I've Got A MILLION of Them!

The two or three of you who follow this Internet enhanced nervous breakdown may recall that, on occasion, I have been more than willing to pass on some "can't miss" million dollar ideas that have been swirling in my melon just looking for a home. Who can forget the Erotic Car Alarm?
Did you cash in on that one? It was a sure fire ticket to big bucks for someone. I generally fore go executing these brainstorms myself in order to continue the creative process. I am an IDEA guy you see and prefer to leave the actual work and glory to others.


Of course I miss an opportunity once in a while...
The New York Mets picking the pocket, or what's left of the pocket, of Citi Bank for roughly a bazillion dollars in naming rights for their new ballpark is a prime example. (Actually, the Mets are sticking up the Federal government since Citi is flat broke from doing deals just like this!)

But, I digress...

Here is a scam...er great idea that I floated in the early 1980s when I toiled as a morning disc jockey in San Francisco. I may have been slightly ahead of my time on this one; so feel free to resurrect it some twenty-seven years after the fact.

I had read a story in a Bay Area magazine or newspaper regarding the expense of the non-stop painting of the Golden Gate Bridge. The coatings of the bridge in what they call "International Orange" is a year round chore and it occurred to me that the city was missing the chance to pawn off this budget buster to a sponsor of some kind. I launched a small campaign to farm the job out to the Guldens Mustard company in return for the structure's naming rights. Guldens would be allowed to paint the bridge mustard yellow and dub the span "THE GULDEN'S GATE BRIDGE".

The radio station general manager mentioned that ideas like this made his decision to fire me an easy one. As you can see, he was a short-sighted moron. The dream is still there and it's yours for the taking. Get the Guldens people on the phone NOW!


Small minded idiots like Fritz are the reason that radio is in the toilet today!

Oooh, here is another one I've been sitting on: How does "Horse Opera Digest" grab you? You know...Just as soap opera fans have "Soap Opera Digest" to keep them up on their favorite soaps and stars, "Horse Opera Digest" would be the magazine for middle-aged guys who love nothing more than watching re-runs of Bonanza on cable TV at all hours.

The "Hoss" episodes are classics!

You should have no problem locating start-up money for this goldmine. (Again, I would do it myself but I'm an idea man.

It took me nearly ten years of sobriety to come up with this one...

Actually it came to me in one of my more thirsty dreams.

Twelve Step Liquors, " where you're never more than twelves steps from your next drink" smells like money in the bank to me. Take it; run with it!

Finally, what you see pictured here is the largest un-tapped pocket of natural gas known to man. Figure out how to tap this and you've solved America's energy problems for generations to come!

These ideas are all yours. Take them and make your dreams of fabulous wealth come true.

If you need me, I'll be right here noodling out more money making ideas. Well, either that or talking to my therapist.

You're welcome!

They Just Don't Get It...

Nobody seemed more surprised by the turnout for yesterday's "Tea Party" than the dolts in big media. It was almost comical to watch as the nimrods at CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC tried to minimize the stalwarts who are fed up with a tax system that asks only about half of us to pay the freight for keeping the federal government in business.

It would be something else if we actually saw our money being spent in a responsible way on things necessary for the country and its citizens continued survival and well being. But NO, those of us who still pay are being asked to fork over our hard earned jack for programs that exist only to perpetuate the careers of professional politicians who buy the gratitude and goodwill of an emerging class of perpetual dependants.

Less than 10% of the population of the United States that makes more than $92,400 per year pays 72.4% of our national income tax. That is WRONG! It is a recipe for fiscal and emotional bankruptcy of the country and it must stop NOW.

Nowhere in the constitution is there a guarantee of health care, welfare benefits or federally funded retirement plans. These are all merely "nice to have" if the country can afford it. (Hell, you could make a better case for a right to have free food.) This has gotten so completely out of hand that drastic measures are required__SOON.

This isn't a new dilemma created by our current recession. It was crafted by professional politicians, both Democratic and Republican, whose penultimate goal is to remain RE_ELECTABLE. After all, the business of politicians is to get re-elected and they are always ALL business.

America needs a flat tax NOW. Everybody needs to have some skin in the game. A country cannot long survive if half the population contributes nothing to the cause. A good start might be to require 15% for those making less than $100,000 and 20% for all citizens above that mark.

The insanity of the tax code now in place only invites disaster. The Obama administration and all politicians must cease their profligate ways or we risk losing the greatest country the world has ever known.

No more cooking the books. We're done enabling this nonsense.

And in OTHER news...

Random thoughts from a random guy...
Did you notice that everyone's favorite mop-up guy, Mitch from ShamWow, got busted in Florida for allegedly beating up a hooker?
Apparently the "Mitchter" picked-up a young lady in a Fort Lauderdale watering hole and brought her to his hotel room to check out the museum quality painting hanging on the wall...or something. When the cheeky pitchman tried to kiss her, she bit his tongue and he reacted in a hostile manner.

I'll let you be the judge, but it seems to me that Mitch might have taken a few to the head in this dust up. The police blotter photos seem to suggest that she got the better of our boy.
Where was Billy Mays when this went down?! Perhaps the two TV pantloads could have tag teamed the young trollop.

Rumors of a video tape showing the daughter of vice president Joe Biden snorting cocaine at a party kept the stooges in the mainstream media busy refusing to investigate the possibility that it might be true. Can you imagine them showing any of the same restraint had the rumor involved a daughter of Dick Cheney? Me neither...

President & Mrs. Obama spent the week looking wonderful as they charmed their way through Europe and points East. The countries we have bailed out time and again like nothing better than hearing what boorish horse's asses we Americans are. Let them call Castro the next time they need somebody to fight their battles for them.

And...by the way, here's the bill for World War II and the re-building of Europe. Shut up and pay it!

(We can touch the Queen ANY damn time we feel like it! Churchill said it was okay.)



The reunion of the Four Preps caught me by surprise. How about you?

Aged like a fine single malt...

There isn't much left of the radio business.

Kids don't pay much attention. The Internet is the tribal drum of a new generation and radio, to them, is ancient history. I was always aware of the ephemeral nature of the business when I joined the band of radio gypsies who made their living pushing the hits on a series of frequencies "town to town...up and down the dial". It was a lot of fun and, once you made it to the "bigs", a decent buck. When the call letters you were selling belonged to major market stations that boasted legendary histories you knew that you had made it and all you needed to hang on was to get decent ratings.

Bad ratings meant getting fired and spending time on the "beach" or, if you were lucky, a second chance at another station in the same market. Most of the time it required a move to a new city and the hope that the new station and its listeners dug your act and good ratings kept you there for a long time. The competition was brutal and true friends hard to find.

In 1976 I managed to escape from what was escalating into a bad situation with a radio station in Tampa. The place was in turmoil and under new management. I was hosting the morning show and had good ratings but knew lots of change was brewing. Time to start calling friends, sending out tapes, and looking for a safe place to land...

That August I stood in the office of Jerry Jackson, the general manager of KOGO in San Diego. Jerry had hired me after surreptitiously spending a week in a Clearwater, Florida motel listening to my show on WDAE in Tampa. It was one of the luckiest breaks of my life. Jerry was the finest person I ever worked for...period. He was a man of his word and a true friend who, sadly, died much too young. Standing next to me on that day in August was another new hire for KOGO named, Bill Moffitt. Bill had recently been canned from San Diego's KCBQ and Jerry, knowing real talent, had scooped him up almost immediately. I was 28 years-old and Bill was 32. It was the beginning of a lifetime friendship.

Bill and I worked side by side for nearly four years at KOGO. He handled the midday show and I followed in afternoon drive. We were just a couple of young guys who spent our formative years in Iowa and grew up dreaming the same dream of having a beautiful time on the radio. And...we did. Though we no longer partake, there was a glass or two of whiskey shared by the two of us in those days. (We called it "liquid show prep".)

(Bill Moffitt rolls his eyes as Lenny Mitchell sinks into his Lazy Boy)

KOGO was sold to a new group of owners in late 1979 and Bill jumped at the chance to return to KCBQ rather than endure the mindless stupidity of the Visigoths who were now in charge. I left for a morning job in San Francisco shortly after. Bill took some vacation time to help me relocate to "Halloween-by-the-Bay" and some serious fun ensued. (Maybe I'll write a book about all of that when most of the participants are dead.)

In 1986 I returned to San Diego to take the midday show on KCBQ where Bill was now happily doing afternoon drive. We made that last for nearly six years, an eternity in the radio biz. Both of us got blown out in late 1991 by one of the most incompetent buffoons I have ever met. Naturally, he is still running a station in Phoenix. The buffoons run everything these days. Bill took a video camera to his firing and recorded the stammering nincompoop as he was being dismissed. It was priceless!

Bill Moffitt is 65 tomorrow! Happy birthday pal! Where are the last thirty years?

Thanks for the laughs. Thanks for being one of the finest disc jockeys who ever honked the hits.

And thanks for being my friend...

March Gladness

New York-
If you stayed on the sunny side of the street it almost felt like Spring had finally arrived in the city. March is like that in this corner of the country. The days are longer and often bright with a hint of blossoms and new leaves to come.
For now, bare trees, rain, and cool temperatures are a lock for the coming weekend. In a couple more Sundays the parks will be packed with the winter weary and their four-legged friends shaking off the stale smell and feel of another Winter spent in the lofts and tiny walk-ups of Manhattan. This morning I saw more than a few New Yorkers wearing the same look Jack Nicholson sported when he so spectacularly snapped in "The Shining".

Linda and I left our daughter Kelly and her husband, Pavol, on the corner of 2nd Avenue and St. Mark's Place about two hours ago as we headed for JFK and a return to San Diego. (There's only so much March I can handle.) They are exhausted from days on the road with their very successful theater company, The Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and the recent opening of "Rambo Solo" an original play conceived and produced by them for the SoHo Repertory Theater Company. We saw it with friends and relatives on Friday night and thought it was wonderful. The critics, including the New York Times, loved it too and the run has been extended. It's nice to see your kids happy and successful. Overnight sensations...after fifteen years of hard work!


Zachary Oberzan in "Rambo Solo" conceived and created by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper

This trip to "The Apple" will be more memorable than most. Not only did we have the fun of experiencing a daughter and son-in-law's success, but this time we had a beautiful unexpected surprise.

The night before last we had a call from our youngest kid, Katie, telling us that she and Doug are going to be parents in October.

WOW! At 35,000 feet it is beginning to sink in that all my grandpa chops will soon be put to the test. Money and candy out the ears and nose will soon be my stock and trade. Perhaps a swing-set and a trampoline for the backyard are in the cards?

Someone once said: " A grandfather is a man with silver in his hair, gold in his heart and jelly beans in his pockets."

I'm thinking that the really cool grandpas will have M&Ms too.

Gotta get the kid one of these hats.

It Changed EVERYTHING

"You should do a blog."

It wasn't Moses and the burning bush. Actually it was my friend, Mike Leach, his voice coming to me from somewhere in the steam room at the gym. Mike, no doubt having grown tired of yet another tirade from me about something, was probably just trying to get me to shut up.
It was only natural that I considered the steam room just another radio show. After all, I was talking to people I couldn't see and it gave me the opportunity to vent about things that were on my mind without having to break for commercials.

I thought about it and...four years later, here we are. Like radio, it's free and I think worth the price for the two or three of you who stop by to see what's on my mind. Look at it this way: It keeps me from going "postal" and taking hostages in the neighborhood.

It was always easy to pick out the really important events that transpired in my parents' and grandparents' generations. The inventions of the automobile, airplane, radio, TV,and the moon landing were all watershed items in the timeline of humanity. I often found myself wondering if there would be one of those Biggies in my generation.

In 1989 my daughter, Kelly, was a freshman at Dartmouth College. On her first trip home from school that Fall she mentioned something called the Internet. "Dad, you really need to check out the net. We do all of our assignments for our professors via the Internet and you and I could stay in touch on-line." It goes without saying that I had no idea what the kid was talking about and gave her words little heed. That seems to be the way of really big things. They sneak up on you and change your life.

The Internet is hands down the most significant life changing invention of my life. It has given most of us access to information on ANYTHING we care to know about and has provided the means to stay in touch with people who may have slipped from our orbit. It is a Godsend to friendship maintenance.

Through this little blog I have heard from old friends, neighbors and co-workers going back over a span of more than fifty years. I like that more than a little bit.

So here's to the net! It's right up there with velcro, canned beer, Sham Wow, and Mighty Putty. It doesn't get much better than that.

Thanks for stopping by...

It's called...STEALING!

There was Bernie Madoff pleading guilty and heading for a lifetime stay in stony lonesome and still not quite sure what he did wrong. That's the way it is with sociopaths. The rules are for everybody else; not them.

In Bernie's defense I would offer that his conduct has been no different and no less reprehensible than that of our elected officials. The congress and a long line of our nation's chief executives have presided over the greatest theft of wealth in the history of mankind. From the Ponzi scheme of Social Security to the printing of worthless paper money, these guys and gals have run our country with an oversight worthy of Al Capone or the Purple Gang. And...it may be too late to turn things around.

Where is Elliot Ness when you need him?


Thomas Jefferson counseled us, "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."
(Glad Tom isn't here to see this.)

Can you imagine what the founding fathers, who risked their very lives to create this wonderful country, would think of Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd and the likes of that moron Bernie Sanders?

"We gave you a republic and you turned it into a whorehouse!"
(By the way, the only whorehouse in the world that DOESN'T make MONEY!)


I'm not sure what happens to us when it's time to take the BIG nap, but I can conjure up no punishment worse than spending eternity hearing a continuous loop of:

"Grandma? Grandpa? Have you seen my piggy bank?"

Something to ponder while doing your taxes.

I wonder if the stooges in D.C. will take an out of town two party check this year?

Bastards!