Porter Wagoner/Robert Goulet

#314 Porter Wagoner/Robert Goulet

No one seemed to see the irony in this. In Nashville, they were busy inducting the latest members of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Guys like Vince Gil and Mel Tillis and Shotgun Red.

Down the road apiece, as they are thought to say down there, another member of the Hall, Porter Wagoner was taking his last breath. Cancered lungs’ll do that after 80 years.

You’ve never heard of him, right? Chances are you haven’t because he never got into the pop music scene. And he hadn’t had a hit in more than 20 years, although that didn’t stop him from touring and playing before pretty good crowds. (The country audience’ll do that.)

There are a lot of reasons to remember this guy fondly. First was his music. Second was his pioneering use of television. The videotaped shows from the 1960s were in black and white (more about which in a moment,) and they were not exactly lessons in how to present or edit music on television. They were radio shows in which the pictures didn’t really matter.

But his was the first of the syndicated, videotaped country music shows, and it ran for 20 years or so before they killed it.

Third was Dolly Parton, who may or may not have gotten where she is on her own, but who got a big boost from Wagoner, who was a mega star back then, made her his partner and expanded her repertoire (no Dolly jokes, please.)

Some of today’s country music types are called “hat acts.” That’s because they wear hats.

Wagoner was a “suit act.” He came from an era where performers wore those Liberace-like rhinestone jackets and pants. This is where black and white TV was useless. Those costumes were elaborate and expensive and colorful. Turquoise. Purple. Yellow. Stuff you could see from the back row, lest you not recognize the pompadour at the microphone.

Hank Snow, Webb Pierce, Hank Thompson, Hank Garland (almost everyone was named “Hank” in those days.) Ernest Tubb, Johnny Cash (before the man-in-black thing started.) Elvis. They were all suit acts. Kept the crummy rhinestone makers in business practically single handedly.

Today’s guys don’t know what to do with a rhinestone.

Porter was, late in his career, a nostalgia act. He could have stayed on top. But he didn’t know how to sing through his nose.

That was his professional downfall.

His personal downfall probably was cigarettes.

Today, 80 isn’t old.

Neither is 73, which is how far Robert Goulet got before cashing it in a few days later. Goulet rocketed to stardom around the same time as Wagoner, the late 1950s, after he was cast opposite Hepburn in “Camelot.”

What a voice. What an actor. And commercial comic, in just these last few months.

Goulet had pulmonary fibrosis. Two stars. Two lung deaths. Too bad for the rest of us.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

Year Three

#313 Year Three

This is the second anniversary of this blog, although similar material has been running out of the fingers and sometimes the brain for far decades longer. The blog and its immediate predecessor, the weekly Bloomberg essay/column/commentary had a few rules. Amazingly, none have been violated.

1. Nothing over 600 words except the annual WestraDamus Retrodictions. Five hundred is ideal.

2. No consecutive serious pieces.

3. No first person singular.

4. No phone, no pool, no pets. (Oops. That’s from “King of the Road” by Roger Miller.)

5. Resist pressure to name drop.

6. No subject is taboo.

7. Reality is funnier than fiction.

Not easy for a career contrarian to follow.

Readership spiked when there was a link here from The Kingsland Report, which no longer exists (Jim Kingsland decided to kill that when he got a real job.)

Everyone who’s been a reporter for awhile decries that state of the art, wonders why people don’t like us and then keeps doing what we get paid to do. It’s a living. Most places, it’s not a GOOD living. But it’s a living.

MYTH #1: “The Liberal Media.” Are you kidding? This phrase was originally coined by a large Midwestern newspaper. It referred to the New York Times, NBC and CBS. What those three things had in common was they were run or owned by Jewish men.

Today’s New York Times doesn’t know what it is. CBS is in the hands of a guy who basically runs movie houses and has no politics. ABC is owned by Disney (and is there anything less liberal than that? Yes, the great social activists and fellow travelers at General Electric, which owns NBC.

CNN? Ted Turner is a liberal billionaire. But he wasn’t when he started the network.

News Corp? That’s pretty liberal. They own Fox, the New York Post, the Weekly Standard, Sky News and countless other left wing propaganda machines.

Plus, if no one’s paying any attention to these outlets, who cares what side they’re on.

Work in a major television news room for ten minutes and you’ll see that they’re lucky to get ANYTHING on, let alone something with a slant in any direction.

MYTH 2: Just that facts, ma’am.

Try to get information out of a “news source” and chances are you end up with gibberish that resemble facts in form, but not content.

