James Rising

Sylvia Robinson, a singer, songwriter and record producer who formed the pioneering hip-hop group Sugarhill Gang and made the first commercially successful rap recording with them, died on Thursday in Edison, N.J. She was 75.

Sylvia Robinson pioneering producer of hip-hop dies

The protest centered around the law proposed to ban nudity in San Francisco. Actually over the use of a towel to sit on if you are.

It’s legal to be nude in San Fran…so wear some flowers in your hair, or in the case of these guys something more. Please?
More here

Some of the names here have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent. In the big scheme of things this is not at the top of the list. But still it baffles me why anyone in this economy would turn down money for honest work.
Let me back up here. I have some friends who are part of a club. We will say it’s the ferret club to protect their identities. Imagine a group of ordinary folks who love all things ferrets. They have little gatherings of their little club in the summer, putting the ferrets thru their paces and award trophies for the best ferrets.

Once a month these ferret lovers like to gather and break bread. They choose among all the fine area eating joints and never had a problem. Never until the last meeting, that is.

The ferret club group on this evening numbered 9. They got a table at a local place known for its pizza. They asked the server if it would be a problem if they could please have separate checks and that’s when the night got ugly. I wasn’t there but I can recreate the scene. The waitress snapped her gum and placing her hand on her hip rolled her eyes. “We only do separate checks for parties of 8 or less.” She dug in her heels and as far as she was concerned that was that. The ferret club consulted each other and made a counter offer. They would combine orders so the waitress would need to write only four checks. No sale.

Now bear in mind that there were 9 people. One over the limit and no ferrets in sight. The manager was summoned. He backed his waitress up.

The ferret club looked at each other and agreed to leave and reconvene elsewhere.

I did a quick survey on the phone this morning. I called quite a few different restaurants. Coopers. Bennigan’s. Ollie’s, Hops and Barley’s. The Chicken Coop. The Dough Company. Pizza Hut. The Olive Garden. Ruby Tuesdays. Cracker Barrel. Red Lobster. Applebees. Lonestar Steak house. The results of my unscientific poll? Each restaurant I called said “no problem.” Would I like to make a reservation?

In the big scheme of things the loss of the restaurant that wouldn’t write separate checks was probably just over $100. The waitress, if she was tipped 20% would have made $20.

It’s not much money I know. But let me put it to you another way. One of the ferret club gave me a gift certificate to the restaurant in question. Why? They had received it as a gift and didn’t want to ever go back there, even for free. Ask yourself this.

If you owned this restaurant, would you want that to happen?

Radio DaZe: WHYN…yawn

WHYN was not a real exciting station. It was formatted extremely tightly and had a very small playlist. As I recall there were only two “oldies” per hour so the amount of variety was limited. Plus they hung onto songs like the life of the PD depended on it. After a few months I was bored. When I get bored I get into trouble and eventually that is just what happened.

I always felt a little bit like an outsider at WHYN. It started from my first day when I walked into the control room to get trained and saw my resume hanging on the bulletin board. WTF? It looked to me like they were justifying hiring me to the staff. It made me very paranoid. Especially when somebody scrawled “Our next superstar?” on it. There was a LOT of jealousy from a few of the fulltimers who thought they should have gotten the job, rather than this hick kid from New Hampshire, for crying out loud.

I did make friends with the afternoon drive guy, Jerry Daniels, and we traded some good-natured barbs on the air for a while until the PD put a stop to that. Creative thinking was not encouraged at WHYN.

You see, I was quick to discover that the real star of the morning show was not the DJ, but the news guy, Ron Russell. Ron had this real hokey upbeat delivery that bordered on frenetic. He made the news very interesting and had been a mainstay on the station for years. I was just another morning guy. A few times Ron would come in and look at me and just shake his head.

“Do you know how many people you are talking to?” he asked me once.

“All of them,” I responded, being my usual smart ass self.

WHYN did have a huge audience (and I had one huge fan that I will tell you about in a moment) and with it’s massive signal and a ground strap connected to the Connecticut river it boomed over the air. But it was an AM in the time that FM was beginning to make big inroads to the listeners and it’s time was nearly over.

WHYN was guilty of not wanting or knowing how to change with the times. They did the same old promotions in the same old way every time. It was boring and predictable to me and I bet to the audience as well. But they certainly did micromanage every move.

A big yearly promotion was held at Mountain Park, an old style amusement park. They opened the gates for free and gave away all sorts of stuff, free food, etc. The highlight was a stage show by a band. The year I was there they got Donnie Most, who played Ralph Malph from “Happy Days”. Most had a record that sucked out loud (All roads lead back to you) that we had been playing the shit out of to hype his appearance. The record peaked at 97 on the charts. The DJ’s job was to introduce him so he could lip synch his big hit.

The PD and the GM must have generated a dozen multi-page memos about this event. It was planned down to the microsecond. Too bad they didn’t give Donnie the memos as he showed up so trashed that he forget the lyrics to his song. I thought it was hysterical and couldn’t stop laughing. Phil Dee was not amused. It was the beginning of the end for me at “the big 56”.

My biggest fan? I met her at the Forest Park Zoo.

At the time the Forest Park zoo was pretty grim. We used to spend a lot of time in the park (It was free) and one time we strolled though the zoo. James (Jamie) would have been about 2. The only real exhibit was a poor old elephant tied to a stake in this ramshackle shed. It stunk, was dark and was very depressing. But I wanted to show my son an elephant.

So we stood at the railing and I pointed out the large creature to my son, like he could miss it. In the background I could hear a radio playing WHYN.

As soon as I spoke the pachyderm looked right at us. I said in a loud voice “Look, Jamie, the elephant sees you.”

To this day I am unsure what the beast was thinking. I know it it recognized my voice because every time I spoke the thing lunged at us, and made that elephant trumpet noise. Jaimie became terrified and the keeper came over to ask us to leave. Weird, but true.

We had found a cheesy apartment in East Longmeadow, oddly enough. Now we would call it “The Projects”. It was called a townhouse, I guess because it had two floors. Edna had found typing that she could do at home, some sort of manuscripts. It was lot of typing for not much money but she did it because she didn’t have to leave the house and we saved on gas and baby sitters. Edna was big on saving money, which was good because we sure didn’t have much. Since the place was so small she set herself up in closet underneath the stairs. I don’t know how she did it, it was so small that you had to go out to change your mind.

My time off from work was not real productive. Looking back on it I think I may have been clinically depressed. I remember drinking a lot and sleeping a lot. It was a boring existence for the “superstar” morning man of the biggest station in town.

NEXT: Don and Mike keep calling and the end at WHYN gets ugly.

I betray my advanced years here. When I was first in a position to start buying stereo and video stuff (in other words as soon as I had a paying job) I studied my options carefully and thoroughly educated myself before I dared to step into the “Hi-Fi” shop.

A few words about “Hi-Fi” shop. Back in those days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and birds had big leather wings and could carry collies away for dinner there were indeed stand alone stores which specialized in stereo equipment. It seems quaint but it’s true.

Loving music and wanting the best I could afford I subscribed to magazines like Stereo Review and High Fidelity so I could make intelligent choices. The salesmen at these “Hi-Fi” shops were scholars of the art. Often wearing tweed jackets with leather elbow patches and smoking pipes they would pontificate at length and really help you make a purchase.

Compare and contrast my recent experience at a store which we will call “Next Guy.” First of all a visit to this type of store raises my blood pressure and gives me a headache. It’s loud. And bright. And busy. I was wanting to buy a Blu-Ray DVD player that connects to the Wi-Fi in my house so I could watch on-line movies. I was educated and knew what I wanted.

The first person I talked to wearing the store shirt was “from another department” and couldn’t help me. Judging by the fact that he looked like he had been kissing a nail gun with piercings covering most of his epidermis I think he may have been from another dimension. The next two guys gave me a brush off with “IDK” (I don’t know) like I was speaking Martian. The fourth guy wanted to help. I could tell. But when he tried to sell me a $70 dollar accessory which was already included in the unit I was considering I hardly knew what to say.

In the middle of this discussion “Next Guy” number five joined us. This guy was sporting a soul patch that dangled several inches below his chin and had been braided with colorful beads. I found it hard to not look at it. But he chased the guy away who was trying to sell me the unnecessary stuff. Then he proceeded to diss every player in the store except the ones that exceeded my budget by several hundred bucks. He lost interest in me as a customer when I told him what I was willing to spend.

On my own I found what I wanted and vowed next time to buy on-line.

I wonder why retail brick and mortar stores go out of business?

I was “bumped” for a paid ad. So this is the only place you will see this deathless prose. Enjoy!

In the big scheme of things it’s not a pimple on the butt of progress. That’s a saying of my Father but he used to say ass. I toned it down for this family publication. I have no clue what it means but I like it nonetheless. I think it means its small potatoes. And speaking of potatoes I will miss the golden French fried ones at the Bloomsburg Fair.

That’s really what I am talking about. People have lost homes, businesses, entire live washed downstream in the raging waters of the Susquehanna. And I have the nerve to bitch about French fries? Yeah. I do. I wish it was going on as it should be as you read this. It really would be a good thing, a break for those reeling from the devastation. But the fair is reeling itself.

The Bloomsburg Fair is something that I look forward to every year. I know that I am not alone because 400,000 some odd people go there every year. Some of them odder than you can imagine. But people watching and face stuffing will have to wait a year.

Can’t believe I won’t get a “Top O’ the Beef” this year. Bummer. The good potato pancakes in in the stand by the dog show. Coors orange juice. The great roasted peanuts. Bummer. Sammy’s cheese-steaks, a truly unique taste. Gross’s French fries which are not. May’s Barbeques. Carmel apples. Funnel cake. Those gargantuan blueberry muffins. Did I mention Coors orange juice? Bummer.

I caught a Facebook rumor that a few of the vendors are setting up on roadsides near the fair. I applaud them and I hope they get something back. I can’t imagine what a dead loss like that does to some of them. I predict a few will not return in 2012. The timing was so unbelievably bad. Tropical storm Lee did its worst on the day that vendors were to start setting up.

Here is something from the Bloomsburg Fair web page:
“Some people on Facebook have offered to donate their ticket purchase price to the fair for our flood recovery fund. If you wish to do this, please let us know by letter or email. We would like to thank those in advance for their consideration of doing this.

You can find out more at www.bloomsburgfair.com.

I suppose my Cholesterol and blood sugar is glad there is no fair. But I think it’s no fair.
Bummer.

It is the great equalizer. Everyone has to submit. Birth, death, taxes and…the visit to the DMV every four years to get your mug shot taken and pasted in a new license. As I sat at the Pa. Department of Motor Vehicles in the Hanover industrial park the other day I wondered a lot of things. First of all I wondered why it was taking so long. I could feel brain cells withering while the minutes passed like molasses on a sub freezing January day. The ticket produced by the grimy machine promised a 17 minute wait. Hemingway, Faulkner and Dickens couldn’t write better fiction. Our elapsed time from doorway to doorway was just under an hour.

Oh and about that grimy machine that produces your number in line. It’s the first thing you see as you enter the facility. It has clear instructions. It’s not brain science. And yet as we waited a human gestation period I observed many who followed us just did not quite get how to or what to do. My thought? If you can’t figure that part out then how do you operate a motor vehicle? Of course having also observed the so called driving skills of NEPA my question is answered.

Another wondering in my dwindling brain cells was how the hell you could get out of this. I peeked at the statutes and found that indeed you could get a license with no photo if A: you were going to be absent from PA for up to 90 days around your license renewal time (a temporary reprieve to be sure) or B: if your religious beliefs (think Amish or Mennonites) prohibit having your photo taken. It raises the question why would the Amish who drive horse and buggy vehicles would need a license in the first place but that’s another line of inquiry.

So basically everyone has to do the long wait at the DMV. Which would explain why the uncomfortable chairs were filled with an assortment of humanity that more resembled the Cantina scene in the “Star Wars” movie. A bald guy sporting a Z.Z. Top style beard. A woman with nearly as much facial hair. A guy with a large gold medallion on a long chain swinging near his belt. A guy wearing a turban. Would they make him take it off? I had plenty of time to observe and think about such things in my wait. I wondered if the governor has to do this. The president? What about movie stars or other famous people? I have trouble picturing Donald Trump or Steve Jobs at the DMV. Of course they probably don’t drive anyway, right?

Tuesday Review: Mr. Saturday Night 1992 R 118 minutes

It’s odd how you stumble into watching a movie sometimes. I was watching an episode of “The Larry Sanders Show” and the guest was Billy Crystal. He was pissed at Larry because he wasn’t plugging his “New” movie “Mr. Saturday Night”.

I don’t know if it’s just internet voodoo, some sort of sinister SEO or just coincidence, but the Netflix Top Ten for James showed this as my number one choice.

So what could I do? Don’t get me started.

I believe this was Bill Crystal’s directorial debut and if it was it was excellent. Of course the material and the character wasn’t exactly stretch for Crystal but he inhabited Buddy Young so perfectly that you could swear he was real.

The movie follows the life and career of comedian Buddy Young Jr. Think Don Rickles with a mean streak, if you can imagine that.

Of course Buddy is just a creation of Crystal’s fertile mind, with him sharing writing nods with the team of Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel (Parenthood, Robots) but you almost feel like Goggling him to see what he really looked like.

David Paymer does a sincere job as Stan, Young’s under-recognized agent brother. There are some really touching scenes between the two as they come to grips with what their relationship and their lives are about.

The other stand out is Helen Hunt as Annie Wells, Young’s new talent agent after his brother leaves for Florida. She is the perfect foil for Young’s steamroller approach even after a slow start.

It won no awards, and did little box office, probably because people were thinking they were going to see a comedy. While the movie did have it’s funny moments it was more than anything a moving drama about a guy who wanted it all but who kept getting in his own way.

Trailer provided by Video Detective

My hearing is not as acute as it once was. I have gone to literally thousands of loud concerts. One time, at a Ted Nugent show somebody threw an M-80 (for those of you who don’t know, an M-80 is a firecracker with the explosive power of a ¼ stick of dynamite) next to me. I felt it but never heard it.

While living at home I got tired of my parents yelling at me to turn the GD music down so I bought headphones. Several pairs, because I would melt the elements out of them. But in spite of this aural damage I have done to myself I can still hear pretty well. Hear enough that the amount of sound rudeness I hear everyday gets on my auditory as well as other nerves. First of all, modern cell phones have very sensitive microphones. Why is it then that people in cell phone conversations in public places feel they have to SHOUT? This usually takes place in a crowded restaurant where the noise level already exceeds that of a 747 taking off.

Oh and about conversation. Sometimes in grocery stores I learn more than I really care to about the lives of others. Does anybody remember the difference between indoor voices and outdoor voices?

But the biggest offenders in the noise sweepstakes are motor vehicles. I live next a road that is busy during the day but less so at night. With the windows open we can hear deer moving in the woods surrounding our home. That is we can when there is not a car going by with the steady LOUD bass thrum from an overly loud stereo. Hey, as I mentioned, I like loud music too, but not at 3am. Oh and then there is the newspaper delivery guys muffler. It wakes me up every morning. For the past five years. Any chance you could visit Midas there, pal?

But by far the worst offense to my battered ear drums is when I am walking in a parking lot, minding my own business and someone locks the car. When I’m not expecting it, and I never am, the loud chirps of the alert mechanism or horn can make me jump three feet in the air and drop the groceries. When you lock or unlock the car with the little remote the lights flash, the horn blows and generally everyone in a three block radius knows about it. There is a setting that allows you to silence it. The lights flashing will confirm the action and anyway you can hear the loud click of the locks going down. How about it? I think you can hear what I am saying.

Popebusters!

Germans were protesting Pope Bendict XVI’s visit. Pretty sure there is some copyright infringement here.