Rest in peace, Sara Romweber

Mitch Easter is the only one left from this record.

When I'm not attempting to burn the house down

Went to see a friend spin some records last night. Yes, it was real vinyl, playing on two turntables. None of this digital laptop deejaying. We brought in our own records, carried them into the bar and we liked it! Made me nostalgic for the old days, as such events tend to do. I miss the slip-cue, it was a lot of drunken fun.

In line at the grocery, a guy mentioned my Guitar House Workshop t-shirt. He asked my what guitars I had. Mentioned my Ibanez first, then he asked me if I played jazz. Told him I was taking lessons. Did not mention that I sucked so that's a positive.

We're having a party in two weeks, today may have been the last time I try cooking burgers in cast iron, as the house has a good amount of smoke. It should clear out in time.

That three throw closeout

Events this past week have brought my head space back twenty years in some ways. A lot of thinking where I was, where I went and why, and where I am now. Somewhere in all that is the how.

And it's such a horrible tragedy, that accident involving the hockey kids in Saskatchewan. Communities are devastated, social lives are centered around those junior leagues on the prairies. They were good kids, I met a few like them, back in the day.

Last night one of our new neighbors invited us over to their place for beers and an outdoor fire. We had a very good time, a beer too many in my case and walked two blocks home. I have not been able to do that for years, maybe since when we lived by the Crest Tavern, when it had real dartboards.

A British dart throwing legend died last week. I was not familiar with him, but my wife was, and friends of mine. I have a board, a good one, waiting to be set up on a bare wall downstairs. I just can't find my darts right now. So I've put a set on my Amazon list. I'm one click away.

There are a lot of things I'm missing right now: the address on a water bill, my concentration to be able to read a freaking book, let alone write anything coherent or meaningful. Some days, when you're under the stress of finally finding a summer caregiver for your son, or selling a house that has a nice personality but some real problems underneath, it's all you can do to be able to get up in the morning with not quite hangover but a bloated uneasy feeling in your gut. I'm so grateful and lucky to have the space to go to and try to get through it all.

Sure, call me an idealist

Piggybacking on one of Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign planks for his ill-fated presidential run, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed making two and four year state college tuition free for state residents with a family income of less that $125,000. This impacts tens of thousands of students. Now, there has not been an explanation of how this will be paid for, but this is a major policy that is being discussed.

While I no longer think everyone should go to college, I'm seeing a lot of people struggle with the costs of college education. I graduated college thirty years ago and had a debt of about $10,000. Total. And it was hard to pay off. Students now are graduating with a debt many times what I had and it would be great for them to have that type of debt relief.

There were comments of people wanting their student loans reimbursed now that this may happen. Why? Because someone is getting something you did not? I thought as a society we were supposed to progress, not punch down or regress when others have any form of success. I always thought we were supposed to leave the room a bit nicer looking than when we left it, and this policy could certainly accomplish that. We worked hard. Now others do not have to. Is that a horrible achievement? Or are people going to be mad because they did not get theirs?

Selfishness is not something people learned at my college, SUNY Fredonia, whose motto is, "To learn, to search, to serve." It must have been in them all along.

The year that keeps on taking

George Michael was an incredible talented musician. He became an artist after starting out as a boy duo with Andrew Ridgely with Wham!

This was my favorite song of his. Dead, and only a year older than me. And this year still has six days left.

Too many Princes are dying this year

When I was a teenager Ska made a little resurgence. I liked Madness and the Specials a lot then learned where they got their music from.

Prince Buster was a legend. He died today, aged 78.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZC6Ot1MLP0

Rest in Peace.

It's high tide

Up until about three minutes ago I had no idea this video existed.



Another one that is almost 30 years old and just as relevant as when released. That's sad, people.

Still relevant, insight spot on almost 30 years later

My Brexit thoughts

Tuesday earworm

It's a catchy chorus that been in my head. Could be worse. Could be all the heavy crap in my head right now. Crap that's not about cats, or Hamilton or Hamilton performed by cats. Or just going outside and shout Alexander Hamilton at the top of my lungs until I get a Pulitzer, or sectioned.

No, I don't get it.

Who am I, though, to deny people happiness? Or obsessions? Or happy obsession?

A few hits to fill in the blanks

This was a good little record by the Fine Young Cannibals back in 1989. It was a year I do not remember too well. Too much drinking, a few too many drugs and general unhappiness/uncertainty. At the end of the year we moved to Ohio, leaving the alcoholic comfort zone of lousy pay for the mystery of a big city. If I stayed on I would not have survived. The next decade was a combination of being broken down and breaking myself. Bad career decisions were made, one after the other. A marriage fell apart. The next decade seemed to repeat itself with financial strain replacing the alcohol. These days the stressors are different but profound and worrisome. I've found it harder to reach my son when the show in his head is greater than that around him, or if he's in pain. It's hard for him to tell us that, and it weighs heavy.

Then this song becomes the show in my head -

"Oh I know that times are bad
and they make you want to cry
Don't be sad, we'll get by"

All I can say is, maybe.

She's uncertain if she likes him. But she knows she really loves him

With snorting head he gazes to the shore
Which once had raised a sea
that raged no more
Like the video films we saw



First thing I saw in my email was a link to his obituary. It had to be a hoax, I thought. Double checked and found the sad news. He and his family kept his illness close, and his final album had many messages to his fans in it. Typing the words David Bowie is dead is so surreal, it cannot be true.

Very hard to imagine a world without him in it. He's been around me for so long, I can't remember him not being close, although I never saw him play live. He's in the iPod, in the CD pile, in the Back Room vinyl. We have the music, the art he made for decades, and we thank him for that.

Still fading away

Another one of my former coworkers died this past week. Jane was an incredibly sweet woman, who I thought had a much harder life than she deserved. She was always working to help make ends meet, even while she was raising her daughter. Her acceptance when I first started working at the liquor store meant a lot to me.

Jane knew everyone who came into the store, and would share gossip and tell some interesting, but not always slanderous stories about them after they left. She was a talented woman, who was the first female window decorator for the J.C. Penney's company in the 1940's.

So when I saw her obituary and read that she died, at the age of 92, I was sad but not too surprised. Had not seen her in years, and thought maybe she was already gone. I hope the final years of life were kind to her.

Roddy Piper in October 1986

I am going to be watching this video all day long.



Ya Gotta Believe!

Charles and Diana did not make it to 34, either

The dirt from my forearm
has stained this desktop into a work patina
Determined years of rest and sweat with
the advancement of scroll finger arthritis
An occasional twinge of notice
there has been nothing from you
on my screen for half of the hours
our battery wires touched before corrosion set in
The acid in the gorge between us damaged any
traditional thirty year pearl past hope of recovery

Your release of a guillotine curtain was the final act
that slammed down any remaining impressions
of whatever joy I kept in a picture frame
Aftershock fragments bounce over the skyline of the city you left
There’s only absence seen through the side mirror
It’s hard to steer away when my hands hurt
Cannot tell if it’s age or road rage
Sympathies never exchanged
after the deaths of relatives, friends
Now we are separated by light years

You constructed the wall you thought I played hide and seek behind
Blocked me out with the skills of the best defensemen
Of course there will not be a gift to celebrate how naive we were
Did we expect anything less from each other
after all this neglect and decay?
When the officiant’s seeing eye dog barked
in the office we all crammed into
I was not listening, always short sighted
Never smelt the fragrance of lilies
on that day we joked about blind justice

Even the tiny country of Togoland has a message for me

I am contacting you for the claim of my late client fund, who is a
native of your country that was deposited with the bank here in Lome,
Togo. I am soliciting for your confidence in this matter; this is by
virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential. Though I know that
a contact of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive, but I am
assuring you that all will be well since I know everything about my
late client fund.

I have decided to contact you due to the urgency of this matter. Let
me start by introducing myself properly to you. I am Barrister Martin
Keen, the personal Attorney to my late client Engr. F. D Plunkett
(Snr) a contractor and importer here in lome-Togo and he was involved
in a ghastly motor accident along Nouvissi express Road. He was
banking with Bank, Lome Togo and had a closing balance as at the end
of September 2008, worth $ 4.5 million usd (Four Million Five Hundred
Thousand United States Dollars).

The bank now expects the Next of Kin to come forward as a beneficiary.
Efforts have been made by the management of bank to get in touch with
any of the Deceased Family or Relatives, but they have met with no
success. Now the management under the influence of the bank director
and Members of the Board of directors has made arrangement for the
fund to be declared Unclaimed so that they can share the money amongst
themselves.

In order to avert this negative development, as part of my duty, I
decided to track his last name over the Internet, to locate any member
of his family. Hence I have contacted you, all documents and proof to
enable you get this fund will be carefully worked out by me for this
claim. I have secured from the probate an order of Mandamus to locate
any of the deceased beneficiaries, and more so I am assuring you that
this claim is 100% risk free.

On the receipt of your response I will furnish you with detailed
clarification as it relates to this mutual benefit transaction.
Respond to my confidential email (barr.martinkeen02@gmail.com) for
full details.

Thanks
Yours faithfully,
Barrister Martin Keen

He liked the scripts better when they had coffee stains on them.

One of my college professors at Fredonia died yesterday. John P. Malcolm was a gregarious and knowledgeable man. Whether in the classroom or walking about town he always had a kind word to say, and if years had passed since you had seen each other, he did not forget who you were.

When he found out we were moving to Columbus, Ohio State was his Alma Mater, he would always ask if we were going to live in Buckeye Village, which he called "Fertility Acres." Many conversations or lectures you had with him started, “Back in my old days at Ohio State!” He was a good man who is directly responsible for my having a degree.

Here’s the story: when I ‘graduated’ in 1985, my GPA in my minor was not high enough so I did not officially earn a degree. No, I was not the best of students. A couple of years later, my ex-wife asked him, he was Chair of the Communication Department, if he would waive that requirement (all without my knowledge) and allow me to have the degree, which was well within the rules at the time. He did it without hesitation.

My schedule has it that I will most likely be unable to attend any services for him, and that distance makes me sad. Dr. Malcolm leaves behind a loving family, scores of colleagues and the many students who had great respect for him. Rest in Peace Dr. Malcolm, and thank you.

Another boss bites the dust

1985 was a crazy year. I graduated college, got married shortly after and began work for a local radio station that was in the process of having its broadcasting license revoked.

This is the second former employer of mine who has died in the past year.

It was a strange place to work, like many of my jobs, with weird and wonderful coworkers. I've never been so scared at work before, as I tried figuring out a newscast out of the local paper and nicking the other station in town. Had no idea what I was doing. None. There was no AP teletype in the station, the owner was too frugal to pay for that. The morning guy was a hoot, a former stand up comedian he made me laugh on the air constantly, God rest his soul.

The former owner of WBUZ, Hammerin' Hank Serafin, died on Saturday, aged 89. I've been playing with this for over a year and a half, finally got motivated to finish it today.



Ten Reasons You Lost Your FCC License

In 1989 radio station WBUZ Fredonia/Dunkirk had it’s license pulled by the FCC. It was only the second license revoked since the Communications Act of 1934. The owner of the station, Hammerin’ Hank Serafin, died on May 2nd.

1) Do not rig a contest in which first prize was a trip to Niagara Falls in which you sent a major advertiser and his wife went to because you were worried people in an immoral relationship would win. Second prize was a hi-tech radio you kept in your office.

2) That time you called the agency for a secretary then asked her supervisor if they had any white girls because the one that showed would make charcoal look white.

3) That day you hacked a public phone booth to air a high school baseball game.

4) Do not keep the public from inspecting your public file during business hours. Do not harass the person who came to view your public file by mocking his hair length.

5) Do not forge the records in your public file. Even if the guy you strung along for years so you could try to sell him the station lied for you.

6) You were also a well known local slumlord. Do not call an advocate for the poor a bitch on the air. Said person was the daughter of a well known county judge. But you could not help yourself, could you?

7) Never charge sponsors for ads they did not agree to run. It also helped your bookkeeper pay her electric bills without you knowing for years.

8) Do not lie about paying your ASCAP fee. Even the polka musicians had to get paid.

9) Because you were such a cheap bastard, you left a visible storefront in town, bought a double wide and parked it next to your transmitter. Enviably located next to a pallet factory at the end of a dead end street. Painted a sign that read the temporary home of WBUZ.

10) In the last days even nature knew you were done. Days before the station went dark a bird flew into the trailer, fluttered around the station, then shat on your desk

The first time

For the last 28 years on his last taping before Christmas, David Letterman has had Darlene Love on as his musical guest and she has performed Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). This was from the first year, 1986.



Letterman is retiring next year and tomorrow night will be the last time Love will perform the song on television, so she claims.

It is a yearly tradition that will be missed. Is Jay Thomas going to throw a meatball on the studio tree?

Because the 80's happened in Italy, too