I lowered my “standards” a bit since she was a smoker (one of my big no-no’s). She was a transplant from New Yawk, but was devoid of any Big Apple accent (or attitude), so at least we had a conversation piece there. We had a few nice lunch dates and I even got a little touchy-feely with her (hug-wise), but for whatever reason, she failed to interpret my overtures that I was interested in dating her, even though as Phil advised me at the time, “Women sense that very easily and it usually scares them off—most women can read that shit from a mile away.” How Judy failed to read my rather obvious signals is beyond me, and she also neglected to tell me that she was seeing some other guy at the time. It was very awkward when I confronted her about that, and she was all apologetic, but the damage was done and I was very distant with her for the longest time afterwards—whether I had the right to be or not. Judy did admit to me a couple years later that she regretted not going out with me at that time, as it turned out the other guy was a real creep (which I confirmed the one time I met him), so that was some consolation, anyway. I fully admit I didn’t handle that situation very well—attribute it to sheer inexperience on my part—and I learned a valuable lesson about what a dicey proposition dating a co-worker can be, and I’ve made it my policy not to pursue any since—with one exception.
When I changed departments at the bank in 1992 and started working with Phil, it opened a new world for me in terms of meeting women, not only because he knew practically everyone in the company (single gals in particular) but also because he played in a band (he’s a drummer), which lent itself to having lots of contact with women, and we got out quite a bit on weekends back then. Long about that time, a cute singer girl from another band named Holly started working as a temp. on the floor right above us, and we came in contact with each other quite a bit. She had a voice similar to Natalie Merchant’s, and Phil and I attended a few of her band’s gigs and I took quite a shine to her. After a while, I finally was able to get her all to myself for an evening when I took her to a Blades hockey game—not really a date, per se, but as friends—and the evening went better than I could’ve imagined. After the game, we stopped off at one of those beatnik-type coffee houses that were all the rage at the time in the pre-Starbuck’s era, even though I can’t stand coffee. I still had a wonderful time as Holly and I sat and just talked for the longest time—well over three hours—about our lives, work stuff and life in general. I had never connected with a woman so thoroughly like that before, and this turned out to be one of the better dates I ever had with a woman, albeit with hardly any physical contact apart from a goodnight hug and kiss. I really thought I was onto something here, but even though we’d really gotten to know each other, I was never able to get past the friendship stage with Holly. It took me a while to figure out that even if she liked you, she tended to keep everyone at arm’s length and wouldn’t let anyone get real close to her. She’s the kind of person who has lots of acquaintances, but very few people who you’d call really close friends, so that was as far as I got with her. Too bad, because she was a really sweet person, and if you’re out there reading this, Holly, I hope you’re doing alright now. Phil thought you and I would make a really cute couple. So did I…
In the early ‘90s/pre-Internet era, personals ads were very much en vogue, so I took my best shot at finding a woman via that avenue. It didn’t dawn on me right away that the majority of personals ads are fake, or that the respondents to them are merely shills for the publication they’re listed in, but I did manage to get a few nibbles here and there. One big mistake I made was once I established contact with someone, I would write these long-ass letters detailing everything I was looking for in a relationship and my turn-offs, turn-ons, et al—i.e., too much information. I mean I specified height, weight, hair and eye color, stopping just short of bra size and tax bracket! Anyway, one respondent whom I politely passed on was apparently desperate to get knocked-up, and offered to let me impregnate her with no strings attached—yikes! Another respondent seemed a lot more promising, a redheaded school teacher named Teresa who wasn’t unattractive—sort of a plainer Sarah Ferguson (I don’t mean that in a bad way)—and our correspondence resulted in two actual dates. We did a comedy club on the first outing, which was fun, and for the second date, I took her to a Blades game, during which I got the impression that I was boring her to death. But when we stopped after the game for a bite, it suddenly dawned on me that she wasn’t exactly the most scintillating company either. I thought to myself, “Who’s boring WHO here?”, and I realized we really weren’t hitting it off. Too bad, because she wasn’t bad-looking, and even as hungry as I was for a girlfriend then (not to mention my attraction to redheads), I had sense enough to know we just weren’t a good fit, and we never saw each other again.
There was one other gal I met via a personals ad, but we only went out once. She was a hairdresser about 25-ish, and we seemed to hit it off rather well, liked the same kind of music and TV shows, etc., and it didn’t even faze me that she had a deformity on her right hand (a birth defect, she explained). Hell, I even got to meet her mother on our one and only date! But I guess I got a little over-anxious about seeing her again when I broached the subject of a second date, and she more or less blew me off by saying she wanted to “keep her options open” and wasn’t looking to seriously date anyone then. I soooo wanted to reply “Then why did you place a personals ad in the first place and why are you wasting my time here?” but I remained a gentleman. Thanks for nothing, sweetheart! That experience soured me enough that I gave up on personals ads for good after that.
In a heroic attempt to help re-ignite my Mojo, my good friend/boss man Phil even took me to a gentleman’s club or two during 1992-93. We once hopped in my car with a couple other guys and drove to the new Million Dollar Fantasy Ranch 40 miles away in Warrensburg, which was a juice bar where you could actually touch the merchandise. During my $20 lap dance, I got lucky with a really cute brunette named Lori who was hotter than a snake’s ass in a wagon rut, and Phil told me later he was impressed with my handling of the female torso, so that gave me some confidence. I really appreciated the effort on Phil’s part, and I do realize it ain’t every day that one’s boss takes his employee to titty bars, but it was only semi-satisfying for me, at best. Yes, the girls were very hot and sexy and all, but you don’t feed a starving dog a rubber bone! I even toyed with the idea of frequenting an escort service several times, especially during my 1994 vacation to Toronto (where prostitution is legal), but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not to criticize anyone who frequents juice/topless bars or patronizes prostitutes—if that’s your scene, who am I to judge?—but, what does it say about me if the only way I can have sex with someone is to have to pay (lots of) money for it? I guess I’m a little old-fashioned here—I’ve always felt that sex is more meaningful when you earn it instead of buying it.
Fortunately, my long dry spell was about to end...
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
(Don't Fear) The Blogger
Nothing certain but death and taxes, you say? Well, there's plenty of both to go around this week...
HARRY KALAS, 1936-2009
Very sad day in baseball yesterday with two major passings. Veteran Philadelphia Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas died in Washington as he was preparing for the Phils’ game at the Nationals’ home park. Kalas was to Philadelphia what Jack Buck was to St. Louis and Ernie Harwell was to Detroit, and was also known nationally as one of the narrators for NFL Films (more or less succeeding the late John “Voice of God” Facenda) and HBO’s “Inside The NFL” program, as well as the voice of numerous Chunky Soup TV ads. He had a rather slow, deliberate play-by-play delivery style and was known for his trademark “outta here” home run call. Unfortunately, “outta here” has a sadder connotation for Harry now…
MARK FIDRYCH, 1954-2009
Long about the same time that Harry Kalas left us, former Major League pheenom pitching sensation Mark “The Bird” Fidrych flew on as well in Massachusetts, evidently the result of some sort of accident involving a dump truck he was working on. The Bird was the Word in the summer of ’76 with his quirky behavior on and around the pitcher’s mound as he earned American League Rookie Of The Year honors with his 19-9 record and even started the All-Star game for the A.L. This was back in the days when ABC aired “Monday Night Baseball”, and their ratings went through the roof on the nights when The Bird was on the mound. Injuries to his knee and shoulder derailed what was a promising career, and although Fidrych’s goofy antics gave the impression that he was a couple fries shy of a Happy Meal, everything I’ve heard and read about him indicates that he was a really down-to-earth guy. Done too soon, both in his career and his life.
MARILYN CHAMBERS, 1952-2009
The Grim Reaper was busy this week, as semi-infamous porn star Marilyn Chambers died over the weekend of unknown causes. Don’t mean to speak poorly of the dead, but I never quite got why she was so popular. I remember seeing several of her more soft-core stuff on Skinemax back in the ‘80s and found her to be awfully plain-Jane for a porn star. Whatever worked, I guess…
ROCKY HILL, 1946-2009
Here’s one more recent passing worth mentioning, although you may not know the name. You probably know Rocky Hill’s younger brother Joe, better known as Dusty Hill of Z.Z. Top. Rocky was a guitarist and singer in a band with Dusty and drummer Frank Beard called American Blues before the latter two hooked up with Rev. Billy Gibbons and formed that Little Ol’ Band From Texas. R.I.P. one and all…
DANCIN’ TO THE JAILHOUSE ROCK?
Speaking of someone a few fries shy of a Happy Meal, legendary producer Phil/Phyllis Spector appears on his way “outta here” after being convicted yesterday in his re-trial for the murder of singer Lana Clarkson in 2003. This man was once a brilliant music producer—just one listen to the Righteous Bros.’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” or “For Once In My Life” bears that out—but he’s always been a strange duck. He basically imprisoned his ex-wife, Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes, in her own home for years because of his raging paranoia that she would cheat on him with someone else. Who woulda blamed her if she did?
One thing I’ll never get about legal-eze, though: in addition to the murder charge, they also convicted Spector for “using a firearm to commit a crime”. Uhhh, isn’t that kinda redundant? Who gives a rip about the firearm? Seems like the murder charge would render that part irrelevant. As A. Bunker once said, “Let’s hear it for the legal profession, Little Girl…[Bronx cheer].”
D.V.D. ON DVD
As part of my ongoing effort to mine the past for good TV viewing in light of the putrid offerings on the networks and cable today, I started in last week on the “Dick Van Dyke Show” on DVD. I’m fairly impressed with the care and effort that went into the first season set, which includes numerous bonus features, including trivia questions and recollections from D.V.D. himself, along with Mary Tyler Moore. The plots and situations are a bit dated nearly 50 years hence, but this show is considered by many as the “perfect” TV sitcom. I tend to disagree with that assessment to a degree, but it is indeed a classic, and it was a pretty good template for subsequent shows to follow. Here are just a few observations on what I’ve seen so far:
Just to show how little I’ve been paying attention lately, I was unaware that TV pundit Glenn “Chicken Little” Beck had jumped ship from CNN to Fox News Channel, which seems to be a much more appropriate home for all his The-Sky-Is-Falling histrionics. My good friend Tom, a staunch Republican, once urged me to watch the Big G, but I’m sorry, dude—you got to do better than some wanker who has all the credibility of Jerry Springer. There was a write-up on Beck in last week’s Slime—er uh, Time—magazine by James Poniewozik in which he opined, “Some TV observers (like me) wondered if Fox’s commentators could thrive in an Obama era. The answer is yes, and how…” That may be true, JP, but that doesn’t make it right when some fear-mongering ratings whore like Beck starts crying like Johnny Fontane in front of Vito Corleone in The Godfather, proclaiming, “I’m sorry. I just love my country. And I fear for it.” Well, Glen, as Vito said to Johnny, “You can ACT LIKE A MAN!” Beck’s hackneyed effort to tug at our collective heartstrings and prey upon ignorant viewer’s irrational fears and hang-ups with all his doomsday prophecies almost makes Pat Robertson look legitimate by way of comparison. I was so pleased to see our good friend Steven Colbert do a mighty fine job a few weeks back on Comedy Central of slaying this faux dragon…
Then again, I long ago gave up wasting my time on the prime-time crap (Beck, O’Reilly, Nancy Grace, Hannity, Van Susterererereren, et al) these networks try to pass off as “news” because it’s nothing but Sensationalism, 101. In the words of Phil Collins, "I got better things to do with my time—I don't care anymore…"
PUCKIN’ A!
Here we are again on the eve of the Stanley Cup playoffs and now’s when the fun really begins. I like the field of teams this year, especially in the Western Conference with the first postseason appearance by the expansion Columbus Blue Jackets, as well as the return of a couple teams who’ve been missing from the Big Dance for a few years, the St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks. I say watch for a San Jose Sharks-New Jersey Devils Stanley Cup finals in late, May.
Meantime, word came down yesterday that the proposed Central Hockey League franchise for the new 5,800-seat arena going up in nearby Independence is a done-deal and will begin play in November. I still have my doubts whether this little arena will fly or not, success-wise, but it’s not far from where I live and supposedly, one won’t have to pay more than $20 a ticket for the as-yet unnamed team. I presume they won’t pay tribute to Blazing Saddles and name them the Kansas City “Faggots”…
HARRY KALAS, 1936-2009
Very sad day in baseball yesterday with two major passings. Veteran Philadelphia Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas died in Washington as he was preparing for the Phils’ game at the Nationals’ home park. Kalas was to Philadelphia what Jack Buck was to St. Louis and Ernie Harwell was to Detroit, and was also known nationally as one of the narrators for NFL Films (more or less succeeding the late John “Voice of God” Facenda) and HBO’s “Inside The NFL” program, as well as the voice of numerous Chunky Soup TV ads. He had a rather slow, deliberate play-by-play delivery style and was known for his trademark “outta here” home run call. Unfortunately, “outta here” has a sadder connotation for Harry now…
MARK FIDRYCH, 1954-2009
Long about the same time that Harry Kalas left us, former Major League pheenom pitching sensation Mark “The Bird” Fidrych flew on as well in Massachusetts, evidently the result of some sort of accident involving a dump truck he was working on. The Bird was the Word in the summer of ’76 with his quirky behavior on and around the pitcher’s mound as he earned American League Rookie Of The Year honors with his 19-9 record and even started the All-Star game for the A.L. This was back in the days when ABC aired “Monday Night Baseball”, and their ratings went through the roof on the nights when The Bird was on the mound. Injuries to his knee and shoulder derailed what was a promising career, and although Fidrych’s goofy antics gave the impression that he was a couple fries shy of a Happy Meal, everything I’ve heard and read about him indicates that he was a really down-to-earth guy. Done too soon, both in his career and his life.
MARILYN CHAMBERS, 1952-2009
The Grim Reaper was busy this week, as semi-infamous porn star Marilyn Chambers died over the weekend of unknown causes. Don’t mean to speak poorly of the dead, but I never quite got why she was so popular. I remember seeing several of her more soft-core stuff on Skinemax back in the ‘80s and found her to be awfully plain-Jane for a porn star. Whatever worked, I guess…
ROCKY HILL, 1946-2009
Here’s one more recent passing worth mentioning, although you may not know the name. You probably know Rocky Hill’s younger brother Joe, better known as Dusty Hill of Z.Z. Top. Rocky was a guitarist and singer in a band with Dusty and drummer Frank Beard called American Blues before the latter two hooked up with Rev. Billy Gibbons and formed that Little Ol’ Band From Texas. R.I.P. one and all…
DANCIN’ TO THE JAILHOUSE ROCK?
Speaking of someone a few fries shy of a Happy Meal, legendary producer Phil/Phyllis Spector appears on his way “outta here” after being convicted yesterday in his re-trial for the murder of singer Lana Clarkson in 2003. This man was once a brilliant music producer—just one listen to the Righteous Bros.’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” or “For Once In My Life” bears that out—but he’s always been a strange duck. He basically imprisoned his ex-wife, Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes, in her own home for years because of his raging paranoia that she would cheat on him with someone else. Who woulda blamed her if she did?One thing I’ll never get about legal-eze, though: in addition to the murder charge, they also convicted Spector for “using a firearm to commit a crime”. Uhhh, isn’t that kinda redundant? Who gives a rip about the firearm? Seems like the murder charge would render that part irrelevant. As A. Bunker once said, “Let’s hear it for the legal profession, Little Girl…[Bronx cheer].”
D.V.D. ON DVD
As part of my ongoing effort to mine the past for good TV viewing in light of the putrid offerings on the networks and cable today, I started in last week on the “Dick Van Dyke Show” on DVD. I’m fairly impressed with the care and effort that went into the first season set, which includes numerous bonus features, including trivia questions and recollections from D.V.D. himself, along with Mary Tyler Moore. The plots and situations are a bit dated nearly 50 years hence, but this show is considered by many as the “perfect” TV sitcom. I tend to disagree with that assessment to a degree, but it is indeed a classic, and it was a pretty good template for subsequent shows to follow. Here are just a few observations on what I’ve seen so far:
- It seems odd that in the early episodes, the producers couldn’t decide whether to call MTM’s character “Laura” or “Laurie”. They eventually settled on “Laura”, of course.
- Not trying to be mean here, but did Rose Marie ever NOT look old to you? She was in her late ‘30s when the show debuted, but she could’ve easily passed for 55 even then…
- It took me a minute or two to recognize a young Jamie Farr, in his recurring role as a smart-alecky deli delivery boy on several episodes. The voice registered at first, but it wasn't until he turned his head sideways and I saw his famous schnozz that I realized who it was!
- I coulda done without the kid that played Richie, the Petrie’s only son. He wasn’t much of an actor—just a little kid reciting lines like it was a school assembly or something.
Just to show how little I’ve been paying attention lately, I was unaware that TV pundit Glenn “Chicken Little” Beck had jumped ship from CNN to Fox News Channel, which seems to be a much more appropriate home for all his The-Sky-Is-Falling histrionics. My good friend Tom, a staunch Republican, once urged me to watch the Big G, but I’m sorry, dude—you got to do better than some wanker who has all the credibility of Jerry Springer. There was a write-up on Beck in last week’s Slime—er uh, Time—magazine by James Poniewozik in which he opined, “Some TV observers (like me) wondered if Fox’s commentators could thrive in an Obama era. The answer is yes, and how…” That may be true, JP, but that doesn’t make it right when some fear-mongering ratings whore like Beck starts crying like Johnny Fontane in front of Vito Corleone in The Godfather, proclaiming, “I’m sorry. I just love my country. And I fear for it.” Well, Glen, as Vito said to Johnny, “You can ACT LIKE A MAN!” Beck’s hackneyed effort to tug at our collective heartstrings and prey upon ignorant viewer’s irrational fears and hang-ups with all his doomsday prophecies almost makes Pat Robertson look legitimate by way of comparison. I was so pleased to see our good friend Steven Colbert do a mighty fine job a few weeks back on Comedy Central of slaying this faux dragon…
Then again, I long ago gave up wasting my time on the prime-time crap (Beck, O’Reilly, Nancy Grace, Hannity, Van Susterererereren, et al) these networks try to pass off as “news” because it’s nothing but Sensationalism, 101. In the words of Phil Collins, "I got better things to do with my time—I don't care anymore…"
PUCKIN’ A!
Here we are again on the eve of the Stanley Cup playoffs and now’s when the fun really begins. I like the field of teams this year, especially in the Western Conference with the first postseason appearance by the expansion Columbus Blue Jackets, as well as the return of a couple teams who’ve been missing from the Big Dance for a few years, the St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks. I say watch for a San Jose Sharks-New Jersey Devils Stanley Cup finals in late, May.
Meantime, word came down yesterday that the proposed Central Hockey League franchise for the new 5,800-seat arena going up in nearby Independence is a done-deal and will begin play in November. I still have my doubts whether this little arena will fly or not, success-wise, but it’s not far from where I live and supposedly, one won’t have to pay more than $20 a ticket for the as-yet unnamed team. I presume they won’t pay tribute to Blazing Saddles and name them the Kansas City “Faggots”…
Saturday, April 11, 2009
The (Love) Life of Brian--Part II
In this installment, I explore the origins of my interpersonal dysfunction with the opposite sex (and people in general) in social situations…
Let’ s start way back at the beginning to give you a little background on how I evolved socially. Even though I’m the youngest of three kids, I almost consider myself to be an only child because of the age difference between me and my brother and sister (who are seven and nine years older, respectively). I was never all that close to them at all, and even though we still all live in the same city today, we might as well be on different continents, as I rarely see or interact with either of them now. At a very early age, I basically had to learn to entertain myself because they were either at school or hanging with their friends or doing their Boy/Girl Scout stuff, and I was always home with Mom while she did her housework and such. My stuffed animals, Matchbox/Hot Wheel cars, TV game shows, and Paul Revere & The Raiders records became my best friends up through age five and beyond—I didn’t even have what you would call a regular playmate or neighbor kid friend during that time, so I’ve been a loner almost from the get-go. Sunday school at church, as well as Kindergarten and early grade school were awkward for me, as I suddenly had to get used to being around lots of other kids all the time—a form of culture shock, if you will. Meantime, from about age five through eleven, I had a bit more interaction with my siblings, but when I finally started feeling a connection to them about the time I hit Junior High age, they both moved out and went to college—D’oh!
Don’t get me wrong—my family (Mom, Dad, Bro and Sis) are all good people, but are hardly what you would call social animals, therefore I was never properly taught to socialize when I was little, let alone encouraged to chase girls when I got older. I never even got the clichéd “birds and the bees” lecture when I hit puberty, so I more or less had to figure things out on my own. What’s worse, puberty—or I should say at least the “sexual awakening” part of it—didn’t hit me until I was damn near 17, so I was a couple years behind everyone else, it seemed. Meanwhile, Bro and Sis didn’t date much (if at all) in their teens, so there was no example for me to follow, thus I remained the reticent, good little boy, just waiting for things to happen that never did happen. Bro and Sis each essentially married the first person to come along that gave them the time of day after high school, and both marriages still survive today, although with mixed results, at best.
This is not to say that I wasn’t paying attention to girls while growing up. There was one girl whom I met in second grade who was the first non-TV person I ever lusted after (Yvonne Craig as Batgirl on “Batman” was the first, followed by Emmy Jo on “The New Zoo Revue”), and she was my equivalent to Charlie Brown’s “little red-haired girl” (only she had light brown hair), but I was too shy and too awkward to do anything about it, even as we attended junior high and high school together. I even have very fuzzy memories of swimming with her and some friends at an apartment complex in 5th or 6th grade, but that might’ve just been a wet dream of mine. Get it—wet dream? [place rim shot here]. Anyway, what truly haunts me to this day is this girl’s older sister was in the very same Girl Scout troop as my sister, which often met right in our very own basement—an inside connection totally wasted! All I can say is Sharon, sweetie, I worshipped you from afar—oh, what might’ve been…
I also had my eye on several cute girls during junior high and high school, but again, I was too shy to act on it. Believe it or not, one of the hotter girls in my 8th grade class—picture a young Suzanne Somers with a brain—actually asked me out to a school dance once, and I just froze as if someone had notified me I’d been drafted. As John Hiatt once sang, “I don’t know why the cry of love is so alarming!” I wimpishly made up some excuse about already having tickets to a Kansas City Kings basketball game that night, or some such thing. Just as well, I guess—I wouldn’t have known how to act if I escorted her to that dance anyway—and I have no doubt it would’ve ended badly. Meantime, I’m sure Miss Rhonda and most of the girls at my school thought I was gay after that. Trust me, Rhonda, if you’re out there reading this, it wasn’t anything personal and you were a gorgeous girl—I just wasn’t ready for the Big Leagues yet. Oh by the way—I’m not gay, either…
Then one bright July day between 8th and 9th grade, I get a phone call from another girl at school whom I made it fairly well-known I had the hots for, a girl named Anni—picture Tiffani-Amber Thiessen crossed with Marisa Tomei (yeoww!)—asking me if I’d like to go out sometime. Actually, I think it was someone posing as her playing a prank on me, but believe it or not, I actually presaged Mark Ratner in Fast Times At Ridgemont High by about four years by telling whoever it was on the phone that I was going to be “doing a lot of traveling” soon. I cringe every time I hear that line in the movie now! I never did confirm who it was that called me, because when school started again in September no words were ever spoken between us. Anni—if you’re out there reading this and that was really you that called me, I apologize profusely. You have no idea how much I regret not taking you up on your offer, nor how much I‘ve kicked myself for not doing so over the last 30 years!
High school was a total wasteland for me, socially, therefore I never dated anyone during that time, and I rarely even attended school functions (except the occasional Raytown South football or basketball game). It never occurred to me that a few of those girls in class might actually like me, but then again, I hardly looked presentable—I was a fat slob, my hair looked like crap, I wore nothing but concert t-shirts or sports logo clothes, and my acne made my face look like a topographical map of the lunar surface. No small wonder I didn’t attract anyone! To make things worse, I just didn’t have the social skills, gift of gab (still don’t, sometimes), or even the ability to bullshit my way through a conversation with someone—it’s just not my style. I’m a little better at it now than when I was 15, but I absolutely suck at small-talk—I’m more of a “cut-to-the-chase” kind of person and never properly learned how to schmooze. Not to sound arrogant, but it never ceases to amaze me how I can fluently string words together on this blog like a concerto, yet when it comes to social occasions, I often register on the ineptitude spectrum on a par with the likes of Bullwinkle, Fredo Corleone, Steve Urkel and Barney Fife! To this day, I still need an awful lot of social lubrication (i.e., alcohol) to feel comfortable chatting someone up. Or as my man Pete Townshend once wrote, “Have to be so drunk to try a new dance…”
Stay tuned for future installments, as I explore all my relationships with women (all three of ‘em!) and the trials and tribulations I went through along the way. If you made a movie about it, you could call it The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but unfortunately, that title’s already taken…
Let’ s start way back at the beginning to give you a little background on how I evolved socially. Even though I’m the youngest of three kids, I almost consider myself to be an only child because of the age difference between me and my brother and sister (who are seven and nine years older, respectively). I was never all that close to them at all, and even though we still all live in the same city today, we might as well be on different continents, as I rarely see or interact with either of them now. At a very early age, I basically had to learn to entertain myself because they were either at school or hanging with their friends or doing their Boy/Girl Scout stuff, and I was always home with Mom while she did her housework and such. My stuffed animals, Matchbox/Hot Wheel cars, TV game shows, and Paul Revere & The Raiders records became my best friends up through age five and beyond—I didn’t even have what you would call a regular playmate or neighbor kid friend during that time, so I’ve been a loner almost from the get-go. Sunday school at church, as well as Kindergarten and early grade school were awkward for me, as I suddenly had to get used to being around lots of other kids all the time—a form of culture shock, if you will. Meantime, from about age five through eleven, I had a bit more interaction with my siblings, but when I finally started feeling a connection to them about the time I hit Junior High age, they both moved out and went to college—D’oh!
Don’t get me wrong—my family (Mom, Dad, Bro and Sis) are all good people, but are hardly what you would call social animals, therefore I was never properly taught to socialize when I was little, let alone encouraged to chase girls when I got older. I never even got the clichéd “birds and the bees” lecture when I hit puberty, so I more or less had to figure things out on my own. What’s worse, puberty—or I should say at least the “sexual awakening” part of it—didn’t hit me until I was damn near 17, so I was a couple years behind everyone else, it seemed. Meanwhile, Bro and Sis didn’t date much (if at all) in their teens, so there was no example for me to follow, thus I remained the reticent, good little boy, just waiting for things to happen that never did happen. Bro and Sis each essentially married the first person to come along that gave them the time of day after high school, and both marriages still survive today, although with mixed results, at best.
This is not to say that I wasn’t paying attention to girls while growing up. There was one girl whom I met in second grade who was the first non-TV person I ever lusted after (Yvonne Craig as Batgirl on “Batman” was the first, followed by Emmy Jo on “The New Zoo Revue”), and she was my equivalent to Charlie Brown’s “little red-haired girl” (only she had light brown hair), but I was too shy and too awkward to do anything about it, even as we attended junior high and high school together. I even have very fuzzy memories of swimming with her and some friends at an apartment complex in 5th or 6th grade, but that might’ve just been a wet dream of mine. Get it—wet dream? [place rim shot here]. Anyway, what truly haunts me to this day is this girl’s older sister was in the very same Girl Scout troop as my sister, which often met right in our very own basement—an inside connection totally wasted! All I can say is Sharon, sweetie, I worshipped you from afar—oh, what might’ve been…
I also had my eye on several cute girls during junior high and high school, but again, I was too shy to act on it. Believe it or not, one of the hotter girls in my 8th grade class—picture a young Suzanne Somers with a brain—actually asked me out to a school dance once, and I just froze as if someone had notified me I’d been drafted. As John Hiatt once sang, “I don’t know why the cry of love is so alarming!” I wimpishly made up some excuse about already having tickets to a Kansas City Kings basketball game that night, or some such thing. Just as well, I guess—I wouldn’t have known how to act if I escorted her to that dance anyway—and I have no doubt it would’ve ended badly. Meantime, I’m sure Miss Rhonda and most of the girls at my school thought I was gay after that. Trust me, Rhonda, if you’re out there reading this, it wasn’t anything personal and you were a gorgeous girl—I just wasn’t ready for the Big Leagues yet. Oh by the way—I’m not gay, either…
Then one bright July day between 8th and 9th grade, I get a phone call from another girl at school whom I made it fairly well-known I had the hots for, a girl named Anni—picture Tiffani-Amber Thiessen crossed with Marisa Tomei (yeoww!)—asking me if I’d like to go out sometime. Actually, I think it was someone posing as her playing a prank on me, but believe it or not, I actually presaged Mark Ratner in Fast Times At Ridgemont High by about four years by telling whoever it was on the phone that I was going to be “doing a lot of traveling” soon. I cringe every time I hear that line in the movie now! I never did confirm who it was that called me, because when school started again in September no words were ever spoken between us. Anni—if you’re out there reading this and that was really you that called me, I apologize profusely. You have no idea how much I regret not taking you up on your offer, nor how much I‘ve kicked myself for not doing so over the last 30 years!
High school was a total wasteland for me, socially, therefore I never dated anyone during that time, and I rarely even attended school functions (except the occasional Raytown South football or basketball game). It never occurred to me that a few of those girls in class might actually like me, but then again, I hardly looked presentable—I was a fat slob, my hair looked like crap, I wore nothing but concert t-shirts or sports logo clothes, and my acne made my face look like a topographical map of the lunar surface. No small wonder I didn’t attract anyone! To make things worse, I just didn’t have the social skills, gift of gab (still don’t, sometimes), or even the ability to bullshit my way through a conversation with someone—it’s just not my style. I’m a little better at it now than when I was 15, but I absolutely suck at small-talk—I’m more of a “cut-to-the-chase” kind of person and never properly learned how to schmooze. Not to sound arrogant, but it never ceases to amaze me how I can fluently string words together on this blog like a concerto, yet when it comes to social occasions, I often register on the ineptitude spectrum on a par with the likes of Bullwinkle, Fredo Corleone, Steve Urkel and Barney Fife! To this day, I still need an awful lot of social lubrication (i.e., alcohol) to feel comfortable chatting someone up. Or as my man Pete Townshend once wrote, “Have to be so drunk to try a new dance…”
Stay tuned for future installments, as I explore all my relationships with women (all three of ‘em!) and the trials and tribulations I went through along the way. If you made a movie about it, you could call it The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but unfortunately, that title’s already taken…
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Big fat tires and everything...
OH, WHAT A TWIT!
