P.S. A Column On Things

Voting has never been easier

Until after the election, this item will be at the top of my column.

Here are the relevant focus-grouped mottoes: Democracy is stronger when we all vote! Your Neighbors Are Waiting For You To Vote!

These links apply to the entire country:

It is now trivial to Get Your Absentee Ballot

In case you live in a place where some people are trying to throw you off the voter rolls, check on your status and register if need be:

Am I registered to vote?

Feel free to share to share this item with others:

Short version (suitable for posters and written letters): tinyurl.com/1psacot1

Long version: Voting has never been easier

 

Good Advice

Start of September 16 Column. More or Less Continuous News Service since 1998

72 Life Lessons For My 72nd Birthday

Why yes, someone else did this first. It’s a great idea, which is why I did it. It took a few days, but I finally hit 72 Life Lessons, in no particular order. Most of them are from my mother and father, as should be. Experience and reading are the next two sources, and my college mentor Edwin Diamond appears twice, while my high school machine shop teacher, Mr. Casper, appears once.

Then, I came up with more lessons:

• In the long run, we're all dead, so everything matters now
• Don't let fear rule your life
• Life is short, and then you die. Have a nice day anyway
     Or Life is a witch and then you fly
• Life is unfair, get over it
• Live is like a shit sandwich; every day you take another bite
• Life is like a sewer: you get out of it what you put into it

Grandkids: Grandson: Radio Swiss Classic

I have been introducing my grandson to the “Radio Swiss Classic” lifestyle; we listen to the internet classical music channel, which merely postannounces the music and ID’s the channel, 24/7, at home and in the car. My grandson has a very good ear. I listen to the French version (as opposed to the German or Italian; for some reason, no Romansch version). If I say “Radio Swiss Classic,” he corrects me: “Radio Suisse Classique, Abba.”

Saying Goodbye Redux

Apropos of the recent Saying Goodbye item, No Chance To Say Goodbye―Radio and Elsewhere .

Blogger and reader S.M Oliva passed this along, about my friend and one-time television co-host George Morrow:

Here's the complete item. From the June 1986 issue of LOTUS Magazine (yes, the Lotus 1-2-3 folks) in a profile written by Paul Freiberger.

---

Morrow's parents owned a small diner and their son was no overachiever. He was a loner who collected records and occasionally tinkered with radios. After dropping out of high school, he traveled with a friend around the United States, Canada, and Mexico, taking odd jobs to get by. "I must have had a hundred jobs," he says. "My resume was an encyclopedia."

Once he and his pal worked as radio show cohosts in Lincoln, Nebraska. "We had to get a little tipsy so we wouldn't be afraid of the mike," says Morrow. "When the boss told us to do the show sober, we had to leave."

---

A veteran radio man of my acquaintance, asked to offer any similar tales from his decades in the business: “Well, that’s a new one on me! Party on AM and FM!”

Broadcasting Giant Gary Owens

While we’re on the subject of radio (from age 5 to age 21, I wanted nothing more than to be a radio man myself), in the process of preparing a (coming soon) tribute to Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, I fell down the Google Hole looking for information on the show’s announcer. Like many announcers and gameshow hosts back in the day, Owen’s day job was at LA radio station KMPC, the crowning glory of a long radio career.

What I discovered was that “shallow fakes” long preceded deep fakes. I ran into a clip of Owens claming to be an aircheck at KORN (no kidding!) radio  in the 1950s.

I wrote the same radio friend as above: “Neither his voice, nor his delivery, nor his sense of humor, changed much in the intervening decade or so before KMPC and Laugh-In.”

To which he pointed out it was unlikely Owens sounded like that as a beginner; most likely it was a recreation he recorded for some much later event at KORN.

Turns out I’d been victimized by a similar “shallow fake.” As a boy, I was given a record I presumed was the actual recording of CBS coverage of the start of World War II, as spoken by the reporters at the time. Many years later, I learned that it was a recreation for the CBS radio series Hear It Now. All it takes for a shallow fake: you’re still employing the same people years later, who can read the same scripts.

--Mogul, the Friendly Drelb

Meme O' The Week: Proofreader's Marks

Thank you Esther Schindler on LinkedIn for finding Grant Snider's cartoon.

Movie: Blink Twice*****

An entertaining look at toxic masculinity if such a thing is possible. Both comedy and tragedy in unequal measure.

This movie is too easy to spoil so technical notes only. Heartily recommended.

• It has a very satisfying  ending. 
• Just over 90 minutes. Good length.
• Women everywhere. Director and co-writer Zoë Kravitz. Definitely passed the Bechdel test. Lots of women who talk about things other than men.
• As I have said before, plays deal with issues and entertain, movies generally just entertain.  Blink Twice is an exception.

This and That

Another Politics Lesson
At Beaver Boy’s State a half century ago, I learned that a campaign that wins a primary can lose the general election. Being the Edible Can Man did not win me a handshake from Gov. McCall. Perhaps a lesson for today.
…
Perspective

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
--Mother Teresa

 “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”
--Carl Sagan
…

Cartoons About Me

Apropos of my series about my being a type nerd:

Anyone who knows me will chortle at this gender-switched truism about me (and my late mother)

 

End of September 16 Column (No. 947)

Start of September 9 Column. More or Less Continuous News Service since 1998

Getting Out The Vote Wasn't This Easy Back In The Day

Back in 1972, when I worked on George McGovern’s quixotic run against the criminal Nixon, we used landline phones to call registered voters, reminding them to vote and offering rides to the polls.

The technology of the 21^st century has changed that. If you’re registered, you can vote in the privacy of your own home. And you don’t have to guess if you’re registered.

Of course there’s still room for the human touch; I just addressed 25 postcards to female no-party-registered voters, asking them to vote. Not to vote for someone, just to vote.

I have mentioned before  my streak of bad luck; I helped Wayne Morse lose his Senate seat, Art Pearl to lose his run for Oregon governor, Bobby Kennedy to lose the Oregon Primary, and, of course McGovern.  I think I’m a jinx, so if TFG had a ground operation in California, I’d sign up.

One other quick note. The Bill Of Rights contains only one responsibility: jury duty. Clearly, voting is another responsibility. But the founding fathers didn’t bother to mention it because they couldn’t imagine anyone who had the right to vote not voting. After all, that was the whole point of the American Revolution. This simply demonstrates their lack of imagination.

Grandkids: Grandson: Unicookie

My daughter bought a container of cookie dough, and my grandson and I rolled it into balls and placed it on a sheet of parchment paper in a baking pan. His previous effort had resulted in a unicookie. We tried spreading the balls apart and rolling smaller balls. Mihir would consistently grab my balls, peel off about a third of the dough and have me reroll them,

Instead of one unicookie, we ended up with several smaller ones that were easier to break apart once cooled. My MIT friends suggested doing cookies in a muffin tin, being careful to insure that the center is cooked. They also suggested smaller balls and wider spacing. I think my grandson is ready for MIT.

Things That Float Into My Mind

I am nothing if not a creature of habit. I found myself reminiscing about the start of my announcing career at Benson Polytechnic. To listen to me, you’d think our founder had three first names: Millionaire Lumberman Philanthropist. He was Simon to his friends.

And then there was the award-winning Benson band. Conductor Harold Rowe glowered at the fact that I used that adjective a dozen times after the band won an award, but it had the added charm of being true.

Meme O’ The Week: Unflattering Yet True