An Old Weird Rod Story

Some of my fondest memories in my radio career are from the three years I spent at KONO Radio, a top-forty format in San Antonio when personality radio was in its hey-day.  I came to work at KONO in the summer of 1969 and left in the fall of 1972.

I became very good friends with B. Bailey Brown who was doing afternoon-drive. At some point B. began calling me Ole Weird Rod because I did a lot of goofy things on the air, used a lot of drop-ins and pretty well bent the format as far as I could.  Before long everyone was calling me Ole Weird Rod, including myself.  I think I truly did some funny stuff on the air but the funniest thing that ever happened at the station was actually off the air.

I was doing the 9 til-midnight shift.  Back then we had a live newsman until midnight. The station had gone through a number of newsmen in the period of a year.  Every time they hired a new guy my main goal was to try to break them up on the air at least once.  My latest newsman was Rudy Rocha and I had been trying to crack him up for a couple weeks without success.  One night after Rudy had started into the news I had gone for a bathroom break.  Till this day I still have no idea what possessed me to do this but I took off my shirt and wrapped myself from the waist to the top of my head with toilet paper.

I knew Rudy was getting close to ending his newscast so I slipped back into the control room.  The door to the control room was at the back of the room so I could step into it unseen until the last moment.  There was a large window on the right of the control room that looked into the news room and a second large window on the left side that looked into the KITY control room which at that time played classical music and was the only thing that Jack Roth, the owner, ever listened to.

 At the end of the newscast, Rudy would give the temp and time and I would hit my jock intro to start the next hour.  Rudy would then have about thirty seconds to get ready to repeat the news on KITY at the top of hour.  As Rudy gave the temp and time I lurched out of my hiding place toward the control board and hit my jock intro to start my record. 
    
Rudy looked up and went into hysterics, falling forward and out of his chair.  The jock on KITY, some student who had been tracking classical music and studying his college books, automatically flipped on the news pot and heard nothing but laughter.  He stared big-eyed into the newsroom with a shocked look on his face. Rudy was still cracking up and I was thinking that this was the funniest stunt I had ever pulled.

What I didn’t realize was that Jocky John Steel, who followed me at midnight, had been over at the Channel 12 Television Studios next door visiting and had brought a couple of executives from ABC in New York to tour the radio stations.  They had evidently walked up about the time I had started all of this.  As I turned around, I saw two men in suits who were gawking at me in all of my toilet paper glory.

At that point Jocky John Steel deadpanned, “And this is Ole Weird Rod.”


Today's good read is Dead Air by Bill Young.  Very well done and a must read for anyone who has ever been in radio.

Stay tuned for future adventures.

Monday Morning Musings

Tiger Woods may be back on the dating scene again but so far he hasn’t even flirted with winning a golf tournament.

Charlotte County Sheriff's deputies arrested 22-year-old Robert Tuttle on Thursday for allegedly threatening his mother with an axe and forcing her to watch movies with him for several hours. Now he shouldn’t have threatened her with an axe, but making her watch three Ashton Kutcher movies is just unforgivable. 

Harry Wesley Coover Jr., known as the inventor of Super Glue, has died at his home in Kingsport, Tenn. He was 94. His family said he had stuck with it as long as he could.

Four more radio stations dropped Glen Beck’s radio show last week and his ratings are off 50% from a year ago. It just goes to show you can fool some of the people some of the time but a fool with a radio show won’t fool em’ for long.

Wow, Kentucky, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Connecticut and Butler are in the Final Four.  It doesn’t get much more exciting than that…Actually it does; reruns of Matlock would be more fun.  March Madness has dribbled off into March Mediocre…

Now here is a headline for you.  HOUSTON  — A deaf man has been accused of biting off part of another deaf man's ear.  Well it’s not like he bit off his fingers.  