Example: the people who make Tasers just came out with a decorator model stun gun for civilians. There are places you know you can buy ‘em legally. Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Arizona, probably Utah.

How about here in the wilds of Pennsylvania? Don’t know. Can’t get a straight answer out of the DA’s office or the cops.

MYTH THREE: Names make news. Nah. Not usually. Except if you’re Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, O.J. Simpson, Lindsay Lohan, Jennifer Lopez or a professional athlete on steroids.

So, we preserver into year three.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

The Spies

#312b The Spies

This was back during World War II. Maxie got a few bucks, working as a Fuller Brush Man in places like Maspeth and Ozone Park. So we went and got this radio.

Gorgeous Radio. From the Lafayette Radio guys. A record changer on the top. A huge loudspeaker, and a receiver that got both regular radio and shortwave.

Gorgeous radio. Deep red-brown mahogany cabinet. Automatic tuning. The works!

One day Fat Chickie comes to the door. He’s the repair guy from Lafayette. Says he has to make a “slight adjustment” to the radio. Maxie says there’s nothing wrong. Gets everything just fine. Plays the records just fine. Fat Chickie says “no, office says I gotta make some adjustments.”

Okay. In he comes with his tool box and his bald head and his gut. Squats down behind the radio, fiddles with a few things and then says “okay, all fixed.” Maxie says “let me try it.”

Now, the shortwave, which worked fine this morning, isn’t working so well. In fact it’s not working at all.

“What did you do to my fancy radio?” he asks.

“I disabled the shortwave. Orders. Sorry.”

“Orders? That’s what I left in Germany.”

“If you’re still here after the war, we’ll come put it back,” says Fat Chickie on his way out.

Maxie the German Spy. A US citizen, a Jew, a refugee, and a Holocaust escapee. Pretty likely guy to be getting secret messages from the Third Reich, right?

The war ended. Maxie was never arrested. Fat Chickie never came back to fix the shortwave.

Was Maxie a spy? Bombs in the Fuller Brush sample case?

Don’t know. He didn’t talk much – at least not about that stuff. But probably not.

No Department of Homeland Security then, either. Just good citizens like the guys at Lafayette Radio doing their best to protect the US of A against Nazi terrorists. So what if a few innocents were inconvenienced!

Now, it’s 2007. And in the condo across the street, a lovely and happy couple. Can’t tell you their names. National security, you know, He’s “H” and she’s “F.” That’ll have to be enough. And guess where they’re from. Iran!

And they’re obviously spies. Here’s how you can tell. He’s friendly with everyone. And she doesn’t “cover.” Plus, they keep their lights on very very late at night. Probably sending secret messages back to the Ayatollah.

He’s handsome. She’s hot. Obviously a distraction. We know what they’re up to. Gathering data and tracking the movements of the rest of us. Waiting for the day the nukes come sailing in from Tehran.

Chertoff and those guys aren’t as smart as Fat Chickie and the Lafayette Radio Company crowd. They knew when they faced the enemy, and they knew what to do. They didn’t wait for the U-Boats to come ashore in Sag Harbor. They went out there and cut off enemy lines of communication before there was any damage.

But we vigilant neighbors are at the ready. We have our eye on you, Persian devils! (Especially you, Lady Short Shorts.)

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

The Organization Woman

#311 The Organization Woman

Organized. Gotta get organized. Gotta straighten up this mess. Put things in order. Make it easier to use.

Many of us used to think that “organized” meant having your stuff around so you could easily get to the things you needed when you needed them.

Unpaid bills on this corner of the desk top. Pens over here. Telephone over there. That kind of thing.

But there’s a new definition. It says organization is having everything look neat. The notion of “use” doesn’t arise. If it looks good, it’s organized. If it’s neat, it’s organized. If it is uncluttered, it’s organized.

Since joining forces with the Organization Woman, the office never looked so good. Books are in size places (used to use author or subject classification,) and there are far fewer of them.

There’s almost nothing on the desk. No pens. No papers. Just the computer and the phone and one of those big box office supply store “organizer” thingies in which you can store a checkbook and maybe a couple of envelopes.

In order to get at anything necessary, you have to move ten other things. And it’s not just the desk. It’s the rooms. And there are a lot of rooms.

Want paper towels? Why they’re in the paper towel holder. And where is that? One’s in plain sight in the kitchen. (that’ll soon be “corrected.” The other is under the bathroom sink.

