Stuff happens when you're on the road...

You go away for a few days and...
NOTHING stands still in your absence.

Linda and I were in Austin, Texas on business for four days and it seems as though life in San Diego went on without me. Imagine.
I came home to around 1,000 e-mails, (got to get a spam filter), lots of junk snail mail and a stack of San Diego Union-Tribunes, Wall Street Journals and Investor's Business Dailies. You really need to check out the latter for its editorial page. The best! No commies allowed.

Also, waiting for me was the latest New Yorker with a wonderful mention of the work being done by daughter Kelly Copper and her husband, Pavol Liska with their Nature Theater of Oklahoma.





Kelly & Pavol (The talk of New York theater and hair stylists everywhere.)


Sifting through the mail, papers and magazines I am also made aware of a few other changes. My ass has definitely gotten wider from all my trough time in Austin eateries and I notice that the thieving weasels in congress have decided to toss us all a bone in the form of some tax rebate check that we may or may not see sometime this year. I'm not certain what exactly we are supposed to do with this gift of our own money but I think it has been suggested that we use it to buy more potato chips at WalMart. I'm fairly certain that they don't want us to spend it on over-priced houses or whiskey. Although, right now the whiskey looks like it might provide the better return.
Isn't it grand that we have these fine public servants looking out for our money? Yes sir, we're lucky that we don't have to handle that filthy loot ourselves. We might do something really stupid like put it in a bank. They're safe aren't they? What???

It's good to be home.

Mama's Got a Squeeze Box!

It takes real talent to make the button box accordion hip and exciting and that's exactly what LynnMarie has. In spades!

I first heard her while driving in the wilds of Minnesota with my pal The Skipper. She was on the radio of our rental car as we wheeled our way to the 40th reunion of the Spencer, Iowa high school class of '66. The song was, "That's What I Like About the North" and it was funny with a kickass funky attitude. The Skipper and I looked at each other and said, "Who is this? She's great!"
Now, nearly two years later, she has been a guest on the internet radio show I co-host with Clark Anthony at SignOnradio.com and she is just as nice as she is talented. Her music is a wonderful combination of old-fashioned Polka, rock n' roll, zydeco and country. It's so flat out HAPPY that it makes your feet move in spite of yourself.


Lynn and her musical partner and arranger, guitarist Charlie Kelley, are making magic in Nashville these days and I'm betting you'll be hearing more about her real soon.

Right now, LynnMarie , Charlie and "The Boxhounds" are working on a new album with vocal greats like Dobie Grey and Hal Ketchum. If it's even close to her "Party Dress" CD, it will make you want to move in with it. Check out cuts like: Squeeze Box, Stuck in the Middle with You, and Happy Feet on "Party Dress" and you'll see what I mean.



LynnMarie...visit her website at: lynnmarie.net

She'll put a smile on your face!



Full disclosure: Lynn did give Clark and me free coffee mugs. (Hey, we were disc jockeys. It's expected!)

Thank God for the statute of limitations...

It's good that they can't get you for stuff you've pulled in the distant past.
I'm not sure what the statute of limitations entails, but it would appear to render stupid actions on your part "okee dokie" after a certain amount of time has past.
I certainly hope so.

For example: I can't wait for my friend Judy to spill the names of big time celebrities she has taken on fat burning hikes for the ritzy spa that employs her. She has hinted broadly rgarding their identity, but claims that if she ever breathes a word of this hot dish she will be canned. Good whiskey and large glasses should be able to pry the names of the Hollywood lard-o's from her when the spa police are no longer a concern.


What got me thinking about the passage of time and information that may have been damaging was this: A close friend was cleaning his garage recently when he came across a picture of a distinguished looking gentleman in a rather exquisite lighted frame. It appeared to be the picture of the head of a corporation or at least a major do mo of some sort. The guy looked to be Scrooge McDuck rich.

Eventually it came to my friend. The man in the fancy frame was at one time the president of a major American broadcasting group. The name was no longer in the instant recall section of my friend's think melon, but he remembered that the guy had been a big deal some twenty-five years ago. How had this picture come to be in this garage?

Suddenly it came back to him. My friend had returned to San Diego after a five year long "West Coast Tour" of radio stations up and down the coast. In the sixties, seventies and eighties it was still common for on-air radio broadcasters to be itinerant job hoppers drifting "town to town up and down the dial", as they say in the theme song of WKRP in Cincinnati. Anyway...my friend was back in San Diego and reconnecting with old radio pals and one thing led to another. He had consumed a few cocktails, (Have you ever noticed how true boozers never have drinks? They have cocktails!), with his longtime degenerate buddy...Mr. X. (Okay, Bill.)

Somewhere around 11PM Bill mentioned that it would be a swell idea to take his newly returned bud on a tour of the local NBC TV station where Bill was the station booth announcer. (A booth announcer is the guy who records all the station Id's and promotional announcements.)

It was a marvelous tour I'm told. Bill took my friend through a sea of puzzled faces in the newsroom and even dropped by the director's booth while the 11 O'clock news was in progress. It was a tour that, I'm sure, the Boy and Girl Scouts never received. A tour that was the talk of the station for weeks to come.

As the two radio reprobates made their way to the lobby where the tour had begun, Bill went to the wall where the lighted picture of the then president of the company was hung and removed it from its place of prominence and handed it to his buddy.
"Here pal....everyone gets one of these as a souvenir of the station."
It seemed perfectly logical at the time...Or, so I'm told.

I wonder if Judy might be able to use a classy lighted frame when she is ready to give up a big name show biz lard ass?

What's Wrong with This Picture?

I have no idea who our next president is going to be.
At this point, I'm fairly certain that even the political cognoscenti haven't a clue.
This much I do know....
One thing that all of us need to demand of our next leader is an unbreakable promise to NEVER EVER beg for oil from the repressive sheiks of the house of Saud. It simply MUST stop!
Ever since the administration of FDR, our leaders Republican and Democrat alike, have prostituted themselves and our country for the sake of Saudi oil. It has netted us $100 a barrel oil that finances the very Islamic fanatics who want to kill us and has perpetuated a family run country with one of the most shameful human rights records in the world.

President Bush's recent trip to Saudi Arabia snared him nothing more than a "We will raise production when the market justifies it", from Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi as he laughed in our national face.
We need a president who will do something more than shrug his shoulders and ask for the customary donation to his presidential library. No, we need a president who will say something like this: "You have ten days to give us whatever we need or we smoke your ass! Oh, and by the way....take that laundry off your head!"

If we are not ready to do this, then we must insist that our president do whatever it takes to develop alternative sources of energy for America. NOW!
Who is willing to tell these despicable dirtbags to pound sand?
That is MY NEXT PRESIDENT.

Nothing Exceeds Like Excess!

It was considered bad form to ask Eddie"Bozo" Miller to pass anything.
He couldn't.
He was too busy breaking records as the "world's greatest trencherman". At least that's what the folks at the Guinness Book of World Records called him.




Eddie Miller pigging down in Oakland






Eddie Miller picked-up the check and exited the planet on January 7 shortly after a rather small, for him, lunch of a French Dip sandwich. "They're going to stuff me," he told a reporter with the Oakland Tribune who asked about any plans he may have had for his funeral.

Mr. Miller was 89 years old and had consumed in his lifetime quantities of food and drink that had won many mentions in the Guinness book.
For example: He once won a contest in Idaho Falls, Idaho by eating 30 pounds of elk and moose meatloaf. On a bet, he chugged a whole bottle of gin. In a single sitting, he downed 27 two-pound pullets of chicken and 324 raviolis. He often ate as many as 11 meals a day for a total of roughly 25,000 calories. Lunch was more times than not preceded by a dozen martinis.
The guy was a bottomless pit.

George Shea, the chairman of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, says that the organization will have a moment of silence to honor Eddie at its Nathan' Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island this July 4.

For years Eddie had been one of Oakland's most prominent men about town. He kept boxes of perfume and pearls in his car as "gifts for the ladies". His car was a bright yellow Cadillac. I'm guessing it had overload springs.

A Date With Judy

If you'll glance to your right, you'll see a link for Judy McDonald's blog.
For big game hunting at its finest, check out her video on catching a mouse with Tupperware.

This adventure beats Anything available on Animal Planet.
Trust me. Click on her BLOG and prepare to be entertained.

The part of the mouse is played by Irving R. Feldstein.

Embracing your inner Eddie...

The garage door goes up and she's off.
My wife has left on some errand and I am alone in the house.

My mind goes into trouble overdrive. Where are those scissors? Matches?
I immediately think of what neighbors' house to egg. I dismiss this as too risky in broad daylight.
I could let the air out of some tires. Checking the garage it occurs to me that only my car is an available target. Where is the fun in that??
How about sneaking some of dad's whiskey? In the 1960's, between my brother and me the old man's booze supply once consisted of gin and whiskey so watered down that it would today be considered a health drink.

Then it dawns on me. I am two months away from my sixtieth birthday; not my sixteenth!
Does this happen to all guys? This overwhelming desire to seek out and fall in love with any and all trouble that resides within a hundred mile radius??? Are we all destined to embrace our inner Eddie Haskel until the day we check into the mahogany Hilton?

I have decided that the answer is YES.



Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some mischief to sniff out.

Where did you say your old man keeps his Camels?