College Radio

Some of my fondest memories were my days on a college radio station. Though I did have a lot of fun I could easily see how professional career in radio would be hideous. Often times the general managers of radio stations are jack asses; college radio included. However, I guess it would be better to work in radio than have a career in theater where just about everyone is an asshole.


Lately, I’ve been listening to college radio on the Internet from New York University, WNYU. College radio is where all the new sounds are brought to the world. New York, being a melting pot of so many cultures and influences is also a melting pot for sounds. Everything is present on WNYU; good and bad alike. If it catches someone’s ear it gets air play.


If you want to give WNYU a try, go to iTunes, select radio, select college/university and follow the alphabet down to WNYU. If you don’t like what you hear wait for the next DJ. They seem to have 2-hour air shifts.

What's Bad Can BeVery Good

I always find it interesting when musicians that are so good that they can do really bad things to music and get away with it.

There are classics like Lester Road-Hog Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys. Then there were groups such as the Portsmouth Sinfonia, which was a normal symphonic orchestra and one day everyone decided to switch instruments. Some musicians specialize in making things sound somewhat off and poorly done, like Devandra Banhart, but under it all is a slick musical thing that sounds like no other.


For your entertainment here are two Youtube of the good being bad.
Portsmouth Sinfonia
Lester Road-Hog Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys

Rainier Beer

I recall someone telling their kids about how scary the movie the Wizard of Oz was. After watching it for the first time the kids just laughed and said it was lame.

There is no doubt that people of my generation came form a different place in history where things were more innocent and novel. A case in point is that we were discussing how funny the old Rainier Beer commercials were. I didn’t recall any of them since I am a rather recent transplant out here and I spent the first ten years here without access to local television.

So, being the curious type I hunted down all the commercials on YouTube and was sadly disappointed. I was even disappointed by the all-time-great Rainier Beer Motorcycle commercial.

I did find one ray of sun shine. You will too if you are a fan of the Noir.

Nose

I don’t get it! Why is it, it seems, humans are the only animals that get stuffy noses? I’ve seen animals sneeze, but I’ve never seen an animal with a stuffy nose. It’s a good thing for horses since they are incapable of breathing through their mouths. Humans can do that so they have an alternate, but it just isn’t fair that our best breathing devices is sometimes out of service.

We all know how it feels to have spent the night breathing through out mouths and we wake up with our tongues feeling like leather or suede. Sometimes blowing one’s nose doesn’t make it any better. Sometimes it makes it worse. Even worse, sometimes it helps just a little frustrating any hope of relief.

I recall flying into San Francisco one day with some mild stuffiness however as soon as the plane started descending I started feeling piercing pain through out my entire head. As the half hour of descending continued it continued getting worse. It took me two weeks to get back to normal after that.

As I write this my nose is stuffy. It’s the kind of stuffy where it wouldn’t be a good idea to fly, and it it isn’t the type to be cleared by a purge into a tissue. What's up with that?

Not Forgotten

Lately I’ve been spending time with some old friends from the 70s. By friends I mean several recordings of things that entranced me in my younger life. It was music that was way before it time, yet at the same time it was just the right time.

I’m talking about the “Concept” bands from the United Kingdom such as King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Genesis (With Peter Gabriel), Yes and there was probably a smattering of some other groups like the Moody Blues as well. These groups had an amazing command of musical literacy blending Jazz fusion, rock, with the sometimes sounds of traditional folk and classical. These groups mastered vocal harmonies often every bit as interesting as the American harmonies from Crosby Stills and Nash or the Beach Boys. They pulled off Jazz riffs every bit as interesting as the works of Frank Zappa with strains of minimalism on the side.

Having not listened to this stuff for a while, I’m reacquainting myself with it all again and I wonder why this stuff isn’t being played today. I mean, you can turn the dial and hear crap like Benny and the Jets and Just the Way You Are until your ears bleed, yet I haven’t heard things like the link below since the 70s. This stuff is too remarkable to be forgotten.