Heaven forbid that Michelle Obama would even dare to look at Queen Elizabeth during her visit to merry ole England last week, let alone put her arm around her! Don’t you just love it when the media gets a hold of something like this and runs amok with it? Apparently, it goes against protocol for anyone to act human in the presence of Her Royal Haughtiness, so putting one’s arm around the bitch is strictly forbidden. Never mind that HRH initiated the contact with Mrs. O.—what was Michelle ‘sposed to do, pull away from the Queen as if she had cooties or something? No disrespect intended, but I have a news flash for all youse Brits out there—Her Royal Hiney’s shit stinks just like everyone else’s! This whole monarchy crap is about as relevant today as a K-Tel Record, and should’ve been done away with decades ago…
THE HOUSE THAT A-ROID BUILT?
Even though it cost a king’s ransom to build, I have to say I’m fairly impressed with the new Yankee Stadium in Gotham City (click pic to enlarge), which had its shakedown cruise last Friday during an exhibition game between the Bronx Bummers and the Cubbies. An egregious wrong has finally been righted with the return of the famed Yankee Stadium frieze ringing the roof of the ballpark, just like it did before the mid-’70s renovation, which relegated it to a cheesy plastic rendering above the outfield bleachers. Another feature I like is the replica linescore board embedded in the outfield wall, similar to the ones used during the Mantle/Ford/Kubek/Skowron era. The concourses look pretty impressive too, but then again, for eleventy-billion semolians, they oughtta be!
BLOW JOB! BLOW JOB! BLOW JOB!
A boot to the head to Royals reliever Kyle Farnsworth for serving up a grapefruit to the White Sox’ Jim Thome in the 8th inning on Opening Day, giving the ChiSox the 4-2 win, and wasting a fine outing by starting pitcher Gil Meche. Farnsworth did the same crap with the Cubs, Tigers and Yankees, and I cursed the day the Royals signed this bonehead. Yes, I know, one loss doth not a season make, but this is going to be a long year with him in our bullpen.
IOWA, WE HARDLY KNEW YE!
I was quite surprised (and pleased) to see the state of Iowa’s Supreme Court rule that their gay marriage ban was/is illegal. Yes, we're talking God-fearing/conservative/corn-belt/Radar O'Reilly's Iowa! But of course, all the right-wing religious pinheads out there are already declaring this as another blow to the institution of marriage. Funny, but I don’t see where gay people have contributed to the divorce rate of 50% percent for first marriages, 67% for second marriages and 74% for third ones in this country, do you? Seems to me this “institution” is imploding just fine on its own…
ARE WE UP-TO-CODE NOW?
Much hand-wringing has taken place in K.C. lately over the dress code adopted by the Power & Light entertainment district, which includes the new Sprint Center arena. The code’s detractors claim it is racially motivated to exclude people of the Rap/Hip-Hop element. What it’s actually saying to these people is “pull your freakin’ pants up, already, ya dweebs!” The code also addresses skankily-attired females, but it sure didn’t prevent Britney Spears from performing at Sprint the other night…
CLASSIC OVERUSED TV/MOVIE CLICHÉ #14
When someone’s on the phone (pre-cellphone era) and their call gets disconnected, why do they always react by clicking the hang-up button and frantically uttering “Hello?” several times? Like that’s going to bring the other caller back? Pushing the button only guarantees you’ve been disconnected!
DA BLOOZ!
The end of the NHL’s regular season is fast approaching, and it’s been fun watching the St. Louis Blues launch a mad late-season dash to make the playoffs after a poor start to the season. St. Lou was a regular fixture in the Stanley Cup playoffs for 25 years straight until hard times struck during this decade when the NHL labor stoppage all but killed the team. Former NHL goalie and broadcaster John Davidson (not the hack nightclub singer of the same name) took over as team President a couple years ago and, unlike the NFL’s Matt Millen, has made the transition from the TV booth to the front office successfully. JD has managed to round up a good core group of young players like Brad Boyes, Barrett Jackman, David Backes and Erik Johnson that could be the nucleus of a dominant team for years to come. Best of all, it’s great to see the fans are responding by filling the seats again, just like in the glory days of the old St. Louis Arena on Oakland Avenue. Now if only K.C. had a hockey team…
Heaven forbid that Michelle Obama would even dare to look at Queen Elizabeth during her visit to merry ole England last week, let alone put her arm around her! Don’t you just love it when the media gets a hold of something like this and runs amok with it? Apparently, it goes against protocol for anyone to act human in the presence of Her Royal Haughtiness, so putting one’s arm around the bitch is strictly forbidden. Never mind that HRH initiated the contact with Mrs. O.—what was Michelle ‘sposed to do, pull away from the Queen as if she had cooties or something? No disrespect intended, but I have a news flash for all youse Brits out there—Her Royal Hiney’s shit stinks just like everyone else’s! This whole monarchy crap is about as relevant today as a K-Tel Record, and should’ve been done away with decades ago…
THE HOUSE THAT A-ROID BUILT?
Even though it cost a king’s ransom to build, I have to say I’m fairly impressed with the new Yankee Stadium in Gotham City (click pic to enlarge), which had its shakedown cruise last Friday during an exhibition game between the Bronx Bummers and the Cubbies. An egregious wrong has finally been righted with the return of the famed Yankee Stadium frieze ringing the roof of the ballpark, just like it did before the mid-’70s renovation, which relegated it to a cheesy plastic rendering above the outfield bleachers. Another feature I like is the replica linescore board embedded in the outfield wall, similar to the ones used during the Mantle/Ford/Kubek/Skowron era. The concourses look pretty impressive too, but then again, for eleventy-billion semolians, they oughtta be!BLOW JOB! BLOW JOB! BLOW JOB!
A boot to the head to Royals reliever Kyle Farnsworth for serving up a grapefruit to the White Sox’ Jim Thome in the 8th inning on Opening Day, giving the ChiSox the 4-2 win, and wasting a fine outing by starting pitcher Gil Meche. Farnsworth did the same crap with the Cubs, Tigers and Yankees, and I cursed the day the Royals signed this bonehead. Yes, I know, one loss doth not a season make, but this is going to be a long year with him in our bullpen.
IOWA, WE HARDLY KNEW YE!
I was quite surprised (and pleased) to see the state of Iowa’s Supreme Court rule that their gay marriage ban was/is illegal. Yes, we're talking God-fearing/conservative/corn-belt/Radar O'Reilly's Iowa! But of course, all the right-wing religious pinheads out there are already declaring this as another blow to the institution of marriage. Funny, but I don’t see where gay people have contributed to the divorce rate of 50% percent for first marriages, 67% for second marriages and 74% for third ones in this country, do you? Seems to me this “institution” is imploding just fine on its own…
ARE WE UP-TO-CODE NOW?
Much hand-wringing has taken place in K.C. lately over the dress code adopted by the Power & Light entertainment district, which includes the new Sprint Center arena. The code’s detractors claim it is racially motivated to exclude people of the Rap/Hip-Hop element. What it’s actually saying to these people is “pull your freakin’ pants up, already, ya dweebs!” The code also addresses skankily-attired females, but it sure didn’t prevent Britney Spears from performing at Sprint the other night…CLASSIC OVERUSED TV/MOVIE CLICHÉ #14
When someone’s on the phone (pre-cellphone era) and their call gets disconnected, why do they always react by clicking the hang-up button and frantically uttering “Hello?” several times? Like that’s going to bring the other caller back? Pushing the button only guarantees you’ve been disconnected!
DA BLOOZ!
The end of the NHL’s regular season is fast approaching, and it’s been fun watching the St. Louis Blues launch a mad late-season dash to make the playoffs after a poor start to the season. St. Lou was a regular fixture in the Stanley Cup playoffs for 25 years straight until hard times struck during this decade when the NHL labor stoppage all but killed the team. Former NHL goalie and broadcaster John Davidson (not the hack nightclub singer of the same name) took over as team President a couple years ago and, unlike the NFL’s Matt Millen, has made the transition from the TV booth to the front office successfully. JD has managed to round up a good core group of young players like Brad Boyes, Barrett Jackman, David Backes and Erik Johnson that could be the nucleus of a dominant team for years to come. Best of all, it’s great to see the fans are responding by filling the seats again, just like in the glory days of the old St. Louis Arena on Oakland Avenue. Now if only K.C. had a hockey team…
Sunday, April 5, 2009
The (Love) Life of Brian--Part I
One topic I've rarely discussed on this blog is my love-life, mostly because there ain’t a whole lot to discuss. I actually don’t mind being open about it, even though it’s a facet of my life that I’m not overly-proud of. In my view, my history with the opposite sex is checkered at best, and rather pathetic at worst. To give you an idea of exactly how pathetic, I’ll turn 45 in June, and to date, I’ve spent a cumulative total of a year-and-a-half in serious relationships with women. That’s 18 months out of 45 years—barely 3% of my lifetime! Now, I do realize there are lots of poor schlubs out there who’ve had even less experience than I have, but it still doesn’t sit well with me that this is all I have to hang my hat on. I’ve only had three real relationships with women-folk in my life, each one lasting no more than six months, and each preceded and followed by lengthy dry spells without a significant other, including the current drought that’s approaching ten years, which just surpassed my previous personal record of nine. And of those three relationships, the best one involved a beautiful woman who lived 1,800 miles and two time zones away from me, so even then I had to really go out of my way just to enjoy a brief spate of happiness with a female human being.
It’s certainly NOT that I don’t love women—I love women every bit as much as I love Rock ‘N’ Roll, T-bone steak, “Sanford And Son” reruns, beer and hockey—but I’ve either been too shy, too awkward, too short, too unattractive, too scared, too agnostic or too unlucky (or any combination of the above) to really get anywhere with a woman on a long-term basis. I haven’t even been on a freakin’ date—let alone kissed a woman on the lips—in damn near ten years, so as you might imagine, I’m a tad rusty and I have a fairly big itch to scratch! I also can’t help but wonder if all of the good women are already taken anyway and/or what the hell is wrong with me sometimes. I don’t mean for this to be a pity-party here for yours truly—trust me, this series isn't all gloom-and-doom—but I really need to take this mental garbage out, so I appreciate your indulgence if you choose to read onward about what I think is a very unorthodox love-life…
I realize I shouldn’t compare myself to others, but it frustrates me no end when I see other people who seem to never want for a companion, like a good friend of mine who’s never been alone in the nearly 18 years I’ve known him—one relationship would end for him, and he’d find someone else seemingly without even missing a beat, kinda like those lizards that lose a leg and grow one back right away. Am I jealous? A little, but after years and years of dating services, personals ads, failed set-ups, complete whiffs on my part on secret admirer attempts, dashed hopes, numerous other dead-ends and disappointments and sheer indifference on the part of women I‘ve pursued, can you blame me?
Want a few examples? At least twice, I pursued women whom I was unaware were lesbians...I once had a co-worker girl turn me down for a lunch date by saying, “I don’t really eat lunch.”...I was even desperate enough to pursue another co-worker chick who had hairier arms than I do, and still, I even struck out with her!...A cute girl in college once turned me down for a date because she was seeing a blind guy. I repeat—a blind guy—D’oh!...I’ve also been blown off by women who deemed me too short (I’m 5’8”) and not cowboy enough for them. Hey, I rode a horse once—Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!...And I couldn’t begin to tell you how many women I’ve had my eye on who were hell-bent on getting married and having kids (not my scene—read on, folks), and one personals ad respondent even specifically wanted me to impregnate her with no strings attached! Peter Wolf and J. Geils Band really nailed it for my love-life: “I’ve had the blues, the reds and the pinks…I’ve been through it all—love stinks!” Damn straight!
What sucks most of all is at this stage in my life, I find the window of opportunity rapidly closing on me to find someone new. I know, I know: never say never—but the odds of finding the woman of my dreams (or even a reasonable facsimile) are really stacked against me as I move through middle age. I absolutely do not want kids (mine or anyone else’s), and the majority of the unattached women in my age group are divorcees with children. While I realize that not wanting kids greatly reduces the playing field for me, it’s something that I am absolutely adamant about. I’m not very good with kids (regardless of their age) and I don’t care to be around them, let alone take on the responsibility of raising them. Call me selfish if you want, but give me credit for knowing my limitations when it comes to an important issue like this.
I ain’t really looking for marriage, either, which also hinders my chances. I’ve seen too many friends, family members and co-workers get married and wind up miserable and/or bitter, to the point where I have to question is it really worth it? Shit, I've watched my own parents merely put up with each other for the last 40 years, so If it comes down to a choice between being trapped in a loveless marriage or being alone, I’d much rather be alone—I’m already used to that, anyway. I suppose I miss out on the bonuses in life thinking this way, but I also miss out on the pain and heartache that can suck the life right out of you. Anyway, I can count on one hand the married people I know who are truly happy (Rose, Tom, Phil, and…um, well I guess that‘s it). Even the thought of living together with someone scares me a bit. You see, I’ve always been your basic loner, and I would have a difficult time adjusting to sharing my abode with another person, even say, a male roommate, let alone a significant female other. When I “played house” with my long-distance girlfriend for ten days about ten years ago, it felt weird having someone else around all the time. Don’t get me wrong—I absolutely LOVED her being here, but not having my own place all to myself felt very odd to me.
I’ve also come to the sobering realization that now that I’m in my mid-‘40s, I probably don’t have any business dating anyone under 30 anymore, so that narrows my options even further. I’d prefer to be with someone who at least, as Col. Potter on “MASH” once said, “remembers the same Presidents”, thus anyone born during or after the Reagan Administration is pretty much off my radar scope now. Just as well—I find the majority of today’s under-30 tattooed, cell phone-obsessed, overly-pierced, skanky Paris Hilton wanna-be generation of females to be shallower than shit anyhow. Even worse, I rarely even meet anyone nowadays who remotely interests me personality-wise or attracts me physically. I’m to blame for a lot of that because I don’t get out as much as I should, but it’s been years since I’ve even met someone who I’d even want to have a drink with, let alone who honked my proverbial hooter and made me want to ask her out. Dating services/websites are a joke, singles events are demeaning, bars are a dead-end to me (including even my friend Phil’s band gigs), dating a co-worker is almost always a no-win situation, and the Internet is full of phonies and playas. Ironically, the only truly-satisfying relationship I ever had was a chance on-line encounter, but I consider that to be just pure dumb luck more than anything else. Lightning doesn’t strike twice, you know…
Stay tuned for Part II, where I trace the origins of my social dysfunction and initial failures with girls during Bob Seger's "awkward teenage blues"...
It’s certainly NOT that I don’t love women—I love women every bit as much as I love Rock ‘N’ Roll, T-bone steak, “Sanford And Son” reruns, beer and hockey—but I’ve either been too shy, too awkward, too short, too unattractive, too scared, too agnostic or too unlucky (or any combination of the above) to really get anywhere with a woman on a long-term basis. I haven’t even been on a freakin’ date—let alone kissed a woman on the lips—in damn near ten years, so as you might imagine, I’m a tad rusty and I have a fairly big itch to scratch! I also can’t help but wonder if all of the good women are already taken anyway and/or what the hell is wrong with me sometimes. I don’t mean for this to be a pity-party here for yours truly—trust me, this series isn't all gloom-and-doom—but I really need to take this mental garbage out, so I appreciate your indulgence if you choose to read onward about what I think is a very unorthodox love-life…
I realize I shouldn’t compare myself to others, but it frustrates me no end when I see other people who seem to never want for a companion, like a good friend of mine who’s never been alone in the nearly 18 years I’ve known him—one relationship would end for him, and he’d find someone else seemingly without even missing a beat, kinda like those lizards that lose a leg and grow one back right away. Am I jealous? A little, but after years and years of dating services, personals ads, failed set-ups, complete whiffs on my part on secret admirer attempts, dashed hopes, numerous other dead-ends and disappointments and sheer indifference on the part of women I‘ve pursued, can you blame me?
