Look Back In Anger ( N'est pas?)

I was walking back to the TV studio from Union Station this morning when I found myself in a crowd of French tourists. My poorly remembered college French only allowed me to get the gist of their conversation, but I gathered they were excited to see the US Capitol. As one walks from the west side of the station, the Capitol dome is suddenly revealed from behind a screen of trees glimmering in the morning sun, with the statue of Freedom ever looking to the east. I began to wonder what Madame Freedom would think of the 'debate' in this country about torture, and it stuck me that all those brave men and women who fought and bled over the years under her banner are owed a profound apology by Msrs. Bush, Cheney et. al. My father and the men of his generation went to Europe with the moral authority to conduct the trials at Nuremberg. Where has that authority gone now in the wake of Abu Garib?

So I tell you what Mr. Obama, it's not for you alone to decide if we should prosecute those responsible for spitting on our constitution.... ask these tourists which country they came to see: Bush and Cheney's or Washington and Jefferson’s. Ask my father and the women and men in all those neat rows across the river in Arlington. Ask the lady on top of that alabaster building on the hill. Look back? Hell yes Mr. Obama, look back with anger.

Ghosts On The Red Line

Riding the train again.. all these years now on the Red Line..sleepy workers with chains of ID hung round our necks like talisman, screaming tourists children swinging on the hand rails, and the flickering images half seen and half imagined out dirty windows. More and more now I have these small daydreams as we rock and sway under the city......I startle awake as we stop at Dupont Circle, and then back to these half dreams.. Jan on that beach watching Lake Huron... kissing Davida under the moonlight, Sheila's scent on my fingers as I picked up my guitar, Nicki in a taxi on 48th street, blues on that Naw'lins station with sweat in my eyes, the housewife south of Kalamazoo, Kiwi in the shadows of Salt Lake... all these ghosts filling my head...and I wonder is this just the price for the life I've lived, is this the cost of loving more than once or twice?
If you could have told me all those years ago when I was a sandy virgin on that beach with Jan that some day I'd be old and dreaming and seeing her face on a dirty subway window.. I don't think I would have understood.... I didn't have the vision then...I'd never seen the ghosts.

Morons On The Edge Of America, The Price Of Mercy & Karla Faye

Here in South Carolina at the beach (in more ways than one the edge of America):

I overheard a young guy the next table over at Boots & Johns Biscuit Shack yesterday. He was 'explaining things' to his friends: The British had 'something to do' with the Boston Tea Party. And he was pretty sure (though not positive) that the Three Musketeers were French. Somewhere Msr. Dumas is rolling in his French grave. When you enter Boots & Johns there is a photo on the wall of the owner (not sure if it's Boots or John) with Dick Cheney, and Fox News is always on the Tee Vee behind the counter. Something tells me that the young idiot I sat next to may turn up at one of those 'spontaneous' "Tea Party" protests organized by Fox News. Someday when the sad history of the decline and fall of America is written, I'm quite sure that repeal of the fairness doctrine will figure prominently on the historian’s list of precipitate causes.

My friend was telling me the other day about a married couple she knows. They are both doctors, very nice people and wonderfully successful. It seems they have made their bundle by running a group of 'pain clinics'. It turns out that they have made so much money; they've managed to buy their own island somewhere. This is the point where I lost my mind and started yelling: "They have their own fucking island?? "Selling pain relief?? In a country where 50 million people have no health insurance?? How in the name of jumping fucking Jesus did we end up with a system that puts a price tag on pain? The last time I checked the words of the master did not say, " Blessed are the merciful for they shall be able to buy their own fucking island".

I am reminded of the man who only promised paradise to one living soul on this earth: the 'good thief' dying beside him at the hands of the state. I don't much care for that ' six dudes you'll meet in heaven' nonsense being sold these days, but two folks I'm pretty sure you might see there are Karla Faye Tucker and that fella from the hill outside the city.

Overheard At The K&W Resturant

Conversation in a restaurant April 2009

Older man seated alone on cell phone:


Hey yeah it’s me how ya doin?

Yeah yeah? So hows that wife?

Everybody?

Uh huh ahh yeah I see what’s that?

Oh yeah? Really?

What ..Cancer?

Uh huh… yeah that’s too bad ..she was a good dog I remember.

Yeah..sorry uh huh.

.How’s the store this year?

In the black or red?

Oh yeah we’re fine…..yeah yeah I just….

Well….I uh..yeah, oh oh..I almost forgot

Yeah when you come down

Yeah I got a set of (unintelligible) yeah I piad 795..no shit…

no no I’m gonna let ‘em go for 275 tops yeah….

You’ll see ‘em when you come down.