Check out this Gentle Giant Video and tell me is this is work that should be forgotten

Pump It Up

I guess I’m still a cheap skate, but I will not take my vehicles to one of those lube shops to have my oil changed. I still do it myself, however every time I crawl under my truck I question my sanity.

In the old days one would crawl under a car and you could be done in 10 minutes, but now it is different. The first thing I have to do on my wife’s car is to remove a thick plastic skid plate with four bolts; two in the front and two in the back in a spot that is only accessible with one hand.

My truck has a metal skid plate that can’t be removed without a lift, but there is a hole to drain the oil, but this hole will not grant you access to the oil plug unless you have an exact extension on your ratchet. I had to buy specially for this task, because if too long or too short you can’t get to the plug. Then once you do get the plug out the oil goes all over the skid plate and settles in the groves where it will continue leak to the garage floor for the next week or so.

Finally by brother set me straight. If there is an easier way to do something he will find it and he uses an oil siphon. It’s this siphon kit with a long thin tube that you insert in the dip stick tube that sucks the oil out of the oil pan. I think it will do a better job because most pan plugs are seated above the the bottom of the pan and I’m sure there is a bunch of gunk left behind.

I know I’ll still have to do a small crawl to change the filters, but this pump will make the oil change less of a task. I’m moving forward.

February Spring in Oregon

Sorry to rub it in the faces of those living elsewhere, but this week has been beautiful here on the Oregon Coast. Sunny and warm with temps near 60. The flowering trees are flowering. The roadsides are dotted with daffodils and crocus.

I pruned my one remaining fruit tree, built two new raised bed boxes, tilled and put in the new raspberry bed and strawberry bed and fenced them from the deer and chickens. I put compost down in the blue berry patch.

Last year we got a late start on the garden, but this year I’m ready for it. Today I’ll be adding compost and soil to all the other beds. That’s one thing about having horses and chickens; one never runs out of compost. I’m compiling compost for next year. It looks to be a good compost crop since it is once again covered in the manure shed, which you may recall I named the manure shed, The Daily Astorian.”

The cool thing is that I was driving somewhere yesterday and out in the middle of nowhere and there was a blue Daily A delivery box in the middle of the road. I pulled over and picked it up. Soon it will become part of the manure shed.

Multi-Purpose

One thing I have always found delight in is when things are invented with two purposes in mind. I recall how I thought it was a great idea when I saw a Castro Convertible commercial when I was a kid. Here was a couch that converted to a bed.

I remember how cool it was when a guy in my home town had an amphibious car. I never saw him drive it into the water, but the potential struck me as being very cool.

I remember getting my first reversible coat. It was blue on one side and red on the other and I did reverse it every once in a while, though I liked the blue side better. I also remember getting a reversible belt. It was brown on one side and black on the other.

I know that inventers keep trying to come up with multi-function devices, but most just don’t cut it. I can’t imaging ever buying a spork which is a spoon/fork combo. I have no need for a pen that has a built-in flashlight. Swiss Army Knives can be somewhat good, but I probably wouldn’t use more two or three attachments.

My mother had a Mix Master that had a meat grinder attachment and a juicer attachment. We never used the grinder, but I do remember her juicing oranges for me when I was a kid.

My passion for dual purpose tools runs deep. I love those screw drivers with interchangeable bits. I have an Estwing hatchet with a hammer head on the back side. Everyone knows that I covet the best ever multi function tool, a back hoe.

The only really cool multi function tool I can think of that has come down the pike in recent memory is the hand held phone with apps where you can call people, email them and browse the internet. They can also play movies, music and act as a GPS unit. That’s almost as cool as a back hoe.

I didn't Mean It!

When I got home yesterday I was surprised to see my wife had my horse on a lead rope letting him eat some of the nice new grass outside one of his pastures. Normally I’d see her fussing with her horse, but not mine. I parked the trick to find out there was trouble and my horse was upset. Nibbling on fresh grass usually calms him down.

