Foxy Foxhole

San Francisco has always been a city where pretty much anything goes.  When I worked there in the 1980's something I looked forward to every Friday as I wrapped up my morning radio show was watching the marquee change at the Kearney Cinema in North Beach.  The station's studios were located in a building on the corner of Washington and Montgomery streets and had a birds eye view of entertainment icons like the Condor Club, the Purple Onion, and the aforementioned Kearney.  The movie house was strictly x-rated in a neighborhood that embraced that sort of thing.  Some of the classic flix advertised back then included:  "Rights of Uranus", "My Bare Lady", "Bar Whores", and the classic twin bill of "Spank Me to Heaven" and "Rodeo Girls in Bondage".  Rumor had it that there was also a raincoat concession in the lobby.  Leaky roof??

I don't know if the Kearney is still around but there is no doubt that the "adult film" industry is still goin' and uh.....never mind.  The reason I know this is because of a recent news story direct from L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. ( A place so notorious for porn production that radio legend Sweet Dick Whittington  dubbed it the "SIN Fernando" Valley.)  In a prepared news release,  the spokesman for a company called Pink Visual said that they have begun construction on what it calls a "post-apocalyptic" underground bunker in anticipation of a global catastrophe rumored to take place in late 2012.

"Our goal is nothing less than to survive the apocalypse to come in comfort and luxury," said Pink Visuals Quentin Boyer, " whether that catastrophe takes the form of fireballs flung earthward by an all-seeing deity, extended torrential rainfall, Biblical rapture, an earthquake-driven mega-tsunami, radioactive flesh-eating zombies, or some combination of the above."

Hmm...sounds like they have  the bases covered.  Mr Boyer refused to give the exact location of the bunker because of "security concerns".  (Word has it that there will be a well stocked bar.  Who can  blame him?)  Plans for maintaining a production studio and the company's website are, of course, key parts of the project.  (I imagine the costume department won't demand too much space.  What do they need?  Pizza delivery man uniform?  French maid costume?  ed)

Underground layout:  Where's the bar?

Although no set number of Pink Visual performers and other employees would be allowed to take refuge in the bunker, L.A. Weekly reported that the facility would accommodate 1200 to 1500 people.  The mind reels with regard to how priority for admittance will be determined.  

So, there you have it.  The world ends in late 2012, but plans are afoot for porn to survive.  It's probably all for the best that most of us will be in the wind.  Porn, cockroaches (of course), and no doubt, the I.R.S., Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi  all survive.  

If that turns out to be the plan, I'll simply say, "Thanks for all the money and the cocktails, I'll see you on the other side."

Room for me?

Juiceless, But Dealing...

No lights, big city

"This will be fun," I offer when my wife declares that this power outage looks to be a long one.  The electricity in most all of San Diego and parts of Orange county wilted and died around 3:45PM yesterday and as the sun slipped into the Pacific we knew there was little hope of a resurrection anytime soon.

The snow and ice storms of the 1960's had provided at least two or three extended powerless adventures during my family's time in northwest Iowa.  This, I decided, had seasoned me for survival in a power void.  As I recall, the only heat we had for those occasions  came from the gas oven in the kitchen and a small fireplace in the living room.  Because of the storms there was no school, however my brother and I were forced to do our homework under the rightfully jaundiced eye of dad.  Because of this, we both longed for a warm classroom and the chance to hang with our guttersnipe pals in the back row just out of the teacher's range. (They could smack you around in those days. ) A cold house, homework and periodic trips outside to "stay ahead of our shoveling" were all part of the great parental plan to make us solid citizens.  (The Calvinist ethic was writ large at our house.  Too bad it didn't work.)

Shovel ready snow

Linda brought no power outage skills to the situation.  She assured me that, outside of minor gaps lasting only a few minutes of her idyllic childhood, Black Hills Power & Light had kept her family electrified to the max.  I could tell this was going to be a steep learning curve.

In San Diego the ocean breezes make air conditioning a sometime thing.  We seldom need it for more than one or two weeks during the late Summer.  Ours had kicked on just the day before yesterday when the thermometer registered a sizzling 91 on the patio.  With a straight face Linda said, "We'll just turn on the ceiling fans and button up the house and that'll be just fine."  As soon as she said it she recognized the flaw in her logic.  No electricity--no fans.  Oops.  While that sunk in I was mentally running through a list of ways to pass a power free evening and coming up short.  TV? NO!  Shoot Pool?  Well, it would be easier to cheat in the dark.  That had possibilities.  After those two I was left with only the option of reading, something we both like to do.  For that one all we needed was some light.

I began to round up all the flashlights and candles in the house and fetched a long forgotten kerosene lamp from a dusty shelf.  Surely the power would be back on before nightfall.  Wouldn't it?
It wouldn't.

As darkness crept up the hill and surrounded us we realized that this was not going to be over soon.  It was amazing to look out on the neighborhood and see only the dim flicker of candles, flashlights and a few fire rings.  We were lucky to be at home.  Folks leaving work had to deal with no traffic signals, gas stations that couldn't pump fuel and streets that looked very different with no lights.  A simple mistake at a power plant had turned back the clock by more than a hundred years and all of us had to deal with it.  I couldn't help but reflect on the very real fact that all four of my grandparents, and Linda's too, had grown to adulthood without benefit of electricity and how very different their world had been.  In many important respects that world may have been better.  Certainly it was quieter and more leisurely.  The outdoor plumbing experience they can keep.

The power returned to our neck of the woods sometime after 3 this morning and we are slowly getting clocks re-set, computers re-booted and coffee made.  We have surveyed the freezer and refrigerator and have recorded only a half filled carton of strawberry ice cream in the casualty column.  Not bad; it could have been much worse.  I consider this as we roll into a weekend of 9/11 remembrance.  Thoughts and prayers go out to other Americans who will never be the same because of what they lost just ten years ago this Sunday.  Maybe minor inconveniences like a power outage are just what we need for perspective.  How else to grasp a loss so great or a wound so deep?  We must never again look and fail to see or call by name an evil so vile and depraved.

We begin by not forgetting.

Time Tripping

"Transience was my pigmentation; my roots would never go deep enough anywhere to make me a home or make secure with love."--Graham Green

My brother and I would cringe and roll our eyes every time we felt the heat of the light bar.  It invariably meant that mom or dad had been inspired to haul out the old Kodak 8mm movie camera to record some dopey birthday or holiday scene starring their sons and assorted pets and pals.  We were mortified by this intrusion into our good times and usually acted like mental patients whenever the camera was pointed our way.  This behavior often invited a swat from dad accompanied by an admonishment to "stop showing off".  Little did he know that both of us would pretty much spend the rest of our lives collecting a check for showing off.  

"I'm lovin' those socks Aunt Shirley gave me!"

As it has been with most everything our parents tried to pound into our heads, this whole business of pictures and home movies has proved to be correct.

Since mom's death I have been sorting through the many things we unearthed in her condo storage space and the nooks of boxes long forgotten on closet shelves.  The 8mm film she 

 was certain no longer existed, was there.    It was tucked away in a cardboard box deep in the stacks of other junk in storage;  the miracle is that it was still intact and usable.  

Costco, the Copper family "go to" headquarters for damn near everything from food to flicks,  is promoting a deal on slide and movie DVD conversion and it is magical.  I now have ALL of the footage shot by mom and dad condensed on four discs and am watching them in amazement.  Memories almost sixty years old are hauled onto my twenty-first century computer screen and many of them take my breath away.  Here is my brother as a baby and me already torturing him.  Our long dead grandparents, beloved dogs, childhood friends and now classic cars come back to life through the mists of time thanks to this now digitized 8mm film.  I am transfixed.  The memories whack me in the gut and often leave me laughing or, conversely, slightly wet of eye.

Many thanks mom and dad for ignoring the protests of your idiot sons and continuing to roll film on all of those occasions.  You knew what you were doing!  Two grateful sons apologize for thinking your obsession with preserving memories was stupid.  As usual, you were right.  I wish it hadn't taken me sixty years to draw that conclusion.

Young parents please note.  It has never been easier to preserve memories that will provide roses in December for you and your kids.

Lights!  Camera!  Action!

Seattle Summit

We were on our way to Alaska and it just seemed like a good idea...

My wife, Linda, and I had decided to tag along with longtime radio partner Cynthia Heath-Kerrigan and her husband, Bill, as they set sail on an Alaskan cruise.  Since Seattle was to be the jumping off point, it was only natural to call old Tacoma/Seattle radio goof deluxe, Dayle Nelson, to see if she cared to meet us for dinner.  She did, and the Steelhead Diner in Seattle's Pike Place Market will never be the same.  Cynthia, who lent her sense of raunch n' roll to shows we hosted on KOGO, KBZT, and KPOP in San Diego found a fellow nut job in Dayle who joined in twisted nonsense with Chuck Boland and me on KTAC in the Pacific Northwest back in the early 1980's.

As the sun burned into the Pacific, (YES, it WAS out!), we recalled seat of the pants stunts we pulled on the air over the many years we played together.  There was the vermouth drinking skunk that lived under Cynthia's house; also the hard hitting expose' that Dayle presented on the Tacoma phone book, not to mention phone calls to a dead Elvis and an even more dead Liberace.  At one point Dayle reprised her unforgettable Ethel Merman impression and nearly cleared out the restaurant.

We laughed lots as the evening wore on.  Days gone by when radio was more "show" than "business" were remembered fondly.  The program directors we dissed and tormented with our penchant for always winging it were recalled with some reluctance.  (We wondered if our flagrant violations of their various anal retentive formats had taken years off their lives.)  It was an evening well spent with two of the best gal pals a guy ever had.

The days of having the kind of fun we enjoyed are long since in radio's rear view mirror--and it's a pity.  These days accountants, lawyers, investment bankers and the Internet have left radio flattened roadkill on the entertainment freeway.  AM, FM and all those transistors today are about as happening as the Pony Express.  It's a sad fact but we still have our memories of the days when radio and spontaneous fun were synonymous.

Cindy, Dayle...thanks for the laughs!  You were, and still are, the best in the business.  Who needs a transmitter anyway.

Cynthia, KC, & Dayle

Happy Face Horse****

The first time I heard the words remedial and college in the same sentence I thought it was for comic effect.  This sort of thing happens a lot when you live in California, a state where public universities have been offering remedial help to college students for years, as it continues to live down to its image as the home of dumb ideas and misplaced priorities.  What other state would allow farmers to go broke and fields to go fallow just to save some glorified guppies from the extinction they so richly deserve?  We're "full up" with crazy out here.

Logan Jenkins,  a worthy local scribe with the San Diego Union-Tribune, recently related in his always edifying column news of a new campaign underway at Cal State San Marcos.  The eggheads at that seat of higher learning have concocted a program that asks students to wear a button encouraging classmates to SMILE at one another.  The geniuses in charge have apparently noticed that students now show up for college not only in need of basic skills in math, English, and science but also lack manners.  (Has day care created a couple of generations of people seemingly raised by wolves?)--ed)

On the San Marcos campus there is now a "Civility Committee"--(seriously!)--set to roam the university rewarding acts of kindness with gift cards and T-shirts.

YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS UP!

No wonder China, and virtually every other country that has not yet been commandeered by bonehead politically correct liberals, is stealing our lunch money and running our drawers up the schoolyard flag pole!

Here's a thought:

How about rejecting students too loutish and stupid to do college level work?  Not everybody should go to college.  We need to get over the idea that four years of protracted adolescence coupled with a few hours of study is the only key to success in America.

There is dignity and honor in occupations like auto repair, plumbing and other jobs that require heavy lifting.  Doubt me?  Check out a plumber's W-2.  Or, even better, next time your sump won't pump, try calling a professor.

"Eat Me"

Make sure you ask for the one with the smiley face button.

And in OTHER News...

Some items of interest you may have missed during the past few days include the banning of those godawful vuvuzelas  at the upcoming Under-20 World Cup in Colombia.  Fans have been forbidden from bringing the noisemakers to the games in the city of Pereira.  It seems that the cacaphonous nuisances that provided the soundtrack for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa are now starting to annoy the players.  Now, if we could just get Washington, D.C. to do the same with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

"Here's Johnny!"

This just in...

Apparently America's favorite doll, Barbie, has tossed out longtime boy toy, Ken, and is now living single in the Malibu dream house she designed herself.  The oceanfront property is nearly 5,000 square feet of the good life and it is now hers...ALL HERS.  Rumor has it that she was able to take out a $24 million dollar second mortgage to buyout the hardcore unemployed Ken who is now living in San Francisco's Castro District with "fishing buddy" Bruce Lovely.  "The bitch took it all," offered the still reeling former Mr. Barbie.  Friends say that once the hurt has passed Ken and Bruce will open their long planned Bed and Breakfast on Northern California's Russian River.

"More closet space for me!" says Barbie.

And, in case you missed it--and you probably did because it was on PMSNBC, Barney Frank proved that natural gas is the answer to the nation's energy problems.  The perpetual gasbag wafted an air muffin on the Rachel Mad Cow show the other day without so much as an "excuse me".  This confirms a long held belief held by most Americans that the Massachusetts congressclown is never quite sure from which end he bloviates.

Who needs "drill baby drill" when all you need do is light a match near Washington, D.C.

"Yes, Dear...Of Course I'm Listening"

"Sure baby...whatever you say!"

"So Janet said that they were going to do that thing we all talked about, except without renting the cottage like last year, but Gloria and Ed want nothing to do with that goofy Paula and Sam."  "I think I'll make that salad I've been wanting to make since I clipped it from the paper; maybe we'll take that to the thing on Saturday."

People who talk like this are called: WOMEN.  Guys, never having even the slightest notion of what the hell their female significant others are talking about, respond with the perfunctory "Uh huh" or an emphatic head bob if they would like the discussion to stop.  To ask for basic information regarding the who, where, what and when of the most recent female verbal ejaculation is to invite a tsunami of even more unknown names an undefined relationships that mean not a tinker's diddly to the average male.

Men speak when they have something to say; women speak to say something.

One of the mysteries of the universe is why women act as if everyone and everything that they know is also in the memory bank of everyone else.  They assume that there is no need for last names, points of reference, relationship data or additional pieces of the puzzle.  Guys are left with the hobson's choice of either asking just WHO on God's green earth Janet IS and why we should care, or merely faking it with a non-committal head nod or the ever neutral, "Really?".  Younger dudes will ask questions and make a concerted effort to understand only to become more baffled while older guys will stick with the tried and true continuous head nod and random "Uh huh" to get them through.  ( I have found it helpful to do a little planning while pretending to listen.  For example: "Who's on Sports Center tonight?" or "I wonder if that leftover pizza in the back of the refrigerator is still okay?" play nicely in my head as I feign interest in what my wife is saying.   For this to work it is extremely important to wait until the talking appears to have ended before checking either the TV listings or the 'fridge. 

I'm not certain if it is mere laziness or a sincere effort to avoid any complications, but most of us men are reluctant to "share" any of the stuff that is going on in our lives.  We, unlike women, feel it is necessary to explain who everybody is and to give extensive detail and technical information when offering up an answer to "What's going on?".   We want to draw a verbal diagram loaded with detail,  and lots of footnotes.  However, unless drunk or coming out of a ten year coma, most men think about how much talking and exposition this kind of "sharing" will involve and choose to punt and go looking for snacks.

 Maybe I'll tell her later.

The problem with the "Maybe I'll tell her later" plan is that invariably after a couple of days most of we gents "think" we did indeed tell her.  Then, usually several months later, when we say, "Don't you remember?  I told you about that!"--she is looking for the strychnine to slip in your Cheerios.

Women!

Uh Oh,  you're going to have to excuse me as I see my wife is saying something.  She appears to be angry.  If I were listening, I'd guess there is something wrong.  You don't suppose she has been reading over my shoulder?  I'm pretty sure I told her I was going to do this.
Maybe not.


I wonder if that six week old pizza way in the back of the refrigerator is still okay?
How long until Sports Center?