Want a few examples? At least twice, I pursued women whom I was unaware were lesbians...I once had a co-worker girl turn me down for a lunch date by saying, “I don’t really eat lunch.”...I was even desperate enough to pursue another co-worker chick who had hairier arms than I do, and still, I even struck out with her!...A cute girl in college once turned me down for a date because she was seeing a blind guy. I repeat—a blind guy—D’oh!...I’ve also been blown off by women who deemed me too short (I’m 5’8”) and not cowboy enough for them. Hey, I rode a horse once—Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!...And I couldn’t begin to tell you how many women I’ve had my eye on who were hell-bent on getting married and having kids (not my scene—read on, folks), and one personals ad respondent even specifically wanted me to impregnate her with no strings attached! Peter Wolf and J. Geils Band really nailed it for my love-life: “I’ve had the blues, the reds and the pinks…I’ve been through it all—love stinks!” Damn straight!
What sucks most of all is at this stage in my life, I find the window of opportunity rapidly closing on me to find someone new. I know, I know: never say never—but the odds of finding the woman of my dreams (or even a reasonable facsimile) are really stacked against me as I move through middle age. I absolutely do not want kids (mine or anyone else’s), and the majority of the unattached women in my age group are divorcees with children. While I realize that not wanting kids greatly reduces the playing field for me, it’s something that I am absolutely adamant about. I’m not very good with kids (regardless of their age) and I don’t care to be around them, let alone take on the responsibility of raising them. Call me selfish if you want, but give me credit for knowing my limitations when it comes to an important issue like this.
I ain’t really looking for marriage, either, which also hinders my chances. I’ve seen too many friends, family members and co-workers get married and wind up miserable and/or bitter, to the point where I have to question is it really worth it? Shit, I've watched my own parents merely put up with each other for the last 40 years, so If it comes down to a choice between being trapped in a loveless marriage or being alone, I’d much rather be alone—I’m already used to that, anyway. I suppose I miss out on the bonuses in life thinking this way, but I also miss out on the pain and heartache that can suck the life right out of you. Anyway, I can count on one hand the married people I know who are truly happy (Rose, Tom, Phil, and…um, well I guess that‘s it). Even the thought of living together with someone scares me a bit. You see, I’ve always been your basic loner, and I would have a difficult time adjusting to sharing my abode with another person, even say, a male roommate, let alone a significant female other. When I “played house” with my long-distance girlfriend for ten days about ten years ago, it felt weird having someone else around all the time. Don’t get me wrong—I absolutely LOVED her being here, but not having my own place all to myself felt very odd to me.
I’ve also come to the sobering realization that now that I’m in my mid-‘40s, I probably don’t have any business dating anyone under 30 anymore, so that narrows my options even further. I’d prefer to be with someone who at least, as Col. Potter on “MASH” once said, “remembers the same Presidents”, thus anyone born during or after the Reagan Administration is pretty much off my radar scope now. Just as well—I find the majority of today’s under-30 tattooed, cell phone-obsessed, overly-pierced, skanky Paris Hilton wanna-be generation of females to be shallower than shit anyhow. Even worse, I rarely even meet anyone nowadays who remotely interests me personality-wise or attracts me physically. I’m to blame for a lot of that because I don’t get out as much as I should, but it’s been years since I’ve even met someone who I’d even want to have a drink with, let alone who honked my proverbial hooter and made me want to ask her out. Dating services/websites are a joke, singles events are demeaning, bars are a dead-end to me (including even my friend Phil’s band gigs), dating a co-worker is almost always a no-win situation, and the Internet is full of phonies and playas. Ironically, the only truly-satisfying relationship I ever had was a chance on-line encounter, but I consider that to be just pure dumb luck more than anything else. Lightning doesn’t strike twice, you know…
Stay tuned for Part II, where I trace the origins of my social dysfunction and initial failures with girls during Bob Seger's "awkward teenage blues"...
Friday, April 3, 2009
Eyeing little blogs with bad intent...
SEVEN MORE YEARS OF 40 MINUTES OF HELL? COOL!
I’d have bet my next paycheck that MU head basketball coach Mike Anderson would’ve bolted to Georgia or Memphis and the money they were about to throw at him. Good thing I didn’t, because in a rare display of loyalty in college hoops, Anderson decided to remain in Columbia and signed a seven-year contract extension. He could’ve gotten a lot more money from those other schools, too, but I bet he figured why start over somewhere else when I just spent three years rebuilding a program that is now poised to be a perennial Big 12 power? Finally, some stability at MU, both in basketball and football, for a change…
LOU SABAN, 1922-2009
Colorful football coaching legend Lou Saban passed away over the weekend of congestive heart failure at age 87. Lou—no relation to turncoat Alabama head coach Nick Saban—was the original head coach of the then-Boston Patriots in the old AFL, and later led the Buffalo Bills to back-to-back AFL titles in ’64 and ’65 and coached them again in the mid ‘70s (when double-murderer O.J. Simpson still legally ran amok) after a stint as Denver Broncos head coach from ’67 to ‘69. During Saban’s tenure in Denver, NFL Films captured one of the funniest sideline coach sound bytes of all-time (included in this video remembrance) when Lou—exasperated by the play of his offense—uttered those immortal words, "They’re killin’ me, Whitey—they’re killin’ me!!" Assistant coach Whitey Dovell was the target of Lou’s hissy-fit, and to this day, I often use "They’re killin’ me, Whitey…" during my own little fits of rage, although most people don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Saban had another famous sound byte before the cameras during a locker room pep talk in Buffalo in the ‘70s: "You can get it done…what’s more, ya GOTTA get it done!" Rest in peace, Lou…
THE NAME GAME, PART I
Speaking of the Patriots, I can actually remember when they were still called the "Boston" Patriots when I was little, and hearing that name always warms my heart. "New England" Patriots always leaves me a little flat, for some reason, even though they play an hour away from Beantown now. Same goes for "Florida" Marlins—it sounds too much like Florida Evans from "Good Times". I hope they finally get their new stadium in Miami proper so they can finally be the Miami Marlins. "Washington" Bullets is another lame example—Baltimore Bullets sounded so much cooler with the alliteration (plus they had the coolest uniforms in the NBA back in the day). At least Washington Wizards sounds slightly hipper than Washington Bullets, and it’s a damn sight better than Washington Nationals—what a bland name for a team!
THE NAME GAME, PART II
Famed Kansas City-based architectural firm HOK Sport Venues, best known for their designs of major stadiums and arenas around the world, like the new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field in Gotham City, the new Twins stadium in Minneapolis, and the retrofitting of our own Truman Sports Complex, has changed its name to Populous. That’s nice, but get a load of the bugle oil they’re spouting about their new name: "Populous allows us to enthusiastically embrace the expertise we uniquely claim—drawing people together," according to senior partner Joe Spear. What the hell does all that have to do with designing stadiums? I hate it when these big corporations get all lofty and spin-doctor-y over some name change—why don’t you just admit that you bought yourselves out from your parent ownership group and shut the hell up already?
SPEAKING OF STADIUMS...
Ain't it amazing how the only time construction workers ever seem to go on strike is when they're doing a major project like a stadium or arena, a convention center, airport or high-rise hotel? That's what's been happening here this week with a couple of the unions involved in remodeling Arrowhead and Kauffman Stadiums. Funny how these union schlubs never get the urge to go on strike when they're building a Wal-Mart or a Starbucks or something. Forgetting the stadiums for a moment, I think these som-bitches have one helluva nerve going on strike during this economic climate—I bet there's a few thousand unemployed construction workers out there who would gladly cross their picket lines and take their places.
TAKE OFF—YOU HOSERS!
Hate to keep beating a dead horse here, but I read another discussion about the Crock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame on msnbc.com this week about why classic groups like Rush and the Moody Blues are excluded from consideration for the Hall, yet "Rockers" like Run-DMC get voted in. You can read the whole thing here, but here are a couple snippets:
—According to Joel Peresman, president and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., the initial selections are made by a committee of 30 to 35 music business people.
I think we’ve hit upon the operative word here—business!
—"It’s not really that this one [act] sold this many albums or this many tickets," explains Peresman. "It’s really ‘What’s the significance of the artist? And why should they be inducted?’"
Duhhh! That’s precisely the point I’ve been trying to make this whole time—what impact and/or influence has that artist had on Rock ‘N’ Roll music over time? You can’t tell me that Rush or the Moody Blues or Kiss or the dozens of other HOF-worthy acts who are annually snubbed by this sham institution aren’t significant. And I defy any of these committee people to explain the "significance" of Leonard Cohen to us. I bet if you polled 100 average Rock fans, not a damn one of them could to tell you who Cohen is. Hell, I’m a very above-average Rock fan, and even I can’t tell you who the hell he is without looking him up on the Internet! Throw me a frickin’ bone here…
Come on Joel, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal—why don’t you just come out and admit that the selection process for the Hall is pure politics perpetrated by a bunch of elitist music journalist snobs who wouldn’t know Rock ‘N’ Roll if it bit them in the ass?
CLASSIC MISHEARD LYRIC #111
"Get Over It"—THE EAGLES (1994) "…wallow in the guilt, you wallow in the pain/You wave it like a flag, yeah, you wear it like a crown…" I originally thought Don Henley sang "you wear it like a badge", as in red badge of courage, which would still fit right in with the Jerry Springer/Moron Povich crowd. Easily my favorite Eagles song of all-time, too.
GOOD QUESTION/GOOD ANSWER
Brian Griffin: "Shouldn’t there be an ‘o’ in ‘country’?"
Glen Quagmire: "No"
CLASSIC OVERUSED TV/MOVIE CLICHÉ #13
Why is it TV and movie people who go on skiing weekends with their friends always have the ulterior motive of scoring hot chicks or hot guys? I think I’d forego the skiing altogether and just stay home and shoot for getting laid instead—it’s safer!
AND THE BOSS DON’T MIND SOMETIMES IF YOU ACT A FOOL…
I re-watched one of my all-time favorite comedy flicks this week, the mighty Car Wash from the 1976. For some reason, I have an affinity with movies that don’t really have a plot to speak of—like American Graffiti, The Big Chill, Hollywood Knights and Fast Times At Ridgemont High—and CW fits in that groove. It featured a typical work day at a Los Angeles semi-automatic car wash emporium staffed by dysfunctional employees and frequented by even crazier customers (Pop Bottle Bomber, anyone?). The movie was shot on location at an actual old-school car wash at 6th & Rampart in L.A. (long since demolished in the ‘80s), which made things seem all the more real, and many of the shenanigans that went on there were certainly very believable—made you almost want to work there!
The cameo appearances by the late Richard Pryor and George Carlin or even the Pointer Sisters and "Saturday Night Live"’s Garrett Morris in Car Wash weren’t even necessary—they were merely there to lend a little star power—and this film could’ve easily made it on its own with its ensemble cast of mostly unknowns, some of whom made names for themselves later. You had a pre-Huggy Bear Antonio Fargas playing the ever-flaming Lindy…Darrow Igus, who played Floyd, later became a regular on ABC’s "Fridays"…future MTV VJ J.J. Jackson was the radio DJ voice over the closing credits…and a pre-"thirtysomething" Melanie Mayron looked infinitely cuter here playing busty cashier Marsha before she lost all that weight, IMO. There were also a few other familiar names in the cast, like ex-Hogan Hero Ivan Dixon, comedian Franklin Ajaye (a Pryor wanna-be with the biggest afro this side of the late Billy Preston), and even Oakland Raiders defensive behemoth Otis Sistrunk, who played the cook at the diner across the street. Danny DeVito was even in the original screen version of Car Wash, but this thing has been butchered up so many times for re-issue on VHS and DVD, and his scenes plus a few others have vanished over time for reasons unknown.
Oh, and did I mention the killer soundtrack? It featured some great stuff from the dying days of old-school ‘70s Soul and R&B, right before Disco came along and finished it off...
I’d have bet my next paycheck that MU head basketball coach Mike Anderson would’ve bolted to Georgia or Memphis and the money they were about to throw at him. Good thing I didn’t, because in a rare display of loyalty in college hoops, Anderson decided to remain in Columbia and signed a seven-year contract extension. He could’ve gotten a lot more money from those other schools, too, but I bet he figured why start over somewhere else when I just spent three years rebuilding a program that is now poised to be a perennial Big 12 power? Finally, some stability at MU, both in basketball and football, for a change…
LOU SABAN, 1922-2009
Colorful football coaching legend Lou Saban passed away over the weekend of congestive heart failure at age 87. Lou—no relation to turncoat Alabama head coach Nick Saban—was the original head coach of the then-Boston Patriots in the old AFL, and later led the Buffalo Bills to back-to-back AFL titles in ’64 and ’65 and coached them again in the mid ‘70s (when double-murderer O.J. Simpson still legally ran amok) after a stint as Denver Broncos head coach from ’67 to ‘69. During Saban’s tenure in Denver, NFL Films captured one of the funniest sideline coach sound bytes of all-time (included in this video remembrance) when Lou—exasperated by the play of his offense—uttered those immortal words, "They’re killin’ me, Whitey—they’re killin’ me!!" Assistant coach Whitey Dovell was the target of Lou’s hissy-fit, and to this day, I often use "They’re killin’ me, Whitey…" during my own little fits of rage, although most people don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Saban had another famous sound byte before the cameras during a locker room pep talk in Buffalo in the ‘70s: "You can get it done…what’s more, ya GOTTA get it done!" Rest in peace, Lou…
THE NAME GAME, PART I
Speaking of the Patriots, I can actually remember when they were still called the "Boston" Patriots when I was little, and hearing that name always warms my heart. "New England" Patriots always leaves me a little flat, for some reason, even though they play an hour away from Beantown now. Same goes for "Florida" Marlins—it sounds too much like Florida Evans from "Good Times". I hope they finally get their new stadium in Miami proper so they can finally be the Miami Marlins. "Washington" Bullets is another lame example—Baltimore Bullets sounded so much cooler with the alliteration (plus they had the coolest uniforms in the NBA back in the day). At least Washington Wizards sounds slightly hipper than Washington Bullets, and it’s a damn sight better than Washington Nationals—what a bland name for a team!
THE NAME GAME, PART II
Famed Kansas City-based architectural firm HOK Sport Venues, best known for their designs of major stadiums and arenas around the world, like the new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field in Gotham City, the new Twins stadium in Minneapolis, and the retrofitting of our own Truman Sports Complex, has changed its name to Populous. That’s nice, but get a load of the bugle oil they’re spouting about their new name: "Populous allows us to enthusiastically embrace the expertise we uniquely claim—drawing people together," according to senior partner Joe Spear. What the hell does all that have to do with designing stadiums? I hate it when these big corporations get all lofty and spin-doctor-y over some name change—why don’t you just admit that you bought yourselves out from your parent ownership group and shut the hell up already?
SPEAKING OF STADIUMS...
Ain't it amazing how the only time construction workers ever seem to go on strike is when they're doing a major project like a stadium or arena, a convention center, airport or high-rise hotel? That's what's been happening here this week with a couple of the unions involved in remodeling Arrowhead and Kauffman Stadiums. Funny how these union schlubs never get the urge to go on strike when they're building a Wal-Mart or a Starbucks or something. Forgetting the stadiums for a moment, I think these som-bitches have one helluva nerve going on strike during this economic climate—I bet there's a few thousand unemployed construction workers out there who would gladly cross their picket lines and take their places.
TAKE OFF—YOU HOSERS!