Think about it. Why do you use paper towels? Because something wet has to be dried. Like, say, the washable electric shaver. Gotta remember to open the cabinet door, remove the makeup carrier, get the paper towel holder out, close the door, use, clean and wipe the shaver, then restore the paper towel holder beneath the cabinet, reposition the the make up caddy (which side is “out?) and most of all, CLOSE THE CABINET DOOR.

The water glasses are in a kitchen cabinet. We use them at three meals a day. They look great in the cabinet. See ‘em? Right there, behind the never used tea cups. And when you’re finished removing the tea cups, getting out the glasses, replacing the teacups, don’t forget to CLOSE THE CABINET DOOR.

Dishtowels, dishes, laundry products, all in a row. Perfect. On view. If Queen Elizabeth should make an unannounced visit, she’d be pleased.

Good thing Liz doesn’t have to get her own glass or paper towel.

It’s all perfectly organized. Until it isn’t.

The Organization Woman is also the Handy Mover. Points are given if you can spot which items she has moved from one perfectly good location to another.

Even the flowers are organized. (I HATE fresh flowers. They’re way too much work. Let’s get artificial flowers. Followed by: Those artificial flowers never change. They have no life. Let’s get rid of them and get some real ones…. Followed by…..)

Those of us who are slobs at heart have found a solution, or at least a partial one. Put stuff in drawers in a way that they remain accessible and useful and useable.

But to keep the secret secret, don’t forget to CLOSE THE DRAWERS and hope no one looks.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

On The Reservation

#310 On The Reservation

The Texas style steak house don’t take reservations. But you can get on the “call ahead” list. Except not if you call too early.

If you want dinner at, say, 6:30 PM, they won’t take your call until five. And before you learn that you have to listen to a lot of “howdy pardner” kind of gibberish, delivered in a distinctly southwest Brooklyn regionalism.

Eventually a chirpy, presumably live body answers and gives you the bad news.

So let’s see what happens at 5PM:

“Well, Howdy, you’ve reached da Tessas Style Steak house. If youse is familiar wid’ the call ahead system heah, jes press wun. If not, hole on an we’s give you all thanstrukshuns.”

The live body answers.

“What time did you want to come in?”

“If I say 6:30, how long will I have to wait?”

“Oh, 30 to 40 minutes.”

“Do I have to show up and wait there for 40 minutes or can I just come in at 7:10 or so for my 6:30?”

“Yes, you can do that. Come in at 7:10.”

”What happens if I want a 5:30?”

”Wait’ll be about an hour.”

“Okay, so put me down for 5:30 and we’ll come in at 6:30.”

At 6:30 we walked through the door with our secret Texas-style code number, issued by the phone person and were seated immediately, while dozens of people waited on line.

Sometimes, things work out. Of course this cut the bill down by ten, maybe 15 maybe 20 bucks.

No, there were no discounts. But when you have to hang out waiting for a table, where do you wait?

The bar, of course.

And what do you do at the bar?

You drink, of course.

And that adds a bunch of money to your bill. Plus you have to tip the bartender separately.

Plus they’re fast.

Or at least the start out that way.

“You wanna pick out your own steak, sir?”

“How will I know when you cook it that it’s the same steak?”

“…um…. Well, we cook the one you pick.”

“So I have to take your word for it?”

“Well, yes, you do. But our word’s good. A cowboy’s word is his bond.”

“But you’re not a cowboy. In fact, if appearance is any indication, you’re not any kind of a boy.”

“I promise you, sir, you’ll get the steak you choose.”

“You work in a steak house. I don’t. You deal with steaks every day. I don’t. You know what a good steak is before it’s cooked., I don’t. Why don’t you pick.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Then you go through the adjective lesion, a careful explanation of what the terms “rare,” “Medium rare,” “medium,” “medium well” and “well done” mean in this particular place.

“How accurate are your cooking thermometers?”

“Okay, I guess.”

Annie Oakley takes the rest of the orders and wanders off toward what we expect must be the kitchen.

They don’t hustle us out, afterward. But they don’t encourage us to stay, either.”

Stayers also do that bar thing.

So these guys aren’t too smart.

But then, what do you expect from a Brooklyn cowboy?

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

Rollover Minutes

#309 Rollover Minutes

It works for cell phones, why not for life? One of the major carriers gives you rollover minutes. If you don’t use up your monthly allotment, you get to add what’s left to next month’s, or use for any time within a year.

We each have 1440 minutes a day. But look what we do with them. Sleeping, eating, watching TV, writing blogs, doing radio shows fighting with kids and spouses. This really isn’t USING these minutes. It’s just kind of HAVING them.