Remember last week when I posted about the chickens laying eggs in his food trough, well I guess he was in his stall when a couple chickens started squabbling. He got spooked by all the noise and dashed from his stall out to the corral and stepped on a chicken in the process. One Silver Laced Wyandotte was killed.

I know it was a freak accident, but I think it’s time I put up chicken wire around the corral to keep the hens out of the horse stalls.

Stars

One can easily be amazed by how often the symbol of the star is used. Star symbols range from three to eight pointed stars. More than eight points are often seen as the Sun.

Many country flags use stars; the USA using 50 stars probably has the most. Stars are also use in state flags like Alaska and Texas, the Lone Star State. A star is a symbol of Islam faith, the crescent moon and a star. The Jews have the hexagram six pointed Star of David and Christian have the Star of Bethlehem.

Communism uses the Red Star as their symbol. Walmart used to use a star between the Wal and Mart, but have since changed it to one word followed by an asterisk. Subaru used the stars of Orion’s Belt as their logo. Starbucks uses a star. Proctor and Gamble uses stars in their logo. There are stars in Lucky Charms. There are a lot of songs about stars and there are a lot of film that use stars in their titles. Famous people are called stars. There is the Energy Star. There are newspapars and magazines called the Star. The Pentagram is the symbol of the occult. Many police departments use the star as a badge.

With all the stars that are being use one would think we’d get tired of seeing them, but the star is different than other symbols I have become tired of the use of Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty. I’m sick of orcas, salmon and polar bears, but the star is something else. It is the king of all symbols that I never get sick of seeing.

Deathbook

For me the jury is still out on Facebook. Yes, I use the site and sometimes the grotesqueness of this act gets to me. It gets really bad when you look up childhood friends and see them looking worse than their grandparents. Years of wear and tear or abuse has taken their toll on nearly all of them. Seeing their photos makes me want to go back there and find out what the hell happened to them to age them so much.

I’m not immune either. My head of thick curly auburn hair is now thin and white, but I feel like I fared better than most of my friends.

My other quasi concern is the potential of Facebook becoming an unreliable memorial site. I’m sure that by now we all know someone that was once on Facebook that has passed away. It is haunting to come across their page and see their words, images and reactions. Their pages collect the comments and invitations as though they were still reading every day. They may even have new friend requests. What I’d like to know is how long will Facebook be there to uphold these unused pages? Can we count on these memorials being there through eternity? Are all the Geocity web pages we created twelve years ago still there? I haven’t been able to find any of my old sites. What makes us think that Facebook will still be here in twelve years?

Maybe Facebook should do what Hotmail does. No activity in 90 days and your account is deleted. If not there is a chance that one day Facebook will have more accounts of those no longer with us that those that are.

Maybe this is a good time for someone to come along and create a social networking site for the dead. This could be a site where you add things while you are alive and after 90 days of inactivity the site will assume you are dead and post all your stuff for eternity.

The Producers

Having watched the film Anvil, I started thinking about music production, which is very much different than film production. In Film production you just dump money into a project, but in music production you actually tell the musicians what sounds to make and you tell the mixer where everything should go.

If you think about it good producers made careers for people. Do you think Bruce Springsteen would be anywhere without Phil Specter layering 57 guitar tracks into a wall of sound? His Born to Run made it possible for him to release carp for the rest of his career and get away with it.

Kate Bush sounded like a squeaky water pump with a bad bearing before Peter Gabriel got a hold of her. David Guetta’s work gets better and better with the Black Eyed Peas. Dr. Dre raised Eminem up from the streets. Frip, Eno, Bowie and David Byrne resurrected several careers of the bland.

So when you hear some music that is really and I mean really interesting you can thank the musicians, but realize that it was the producer’s vision that fleshed out the sound to make it stand out and grab you by the ears to take notice.

The Great One

My apologies in advance to my Canadian readers, but I become bothered by the use of the term, “The Great One” mentioned with the name Wayne Gretzky. The term Great “One” indicates to me that there is only one “Great One.” There is only one King of Pop, only one King of Rock and only one Queen of Soul.