Hate to keep beating a dead horse here, but I read another discussion about the Crock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame on msnbc.com this week about why classic groups like Rush and the Moody Blues are excluded from consideration for the Hall, yet "Rockers" like Run-DMC get voted in. You can read the whole thing here, but here are a couple snippets:
—According to Joel Peresman, president and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., the initial selections are made by a committee of 30 to 35 music business people.
I think we’ve hit upon the operative word here—business!
—"It’s not really that this one [act] sold this many albums or this many tickets," explains Peresman. "It’s really ‘What’s the significance of the artist? And why should they be inducted?’"
Duhhh! That’s precisely the point I’ve been trying to make this whole time—what impact and/or influence has that artist had on Rock ‘N’ Roll music over time? You can’t tell me that Rush or the Moody Blues or Kiss or the dozens of other HOF-worthy acts who are annually snubbed by this sham institution aren’t significant. And I defy any of these committee people to explain the "significance" of Leonard Cohen to us. I bet if you polled 100 average Rock fans, not a damn one of them could to tell you who Cohen is. Hell, I’m a very above-average Rock fan, and even I can’t tell you who the hell he is without looking him up on the Internet! Throw me a frickin’ bone here…
Come on Joel, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal—why don’t you just come out and admit that the selection process for the Hall is pure politics perpetrated by a bunch of elitist music journalist snobs who wouldn’t know Rock ‘N’ Roll if it bit them in the ass?
CLASSIC MISHEARD LYRIC #111
"Get Over It"—THE EAGLES (1994) "…wallow in the guilt, you wallow in the pain/You wave it like a flag, yeah, you wear it like a crown…" I originally thought Don Henley sang "you wear it like a badge", as in red badge of courage, which would still fit right in with the Jerry Springer/Moron Povich crowd. Easily my favorite Eagles song of all-time, too.
GOOD QUESTION/GOOD ANSWER
Brian Griffin: "Shouldn’t there be an ‘o’ in ‘country’?"
Glen Quagmire: "No"
CLASSIC OVERUSED TV/MOVIE CLICHÉ #13
Why is it TV and movie people who go on skiing weekends with their friends always have the ulterior motive of scoring hot chicks or hot guys? I think I’d forego the skiing altogether and just stay home and shoot for getting laid instead—it’s safer!
AND THE BOSS DON’T MIND SOMETIMES IF YOU ACT A FOOL…
I re-watched one of my all-time favorite comedy flicks this week, the mighty Car Wash from the 1976. For some reason, I have an affinity with movies that don’t really have a plot to speak of—like American Graffiti, The Big Chill, Hollywood Knights and Fast Times At Ridgemont High—and CW fits in that groove. It featured a typical work day at a Los Angeles semi-automatic car wash emporium staffed by dysfunctional employees and frequented by even crazier customers (Pop Bottle Bomber, anyone?). The movie was shot on location at an actual old-school car wash at 6th & Rampart in L.A. (long since demolished in the ‘80s), which made things seem all the more real, and many of the shenanigans that went on there were certainly very believable—made you almost want to work there!
The cameo appearances by the late Richard Pryor and George Carlin or even the Pointer Sisters and "Saturday Night Live"’s Garrett Morris in Car Wash weren’t even necessary—they were merely there to lend a little star power—and this film could’ve easily made it on its own with its ensemble cast of mostly unknowns, some of whom made names for themselves later. You had a pre-Huggy Bear Antonio Fargas playing the ever-flaming Lindy…Darrow Igus, who played Floyd, later became a regular on ABC’s "Fridays"…future MTV VJ J.J. Jackson was the radio DJ voice over the closing credits…and a pre-"thirtysomething" Melanie Mayron looked infinitely cuter here playing busty cashier Marsha before she lost all that weight, IMO. There were also a few other familiar names in the cast, like ex-Hogan Hero Ivan Dixon, comedian Franklin Ajaye (a Pryor wanna-be with the biggest afro this side of the late Billy Preston), and even Oakland Raiders defensive behemoth Otis Sistrunk, who played the cook at the diner across the street. Danny DeVito was even in the original screen version of Car Wash, but this thing has been butchered up so many times for re-issue on VHS and DVD, and his scenes plus a few others have vanished over time for reasons unknown.
Oh, and did I mention the killer soundtrack? It featured some great stuff from the dying days of old-school ‘70s Soul and R&B, right before Disco came along and finished it off...
Sunday, March 29, 2009
1974 - The Year of the Weird
I was listening to one of my homemade ‘70s compilation CDs the other day ("Have A Nice Day-Deluxe", as I like to call my little creations) and while cruising the year 1974, I couldn’t help but note the number of odd recordings that wound up being hit records that year. I mean, we had a singing nun, a little Ragtime, a Canadian defending America with a spoken-word 45, a tribute to James Dean (two, if you count the Eagles' "James Dean"), a hit song with a gorilla chant, an interracial duet about an aborted abortion, a hit single about a Civil War hero, another song with a fake live audience on it and a song about people running around nekkid, among others—all in the same calendar year! Then again, this was the same year that our President resigned in infamy, Evel Knievel jumped the Snake River Canyon in a homemade rocket-cycle (well, tried to, anyway) and Philippe Petit high-wired between the World Trade Center towers, so what else should one have expected? So, in that oddball spirit, here’s a little look back at that goofy year in music history. To paraphrase one of the big hits thereof, “It was weird and it was wonderful…”
"The Joker"—STEVE MILLER BAND This one was a carryover from late ‘73, with young master Miller posing as any number of aliases—the Gangster of Love, Maurice, the Pompatus of Love (whatever that is) and the Space Cowboy. What we do know is that he was smoker and a Midnight toker…
"Seasons In The Sun"—TERRY JACKS One of the all-time biggest sellers for Bell Records this side of the Partridge Family and Tony Orlando & Twilight, this dirge about a poor soul who was dying of some unnamed disease lit up the Billboard charts in early ’74. We had joy, we had fun, indeed!
"Bennie And The Jets"—ELTON JOHN “She’s got electric boobs, a Mohair suit…I read it in a magazine…” Okay, I know the lyric was ‘boots’, b-b-b-b-but this was one of the biggest hits of the year, even with it’s faux live audience. Late producer wunderkind Gus Dudgeon even admitted that the fake crowd noise was “out of time” with their collective clapping, as is par for the course with a British audience. It still astounds me to this day that Elton himself thought he left France with a piece-of-crap album after recording Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Silly Elton…
"The Americans"—BYRON MacGREGOR Quite possibly the most unlikely hit record in Top 40 history, this was a verbatim re-hash of an early, 1973 spoken-word commentary by legendary Canadian pundit Gordon Sinclair (accompanied by “America The Beautiful” in the background) about how Gordon/Byron was “damned tired of seeing America being kicked around” for all the good the U.S. did for the world at the time. Even the late Tex Ritter (John’s pappy) took a shot at this little diatribe, but it was the late Mr. MacGregor’s version that went all the way to #4 on the Billboard charts. “The Americans” was even revived in the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, albeit to a much hollower effect…
"Rock On"—DAVID ESSEX This song has always come across as rather strange to me, for some reason—”See ‘um shake on the movie screen, uh, Jimmy Dean.” Uhhh, the Sausage King?!? Okay, dude, whatever, you say…
"I Love"—TOM T. HALL Any song that pays tribute to little baby ducks scares the bejeezus outta little ol' me…
"Spiders And Snakes"—JIM STAFFORD Another carryover from the tail-end of ‘73, and a big crossover Country song, to boot. This song was wrote by David Bellamy of the Bellamy Bros., who was a roadie for Mr. Stafford back in the day before he became famous.
"Hooked On A Feeling"—BLUE SWEDE I’m curious as to what think-tank came up the “Ooga-Chucka, Ooga-Chucka” chant that embellished this here 1969 B.J. Thomas hit remake. Whomever it was, it worked, for reasons that remain unexplained to this day…
"The Lord’s Prayer"—SISTER JANET MEAD Delivered in all earnestness, evidently—Sister Janet duplicated Mr. MacGregor’s success and took this thang all the way to #4 in the Spring of ‘74. Amen, sistah!
"W.O.L.D."—HARRY CHAPIN/"T.S.O.P."—M.F.S.B. A couple of hits known by their initials, the former being about an over-the-hill radio DJ (shades of Dr. Johnny Fever?) and the latter being the "Soul Train" theme, all about The Sound Of Philadelphia (performed by Mothers Fathers Sisters Brothers, as the acronym dictated). The latter also featured the Three Degrees doing the "doot-doot-doodle-e-doos"…
"The Streak"—RAY STEVENS Oh, yes, they called it great sensation that was sweeping the nation in ‘74—running around in the buff! I was ten at the time and never witnessed this phenomenon in person, but heard plenty about it on the nightly news with Walter Cronkite, as well as from my older sister, who witnessed a streaker or two on campus at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, my future alma-mater. Don't look, Ethel!
"Billy, Don’t Be A Hero"—BO DONALDSON & THE HEYWOODS Here’s that Civil War paean I referred to earlier. What exactly is a Heywood, anyway?
"The Night Chicago Died"—PAPER LACE Originally recorded by those dreaded aforementioned Heywoods, “The Night Chicago Died” was the one and only hit for Paper Lace, going all the way to #1 in the summer of ‘74. I always thought it was about the famed fire in Chicago, rather than about Al Capone and his famous vault…
"(You’re) Having My Baby"—PAUL ANKA & ODIA COATES Man, did this song have all them conservatives shittin' bricks on not one, but two fronts here! First, there was the whole abortion thing (or in this case, the averted variety), then you had an interracial couple singing all about it—shades of blasphemy in those days!
"Beach Baby"—FIRST CLASS A bit of nostalgia pastiche in the American Graffiti/”Happy Days” era. Only problem was that the ‘50s weren’t as fabulous as we‘re made to believe. A little trivia for you, here, singer Tony Burrows also fronted The Pipkins ("Gimme Dat Ding"), The Brotherhood of Man ("United We Stand"), White Plains ("My Baby Loves Lovin'") and Edison Lighthouse ("Love Grows [Where My Rosemary Goes]'").
"Wild Thing"—FANCY White Trash Rock ‘N’ Roll rears its ugly head on this insipid remake of the Troggs' classic. As Jed Clampett was known to utter, “Pity-ful, pity-ful…”
"Sister Mary Elephant"/"Earache My Eye"—CHEECH & CHONG A pair of Dr. Demento classics that hit the Top 40 in ‘74. I could easily relate to “Elephant”, given the typical quality of substitute teachers in the Raytown School District. Even my regular 4th-grade teacher thought this thing was a total hoot! SHAAADUUUP!!! “Earache” was the debut of Rock legend Alice Bowie, too…
"Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)"—REUNION A rapid-fire roll call of Rock ‘N’ Roll legends, both big and small, provided by former Ohio Express vocalist Joey Levine (no relation to the late Irving R. Levine). Comedienne Tracey Ullman turned in a serviceable remake of this one in 1984.
"Kung Fu Fighting"—CARL DOUGLAS This hit presaged Miss Piggy by at least two years with its inherent karate chops and “HI-YAAA”s. It was disco before disco was ever cool. Come to think of it, was Disco ever cool?!?
"Angie Baby"—HELEN REDDY Weird song about a weird girl written by Alan O’Day (of “Undercover Angel” fame) that was cause of much conjecture in ‘74. Did she kill the boy that came into her room? Did she swallow him whole, or did the radio do it? Sounded like “Search For Tomorrow” or "The Edge Of Night" territory to me…
"Mandy"—BARRY MANILOW The first of a continuous steady stream of depressing dreary-weepies from Brother Barry, this sad-sack song checked in at numero uno at the tail-end of '74 and forever cemented Mr. Barry Allan Pinkus into the hearts and minds of American record-buyers.
"The Entertainer"—MARVIN HAMLISCH Marvin had to reach back 72 years to snag Scott Joplin’s 1902 piano rag, which was part of the soundtrack to the hit film The Sting, starring the late Paul Newman, Robert Redford and the late Robert Shaw. Our music teacher at Blue Ridge Elementary School was majorly impressed that I even knew who the hell Scott Joplin was way back then…
And little did 4th-grade yours truly know that all the while in 1974, some crazy-ass Rock ’N’ Roll band from New York that wore make-up and incorporated lots of pyro and fire into their live stage show was already in en route to conquering the world and would ultimately become my favorite band of all-time…
"The Joker"—STEVE MILLER BAND This one was a carryover from late ‘73, with young master Miller posing as any number of aliases—the Gangster of Love, Maurice, the Pompatus of Love (whatever that is) and the Space Cowboy. What we do know is that he was smoker and a Midnight toker…
"Seasons In The Sun"—TERRY JACKS One of the all-time biggest sellers for Bell Records this side of the Partridge Family and Tony Orlando & Twilight, this dirge about a poor soul who was dying of some unnamed disease lit up the Billboard charts in early ’74. We had joy, we had fun, indeed!
"Bennie And The Jets"—ELTON JOHN “She’s got electric boobs, a Mohair suit…I read it in a magazine…” Okay, I know the lyric was ‘boots’, b-b-b-b-but this was one of the biggest hits of the year, even with it’s faux live audience. Late producer wunderkind Gus Dudgeon even admitted that the fake crowd noise was “out of time” with their collective clapping, as is par for the course with a British audience. It still astounds me to this day that Elton himself thought he left France with a piece-of-crap album after recording Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Silly Elton…
"The Americans"—BYRON MacGREGOR Quite possibly the most unlikely hit record in Top 40 history, this was a verbatim re-hash of an early, 1973 spoken-word commentary by legendary Canadian pundit Gordon Sinclair (accompanied by “America The Beautiful” in the background) about how Gordon/Byron was “damned tired of seeing America being kicked around” for all the good the U.S. did for the world at the time. Even the late Tex Ritter (John’s pappy) took a shot at this little diatribe, but it was the late Mr. MacGregor’s version that went all the way to #4 on the Billboard charts. “The Americans” was even revived in the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, albeit to a much hollower effect…
"Rock On"—DAVID ESSEX This song has always come across as rather strange to me, for some reason—”See ‘um shake on the movie screen, uh, Jimmy Dean.” Uhhh, the Sausage King?!? Okay, dude, whatever, you say…
"I Love"—TOM T. HALL Any song that pays tribute to little baby ducks scares the bejeezus outta little ol' me…
"Spiders And Snakes"—JIM STAFFORD Another carryover from the tail-end of ‘73, and a big crossover Country song, to boot. This song was wrote by David Bellamy of the Bellamy Bros., who was a roadie for Mr. Stafford back in the day before he became famous.
"Hooked On A Feeling"—BLUE SWEDE I’m curious as to what think-tank came up the “Ooga-Chucka, Ooga-Chucka” chant that embellished this here 1969 B.J. Thomas hit remake. Whomever it was, it worked, for reasons that remain unexplained to this day…
"The Lord’s Prayer"—SISTER JANET MEAD Delivered in all earnestness, evidently—Sister Janet duplicated Mr. MacGregor’s success and took this thang all the way to #4 in the Spring of ‘74. Amen, sistah!
"W.O.L.D."—HARRY CHAPIN/"T.S.O.P."—M.F.S.B. A couple of hits known by their initials, the former being about an over-the-hill radio DJ (shades of Dr. Johnny Fever?) and the latter being the "Soul Train" theme, all about The Sound Of Philadelphia (performed by Mothers Fathers Sisters Brothers, as the acronym dictated). The latter also featured the Three Degrees doing the "doot-doot-doodle-e-doos"…
"The Streak"—RAY STEVENS Oh, yes, they called it great sensation that was sweeping the nation in ‘74—running around in the buff! I was ten at the time and never witnessed this phenomenon in person, but heard plenty about it on the nightly news with Walter Cronkite, as well as from my older sister, who witnessed a streaker or two on campus at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, my future alma-mater. Don't look, Ethel!