OK then..yeah I just you know I yeah

Texas Radio (Sans big Beat), Zen And The Art Of Quarter Hour Maintenence, And Solid Gold Stupid In The Great White North

More Stories: Years ago I was at SXSW with some friends who owned a FM station that was heard in Austin but had studios in a town some 20 miles down the road. We took a drive one day to see the place, and on the way I came up with an idea for a format. What could be more perfect in Texas I thought than a station called "Kay Bob". Being the programing whiz kid that I was, I came up with a KBOB format on the spot: All Willie + Waylon and the Boys...and all the DJs would be named Billy Bob, or Bobbie Ray, or Bobbie Sue or..well you get the idea. After pulling into the town (complete with hitching posts and good ole' boys on the courthouse steps), I reconsidered the likey reception a long haired wise guy from MoTown might get pitching a format in those parts. Sorry Hos, no KBOB ever happened.



I had another long standing radio theory that involved a simple formula: divide the total power in watts by the number of times a day you play Stairway To Heaven, then multiply by the number of trailer parks in your Metro.... and you should get pretty close to your average quarter hour rating. My stupid formula made as much sense as most of the nonsense I heard from consultants over the years. I remember Lee Abrams telling us once to "be like the mafia on the phones". I still don't know what the fuck that meant.



Years later I gaped in wide wonder when I heard a Windsor Canada station try a Motown Gold format with 20% Can Con ( Canadian Content). That meant every fifth song had to be from a Canadian Motown artist. Go ahead and name one......... I rest my case eh. They would have been better off as CBOB.

Cindy Lou Who, , Strange Scenes Outside The Train Station, And Rage On The Via Vittorio

There is a woman I see in the cafeteria of my government office building just about every day. She is there in the morning, and there until the cops kick her out at night. I call her Cindy Lou Who because she kinds of looks like a Dr Suess character. Cindy sits alone engaged in animated conversation with no one at all. She always seems to be deeply engaged, and appears to be listening to a frequency only she can hear. I always want to say something to her, to tell her that the rest of us see her, know she is here...but I don't. And I'm not sure anyone else really notices her much. Cindy Lou is just another casualty of the American Dream: alone and crazy and passed by.

Outside Union Station in downtown DC there is always a cast of whack-a- loons, nut jobs, and Lou Who's worthy of an all start roster for crazy folks. One guy is there almost every day yelling about the government ripping off his social security check. Often when I come up the escalator from the Metro stop there, the first thing I hear is this mans deep booming voice saying " The mothefucking US fucking government stole my motherfucking check". I love watching the tourists with small kids blanch and look stunned as they hear Check Boys profane tirade. Welcome to DC motherfuckers. I once witnessed a guy go to the trouble of dragging a nice portable amplifier with speakers and a microphone and everything so he could preach from the bible. The only problem was, he preached in French. Tres' Whoopsie Msr. NumbNuts. 

I thought of the French preacher when I was in Rome last year. We were riding an open top sightseeing bus past Harry's Bar on the Via Vittorio Veneto, when I saw an Italian man on the corner raving and gesturing and looking for all the world like Cindy Lou's Roman cousin. I realized in a flash that there is something more or less universal about crazy. in spite of the language barrier I instantly recognized this guys rant: it seems that mothefucker Silvio Berlusconi stole the dudes check. Ciao baby!.

God and Dog At Yale, A Timely Rebuke, Cool Gardens

Religion... always a fun topic. Watching Karen Armstrong the other night with Bill Moyers got me thinking about how best to illustrate the insanely bad theology of most American self styled 'christians'. Try this on: I love my Dog more than your 'god' loves you. No matter what my wonderful mutt ever does I would never hurt him, nor wish him anything but joy. According to the theology preached and pounded into the heads of millions of unthinking yahoos everyday in this country, their 'god' will send people to torment for all eternity if the folks don't say the right magic words, and agree to the right set of propositions. That's insane. And monstrous. Such theology demonstrates far less love than any dog lover has for his or her pet. However, the above formula is exactly where the 'christian' doctrine of "no salvation outside the church" leads. Once in the nineties I was so broke I took a job writing commercials for WMUZ, the 'christian' station in Detroit. All in all they were very nice people, a few true believers, and quite a few just there for the job. One time I was asked to write a spot for some local car insurance guy who wanted to tell people that the bible says you have to have car insurance. I asked the guy to show me where it says that since I could not find the chapter titled 'The Gospel of Saint Geico". Another day I was having lunch with one of the salesman who informed me that I was going to hell because I didn't believe in the whole 'Jesus is my personal savior' nonsense. I then asked if my Jewish wife was also condemned. He smiled and said: "Certainly". OK I said, 'what about the six million in the Shoah who went up the chimneys, what about all those children...did your 'god' send them straight to hell because they didn't believe what you do?" He said that yes, he guessed that must be so. I tried to point out that he was expressing the same philosophy as Charlie Manson who famously said, "Hitler was just leveling the karma of the Jews"... but since I was a bit hot and said something along the lines of: " You fucking people are nuts”. I drew a loud 'rebuke in the name of Jesus' from one of the church ladies in the lunchroom. Oh well..So much for the finer points of theological debates. I don't worry much about the big existential questions anymore. The Zen guys would say that such inquiries are " inappropriate" and I think they are right. I do look forward to one day meeting Him, be it in the cool of the evening or the morning garden. And when I do I’ll be walking my dog with 'nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah'.