I consulted the Interwebs to see just how many people are claiming the title and found passing references to Ronald Reagan probably because his sycophants couldn’t spell the word Orator. He was known as the Great Orator.

Then I saw a reference to “The Great One” being used for Mark Levin, a conservative radio talk show host. Radio and especially talk radio is the lowest rung in entertainment. No one sitting in a chair with cans on their head should ever be called great. This title was more than likely boasted by Faux News which is famous their revisionist history. No way is this guy great.

I guess the Canadians felt that if they used the term “The Great One” to describe Gretsky no one but Canadians would notice since Americans have no idea of what Hockey is. It’s like soccer on ice, and we have no idea what soccer is either in spite of the millions of kids that are forced to play it by some unseen force. Unless one is Continental you’ve probably never seen a soccer game. You’ve probably never seen a hockey game unless you are from Canada or Minnesota.

Setting the record straight, Jackie Gleason (February 26, 1916 – June 24, 1987) was and still is the Great One. His death at the age of 71 did not remove the title. He will always be the Great One. All of these other posers need to make up a new title for them selves.

Give Peas a Chance

Again, I’ve been remised in my social obligation to keep up with new things. If you remember it was only last year when I finally discovered how good Snoop Dogg and Eminem were. I felt like my resistance to rap robbed me from enjoying this music for a decade and I had a lot of catching up to do.

It happened again. Though they’ve been around for twelve years; last week I finally came to realize how good the Black Eyed Peas are. I could have been enjoying this stuff over the last twelve years and now I have to play catch-up. I know some of you are out there calling me an old fogey douche bag, but I am sincerely trying to keep up.

Now, for those that haven’t spent any time with the Peas they aren’t just a Rap/Hip Hop act, these folks are all over the place. Yes, they are based in Hip Hop, but they introduce all sorts of textures of other musical genres into every song. In their music one can hear techno, funk, reggae, old school jazz and fusion, salsa, , metal, acoustic and hard rock.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I have a very short attention span and I am always fascinated by music that changes often with outstanding production values. This stuff is definitely headphone or ear bud music. It has all if not even more energy than Snoop, Eminem and the Flowbots. This stuff can restore your faith in the music industry and restore all the air that Lady GaGa sucked out of the room.

Here is a piece that is for the ears of those that need a gentle transition into realizing this group is worth a listen. This song is called Union and it features Sting. Click this link.

Who's That Knocking at My Door

I think it was Quandle Queen that mentioned she wanted to see a photo of my chickens looking in the window. Here is a Buff Orpington that just finished pecking at the window trying to get my attention. These yellow hens are my favorite by far. They actually come up to me looking to be petted. I can pick them up without them ever complaining.

Anvil

Today I feel I need to brush on the topic of documentaries about head banging heavy metal music. Bear with me especially if you are not a fan of this type of music.

I’m sure that unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve no doubt seen Rob Reiner’s 1984 ”mockumentary” This is Spinal Tap. It was the funny story about a metal band that always skirted real fame and fortune. This film showed a lot of heart and soul and the conflict between members that had a vision and talent, but they just couldn’t connect with the masses. The funny thing about Tap was a lot of Metal Bands thought the film was about them, and often I guess it was; it was about them all.

The next film was the 2004 documentary, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. This film also showed the heart and soul and the conflict between members of a successful metal band. This film had a lot of similarities to the fictional Spinal Tap film. Some were intentional, and some not.

There is a real Metal Band out there that pretty much wrote the book on Metal. Oddly they never really made it, but after 30 years they are still working on it. This group is the real Spinal Tap. They are a Canadian group called Anvil. Please go out and rent the film, Anvil: The Story of Anvil. If you ever root for the under-dog, this is film is for you. Included in this documentary are interviews with Slash of Guns and Roses, Lemmy of Motorhead and Lars Ulrich of Metalica among others. The interviewees all sing the praises of Anvil yet none of them seem to understand why they never became the Beatles of Metal.