"Billy, Don’t Be A Hero"—BO DONALDSON & THE HEYWOODS Here’s that Civil War paean I referred to earlier. What exactly is a Heywood, anyway?
"The Night Chicago Died"—PAPER LACE Originally recorded by those dreaded aforementioned Heywoods, “The Night Chicago Died” was the one and only hit for Paper Lace, going all the way to #1 in the summer of ‘74. I always thought it was about the famed fire in Chicago, rather than about Al Capone and his famous vault…
"(You’re) Having My Baby"—PAUL ANKA & ODIA COATES Man, did this song have all them conservatives shittin' bricks on not one, but two fronts here! First, there was the whole abortion thing (or in this case, the averted variety), then you had an interracial couple singing all about it—shades of blasphemy in those days!
"Beach Baby"—FIRST CLASS A bit of nostalgia pastiche in the American Graffiti/”Happy Days” era. Only problem was that the ‘50s weren’t as fabulous as we‘re made to believe. A little trivia for you, here, singer Tony Burrows also fronted The Pipkins ("Gimme Dat Ding"), The Brotherhood of Man ("United We Stand"), White Plains ("My Baby Loves Lovin'") and Edison Lighthouse ("Love Grows [Where My Rosemary Goes]'").
"Wild Thing"—FANCY White Trash Rock ‘N’ Roll rears its ugly head on this insipid remake of the Troggs' classic. As Jed Clampett was known to utter, “Pity-ful, pity-ful…”
"Sister Mary Elephant"/"Earache My Eye"—CHEECH & CHONG A pair of Dr. Demento classics that hit the Top 40 in ‘74. I could easily relate to “Elephant”, given the typical quality of substitute teachers in the Raytown School District. Even my regular 4th-grade teacher thought this thing was a total hoot! SHAAADUUUP!!! “Earache” was the debut of Rock legend Alice Bowie, too…
"Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)"—REUNION A rapid-fire roll call of Rock ‘N’ Roll legends, both big and small, provided by former Ohio Express vocalist Joey Levine (no relation to the late Irving R. Levine). Comedienne Tracey Ullman turned in a serviceable remake of this one in 1984.
"Kung Fu Fighting"—CARL DOUGLAS This hit presaged Miss Piggy by at least two years with its inherent karate chops and “HI-YAAA”s. It was disco before disco was ever cool. Come to think of it, was Disco ever cool?!?
"Angie Baby"—HELEN REDDY Weird song about a weird girl written by Alan O’Day (of “Undercover Angel” fame) that was cause of much conjecture in ‘74. Did she kill the boy that came into her room? Did she swallow him whole, or did the radio do it? Sounded like “Search For Tomorrow” or "The Edge Of Night" territory to me…
"Mandy"—BARRY MANILOW The first of a continuous steady stream of depressing dreary-weepies from Brother Barry, this sad-sack song checked in at numero uno at the tail-end of '74 and forever cemented Mr. Barry Allan Pinkus into the hearts and minds of American record-buyers.
"The Entertainer"—MARVIN HAMLISCH Marvin had to reach back 72 years to snag Scott Joplin’s 1902 piano rag, which was part of the soundtrack to the hit film The Sting, starring the late Paul Newman, Robert Redford and the late Robert Shaw. Our music teacher at Blue Ridge Elementary School was majorly impressed that I even knew who the hell Scott Joplin was way back then…
And little did 4th-grade yours truly know that all the while in 1974, some crazy-ass Rock ’N’ Roll band from New York that wore make-up and incorporated lots of pyro and fire into their live stage show was already in en route to conquering the world and would ultimately become my favorite band of all-time…
Friday, March 27, 2009
To go where no blog has gone before...
I'm still here, dear friends. Just haven't had much time to post this week as I continue work on the new Great Wall of Raytown in my computer/stereo chamber here at the ol' homestead. Full pictorial coverage coming soon to a blog near me as soon as I'm finished with it.
MIZZOU-RAH!
The Missouri Tigers went where no MU men’s basketball team has gone before last night by winning their 31st game of the season and upsetting the Memphis Tigers in their Sweet 16 game in the NCAA tournament. My brackets are now totally trashed because I had Memphis winning the whole she-bang, but you won’t hear me complaining. I have to admit, though, that when MU got up to that big 24-point lead and Memphis kept chipping away at it that I went into “Oh shit—here we go again…” mode, but for some reason, the other shoe didn’t drop this time. The second half was interminable last night, but thankfully there was no Tyus Edney or fifth-down or illegal ball kick to ruin our evening. Now if MU can beat them UConn cheaters (UCon?) tomorrow and Kansas wins their two games this weekend, this sets up a game for the ages as the Border War would be waged in the Final Four. MU and KU both won on their home courts against each other this season, and I’m dying to see who’d win on a neutral floor.
DAN SEALS, 1948-2009
Singer Dan Seals died of lymphoma on Wednesday at age 61. Although he was from Texas, he was half of “England” Dan & John Ford Coley, who had a nice little run in the “Soft Rock” genre in the late ‘70s with hits like “I’d Really Love To See You Tonight”, "We'll Never Have To Say Goodbye Again" and “Love Is The Answer”. Seals re-invented himself in the ‘80s as an all-out Country singer and was fairly successful there as well, and once duetted with Marie Osmond on 1983’s “Meet Me In Montana”. He was also the brother of singer Jim Seals of Seals & Crofts—no slouches in the Soft Rock genre themselves—and even toured with Jim as recently as last year under the name Seals & Seals.
THE JESTER STOLE OUR THORNY CROWN?!?
Workers finally hoisted the new crown to the top of the scoreboard at Kauffman Stadium last week, then took it back down damn near as fast as they put it up. Seems that the new one didn’t “glitter enough” to satisfy Royals officials, so it was shipped piece-by-piece to a place downtown where workers applied some sort of overlay cladding that will enhance the sparkle effect. Sounds good to me, so long as they don’t splash a Crown Royal logo (get it?) across the front of it, which you know has crossed their money-grubbing minds at least once or twice. They still hope to have the crown re-installed by opening day, April 10th.
THOSE KNUCKLEHEADS ARE BEGINNING TO SCUFFLE…
Hollywood is once again showing its usual lack of originality as word has it that the dreaded Ferrelly Bros. are wanting to make a new Three Stooges movie, featuring Sean Penn as Larry and Jim Carrey as Curly. This is not a biopic, mind you (we already have one of those), but a new Three Stooges story, and I think it’s a horrid idea. This is like trying to remake The Godfather or The Wizard Of Oz or re-create Woodstock or something—it just ain’t done! You cannot possibly improve upon or capture the spirit of the original, so why even bother? Youse Farrellys are treading on sacred ground here. Why, I oughtta…
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Did ya see where AIG is thinking about changing its corporate name to something else to downplay the stigma of their unholy fuck-ups? Too bad Dewey, Cheatem & Howe is already spoken for by the above-mentioned famous trio…
YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONES YOU LOVE?
I’ve gotten a chuckle or two out of this week’s media hoop-de-doo over conservative radio host Laura Ingraham (Rush Limbaugh with a uterus, from what I gather) and her derogatory comments about John McCain’s daughter Meghan’s posterior and the size of it. I’ve not seen Ms. McCain’s derriere myself, but that’s neither here nor there anyway—what I find fascinating is how these conservative jaw-jackers are starting to attack members of their own team now. Oh by the way, if Ingraham has such a problem with overweight people, then Limbaugh ought to be a big target of her verbal bazooka…
CLASSIC OVERUSED TV/MOVIE CLICHÉ #12
In TV-and-Movie Land, people nearly always answer the phone on the first ring, do they not? And the average response time in Hollywood to a ringing doorbell is 3.2 seconds, which far exceeds that of us normal humans.
BY THE HAIR OF OUR CHINNY CHIN-HO!
My latest foray into classic old-school TV is the venerable "Hawaii Five-O", which I started watching on DVD this month. I remember watching the show as a kid, just for that wicked opening title sequence with the exciting theme music by The Ventures—not to mention the hula girl shaking her ass right there on the screen! H5O had an unprecedented 12-year run on CBS from 1968-80, the longest of any crime drama series in TV history. I just finished the first season on DVD and amazingly enough, the stories (even with Gavin McLeod playing a drug dealer) hold up quite well some 40 years later, as does the video quality—some episodes almost look as if they were filmed last week instead of in 1969. It's easy to forget that even with the idyllic island paradise they have in our 50th state that they have slums, seedy neighborhoods and riff-raff in Honolulu just like they do in Chicago or Philadelphia.
I'd forgotten what a hard-ass cop Steve McGarrett was, and from what I hear, it wasn't necessarily an act, as the late Jack Lord was quite the taskmaster on the set as well, which rankled a few cast members at times. I always liked Danno, too—I remember pretending to be him in my make-believe crime-fighting world when I was five or six. What's really cool is even though I watched shows like "5-O", "Mod Squad" and "Streets Of San Francisco", et al, when I was young, I don't remember too many specific episodes, so when I watch them on DVD now, they're like brand new shows to me in a way. So, you can keep your "Cold Case", "24", "Without A Trace", "CSI-Dubuque" and whatever—I'll take McGarrett, Chin-Ho, Kono and Danno over all them any day.
BIBLEMAN ON SKID ROW?
(WARNING: Religious commentary ahead—reader discretion advised for those who are easily offended by mean old agnostics like yours truly…)
In a story that reeks of Bonaduce Syndrome, it seems that actor Willie Aames held a big yard sale at his soon-to-be-foreclosed-on home in nearby Olathe, KS yesterday (with reality TV cameras rolling) to help ward off his creditors as he’s supposedly just one step away from living under a bridge. Aames has hit hard times lately which have included bankruptcy, a marriage gone south and even a suicide attempt over the holidays last year. Don’t mean to pick on someone who’s down here—so long as they refrain from attempting to make the most of their losing streak—and I get a little indignant when some marginal down-and-out has-been celebrity exposes his pathetic situation just to star on another lame reality TV show and/or make a buck. Evidently there is a market for memorabilia from Brother Willie’s illustrious career (some people were buying his stuff, anyway) that ran the gamut from TV fare like “Eight Is Enough” and “Charles In Charge” to a brief stint as a guitarist in Rock band to cheesy teen sex farce movies like Zapped! and even cheesier phony low-budget born-again Christian TV palaver like “Bibleman”, which Aames produced right here in K.C. in the ‘90s in conjunction with a Communist Christian organization known as “Youth For Christ”. The moral of the story here is that even renouncing your past and becoming a born-again pinhead is no guarantee that your life won’t still suck anyway…
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about an “Eight Is Enough” Bradford sibling making unsavory headlines or running amok. Adam Rich, who played young Nicholas, is notorious for his various run-ins with the law over drug busts and burglaries and such. Actress Lani O’Grady (sister of Don Grady of “My Three Sons” fame), who played oldest daughter Mary, had a drug problem too, and died penniless while living in an Arizona trailer park in 2001. Susan Richardson, who played (cleverly enough) Susan, also battled drugs, a nervous breakdown and once claimed that she was abducted by aliens. She now works in a nursing home in Pennsylvania. The other four Bradford sibling actors seemingly have vanished without a trace like Chuck Cunningham on “Happy Days”.
MIZZOU-RAH!
The Missouri Tigers went where no MU men’s basketball team has gone before last night by winning their 31st game of the season and upsetting the Memphis Tigers in their Sweet 16 game in the NCAA tournament. My brackets are now totally trashed because I had Memphis winning the whole she-bang, but you won’t hear me complaining. I have to admit, though, that when MU got up to that big 24-point lead and Memphis kept chipping away at it that I went into “Oh shit—here we go again…” mode, but for some reason, the other shoe didn’t drop this time. The second half was interminable last night, but thankfully there was no Tyus Edney or fifth-down or illegal ball kick to ruin our evening. Now if MU can beat them UConn cheaters (UCon?) tomorrow and Kansas wins their two games this weekend, this sets up a game for the ages as the Border War would be waged in the Final Four. MU and KU both won on their home courts against each other this season, and I’m dying to see who’d win on a neutral floor.
DAN SEALS, 1948-2009
Singer Dan Seals died of lymphoma on Wednesday at age 61. Although he was from Texas, he was half of “England” Dan & John Ford Coley, who had a nice little run in the “Soft Rock” genre in the late ‘70s with hits like “I’d Really Love To See You Tonight”, "We'll Never Have To Say Goodbye Again" and “Love Is The Answer”. Seals re-invented himself in the ‘80s as an all-out Country singer and was fairly successful there as well, and once duetted with Marie Osmond on 1983’s “Meet Me In Montana”. He was also the brother of singer Jim Seals of Seals & Crofts—no slouches in the Soft Rock genre themselves—and even toured with Jim as recently as last year under the name Seals & Seals.
THE JESTER STOLE OUR THORNY CROWN?!?
Workers finally hoisted the new crown to the top of the scoreboard at Kauffman Stadium last week, then took it back down damn near as fast as they put it up. Seems that the new one didn’t “glitter enough” to satisfy Royals officials, so it was shipped piece-by-piece to a place downtown where workers applied some sort of overlay cladding that will enhance the sparkle effect. Sounds good to me, so long as they don’t splash a Crown Royal logo (get it?) across the front of it, which you know has crossed their money-grubbing minds at least once or twice. They still hope to have the crown re-installed by opening day, April 10th.
THOSE KNUCKLEHEADS ARE BEGINNING TO SCUFFLE…
Hollywood is once again showing its usual lack of originality as word has it that the dreaded Ferrelly Bros. are wanting to make a new Three Stooges movie, featuring Sean Penn as Larry and Jim Carrey as Curly. This is not a biopic, mind you (we already have one of those), but a new Three Stooges story, and I think it’s a horrid idea. This is like trying to remake The Godfather or The Wizard Of Oz or re-create Woodstock or something—it just ain’t done! You cannot possibly improve upon or capture the spirit of the original, so why even bother? Youse Farrellys are treading on sacred ground here. Why, I oughtta…
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Did ya see where AIG is thinking about changing its corporate name to something else to downplay the stigma of their unholy fuck-ups? Too bad Dewey, Cheatem & Howe is already spoken for by the above-mentioned famous trio…
YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONES YOU LOVE?
I’ve gotten a chuckle or two out of this week’s media hoop-de-doo over conservative radio host Laura Ingraham (Rush Limbaugh with a uterus, from what I gather) and her derogatory comments about John McCain’s daughter Meghan’s posterior and the size of it. I’ve not seen Ms. McCain’s derriere myself, but that’s neither here nor there anyway—what I find fascinating is how these conservative jaw-jackers are starting to attack members of their own team now. Oh by the way, if Ingraham has such a problem with overweight people, then Limbaugh ought to be a big target of her verbal bazooka…
CLASSIC OVERUSED TV/MOVIE CLICHÉ #12
In TV-and-Movie Land, people nearly always answer the phone on the first ring, do they not? And the average response time in Hollywood to a ringing doorbell is 3.2 seconds, which far exceeds that of us normal humans.
BY THE HAIR OF OUR CHINNY CHIN-HO!