Stay tuned for future adventures

Toke And Poke

Medical marijuana is now a $1.7 billion market, according to a report released Wednesday by See Change Strategy, an independent financial analysis firm that specializes in new and unique markets.  Compare that with Viagra, which is a $1.9 billion business.  I think that makes for way more “Stoners with Boners” than I ever imagined. .

And Now For Today’s Politics

Seeing the latest figures from the census showing the explosion of the Latin population in the United States, the GOP might think about learning Spanish rather than building a wall.

The former House speaker Nitwit Gingrich was quick to criticize President Barack Obama two weeks ago for not being more forceful in leading an international campaign to destroy Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's.  Gingrich said the United States should tell Gadhafi "that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we're intervening."    On Wednesday, Nitwit did an about-face and said, "I would not have intervened." .  …. Wow…Mr. Decisive.  And this bonehead wants to be President?

Speaking of folks who want to be President.  Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) says she has not made a decision yet on whether she will run for president. This will certainly make the 2012 election interesting if Mrs. Bachmann and Mrs. Palin both decide to run.   They would split the idiot vote. Both of these ladies have a screw loose.  Obviously it’s the screw that keeps their mouth shut.

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.  So how much do they owe the IRS? .….ZERO, NADA, ZILCH… In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.  Even as the government faces a mounting budget deficit, the GOP talk in Washington is about lower tax rates.  WAKE UP FOLKS… lower taxes for the corporate world, not for us common folks.


Stay tuned for future adventures.

Forget 4G

When I first started hearing and seeing all of the ads on TV about the new 4G phones, I thought wow, the G surly stands for Grand or Galactic and we could phone outer space or other planets.  Then I thought maybe the G stands for Glamorous or Glitter so we could talk to our favorite movie and television stars.  Another thought was that the G must be for Genius and it is a hundred times smarter than a smart phone.

Then it hit me, with the enormous amount of money they are spending promoting 4G, it must stand for Godly and we would have a hot line directly to heaven.

But alas after much research on the subject, the G must stand for GOUGE as in to cheat out of money or overcharge.  Then again it could be GREEDY because 4G doesn’t do anything that the phone in your hand doesn’t do right now.

And Now For Something Completely Different.

Lindsay Lohan's father has been arrested. He said he wanted to spend more time with his daughter.

I just read a story that said Tiger Woods was back on the dating scene.  As far as I can tell he was never off the dating scene but now he’s not MARRIED.

HBO has announced they are doing a movie on the life of former Vice-President Darth Cheney.  It will open when Darth was a teenager and shot his best friend with a BB gun.  Shortly after that Darth had the first of his 23 heart attacks which is an incredible number for someone who obviously doesn’t have a heart.


Stay tuned for future adventures.

Goof Off Day

Tuesday is National Goof Off Day.  When I saw this I thought wow, this is great that they (whoever they are) are finally honoring us Goof Offs.  They recommend that you go out and spend the day window shopping with your favorite friend. Or just sit down and read a book or watch TV. This day is set aside for you to anything you enjoy doing.

This is what I do everyday, but let me tell you, being a full time goof-off is not as easy as you might think. There are some draw-backs to being a professional do nothing person.  The main one is that every once in a while you actually want to do something.  When this happens you just have to calm yourself and remember that doing something takes energy and money.  That usually nips it in the bud on the spot. If it persists, then I just go to bed until it goes away.

Another thing about being a Professional Goof-Off is there are no days off.  Its 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  No holidays, no sick days and the pay sucks but other than that, it's a pretty good gig.  Come to think of it, it is very much like my days in radio..   

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

Here is news story for ya.  According to an Oxford scholar, God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel.  Well yeah, "Create the world," was the first thing on his honey-do list.

There are some things about the new electric Chevy Volt that will shock you. I mean beside the sticker price.  It seems it takes ten hours to charge the battery.  Better take a sack lunch and book when you whip into the charge station.  Also that charge will only get you about 26 miles.  Let’s see, a trip to Galveston from Houston will only take you a day and half.  Wasn’t horseback faster?