I am not a Metal-head by any means, but I found this film so touching because of their drive and sincerity that I want to buy their entire album collection, even if I’ll never listen to any of them.

Please visit this site to see the movie trailer.

Game On

I don’t know if it is still true, but it used to be that the best ping pong players came from the military. I suppose the people in the military had a lot of down time and had a good opportunity to hone their motor skills. The skills were legendary. Jean Shepherd talked about it back in the 60’s and you may remember one of the fictional characters, Forest Gump had a mastery of the paddle. I don’t hear a lot about ping pong and I wonder if it is relevant any more. It is still part of the Summer Olympic Games, but do non-competitive people even play it these days.

When I was growing up some of my friends had ping pong tables in their basements, but most of the kids I knew ignored it, using the table for other projects.

Games have used differing amounts of real estate over the years. Golf for instance uses several acres. Polo, football, soccer, hockey and baseball, to name a few use good hunks of property. Then you get to tennis, handball, and racket ball that uses courts. After that it goes to table games like ping pong, billiards and cards. From there we head into board games. Recently most games can now be played with small hand held devices.

Some game characteristics are already lost especially if you play any games on a device. A big part of playing poker is your skill of detecting an opponent’s bluff or noticing an opponents’ “tell”, which is a tick or an emotion they expose through body language relating to their hand, strategy or anxiety level. I try to play internet Scrabble every day. I play against a robot at Pogo.com at the expert level. It’s good and all but the problem is that you cannot put down a word that isn’t a word. In real Scrabble, if someone puts down a questionable word you may challenge it, but this doesn’t come into play on-line.

I wonder if this will all transgress into mind games. You have to admit that this has already begun to some extent.

Strategy

I find it interesting how often we use strategy in our day to day lives. Though we don’t often consider the things we do as strategic assemblages, but nearly everything falls into this category. We are like cats out hunting mice. When you consider when and where to shop, or park your car there is usually a strategy involved.

We try to shape our environment to suit our needs. It often becomes like a game where there are winners and losers. We don’t like to be bested.

I even notice this with comments on blogs. I see bloggers get very defensive when people comment on their blogs. I find it especially interesting when you read a comment that someone has made and the blog author returns to delete the comment. Some employ the strategy of moderation; only allowing comments they approve to be view by others. I don’t quite understand this. Is it that they don’t have enough confidence in their own ideas and opinions that they can’t step up to the challenge when someone confronts their stand on issues.

I admit that sometimes I’ll post something knowing full-well that I’m stepping in a huge dung pile and I wait on the side line with a cricket bat. Though, of all the comments I’ve fielded here over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever had what I would consider an abusive comment. Some readers give me shit from time to time and I reply to them as would a monkey in a zoo, throwing feces back at them.

That’s my strategy.

Checkers

Checkers, called Draughts in most countries, has been traced back to the 1300s, though it may indeed stretch further into history than that. Checkers is not a game of random chance, but rather a game of skill and strategy when played well.

My father was a rather good checker player back in the early 60s. He was an OK chess player, and he knew his way around a deck of cards, but his master game skill was checkers. You don’t see people playing checkers much these days. I’ve only seen it being played by old men in city parks. I recall seeing rows of regulars playing every morning in Honolulu, but elsewhere it is a game you just don’t see any more.

I don’t know where my father picked up his skill since he was never in places where people pick up the skill of playing checkers. I recall seeing him dethrone local champions that learned to play in the military or in fraternal organizations. He once told me that he could anticipate six moves ahead.

One day a guy came over to play him. His name was Charley. Charley was a tall wiry fell with a bald head with a band of hair that went around the back of his head from temple to temple. He also had one eye that was partially closed. I recall Charley sitting at our kitchen table calmly smoking Chesterfields. The first game Charley beat my father handsomely. The next game he beat him even faster. The third game was a brutal beating. It was after the brutal beating of the third game; I could see a look come over my father’s face. It was a look that one has when they figure something out.