My latest foray into classic old-school TV is the venerable "Hawaii Five-O", which I started watching on DVD this month. I remember watching the show as a kid, just for that wicked opening title sequence with the exciting theme music by The Ventures—not to mention the hula girl shaking her ass right there on the screen! H5O had an unprecedented 12-year run on CBS from 1968-80, the longest of any crime drama series in TV history. I just finished the first season on DVD and amazingly enough, the stories (even with Gavin McLeod playing a drug dealer) hold up quite well some 40 years later, as does the video quality—some episodes almost look as if they were filmed last week instead of in 1969. It's easy to forget that even with the idyllic island paradise they have in our 50th state that they have slums, seedy neighborhoods and riff-raff in Honolulu just like they do in Chicago or Philadelphia.
I'd forgotten what a hard-ass cop Steve McGarrett was, and from what I hear, it wasn't necessarily an act, as the late Jack Lord was quite the taskmaster on the set as well, which rankled a few cast members at times. I always liked Danno, too—I remember pretending to be him in my make-believe crime-fighting world when I was five or six. What's really cool is even though I watched shows like "5-O", "Mod Squad" and "Streets Of San Francisco", et al, when I was young, I don't remember too many specific episodes, so when I watch them on DVD now, they're like brand new shows to me in a way. So, you can keep your "Cold Case", "24", "Without A Trace", "CSI-Dubuque" and whatever—I'll take McGarrett, Chin-Ho, Kono and Danno over all them any day.
BIBLEMAN ON SKID ROW?
(WARNING: Religious commentary ahead—reader discretion advised for those who are easily offended by mean old agnostics like yours truly…)
In a story that reeks of Bonaduce Syndrome, it seems that actor Willie Aames held a big yard sale at his soon-to-be-foreclosed-on home in nearby Olathe, KS yesterday (with reality TV cameras rolling) to help ward off his creditors as he’s supposedly just one step away from living under a bridge. Aames has hit hard times lately which have included bankruptcy, a marriage gone south and even a suicide attempt over the holidays last year. Don’t mean to pick on someone who’s down here—so long as they refrain from attempting to make the most of their losing streak—and I get a little indignant when some marginal down-and-out has-been celebrity exposes his pathetic situation just to star on another lame reality TV show and/or make a buck. Evidently there is a market for memorabilia from Brother Willie’s illustrious career (some people were buying his stuff, anyway) that ran the gamut from TV fare like “Eight Is Enough” and “Charles In Charge” to a brief stint as a guitarist in Rock band to cheesy teen sex farce movies like Zapped! and even cheesier phony low-budget born-again Christian TV palaver like “Bibleman”, which Aames produced right here in K.C. in the ‘90s in conjunction with a Communist Christian organization known as “Youth For Christ”. The moral of the story here is that even renouncing your past and becoming a born-again pinhead is no guarantee that your life won’t still suck anyway…
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about an “Eight Is Enough” Bradford sibling making unsavory headlines or running amok. Adam Rich, who played young Nicholas, is notorious for his various run-ins with the law over drug busts and burglaries and such. Actress Lani O’Grady (sister of Don Grady of “My Three Sons” fame), who played oldest daughter Mary, had a drug problem too, and died penniless while living in an Arizona trailer park in 2001. Susan Richardson, who played (cleverly enough) Susan, also battled drugs, a nervous breakdown and once claimed that she was abducted by aliens. She now works in a nursing home in Pennsylvania. The other four Bradford sibling actors seemingly have vanished without a trace like Chuck Cunningham on “Happy Days”.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
1982 - The Other Year of The Album, Part 2
And now the conclusion of my look back at the music of the nether year 1982...
DEBUTS
STEVIE NICKS—Bella Donna Stevie’s first solo effort was highly-anticipated and she didn’t disappoint. She scored big hits with “Edge Of Seventeen” and her duets with Tom Petty (“Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”) and Don Henley (“Leather And Lace”). Another good track was “After The Glitter Fades”.
SCANDAL—Scandal Scandal came from New Yawk and hit fairly big in the early MTV era with “Goodbye To You” on their debut EP (that’s Extended Play, for youse youngins). It also yielded another single that’s now largely forgotten, “Love’s Got A Line On You”. They soon changed their name to Scandal featuring Patty Smyth and broke out with “The Warrior” in 1984.
DON HENLEY—Can’t Stand Still Dangerous Don’s first non-Eagles release featured the classic “Dirty Laundry”, with its brutal smackdown on the phoniness of the TV news industry. Fox News Channel didn’t even exist yet, Anderson Cooper and Sean Hannity were still in puberty, CNN was in its infancy, Katie Couric was running for prom queen and Bill O’Reilly was probably bussing tables when this song first came out and it’s even more prescient today than it was 27 years ago. Another track called “Johnny Can’t Read” offered up more social commentary about illiteracy.
ROBERT PLANT—Pictures At Eleven Another solo debut from a well-established singer, Plant was doing everything he could to distance himself from his Led Zep past (although why I’m not sure). PAE had some interesting songs, but in typical Robert Plant cryptic fashion, he gave them strange titles that had nothing to do with the lyrics therein like “Pledge Pin” (drop and give him 20?!?), “Burning Down One Side” and “Worse Than Detroit”.
MISSING PERSONS—Spring Session M One of the first songs I ever remember listening to on a Sony Walkman was Missing Persons’ “Words” and I was quite impressed with it. I was also strangely drawn to this Dale Bozzio woman with her multi-colored hair and creative use of electrical tape in her stage costumes, particularly around the breast area. Spring Session M—an anagram for Missing Persons—also featured “Destination Unknown” and the underrated “Walking In L.A.”, “Windows” and “Mental Hopscotch”, all of which reside on my iPod today.
A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS—A Flock Of Seagulls This was the greatest Techno-Pop album ever made. These guys were surprisingly good in concert, too, and although they sounded robotic as all get-out, I liked them anyway, for some reason. Go past the big hits “I Ran” and “Space-Age Love Song” and there’s still lots of great stuff here, like “Telecommunication”, “Modern Love Is Automatic”, “You Can Run”, “Messages”, “Standing In The Doorway” and the instrumental “D.N.A.”. Sadly, groups like AFOS and Missing Persons had very short shelf-lives, but it was fun while it lasted, anyway.
MOTLEY CRUE—Too Fast For Love While far from being the Crue’s greatest recorded achievement, Too Fast was at least a good start. It featured “Take Me To The Top” (not the Loverboy song of the same name), “Piece Of Your Action” and “Live Wire”, and laid the groundwork for the next album, Shout At The Devil, which was their best, IMO.
BREAKOUTS
STRAY CATS—Built For Speed Contrary to popular belief, this was not the Cats’ first album, per se, as they had already released two over in England from which this album was pieced together. It certainly threw a big curve ball to the music scene that was almost overwrought by New Wave and Techno music by kicking it old-school. “Rock This Town” and “Stray Cat Strut” were great, but “Rumble In Brighton”, “Double Talkin’ Baby” and “Runaway Boys” were even better.
SCORPIONS—Blackout The Scorps had been around quite a while too, and 1980’s “The Zoo” was a major step forward for them. Blackout finally put them on the map for keeps with the big hit radio hit “No One Like You”. The rest of the album didn’t suck either, with scorchers like the title track, “Dynamite” and “Can’t Live Without You”. These crazy Germans were still on the rise, too…
IRON MAIDEN—The Number Of The Beast And here was another heavy metal band on the rise. Bruce Dickinson’s Daltrey-like scream at the beginning of the title track ushered in the new Iron Maiden era, and they finally found the singer they were looking for to replace the one-dimensional Paul d’Anno. Their fortunes improved exponentially on Beast, which featured the classic “Run To The Hills” and several others.
ADAM ANT—Friend Or Foe I was highly-resistant to the whole New Wave thing in the early ‘80s and avoided acts like Duran Duran and Culture Club like the Plague, but resistance was futile when I heard Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes” on the radio. On a whim, I bought Friend Or Foe and it wound up being one of my surprise favorites that year. I loved the freight train-like rhythm of “Goody Two Shoes”, and it also popped up in the title track and a couple other songs. “Place In The Country”, “Desperate But Not Serious” and “Crackpot History” were standouts too.
MY PERSONAL FAVORITES FROM '82
RUSH—Signals Rush was on a roll in the early ‘80s, and Signals is one of my all-time favorite Rush albums, the cassette copy of which I practically wore out driving to and from classes as a Freshman at UMKC, and I really began to embrace thinking-man’s Rock. I instantly took a liking to “Subdivisions”—especially Geddy Lee’s trippy synthesizer solo therein. You can also find some very underrated stuff here, like “The Analog Kid”, “Digital Man” and “Countdown”, the latter of which features actual radio transmissions from the early Space Shuttle launches that Rush was very privileged to be able to use—NASA doesn’t loan those out to just anyone. Rush even cracked the Top 40 for the first and only time with “New World Man”.
OZZY OSBOURNE—Diary Of A Madman According to legend, Diary was recorded during the same sessions as Blizzard Of Ozz, and the quality was certainly consistent with, if not even a little better than, its predecessor. I resisted Ozzy initially because of the whole canary-biting thing, but was irrevocably hooked by Randy Rhoads’ chugga-chugga-chugga intro to “Over The Mountain”. “Flying High Again” is a classic, of course, while “Little Dolls” and “Tonight” were great under-the-radar tracks, and Rhoads showed off his acoustic side on the anthemic “You Can’t Kill Rock ‘N’ Roll”. Again, I have to say, what might have been, with young Master Rhoads. Rest in peace, Randy—you rocked!
OZZY OSBOURNE—Speak Of The Devil Ozzy owed Epic Records a live concert album, but balked at doing one covering his current solo work because (to his credit) he didn’t want to appear to be capitalizing on the tragic death of Randy Rhoads just six months earlier. He waited until a more appropriate time and released Tribute in 1987, featuring Rhoads’ live work, circa. 1981. In the meantime, His Royal Ozz-ness (or someone) came up with the ingenious idea of doing a live album comprised of nothing but Black Sabbath tunes, some of which he hadn’t performed in several years. Devil was amazingly good considering how Ozzy’s band—drummer Tommy Aldridge, erstwhile Quiet Riot bassist Rudy Sarzo and guitarist Brad Gillis, who was on loan from Night Ranger—had to learn most of the material (almost literally) overnight for the two concerts this album was culled from. They’d already been playing “Paranoid”, “Children Of The Grave” and “Iron Man” as part of Ozzy’s regular live act, but tunes like “Symptom Of The Universe”, “Never Say Die”, “Sweet Leaf”, “Fairies Wear Boots” and “The Wizard” were all new material for the band, and these guys were obviously quick-studies, because the result was phenomenal. In the process, Ozzy killed two birds (canaries?) with one stone—he fulfilled his obligation to Epic and aced out his former band in the 1982 live album department by light years.
JEFFERSON STARSHIP—Winds Of Change Guitarist Paul Kantner pissed and moaned on VH-1’s “Behind The Music” that the band had sold out during this period and that they were putting out crap. Well, Bud, it was YOUR band and you were a co-founder of it, so why didn’t you do something about it? Whiny bitch. Anyway, I thought Winds Of Change was a dandy record, and Grace Slick being back full-time made it even better. She sounded great on cuts like “Can’t Find Love”, the title track and the frenetic “Out Of Control”, Mickey Thomas was a standout on “Keep On Dreamin’”, and I really liked Craig Chaquico’s guitar work throughout. This turned out to be the last really good record J. Starship ever made, as 1984’s Nuclear Furniture sputtered and then things went from bad (the insipid “We Built This City” schlock in ’85) to worse (the putrid “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” in ’87). I still can’t believe Bernie Taupin co-wrote "We Built This City", either...
ASIA—Asia The critics ripped this album as "corporate Rock at its worst", but since when do I ever listen to critics anyway? True, "supergroups" like this comprised of major playas from other bands usually wind up producing roach droppings, but I thought this was a killer album. Ex-Buggle keyboardist Geoff Downes, ex-Yes guitar man Steve Howe (not the baseball pitcher), ex-King Crimson bassist/singer John Wetton and ex-ELP drummer Carl Palmer put together a fine slab of vinyl on which nearly every track was outstanding, with the big radio hits "Heat Of The Moment" and "Only Time Will Tell" and "Your Wildest Dreams". Even better were "Here Comes The Feeling" and my personal favorite, "Time Again", on which the band members individually flexed their musical muscles.
JUDAS PRIEST—Screaming For Vengeance The Beast that is The Priest is another act I was reluctant to embrace at first, mostly because of their poor performance opening for Kiss in ’79, but to be fair, that was before “Breaking The Law” and “Living After Midnight” came out. Priest put on a much better show on an MTV concert I saw in late, ‘82/early ’83 and it convinced me to buy Vengeance and I was quite impressed. “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” is great, but it’s not even the best song on the record, IMO. “Bloodstone”, “Ridin’ On The Wind” and the opening segue “The Hellion/Electric Eye” are even better. Definitely one of the better Heavy Metal albums of the early ‘80s.
DAVE EDMUNDS—D.E. 7th This outstanding record made the summer of ’82 a lot more enjoyable as I played it to death on my car stereo. From the Springsteen-penned lead-off track “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)” to the closing Chuck Berry cover, “Dear Dad”, Dave had it clicking on all cylinders. He threw in a little of everything on this record: a little Cajun (“Bail You Out”), a little Bluegrass (“Warmed Over Kisses”), a little Country (“Louisiana Man”), a little Cowboy (“Deep In The Heart Of Texas”) and some good ol’ Rock ‘N’ Roll (“Generation Rumble”, “Other Guys’ Girls”, and a nifty cover of NRBQ’s “Me And The Boys”). The Boss wrote “From Small Things” specifically for Edmunds, and it’s a funny tale about wedded-bliss gone south, while “Dear Dad” is one of the funniest Chuck Berry songs ever, and Dave’s version blows the original away. I highly recommend this album if you’re looking to “kick it old school”.
BEST OF THE REST
PAT BENATAR—Get Nervous PB continued her successful early ‘80s run with another very consistent record, which featured the hits “Shadows Of The Night”, “Lookin’ For A Stranger” and “Little Too Late”. “Anxiety (Get Nervous)” and “The Victim” were my personal favorites, and the straight-jacket/rubber room motif on the cover was a cool added touch. Unfortunately, the rest of Pat’s career would be very hit-and-miss from this point onward…
PHIL COLLINS—Hello, I Must Be Going! I liked PC’s second solo album even better than his first one, Face Value with "In The Air Tonight". “I Don’t Care Anymore” and Phil’s Motown cover of “You Can’t Hurry Love” were all over the radio, but there were a couple other gems on here like “It Don’t Matter To Me”, “Like China” and “Do You Know, Do You Care?”. Commercial as all get-out, to be sure, but still not a bad Pop/Rock album.
.38 SPECIAL—Special Forces One of the better albums these guys ever made, featuring the radio hit “Caught Up In You”. Best song was the now somewhat-forgotten “Chain Lightning”, and it also contained "Rough-Housin'" and "You Keep Runnin' Away".
GEORGE THOROGOOD—Bad To The Bone Lonesome George and the Delaware Destroyers broke through with his trademark song on this album, which also featured a dandy cover of the Human Beinz’ “Nobody But Me”, which is quite possibly the most negative song ever written, thanks to all its inherent “no, no’s”. BTTB also featured a cool original called “Back To Wentzville”, which was inspired by some shenanigans that went on in the west suburbs of St. Louis.
BILLY JOEL—The Nylon Curtain While not quite as good as its predecessor Glass Houses, Nylon Curtain had its moments like “Goodnight Saigon” and the big radio hits “Pressure” and “Allentown“. Mr. Piano Man also did his best John Lennon impression on the track called "Laura".