Right wing-nut columnist Ann Coulter said that radiation is good for you.  I not sure about this but I’m all for Ann trying it out.  A good dose might do her good.  I know it would do me good if she would.

 A new report out today says CBS President Les Moonves wants Charlie Sheen back on Two and a Half Men.  Makes sense; they feed each others addiction.  Charlie’s is cocaine and Les’s is money.

Rocker Sammy Haggar in his new tell-all book says that he was abducted by aliens.  I think a couple of illegals grabbed him after a concert in San Diego and took him across the border for a night of slamming tequila shots. 


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Another Moonlight Special

Tomorrow is the SuperMoon.  This is the night that the moon is the closest to the earth this year.  In fact it is the closest it has been in 18 years.  NASA scientist have stressed that the SuperMoon will not cause any natural disasters.

Oh yeah, well what about the poor werewolves?  Man, they are going to be going nuts.  If you have any friends that are werewolves or know of anybody who are friends with werewolves, tomorrow night is not a good night to hang out with them. 

I have a couple friends that are werewolves and they are very nice people except once a month they get really nuts. (I know this is a great place for a PMS joke but I have chosen to rise above it and I don’t want to get my throat ripped out). I am just saying tomorrow night is not the night to go howling at the moon.
   
Speaking of the moon, we made nine trips to the moon in four years. Six times we landed on the moon and three times we couldn’t find a parking space, so we just drove around it and came home.  The last time we went to the moon was 1972. That was 39 years ago. Surely a parking space has opened up by now.

Think of the technology and the incredible precision timing it took to pull off a moon landing.  I mean what if they had gotten there and it was a half or quarter-moon?  We could have missed it completely.

But we will always have moonlight, moonbeams, moonshine, moon pies, moon river, blue moon, harvest moon, new moon, half-moon, quarter-moons. Don’t forget the man in the moon, by the light of the silvery moon, paper moon, moon dance, moon walk, moon shot, moonstone, moon shadow, moonlight serenade, Moon over Miami,  Moonraker, Moonstruck, and quit mooning me out the school bus window.
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When was the last time you were hit up at the airport by moonies?  They must be in a really long eclipse. If Neil Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the moon, why does Michael Jackson get credit for the Moon Walk?

An Update on Then There Is Just Plain Stupid

 Rush Slimbaugh said this week that the media was overplaying the crisis in Japan. "Remember the BP oil spill, the worst oil spill ever except there wasn't any oil," he said.
Let’s see, eleven rig workers died when a BP-leased rig exploded some 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana in April last year, sending a record 4.9 million barrels of toxic crude spewing into the Gulf.  It took three months to cap the well, while leaking oil tainted marshlands, brought a halt to commercial fishing and shrimping in large areas of the Gulf, and crippled tourism.  

The death estimates in Japan are now over 14,000. And to think this asshole makes millions of dollars saying this kind of crap just so the media will talk about him.  A tragedy on a tragedy.

There have been so many bank robberies at banks inside of grocery stores that they have added a bank robber line right beside the express lane.  The sign says “only one gun.”

 Jodie Foster says Mel Gibson brings a lifetime of pain to his latest picture “The Beaver.”  Unfortunately I think the pain was to the people around him.



Stay tuned for future adventures

And Then There Is Just Plain Stupid

Gilbert Gottfried got fired for making jokes about the tragedy in Japan.  I saw where Joan Rivers defended Gilbert saying, "That's what comedians do!!!”  What, be stupid?

Being inappropriate is one thing; being stupid is another.  Telling jokes about something that killed thousands of people to a few friends is truly insensitive; putting it on Twitter and Facebook is STUPID.   Dan Turner, the press secretary for the Governor of Mississippi, did the same thing as Gilbert; got fired for being STUPID.  You would think these clowns would know by now how Facebook and Twitter work.

