Category: Radio and Television Stuff

An April Fool Prank +50 years

An April Fool Prank +50 years

I came to the realization earlier today that 50 years ago, I was on the radio and needed to pull off a prank. With the help of a young woman, I was able to accomplish my mission. Here’s the scoop…

On a cool and rainy night fifty years ago, I teamed with an OU-C classmate to promote a “Streak In” at the OU-C parking lot on WBEX. A small group of people came to the station just before the April Fool was announced – one of them, a young woman, exposed her breasts, much to the amusement of the group she was with, the classmate helping me in the ruse, and me.

I stayed after the station signed off and filed a modified version of the story to the Associated Press. The Chillicothe Gazette took notice and I was on the front page the next afternoon, to the amusement of my co-workers and the young woman helping me with the ruse.

The VP mentioned was in her late seventies at the time and was the only person at the station not amused by the antics from the previous evening.

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Panic of the Week

Panic of the Week

Last week it was gas stoves – this week it looks like we need to be aware of the rainbows connected to the 50th anniversary of the release of Dark Side of the Moon, a recording by some rock group which incidentally stayed on Billboard’s Top 100 album chart for as long as anyone can remember. More on the record here in a bit.

But gas stoves. Seriously? The first I heard about some government agency warning about gas stoves came with the headline: “Biden Wants to Take Away Your Gas Stove!!” Yep, Joe Biden, President of the United States, to some the root of all evil (something about stealing an election by getting more votes), is set to send thousands of IRS agents to your house to confiscate your gas range! Just like Obama was poised to set government gun confiscation vans minutes after he was sworn in as President back in 2009.

Oh! The humanity!

It seems that we are bombarded by headlines from certain news sources telling us that we are on the brink of disaster on an almost weekly basis. I recall being told back sometime in October that we would run completely out of diesel fuel by Thanksgiving and that the economy would come to a standstill.

We’re still waiting on that to come to pass. Never mind that the 60-day supply of diesel fuel some portions of the media are trying to get you to panic about is what is usually on-hand and that the supply is being supplemented daily. Note, too, that the panic mysteriously went away shortly after election day.

Imagine that!

Every day there’s something trying to grab our attention – attempting to scare us into action or inaction, usually to the benefit of some group or another wanting power to… well, to twit whatever opponent they care to choose. It’s like the headline back there in the second paragraph of this little essay. There are people who dislike Joe Biden, and they love it whenever he gets even a small measure of comeuppance.

Can you say, “Classified Documents”? I knew you could!

It was pointed out the other day that time was that you had only three sources of national television news. These days, you have a multitude of sources to choose from – and people tend to choose whatever source they feel is closest to what they believe are their own views. Any source other than the chosen source is nothing but “Fake News!” Any opportunity to twit an opponent is good news – pure and wholesome, and 100% true!

Back to gas stoves.

There are risks involved in any sort of cooking as there are risks in every aspect of life. No need to panic. No one is going to come knocking at your door, wanting to confiscate your gas range.

As far as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, fifty years is a landmark. Even more amazing is the fact that the album remained on the Billboard Top 100 album chart quite literally for decades. (Bruce Springsteen’s first album, Greetings From Asbury Park New Jersey, also hit the 50-year mark this month. Hardly anyone noticed.) The graphic artist who created the 50-year logo included a rainbow – something seen on the album cover. All of a sudden, there was an outcry from some quarters about the rainbow, and how there was an alignment with the Gay community! Think what you will about Pink Floyd’s Magnum Opus, I really don’t think that the musicians involved in making that album were signaling the Gay community. Yet, there you go. Someone with too much time on their hands and/or a chip on their shoulder is out there making something that isn’t about a 50-year-old record album.

It’s time to light up the gas stove, make some home-made soup, and take another listen to Pink Floyd!

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Old Age

Old Age

“Don’t be afraid of old age – it’s a privelege denied to many” – Paraphrasing something I keep reading. I’m old and can’t rightly remember who came up with the quote or where I found it.

While organizing my thoughts this afternoon, I ran across a post on Facebook from an old colleague telling of the death of another colleague and friend from back in the day. And I really mean back in the day.

The recently departed was, in many ways, one of the smartest people I have ever worked with. He had a way with electronics (got him a scholarship to become and electrical engineer), and he had his own little way of making observations no one else could possibly make. For instance, the chief engineer at the radio station where my friend and I worked back in 1974, would purchase a bottle of Pepsi from the station’s vending machine when he began to work on something. My friend noted that the engineer would purchase more Pepsis from the vending machine as the job progressed. Within a month or so of watching that engineer, my friend would estimate how complicated a job would be by the number of bottles of Pepsi the engineer would consume. I can still hear him say that thus and such a job looks like it would be a “Three Bottle Job.”