My father set up his checkers for a fourth game and looked over at Charley and said, “You’ve done some hard time, haven’t you, Charley?” Charley didn’t even blink his good eye and he replied, “Attica.” With this my father said, “I guess I won’t be winning any games today.” Charley replied, “Probably not.”

I later asked my father what that was all about. He told me that people that people that learn to play checkers on the streets, or at clubs, or in the military could only get so good because they eventually had to get away from the board and do some work, but the guys serving hard time have nothing to do all day but play and play and play and get better and better. There was no beating an ex-con in checkers.

Kid Myths

There are certain myths that get passed down from generation to generation. These are kid myths, not adult myths. I know I’ve never perpetuated these myths and I can never figure out how they have survived as long as they have. Of the several I will focus on only a few for the purpose of keeping this short for those of us with equally short attention spans.

Have you ever heard the myth of what happens if you peal a golf ball apart? The myth is that the strands of rubber bands under the plastic shell are wrapped so tightly and even more tightly as you get near the center that they may explode when the outer pressure is lessened. To make it worse the core of every golf ball is an acid and when that gets on you, well you are a goner. And never throw a golf ball into a fire. The explosion has been known to level city blocks.

How about the myth that if you make a funny face your face may stick in that position forever? It was said that the old man that lived next to the school I attended, that happened to have his mouth stuck in a combo smile/grimace position didn’t heed this warning and he was a victim of this malady.

Finally for today, what about the myth of quick sand? This is a big concern among kids. Every time a kid encounters mud there is always the fear that they will be sucked into a murky abyss. To make it even worse there is the myth of slow sand which is equally inescapable as quick sand; however it takes much longer to suck you in making it a much more terrifying death. And there is a bottom of each quick sand pit. It is like a grain hopper filled with the bodies of generations of kids and their pets.

Do you have any kid myths that need some exposure?

Chicken Tractor

Yesterdays post brought forward a couple questions as to exactly what a chicken tractor is. It is basically a penned in yard on wheels or skids and it often involves a coop as well. Every day, depending on size you can manually drag or tow the chicken tractor with a lawn tractor to a new location where the chickens can scratch in the dirt and eat greenery.

I don’t use one because the size I would need to house 21 chickens would be enormous. They would also turn the ground into a wasteland within a couple hours. For now I’m much better off letting them roam the acreage where they can get a very diverse diet between the horse stall and the woods and the lawn the gardens and the swamp.

It is the diverse diet that makes my hens eggs so much better than anything available in stores.

Crouching Tigers, Hiding Chickens

The evening routine around here starts around sun-down. I do muck out the horse stalls, fill their water troughs, put out hay and feed, collect any eggs the chickens may have laid in their feed troughs and then I bring in the horses from the pasture.

Then I move onto the chickens where I collect the eggs, fill their water and their feeders and throw some kitchen scraps inside the yard of the Super-Max to lure them in for the night. I do a count and lock them in.

I did all this on Thursday night. It had been a rather nice day, but right at sun-down a rain squall moved in so I got wet. When I got into Super-Max I found that three Buff Orpingtons, two Barred Rocks and one Silver Laced were missing. There should always be four of each breed and Blue, the rooster. There were a lot a lot of hens missing. My heart sank. I looked all around and called for them. I went into the house and got a flash light and I poked a beam under every deck and out building. I searched the thickets and around stumps. I could not find the six missing hens.

I wondered if a family of coyotes wandered through nabbing them, but I saw no feathers or tracks in the mud. I had heard nothing and I know I had seen all four Buff Orpingtons on my porch looking in my living-room window just an hour earlier.

I had hoped the rain squall caught them off guard and they took shelter somewhere. I wasn’t looking forward to the option of restricting their free ranging during the day or building a chicken tractor to move them to a new location every day.

Just moments ago I was sitting here in my living room at 8:00am and two of the Buffs showed up on my porch. I put on my boots and went outside and the other hens out on the lawn. They weren’t killed, but hollered up somewhere for the night. I’m glad the local raccoons didn’t discover their hideout.