Speaking of being stupid; prosecutors recently charged Mel Gibson with misdemeanor battery of his ex-girl friend. It seems Mel’s career has gone from Braveheart to Chicken Shit.

March Madness is almost here.  Charlie Sheen just got an early start.  The poster child for STUPID has announced he's doing a “One Man Show” in Chicago and Detroit.  Well, of course, it’s a one man show; this man has no friends.  Who would he do a show with; his drug dealer or maybe a couple of hookers?  Hey Charlie and Moe Gadhafi could hook up and be a comedy team.  Talk about Dumb and Dumber…

A Libya no-fly resolution was offered at the UN yesterday.  This seems impossible to me. Can you imagine how many flies there must be in Libya?

And as a final note, once again the award for the most boring community in the state goes to Plano, Texas.


Today's good read is The Sentry by Robert Crais. I have just discovered Robert and this is the latest in his Joe Pike series.



Stay tuned for future adventures.

There Was A Time When Radio Was Fun

I just came across a Face Book page called "I WAS A DJ WHEN DJS JOCKED DISCS...AND I DON'T MEAN CD's   http://on.fb.me/eNXODs      It brought back a lot of radio memories for me. For many years of my life, radio was a huge part of it and now it is almost non-existent.  I find that sad in many ways.  I know nothing stays the same and that’s okay, what a boring world it would be if it did, but radio changed for all the wrong reasons.  For me radio was fun, exciting and truly entertaining and now it is boring, redundant and mostly irritating.

I am old enough that I can remember before we had a tv in our home and we would listen to the radio.  I listened to Red Skelton, Amos and Andy and lots of other radio shows.  Then about the time I started junior high school I started listening to music radio.  I grew up listening to KLIF in Dallas and KFJZ in Fort Worth during the day and stations like KOMA in Oklahoma City, WNOE in New Orleans and WLAC in Nashville at night.  WLAC is where I discovered black music and fell in love.

KOMA,WNOE, KLIF, KFJZ and KXOL were great top 40 stations and had some of the best jocks in the world. Randy Robbins, Mark Stevens, Paxton Mills, Rex Miller, Dave Ambrose, Jimmy Rabbit, Frank Jolly, C.C. Courtney,  and Charlie Van Dyke to mention a few.  Always high energy, lots of reverb and always entertaining.  It was fun radio.

I was fortunate enough to work in markets that were very competitive which forced us to be more creative on the air.   I worked at KXOL where we were in a tough battle with KFJZ.   In San Antonio at KONO, where we went head to head with KTSA.  While I was in Denver at KTLK we battled KIMN.   Finally at KRLY in Houston, I was up against KILT and KRBE.  The fun part is that everybody knew everybody and we had fun together. We respected our competition and yet did everything we could do to beat them.  This resulted in radio that was truly entertaining, and the real winner was the listener.   Now there is no competition and no creativity. Most of all of radio today is owned by four companies.

Radio stations use to be owned by people who loved radio and only had a few stations each.  Now they are owned by huge corporations and run by people (mostly lawyers and accountants) who don’t have a clue to what radio is about. 

I don’t spend time grumbling about today’s radio, as I said before everything changes. I am just grateful I got to work in radio with some great talent such as Tim Kelly,  Steve Sellers, John Steel, Bob Moody, Harry Scarbough, Cris Cooper, B.Bailey Brown, Chuck Joseph, Mike Wade, Ron Foster, Ron Seldon, Johnny Shannon, Paul Kirby, Phil Gardner and C.C. McCartney just to name a few.  It was fun and exciting for the people listening and for the folks who were on the air.



Stay tuned for future adventures.  

A Biblical Event

There is a new translation of the Bible out.  The Bible by the way has been translated more than any book in history.  I guess one of these days they will finally get it like they want it.  Anyway the new American version is supposed to be more updated for the times.  Genesis now begins with “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”

They say your ears never stop growing.  Methuselah must have looked like Dumbo.