Anyhoo, my friend is no longer among the living – no longer able to judge how many bottles of Pepsi would be needed to finish a particular job.

Interestingly enough, that friend’s name came up in conversation with a mutual friend less than two weeks ago. The mutual (and still living friend) wondered about the man and what he was up to these days. I told the mutual friend that our friend had “left the building.”

I am to the age when losing old friends is becoming more frequent. I was reminded of the death of one of my best friends to early-onset Alzheimer’s when his widow reminded me of his birthday – and that had he lived, he would be somewhere in his seventies. He barely missed being in his mid-sixties.

The girl living up the street from us when we were in high school was another Alzheimer’s victim. She was a doctor. What a waste.

There was Tim, with whom I shared an enthusiasm for all things automotive. Cancer. Early sixties.

We have all lost someone, a friend, an acquaintance, a family member – and we all mourn those passings to one degree or another. Some we will mourn for years. Others, a month or two tops. Depends a lot on the burden someone’s death places on us. I have friends who have lost children who likely will never recover. Other deaths create barely a ripple in some of our lives.

My friend who passed with Alzheimer’s will be with me for quite some time, I suppose. We were somewhat close. Interestingly enough, it was the man who “left the building” earlier this week who introduced me to the Alzheimer’s victim. I have survived them both and will continue to celebrate being an old fart.

Not many of us have that privelege, you know!

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Routines

Routines

Last Saturday I confirmed something I thought I saw coming – the breakup of my Saturday morning routine. For the past several years, my Saturday morning revolved around several radio presentations. I structured my morning routine so that I could do the laundry, letting the washer and dryer do their thing while I listened to a couple of segments of “Wheels-With Ed Wallace” and the NPR show “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” Ed announced that last Saturday morning would be his last day doing Wheels.

There goes an hour of my Saturday morning routine.

Wheels is an advertising vehicle for select automobile dealerships here in the Metromess. The show could be one long, boring program length commercial run by a former car salesman; instead it’s a bit of a variety show run by a former car salesman. Calling out Mr. Wallace as a former car salesman (which he was) is doing the man a disservice. Yes, there’s car talk out there, but what I listened for were a couple of features which he ran as part of the show.

At about 8:30, Ed ran a relatively short feature about the history of Rock and Roll. Stories about groups, individual performers, and stories about radio itself were featured. I cannot say that I was ever bored with Ed Wallace’s Saturday morning college of rock and roll knowledge. Many times he would tell of the background of a performer who had recently died. This past Saturday he presented a vignette of the man who came up with the term “Oldies but Goodies,” a radio veteran who passed earlier in October.

Around 9:10 or so, Ed ran a segment he called “The Backside of American History.” As with the rock and roll segment, he featured well-researched stories not usually found in history books. My favorite story was one he told just before Christmas each year about the Santa Claus Bank Robbery… a shoot-em-up story about a pre-Christmas bank robbery pulled off by a burglar in a Santa Claus suit in Cisco Texas.

It was at the end of this week’s final part of a three-part story about legendary CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow that Ed confirmed that he was doing his last show.

Frankly, I don’t blame the man for stepping away from the microphone. He’s either just turned or is pushing seventy awfully hard and he deserves a break from a job well done.

Still, I am almost at a loss as to what to do in that hour or so on a Saturday morning. Maybe I can find another something to latch onto for my appointment radio fix.

Yes, I said appointment.

Many of us have certain media appointments through the week. I knew a family back in the day who gathered faithfully on Saturday nights to watch “Mission: Impossible.” One of my good friends would drop everything he was doing to watch what he called, “Book ’em,” better known as “Hawaii Five-O.” I’ve had similar appointments with several other shows – and have current appointments with “Ghosts,” “Svengoolie,” and several re-runs of older shows, like “Batman” with Adam West (is there any other?).

I’ve had Saturday morning radio appointments with “What Do You Know,” “Car Talk (with Tom and Ray),” and almost had an appointment with Tom Bodett’s “End of the Road” radio series. I caught the last episode of “End of the Road,” ended up finding and reading the book he wrote incorporating the stories he told on the radio. Bodett occasionally shows up on “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” as a panelist, and still can be heard from time to time advertising Motel 6 (We’ll leave the light on for you).

I will most likely find something else worth listening to while doing laundry and other household chores on Saturday morning. Still, there will be a hole left with Ed Wallace parting company with Wheels. Good job, Ed. Never met you, but I sure will miss you!

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