Base 11

OK, any Math Heads out there? The Arabic numerals we use is called Base 10, which means once you go above the number 9 you need to place a digit in front and proceeded going from zero to nine again. We all know how it works.

Now what I’d like to know is what would the symbol for the number 10 look like if our system was based upon Base 11 and wouldn’t the word Base 10 mean Base Eleven?

W

I wonder about the letter W. It isn’t two U’s at all. It is more like a double V. Besides U is a vowel and W is only a vowel rarely along with Y. I’m all for the letter W; some of my favorite words include it, but I don’t think it should be called a Double-U. No more than E should be called an F with a base, or a q ba called an O with a penis, or an X should be called Crossed I’s.

Chickens Know What They Like

Chickens are just weird, which I guess is a good thing. I built them the Super Max coop to keep them safe. Inside the coop are five nest boxes custom made to specifications the chicken experts all agree upon as the best design. They do lay eggs in the boxes, but when I let them out every day to free range they make their rounds. Occasionally I’ll find an egg here and there but they’ve discovered a new favorite laying spot. They love to go into one of the horse stalls and lay eggs in one of the horse feeders. Fortunately my horses aren’t egg eaters, but I do have check before putting their horse food in there.

Go To Goggo

In the quest of a more fuel efficient transportation without the loss of any luxury, which seems odd to me, the auto industry came up with the hybrid. If they were really serious they should start producing Goggomobiles again.

The Goggomobile was a Bavarian automobile manufactured by Glas Auto. Glas Auto was later taken over by BMW. One could buy for a price between $800 and $1500. It had a 15 HP engine and boasted of fuel consumption at 70 miles per gallon. There were 219,531 sedans and 66,511 coupés built from 1955 to 1969. Between 1957 and 1961 some 700 sports cars known as Darts, not to be confused with the Dodge Dart, were produced.



One may wonder why not a Smart Car? Weighing in at 1800 pounds, the Smart Car is twice the weight of the Goggo, it’s maximum speed is 90MPS nearly double that of the Goggo, however the fuel efficiency of the Smart Car is only 31 MPG where the Goggo got 70MPG.

I know you are probably going to tell me about all the safety and pollution stuff that kills any chance that it will ever have improved fuel efficiency. But you can still find Goggo’s to buy out there. Wouldn’t it be cool to drive one?

Shocking!

It is always interesting when a media darling falls from grace and exposes themselves as just a common human with faults like the rest of us. Every year you can count on at least one person falling every month. In recent months we had Tiger Woods, David Letterman, just about every politician in South Carolina. Think about the long list of others: Bill Clinton, Marv Albert, Elliot Spencer, Jimmy Swagert, David Copperfield, Gary Hart, Pee Wee Herman. I’m surprised we are even surprised by this sort of stuff anymore.

Back in the old days scandal was so much more innocent. Sure there were people like Fatty Arbuckle that had their careers ruined over big stuff, but the innocence I am talking about is events like what happened to Uncle Don.

Uncle Don was a radio host for a children’s radio show. Don was really popular and on the air six-days a week. One day after the show ended an engineer neglected to turn off his microphone and Uncle Don was heard to say, "There, I hope that'll hold the little bastards."

Some say this took place on WOR in New York in 1939. Though Snopes.com tries and tries to shoot holes in this event ever actually happening, my mother remembers it clearly, and I recall hearing a bloopers record with the event back in the 60’s when I was a kid.

It is so strange that things like that shocked the masses, and here I sit wondering why they still bleep John Stewart ever he uses the “F” word. I mean, everyone knows what he is saying, so what’s the BFD? If I may quote another historic shocker, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” about the words that are used as long as the grammar is correct.

Sick Day XXXII

I am sick of people that go into long boring detail about a dream they’ve had. Worse than that I’m sick of people that go into long detail about a movie or a TV show they say. But what really make me sick is when someone goes into every intimate detail about some food they ate especially when you know their favorite cuisine is wherever there is a all you can eat buffet and they won't attend an event unless someone is feeding them. Rat Bastards and Rat Bitches!