Warner Bros, the production company that produces “Two and Half Men” fired Charley Sheen this week. Man I didn’t see that one coming.

I just saw this headline. The credit card of the future: It ‘talks to you.  I can imagine what mine will say.  “Please leave home without me” “Don’t touch me” “Are you kidding, you’re gonna buy that, lol”  “Are you nuts?”

Julianne Moore is set to play former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in an upcoming TV film.  The film "Game Change," which follows John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign from when he chose Palin as his running mate through their defeat in the general election.  They are looking for someone age appropriate to play John McCain.  Word is Charlie Chaplin is the front runner.

Best joke of the week.  How much cocaine did Charley Sheen do?  Enough to kill Two and Half Men.  Wish I could take credit for that one.


And In The World of Smarmy Politics

Potential U.S. Republican presidential candidate Nitwit Gingrich told a Christian television network that he had sought God's forgiveness for a marital affair.  Now ole Nitwit cheated on both of his wives before marrying the current Mrs. (You’re my one and only and my third) Gingrich and since he said A marital affair,  I wonder which ONE marital affair was he looking for forgiveness and which one he didn’t give a damn about.

To give you an example how nice a guy ole Nitwit is, he told his first wife he wanted a divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery.  He divorced his second wife after she learned she had MS.

Here is Nitwit’s excuse for having affairs. "There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate," said Gingrich.  Let’s see, ole Nitwit was so busy trying to screw the country he didn’t notice that he was screwing some one other than his wife. Yeah, this is a guy you want running the country.

I have noticed through the years that the preachers that rant the loudest about homosexuality are usually closet gays or having multiple affairs.  Also when someone continually tells me how honest they are, I find that they are likely to be liars and crooks.  So when I come across a conservative Republican that can’t quit raging about the deficit, the stimulus or how broke we are, I am pretty sure I know who spent the money,.

Here are a couple of examples. The award for the state that has the highest debt per person is Massachusetts.  Massachusetts endured several budget blows in the second half of the past decade, including a massive $15 billion construction project in Boston infamously referred to as the “big dig,” and a substantial health care reform package passed back in 2006 that added several hundred million dollars to the state’s budget. This is the health plan of former Governor Mitt Romney.

And the 2nd highest debt per person goes to Alaska.  Alaska’s expenditures go to education and public welfare programs, and indeed, Alaska spends more on public programs as a proportion of its overall GDP than all but one state in the country, which may go some way toward explaining how their debt has gradually increased.  Sarah doesn’t seem to remember this.

Between Nitwit, Mitt and Sarah, the Republicans are looking good…. I should have material for the next two years.

Stay tuned for future adventures

The Gas Scam

The gas scam is back.  What is happening today is the same thing we went through in 2008.  The price of gasoline is on the rise because of “paper oil”.  Paper oil is the term that comes from Wall Street traders that drive up the market price.  It is called “Paper Oil” because they never actually take control of a single barrel of oil.  They simply bid on it and drive up the price so they can sell it and make a profit without ever getting their hands oily.

The bottom line is that once again Wall Street and the major oil companies are putting profits ahead of anything else. How many billions did the oil companies net last time and of course we can thank Wall Street for a major part of the recession. 

 “Paper oil” may be un-American, un-patriotic, and un-ethical but it is not illegal.  Although it seems to me what the “paper oil” traders are doing smacks of price gouging similar to raising the price of a needed commodity such as ice or water just after a hurricane or natural disaster.  Just like an unscrupulous price gouger post hurricane, we can always count on Wall Street Traders and oil companies to gouge the American consumer with higher gas prices when there is any excuse of turmoil in the middle east.

The latest price surge comes as “paper oil” buyers, fearful of even higher prices, have swarmed the market.  The “paper oil” traders are taking advantage of what is going on in Libya.  The fact is the loss of Libya’s oil output — even all of it — would remove a relatively small percentage of total global supplies. In any case, Saudi Arabia is believed to have enough spare capacity to cover any shortfall

I also know that there is a huge reserve of oil in the northwestern part of the United States, mostly in Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas.  This is being protected from drilling at this time by environmental laws.  The problem with saying that this protected oil could cure our problems is two-fold.  In the first place, if you started drilling tomorrow, it would be years before that oil product got refined and to the gas pump.

But the main problem is that all oil is traded on the world market.  The price of oil is universal.  Texas oil or Montana oil doesn’t sell at a different price than foreign oil.  Oil is oil.  We produce quite a bit of oil in United States right now; do you see it selling at a different price than oil from the Middle East?  I don’t think so.

The price of a barrel of oil or a gallon of gasoline has little or no connection to the cost of producing it and we have plenty of oil on hand.  As of last week, there was some 346 million barrels of oil in American storage, according to the Department of Energy, comfortably above the five-year average range for this time of year.

Gasoline prices have also surged in the past month, even though roughly 234 million barrels of it were sloshing through the system as of last week, well above five-year averages. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline hit $3.51 last week, up 13 percent in a month.

The sad fact is there is not much we can do about high gasoline prices until the Middle East settles down.  The one thing I do know to do is quit buying gas or anything else from a major oil company.  I have not spent a single dime at Exxon since the Valdez.  I know it has not had any effect on them but it certainly makes me feel better and it is very easy to do.  I have to make no sacrifices as there are plenty of smaller stations and convenience stores to buy gas.  But if we were to all do this, it would have a major impact on the large companies like Exxon, Mobile and Shell that have such a control over this industry. 

Stay tuned for future adventures.

The Shine Is Off Sheen

Thank God Charlie Sheen is okay.  He said so himself in an interview from his planet of Denial.  Charlie said he has just gotten a new transfusion of Tiger Blood, (No word from Tiger Woods on how that went.) and his Adonis DNA was one hundred percent.  He reported he and his two girlfriends, Natty -- the self-proclaimed porn star -- (I guess no one else has proclaimed her.), and Rach The Goddess (I’m not sure of what?) have been having some deep conversations about the problems in Wisconsin while just hanging around the house (Charley has a trapeze in the living room)

Charlie said he was not interested in people treating him like he was a twelve year old.  He was fifteen now, and felt people should at least respect his wishes, if not adoring and worshiping his every word.  He said he realized a long time ago that he was special and people shouldn’t worry about him, that alcohol and cocaine had no effect on him and as long as he didn’t get close to Kryptonite, he would be fine. He also said, “there is nothing broken here”, well other than the dining room furniture, the spa in the pool, part of the master bed room and the BMW parked in the kitchen.

Charlie also said his good friend Moe Gadhafi has called a couple of time to get his advice on his situation and Charlie told him to hang in there, that everyone loved him.  He told him not to worry; the media was just having a slow day and making a mountain out of a mole hill. Charley said it was a sad day when a dictator couldn’t kill a few hundred of his own country men without the press making a big deal of it.

For only a million more dollars a week, Charlie said he would come back to work; he just needed someone to tell him where that is.  He said he knows a lot of people depend on their lively hood because of him, especially the Guzman’s Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico.

Charlie ended the interview by saying that he doesn’t need the help. He said, “I sort of evolved beyond it.” He also noted that he had grown an extra toe and a third ear.


Another celebrity in the news, Christina Aguilera was arrested early Tuesday near the Sunset Strip on suspicion of being drunk in public.  It seems for her sobriety test, they ask Christina to sing the National Anthem. 

Lindsay Lohan said Tuesday on the syndicated magazine show "Extra" that she was hoping for a big-screen comeback.  Sounds like Lindsay might have been doing a little “Sheen.”


Today’s good read is Ain’t She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.  This is one of the most entertaining books I have read lately.  Great story and well written.




Stay tuned for future adventures.