NICK LOWE—Nick The Knife Not the greatest album His Royal Lowe-ness ever made, but it contained two tracks that I loved, the silly “Ba-Doom” and one of the better “up yours” kiss-off songs of all-time, “Stick It Where The Sun Don’t Shine”.
JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS—I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll I never did much care for the title track here—it plods along too slowly and it features the worst guitar solo this side of Spinal Tap. But, I really liked Joan’s cover of Tommy James’ “Crimson And Clover” and there was also a song on the album called “Nag” that was a bit of a stitch.
MOTORHEAD—Iron Fist The final Motorhead album with Fast Eddie Clarke on guitar, and they still packed a wallop on the title track, which bore more than slight resemblance to their signature tune, “Ace of Spades”. Great lyrics from Uncle Lemmy on “(Don’t Need) Religion”, “Go To Hell”, “Sex And Outrage” and “I’m The Doctor”.
SAMMY HAGAR—Three Lock Box Sammy was still crankin’ out some great tunes here, including the title track and “Baby’s On Fire”, “Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy”, “Remember The Heroes” and “I Don’t Need Love”.
THE WHO—It’s Hard While it was hardly another Who’s Next or Who Are You, It’s Hard was a major improvement over the flaccid Face Dances from ’81. As was the case with Dances, John Entwistle’s contributions (“It’s Your Turn”, “Dangerous” and “One At A Time”) were better than Pete Townshend’s, but this time PT put forth a little more effort which resulted in two classics, “Eminence Front” and “Cry If You Want”. The title track and “Cook’s County” weren’t bad either. Still, it wasn’t quite the way one would like to have seen this mighty band go out as a recording unit…
DEBUTS
STEVIE NICKS—Bella Donna Stevie’s first solo effort was highly-anticipated and she didn’t disappoint. She scored big hits with “Edge Of Seventeen” and her duets with Tom Petty (“Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”) and Don Henley (“Leather And Lace”). Another good track was “After The Glitter Fades”.
SCANDAL—Scandal Scandal came from New Yawk and hit fairly big in the early MTV era with “Goodbye To You” on their debut EP (that’s Extended Play, for youse youngins). It also yielded another single that’s now largely forgotten, “Love’s Got A Line On You”. They soon changed their name to Scandal featuring Patty Smyth and broke out with “The Warrior” in 1984.
DON HENLEY—Can’t Stand Still Dangerous Don’s first non-Eagles release featured the classic “Dirty Laundry”, with its brutal smackdown on the phoniness of the TV news industry. Fox News Channel didn’t even exist yet, Anderson Cooper and Sean Hannity were still in puberty, CNN was in its infancy, Katie Couric was running for prom queen and Bill O’Reilly was probably bussing tables when this song first came out and it’s even more prescient today than it was 27 years ago. Another track called “Johnny Can’t Read” offered up more social commentary about illiteracy.
ROBERT PLANT—Pictures At Eleven Another solo debut from a well-established singer, Plant was doing everything he could to distance himself from his Led Zep past (although why I’m not sure). PAE had some interesting songs, but in typical Robert Plant cryptic fashion, he gave them strange titles that had nothing to do with the lyrics therein like “Pledge Pin” (drop and give him 20?!?), “Burning Down One Side” and “Worse Than Detroit”.
MISSING PERSONS—Spring Session M One of the first songs I ever remember listening to on a Sony Walkman was Missing Persons’ “Words” and I was quite impressed with it. I was also strangely drawn to this Dale Bozzio woman with her multi-colored hair and creative use of electrical tape in her stage costumes, particularly around the breast area. Spring Session M—an anagram for Missing Persons—also featured “Destination Unknown” and the underrated “Walking In L.A.”, “Windows” and “Mental Hopscotch”, all of which reside on my iPod today.
A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS—A Flock Of Seagulls This was the greatest Techno-Pop album ever made. These guys were surprisingly good in concert, too, and although they sounded robotic as all get-out, I liked them anyway, for some reason. Go past the big hits “I Ran” and “Space-Age Love Song” and there’s still lots of great stuff here, like “Telecommunication”, “Modern Love Is Automatic”, “You Can Run”, “Messages”, “Standing In The Doorway” and the instrumental “D.N.A.”. Sadly, groups like AFOS and Missing Persons had very short shelf-lives, but it was fun while it lasted, anyway.
MOTLEY CRUE—Too Fast For Love While far from being the Crue’s greatest recorded achievement, Too Fast was at least a good start. It featured “Take Me To The Top” (not the Loverboy song of the same name), “Piece Of Your Action” and “Live Wire”, and laid the groundwork for the next album, Shout At The Devil, which was their best, IMO.
BREAKOUTS
STRAY CATS—Built For Speed Contrary to popular belief, this was not the Cats’ first album, per se, as they had already released two over in England from which this album was pieced together. It certainly threw a big curve ball to the music scene that was almost overwrought by New Wave and Techno music by kicking it old-school. “Rock This Town” and “Stray Cat Strut” were great, but “Rumble In Brighton”, “Double Talkin’ Baby” and “Runaway Boys” were even better.
SCORPIONS—Blackout The Scorps had been around quite a while too, and 1980’s “The Zoo” was a major step forward for them. Blackout finally put them on the map for keeps with the big hit radio hit “No One Like You”. The rest of the album didn’t suck either, with scorchers like the title track, “Dynamite” and “Can’t Live Without You”. These crazy Germans were still on the rise, too…
IRON MAIDEN—The Number Of The Beast And here was another heavy metal band on the rise. Bruce Dickinson’s Daltrey-like scream at the beginning of the title track ushered in the new Iron Maiden era, and they finally found the singer they were looking for to replace the one-dimensional Paul d’Anno. Their fortunes improved exponentially on Beast, which featured the classic “Run To The Hills” and several others.
ADAM ANT—Friend Or Foe I was highly-resistant to the whole New Wave thing in the early ‘80s and avoided acts like Duran Duran and Culture Club like the Plague, but resistance was futile when I heard Adam Ant’s “Goody Two Shoes” on the radio. On a whim, I bought Friend Or Foe and it wound up being one of my surprise favorites that year. I loved the freight train-like rhythm of “Goody Two Shoes”, and it also popped up in the title track and a couple other songs. “Place In The Country”, “Desperate But Not Serious” and “Crackpot History” were standouts too.
MY PERSONAL FAVORITES FROM '82
RUSH—Signals Rush was on a roll in the early ‘80s, and Signals is one of my all-time favorite Rush albums, the cassette copy of which I practically wore out driving to and from classes as a Freshman at UMKC, and I really began to embrace thinking-man’s Rock. I instantly took a liking to “Subdivisions”—especially Geddy Lee’s trippy synthesizer solo therein. You can also find some very underrated stuff here, like “The Analog Kid”, “Digital Man” and “Countdown”, the latter of which features actual radio transmissions from the early Space Shuttle launches that Rush was very privileged to be able to use—NASA doesn’t loan those out to just anyone. Rush even cracked the Top 40 for the first and only time with “New World Man”.
OZZY OSBOURNE—Diary Of A Madman According to legend, Diary was recorded during the same sessions as Blizzard Of Ozz, and the quality was certainly consistent with, if not even a little better than, its predecessor. I resisted Ozzy initially because of the whole canary-biting thing, but was irrevocably hooked by Randy Rhoads’ chugga-chugga-chugga intro to “Over The Mountain”. “Flying High Again” is a classic, of course, while “Little Dolls” and “Tonight” were great under-the-radar tracks, and Rhoads showed off his acoustic side on the anthemic “You Can’t Kill Rock ‘N’ Roll”. Again, I have to say, what might have been, with young Master Rhoads. Rest in peace, Randy—you rocked!
OZZY OSBOURNE—Speak Of The Devil Ozzy owed Epic Records a live concert album, but balked at doing one covering his current solo work because (to his credit) he didn’t want to appear to be capitalizing on the tragic death of Randy Rhoads just six months earlier. He waited until a more appropriate time and released Tribute in 1987, featuring Rhoads’ live work, circa. 1981. In the meantime, His Royal Ozz-ness (or someone) came up with the ingenious idea of doing a live album comprised of nothing but Black Sabbath tunes, some of which he hadn’t performed in several years. Devil was amazingly good considering how Ozzy’s band—drummer Tommy Aldridge, erstwhile Quiet Riot bassist Rudy Sarzo and guitarist Brad Gillis, who was on loan from Night Ranger—had to learn most of the material (almost literally) overnight for the two concerts this album was culled from. They’d already been playing “Paranoid”, “Children Of The Grave” and “Iron Man” as part of Ozzy’s regular live act, but tunes like “Symptom Of The Universe”, “Never Say Die”, “Sweet Leaf”, “Fairies Wear Boots” and “The Wizard” were all new material for the band, and these guys were obviously quick-studies, because the result was phenomenal. In the process, Ozzy killed two birds (canaries?) with one stone—he fulfilled his obligation to Epic and aced out his former band in the 1982 live album department by light years.
JEFFERSON STARSHIP—Winds Of Change Guitarist Paul Kantner pissed and moaned on VH-1’s “Behind The Music” that the band had sold out during this period and that they were putting out crap. Well, Bud, it was YOUR band and you were a co-founder of it, so why didn’t you do something about it? Whiny bitch. Anyway, I thought Winds Of Change was a dandy record, and Grace Slick being back full-time made it even better. She sounded great on cuts like “Can’t Find Love”, the title track and the frenetic “Out Of Control”, Mickey Thomas was a standout on “Keep On Dreamin’”, and I really liked Craig Chaquico’s guitar work throughout. This turned out to be the last really good record J. Starship ever made, as 1984’s Nuclear Furniture sputtered and then things went from bad (the insipid “We Built This City” schlock in ’85) to worse (the putrid “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” in ’87). I still can’t believe Bernie Taupin co-wrote "We Built This City", either...
ASIA—Asia The critics ripped this album as "corporate Rock at its worst", but since when do I ever listen to critics anyway? True, "supergroups" like this comprised of major playas from other bands usually wind up producing roach droppings, but I thought this was a killer album. Ex-Buggle keyboardist Geoff Downes, ex-Yes guitar man Steve Howe (not the baseball pitcher), ex-King Crimson bassist/singer John Wetton and ex-ELP drummer Carl Palmer put together a fine slab of vinyl on which nearly every track was outstanding, with the big radio hits "Heat Of The Moment" and "Only Time Will Tell" and "Your Wildest Dreams". Even better were "Here Comes The Feeling" and my personal favorite, "Time Again", on which the band members individually flexed their musical muscles.
JUDAS PRIEST—Screaming For Vengeance The Beast that is The Priest is another act I was reluctant to embrace at first, mostly because of their poor performance opening for Kiss in ’79, but to be fair, that was before “Breaking The Law” and “Living After Midnight” came out. Priest put on a much better show on an MTV concert I saw in late, ‘82/early ’83 and it convinced me to buy Vengeance and I was quite impressed. “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” is great, but it’s not even the best song on the record, IMO. “Bloodstone”, “Ridin’ On The Wind” and the opening segue “The Hellion/Electric Eye” are even better. Definitely one of the better Heavy Metal albums of the early ‘80s.
DAVE EDMUNDS—D.E. 7th This outstanding record made the summer of ’82 a lot more enjoyable as I played it to death on my car stereo. From the Springsteen-penned lead-off track “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)” to the closing Chuck Berry cover, “Dear Dad”, Dave had it clicking on all cylinders. He threw in a little of everything on this record: a little Cajun (“Bail You Out”), a little Bluegrass (“Warmed Over Kisses”), a little Country (“Louisiana Man”), a little Cowboy (“Deep In The Heart Of Texas”) and some good ol’ Rock ‘N’ Roll (“Generation Rumble”, “Other Guys’ Girls”, and a nifty cover of NRBQ’s “Me And The Boys”). The Boss wrote “From Small Things” specifically for Edmunds, and it’s a funny tale about wedded-bliss gone south, while “Dear Dad” is one of the funniest Chuck Berry songs ever, and Dave’s version blows the original away. I highly recommend this album if you’re looking to “kick it old school”.
BEST OF THE REST
PAT BENATAR—Get Nervous PB continued her successful early ‘80s run with another very consistent record, which featured the hits “Shadows Of The Night”, “Lookin’ For A Stranger” and “Little Too Late”. “Anxiety (Get Nervous)” and “The Victim” were my personal favorites, and the straight-jacket/rubber room motif on the cover was a cool added touch. Unfortunately, the rest of Pat’s career would be very hit-and-miss from this point onward…
PHIL COLLINS—Hello, I Must Be Going! I liked PC’s second solo album even better than his first one, Face Value with "In The Air Tonight". “I Don’t Care Anymore” and Phil’s Motown cover of “You Can’t Hurry Love” were all over the radio, but there were a couple other gems on here like “It Don’t Matter To Me”, “Like China” and “Do You Know, Do You Care?”. Commercial as all get-out, to be sure, but still not a bad Pop/Rock album.
.38 SPECIAL—Special Forces One of the better albums these guys ever made, featuring the radio hit “Caught Up In You”. Best song was the now somewhat-forgotten “Chain Lightning”, and it also contained "Rough-Housin'" and "You Keep Runnin' Away".
GEORGE THOROGOOD—Bad To The Bone Lonesome George and the Delaware Destroyers broke through with his trademark song on this album, which also featured a dandy cover of the Human Beinz’ “Nobody But Me”, which is quite possibly the most negative song ever written, thanks to all its inherent “no, no’s”. BTTB also featured a cool original called “Back To Wentzville”, which was inspired by some shenanigans that went on in the west suburbs of St. Louis.
BILLY JOEL—The Nylon Curtain While not quite as good as its predecessor Glass Houses, Nylon Curtain had its moments like “Goodnight Saigon” and the big radio hits “Pressure” and “Allentown“. Mr. Piano Man also did his best John Lennon impression on the track called "Laura".
NICK LOWE—Nick The Knife Not the greatest album His Royal Lowe-ness ever made, but it contained two tracks that I loved, the silly “Ba-Doom” and one of the better “up yours” kiss-off songs of all-time, “Stick It Where The Sun Don’t Shine”.
JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS—I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll I never did much care for the title track here—it plods along too slowly and it features the worst guitar solo this side of Spinal Tap. But, I really liked Joan’s cover of Tommy James’ “Crimson And Clover” and there was also a song on the album called “Nag” that was a bit of a stitch.
MOTORHEAD—Iron Fist The final Motorhead album with Fast Eddie Clarke on guitar, and they still packed a wallop on the title track, which bore more than slight resemblance to their signature tune, “Ace of Spades”. Great lyrics from Uncle Lemmy on “(Don’t Need) Religion”, “Go To Hell”, “Sex And Outrage” and “I’m The Doctor”.
SAMMY HAGAR—Three Lock Box Sammy was still crankin’ out some great tunes here, including the title track and “Baby’s On Fire”, “Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy”, “Remember The Heroes” and “I Don’t Need Love”.
THE WHO—It’s Hard While it was hardly another Who’s Next or Who Are You, It’s Hard was a major improvement over the flaccid Face Dances from ’81. As was the case with Dances, John Entwistle’s contributions (“It’s Your Turn”, “Dangerous” and “One At A Time”) were better than Pete Townshend’s, but this time PT put forth a little more effort which resulted in two classics, “Eminence Front” and “Cry If You Want”. The title track and “Cook’s County” weren’t bad either. Still, it wasn’t quite the way one would like to have seen this mighty band go out as a recording unit…
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