We should be able to roll our life minutes over into tomorrow, or any other time during the coming 12 months. If it’s good enough for AT&T or at&t as it now prefers to be known, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

Sound unreasonable? Nah. The phone companies – all of them – play fast and loose with the minutes, anyway. As they carefully note in teeeeeny tiiiiiny type in the bottom of your contract, you have to pay for incoming calls as well as outgoing calls and you have to pay for “toll-free” calls because you’re not really paying for calls, you’re paying for air time. So it doesn’t matter whether you call Timbuktu or next door – as soon as you push “send,” or “receive,” you’re on the air and the meter is running.

If your call lasts for 56 minutes and 12 seconds, you’re billed for 57 minutes. That’s called rounding. You’d think they’d round both ways, so a call of 56:29 would be charged at 56 minutes, and a call of 56:31 would be billed as 57. But, no.

When the call lasts 1:01, you’re billed for two minutes.

So, the idea of a “minute” and the idea of a “call” and the idea of “rounding” all get very flexible. If it’s good for them, why not for us?

Then, there’s when you use your minutes. Many calling plans give you “free” nights and weekends. Great. That was a move to reduce business hour phone traffic, reduce dropped calls and shifting social calling to the evening and overnight hours.

And, of course, that’s what most of us do. At some point, it will no longer be to the telcoms’ advantage to do that and they’ll (a) start charging and (b) try to make you think they’re improving your calling plan. (Notice, they can change the terms whenever it suits them, but if you cancel early, they hit you with a close to $200 “early cancellation fee.”)

It’s no wonder the cell phone carriers are at the bottom of every customer satisfaction survey conducted by anyone, for anyone and at any time since the dawn of the cell age.

So if they can play with minutes that way, we should, too.

If you’re waiting on the phone for customer “service,” you’re not using your personal, in-life minutes. If you’re waiting in traffic, at the supermarket, for the woman of your dreams to finish “putting her face on….” you’re not using your personal, in-life minutes.

You should have the right and the ability to roll them over into tomorrow.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR

Imus & Andy

#308 Imus and Andy or Life Imitates Art

The old lizard, Imus is among us again. “God’s Chosen Disc Jockey,” as he once called himself resurrected by the new owners of ABC Radio.

All of us in the radio biz owe this guy a debt of gratitude. He had the nerve to say stuff we all were thinking, but lacked the nerve to say. But he hasn’t been funny in 30 years. And his return to the airwaves lets us hear a guy who never could have gotten where he is by being the way he is.

Years of racist, sexist, mindless self involvement caught up with him, and he got fired from a job that paid 40 million dollars a year.

Apparently, he never saw “A Face In The Crowd,” the 1957 movie that starred a bunch of household names that were all but unknown at the time. Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Tony Franciosa, Walter Matthau and Lee Remick.

There were cameos from Benett Cerf, Faye Emerson, Virginia Graham, Sam Levinson, Brownie McGee, Charles Nelson Riley, John Cameron Swayze, Rip Torn, Mike Wallace, Walter Winchell and others.

The story, originally “Your Arkansas Traveler” was by Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan directed. A power cast if ever there was one.

The movie’s about a guy who rises from a night in a drunk tank to become a national radio, then television, then political superstar.

But he knocks himself out of the box with the 1957 version of “Nappy headed ‘hos that got Imus the boot.

The Matthau character assures the Patricia Neal character that the Andy Griffith character will eventually make a comeback, but in a chastened way.

In some ways, this was a story about Arthur Godfrey, a popular broadcast personality of the day who also shot himself in the foot, though not as badly as either Griffith’s “Lonesome Rhodes,” or Imus.

And so, life imitates art.

Imus is back. All but a handful will have forgotten that he was gone and made a comeback. An even smaller number will try to get him fired just for being what he is or was.

It wasn’t the one remark that got him canned in the first place. It was years of dancing in the duck blind, but too fast for any of the hunters to take aim.

Do we celebrate the comeback? Do we castigate ABC/Citadel for dragging this guy back into the public eye? Or do we just figure it’s part of a cycle in which entertainers come and go, getting so full of themselves along the way that they are thought of as dangerous.

Probably, most of us will pay no attention at all. At least not after the first few days of the new show.

After all, he’s just an old lizard, a reformed coke-head and booze hound, like Lonesome Rhodes.

Griffith, possibly the most underrated actor of the last century, is largely confined to a wheelchair these days, but still gets around.

You can bet Hollywood, Broadway and ASCAP will turn out for a deserved final goodbye when he finally goes.

Imus, on the other hand, will go quietly. But not now.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR