It's Not You, It's Me

Image by Prawny from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination."    

                                                                             -George Benard Shaw

Dear Gentlereaders,

America, a democratic republic, recently conducted a royal funeral for a gentleman who moved out of the White House 45 years ago at the conclusion of his good/bad/mediocre/coulda been worse (choose one) single term as the Temporary King of America (TKOA). 

When I found out this occasion provided a 12th paid holiday for postal workers this year I thought that Mr. Carter had been canonized by the American Postal Workers Union but I was wrong. The majority of the employees of the Fedrl Gummit were given a paid day off so they could process their grief. 

{Process?}

A very popular word nowadays that's often substituted for the phrase deal with. I'm just tryna stay cool, bruh. 

The Donald's recent coronation marking/celebrating his second and last stint as TKOA is now behind us...assuming, of course, he doesn't morph into the fascist dicktater the Blue Team warned us about.

I started to write that irregardless, given the Donald's age we don't have much to worry about, but then I remembered that Mr. Peanut was our first temporary King who lived to be a hundred years old. 

{I wonder if he ate much fast food?} 

{By the way, whaddayamean temporary king? We don't have kings, we have presidents.}

We used to, Dana, but consider. Team Red raised $200,000,000 (more or less) from multiple sources to pay for several days of revelry to honor the Donald's return to the throne. 

Some proudly and publicly proclaimed their allegiance to the new King (as well as no shortage of various and sundry supporters from behind curtains), "to bankroll a multi-day extravaganza of lavish dinners, galas and events that give big money donors exclusive face time with the incoming administration." 

Call me cranky, but that seems more like financial obeisance to a new monarch, as opposed to a shindig at the VFW hall in the Swamp which is how we do things out here in Flyoverland.  

By the way, I stole the quote above from (yet another) non-profit, Campaign Legal Center, which according to Wikipedia "...is a government watchdog group in the United States. CLC supports strong enforcement of United States campaign finance laws."

I confess to knowing nothing about the CLC, in fact, I never even heard of them till I went a-googlin' in search of estimates of how much dough was spent celebrating the coronation. But mentioning one of our ubiquitous, politically focused non-profits when writing about anything political is a rule, and serves to make the writer sound like he/she/they know what they are talking about.

{I thought you were gonna knock off that he/she/they crap?}

The classics never get old. 

{And another thing, behind curtains? Doesn't the Donald's official inaugural committee have to issue an official report in a few months detailing exactly who gave what?}

Yep, but shockingly, as in campaign donations, there are loopholes available. For example, if I give my buddy the CEO of Acme Inc. some cash on the down-low he/she/they can make a corporate donation without mentioning me or those I may be fronting for.  

All politics, all the time.

If you're old like me, you may have fond memories of an early morning AM radio show that was the place to go for early morning updates as to what was going on in your corner of the country.

"Hey, Ma, did they cancel school?" 

In my case, it's KDKA Pittsburgh. America's first commercial radio station. I can still hear Jack Bogut cracking jokes and trading quips with newsman Ed Chauncey. I'm so old I remember Rege Cordic. I...

{Ahem.} 

A few weeks back I got up late, late for me anyway (7 a.m.), and on an impulse clicked on my clock radio as I wanted to check something out.

I rarely listen to it but it's tuned to a local AM station long past its glory days but is still a local icon -- "NewsRadio 570 WKBN - Youngstown's News, Weather & Talk Station." The news and weather reports are limited and brief but the talk (and the commercials) never stops.

The reason for my impulse was a recent local development. Long story short, one of the last two talk show hosts who reside in the Youngstown metro area has recently retired. That means there's only one local Joe Bagadonuts left (3 to 6 p.m.)...and 23 hours of regional or nationally syndicated jaw-jaw. 

Not having listened in quite a while I wondered who was currently talking (hosts come and go) to my fellow denizens of NE Ohio (Canada's deep south) as they trudged to work.

I unfondly remember (I'm retired and don't miss being a wage slave, not even a little bit) driving with one hand on the wheel, wiping my fogged windshield with a stained McDonald's napkin with the other, and squinting to see where I was going while waiting for my semi-trusty steed to thaw out. 

{Is unfondly a word?} 

One Michael Delgiorno (from Nashville) was ranting about how outraged he was about the recently dethroned TKOA, Slow Joe, retroactively pardoning friends and family members for any sins they may have committed -- At. Seven. O'clock. In. The. Morning. 

I turned off my radio. 

{Well, lots of people are upset about it. I don't see what...}

It's not you, it's me. Lots of other people are upset about the Donald pardoning most of the January 6 rioters, but that's not my point. 

Is getting worked up over Red team v. Blue team on your way to work in the morning before having to deal with bosses and coworkers, some of whom may not be your favorite H. sapiens, a good idea?

{Well, there's always Howard Stern. If he's not polluting your local airwaves one of his competitors is probably available on an FM station. They do tend to be sex-joke-saturated but some are quite funny. You're familiar with the FM band, right?}

Oh yeah. Pseudo-country music, "Classic Rock" (about a hundred tunes played over and over again), violent/obscene Rap/Hip-hop, Top 40 computer-generated insipid Pop... 

{Geesh..never mind.}

It's not you, it's me. 

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

      

   

 

Is Cher the Anti-Christ?

Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"I've been famous my entire life; I don't know any other way." -Cher

Dear Gentlereaders,

I (along with Bobcat Goldthwait), for reasons I am sworn not to reveal, have long believed that Scott Baio was the anti-Christ. 

However, I now believe it might be Cher. 

{Perhaps there's more than one, that would explain a lot.}

I don't know, my dear gentlereaders, if you're aware that she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last October, you might think that this alone is proof, but the RRHoF crossed over to the dark side a long time ago. Madonna was inducted back in 2008.

If you're not a geezer/geezerette of a certain age with a certain sensibility, that I will not attempt to put into words, you may not understand why this is appalling. But hey, if you like it (or it's all rock and roll to you), it's good music. 

However. 

Cher — who by the way has recently released volume one of her much-anticipated autobiography, 432 pages written by a ghostwriter, "fixed" by two additional ghosts, and then fine-tuned by Cher and a professional editor — proudly declared "I changed the sound of music forever, all right?" in her induction speech. 

As my millions of regular readers are aware, I'm a news nerd who keeps an eye on multiple news sources seven days a week. I know, I know... In my defense, nowadays I skim a lot more, read a lot less, and I have no shortage of other pursuits. 

When I recently came across the Cher quote in question I was brought up short. Say what? This required looking into. 

It turns out her insipid pop hit Believe was the first hit pop song to use a music producers tool, Auto-Tune, to make a singer sound like a robot. It had been around for a while but had previously been used to correct a given singer's off-pitch lyrics, subtly, so that the public was unaware that their favorite rock/pop star may not have been quite as talented as they thought.

The technology involved has come a long way since then. It's now possible to make the "live" performances of everyone from Taylor Swift to the band fronted by your obnoxious rich cousin's kid sound like sonic perfection. But I drift. 

It seems that neither Cher nor her producer, Mark Taylor, were happy with the sound of Believe despite much tinkering. At a certain setting, Auto-Tune will make any singer sound like a robot, this was considered an audio glitch at the time but Mr. Taylor thought it was perfect for Believe, and Cher (and ultimately many H. sapiens) agreed. 

Cher had to fight her record label, who disagreed, but she won the skirmish. The deliberate "glitch" became known as the Cher effect, and the rest is history. And that's how Cher changed the sound of music forever, all right? 

{I wonder when volume two will be released?}

We can only hope it's available before Cher, a remarkably well-preserved 78-year-old, releases it before she moves on to Rock and Roll Heaven, Dana.   

The age of the remakes and "franchises" continues apace. Given the number of updated versions of movies and TV shows, as well as the fact that sequels and prequels are now franchises (is it just me or are there 31 flavors of Star Wars available?) I would like to suggest a remake of a TV show that I loved watching that was on from 1955 to 1960, The Millionaire. 

Sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive!

When I went a-googlin' I discovered the show ran from '55 to '60, Since I didn't come along till 1953 for a moment there I thought that Mum's favorite child must have been an unusually precocious little bugger... till I discovered that reruns ran here, there, and even there till the 80s. 

And then, according to Wikipedia, "In 2015, the series began to air on CBS's digital subchannel network Decades...". 

{Digital subchannel network?}

Right? I don't know either. If you're interested, Wikipedia has a detailed explanation. Personally, I'm not. It's a broadcast thing and I've been tethered to my cable for decades. I'm a world-class streamer and if it were up to me I'd keep the cable for high-speed internet access and nothing else. But I'm no longer the Grand Imperial Poobah of Casa de Chaos, I just rent an overpriced room here. 

Suffice it to say, it seems to me that a black-and-white show made in the late 50s that's still around is a prime candidate for a remake.  

On a related note, in the course of my research, I discovered that 19 of the more than 200 episodes have been removed from syndication by CBS, which apparently has control of the show. I'd love to know why, but CBS hasn't returned my calls or responded to my emails.    

I've previously noted elsewhere that I've often been a day late and two (inflation-adjusted) dollars short over the years. I've successfully avoided the burdens of fame and fortune for multiple decades, and now that I've reached my seventies I suspect the odds are I will continue to do so. 

I've reached a point in my life where I'm glad I've never been even a minor celebrity but I still dream of winning FU (that's feck you, not the other one) money via a lottery ticket  — or being paid a visit by John Beresford Tipton's executive secretary, Michael Anthony.   

The executive secretary introduces each show. He's charged with delivering a check for $1,000,000.00 to the subject of that particular episode by his boss, John Beresford Tipton, a reclusive billionaire, one of the world's 19 multi-billionaires.  

{Nineteen? Aren't there like, 3,000 billionaires nowadays?}

Yeah, more or less. Billionaires, just like we thousandaires, experience occasional streaks of bad luck and are reduced to being mere millionaires, convicts, or plant food.  

Anyway, you never actually see the reclusive billionaire (think Charlie's Angels) and the executive secretary character gets minimal screen time. The bulk of the show is about who gets a check in that particular episode and its impact on their life. 

This same formula, resuscitated, would result in relatively modest production costs and serve as a showcase for current stars looking for publicity or career resuscitation, and wanna-be (i.e. cheaply and easily obtained) TV stars.

Check out the show's Wikipedia entry and scroll down to view a list of guest stars who were, or became, famous.  

Potential audience? The Precariat. The hundreds of millions of us out here dealing with transitory inflation and little to no confidence in what's next who get up every morning wondering if this is the day the other shoe drops.

{Speaking of inflation, according to my calculations, Mr. Tipton would have to cut ten million dollar checks nowadays. A mere million won't even buy a nice house in no shortage of Zip codes.} 

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

  

Duck and Cover

A blast from the past. 

CDD20

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"Just dive under your desk and kiss your ass goodbye." -Jimmy Buffett

Dear Gentlereaders,

The Cuban Missile Crisis — which according to Wikipedia "...is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war — occurred in the fall of 1962. I was nine years old in '62 and I remember Mum and Dad obviously being freaked out but pretending they weren't so as not to freak out their kids.  

I now understand that having lived through the Great Depression and World War Two they were understandably a little jumpy. But I was a Boomer. Boomers, the first generation to grow up with television, knew just what to do if the nukes started flying and there was a commercial to remind us. All you had to do was duck and cover!

 

I don't remember the commercial, but I do remember seeing the official Civil Defense film at some point that starred the famous Burt the Turtle the commercial mentions. I went a-googlin' to try and find out if anyone is officially credited with modifying the tagline duck and cover to a popular and widely known slightly different version — duck and cover, and kiss your ass goodbye — but had no luck. 

My fellow Boomers and I should've all been subject to debilitating existential trauma. Instead, some unknown one of us turned our trauma into a joke, a pre-meme era meme if you will, a poster that was quite popular. I know this because I owned one. An alleged original copy of the one I owned in the early 1970s that I purchased for, maybe, five bucks is nowadays a collector's item that sells for $270.

Given the price of concert tickets for Boomer rock bands (that may or may not feature original members who nowadays look like death sucking on a LifeSaver), it seems like there's good money to be made in the nostalgia business.     

{Official Civil Defense film?}  

Civil Defense, as my fellow geezers/geezerettes hopefully remember, was the purview of various and sundry agencies of The Fed'rl Gummit that were sorta/kinda early versions of what we now refer to as Homeland Security, Dana. 

Very long story short (there's a long Wikipedia version available) a ton of tax money was spent to teach Americans how to survive a nuclear war, info about everything from stocking up your pantry to how to build personal nuclear fallout shelters. 

Nowadays, it's generally agreed that this would all be ultimately pointless, which is the primary reason the world has to worry about the Pooteen, kids. Mr. Putin, despite the fact Russia continues to fall apart, still has enough nukes in his basement to end the world. 

Given that a full-fledged nuclear war could end the world in about a minute, why isn't anyone gluing themselves to streets and/or splashing paint on famous paintings like the traumatized delicate flowers obsessed with global warming?

Anyways... originally, this was supposed to be a full-fledged column adhering to a now-defunct company policy, that is to say, at least 1500 words in length since I now only publish every other week. But it was at this point that I hit a wall and not only lost interest in the subject at hand, I contemplated shutting this enterprise down. 

I repeatedly opened my free (which means you no longer have an excuse) Google-supplied software — "Blogger" according to Wikipedia "...is an American online content management system founded in 1999 that enables its users to write blogs with time-stamped entries." — and just stared at the content above. 

Stumped. 

Holly crap, do I have writer's block? I am, of course, aware of this phenomenon and have even suffered from a mild case of it from time to time but this was different, it felt like I was done and had nothing else I wanted to say. 

Fortunately, my spiritual advisor (for lack of a better term), the Daozhang of a secret Taoist monastery in China's Wudang Mountains, was recently gifted with a free Starlink connection by our mutual friend, Elon Musk, so I was able to give him a call and ask for advice. 

I'll tell ya, beats the hell out of having to take a sabbatical and make my way there in person, all the while having to worry about being tossed in the jug by one of the Emperor's minions, possibly for years, while hoping for a hostage exchange. 

Sometimes I hate to write and I wish I didn't have to.

{Have to?}

Often I enjoy it, when the words flow freely, other times it's too much like work. Sometimes I'm satisfied with the results, but often I'm not. 

{Huh. Sounds like someone's off his psych meds again.}

Balderdash! I don't take psych meds, Dana, thank you very much.}

{Balderdash? Have to?}

It's a cool word that I don't believe I've ever used before. As to have to, writing is my psych med. If I don't write, my nogginal neurons tend to get tangled. I've done a bit of research and I'm led to believe that if you're at all creative and don't have an outlet this is what happens. 

{Didn't Freud give a famous lecture on tangled nogginal neurons? Anyway, what's your problem? just write. You don't even have to publish the results if you don't want to. Chill, dude.}

Remarkable, that's pretty much what the Daozhang said. 

{What's so remarkable? I'm smarter than I look, just like you.}

Alrighty then, new company policy. 

Going forward I shall continue to publish a new column every other week. Without a minimal commitment, to this and no shortage of other things in my life, I might just stop getting out of bed or even just float off into space, never to be seen again. 

{Say what?}

It's a jaded geezer thing. I'll strive for at least 750 words but there might be far less (or more, like this particular column). Anyone who doesn't like the new policy can request a refund, no questions asked.

Note to Theo: I'm thinking of resuscitating my would-be novel. Don't tell anyone.  

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Comments? I post links to my columns on Facebook where you can love me, hate me, or cancel me. Cranky don't tweet (Xclaim?).

Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved