No rock for you!

by | Apr 21, 2015 | Music | 0 comments

Tonight I was supposed to go see Jesse Malin in concert. He’s one of my faves and I love his new album New York Before The War. I even sent out a mass email a few weeks ago urging my friends to go see him. But he cancelled the show about a week and a half ago. (So much for my skills as a concert promoter. I’m no Don Kirshner.) He played Chicago last night, and he’s playing Pittsburgh tomorrow night, so it’s not like Cincinnati would’ve been out of the way. Looks like he booked an in-studio performance at a Pittsburgh radio station for tomorrow afternoon instead of coming here tonight. Can’t say as I blame him, as he usually doesn’t draw well here. Still, I’m crushed. Maybe next tour. Until then…

 

Stan the Underappreciated Man

by | Apr 19, 2015 | Advertising, Funny Business, Pop Culture | 0 comments

As someone who worked in both radio (including a stint on the Gary Burbank Show, a “theater of the mind” comedy show featuring dozen of wacky characters) and advertising, I would be remiss if I didn’t pay tribute to the late, great Stan Freberg, who passed away earlier this month. IMDb lists him as “Composer, singer, actor, author, comedian and advertising executive.” That doesn’t really do justice to his talents. He was a voice in Looney Tunes… he created great satirical sketch comedy for radio… he was Weird Al before there was a Weird Al… he was the godfather of the funny commercial for both radio and TV, including this radio ad that shows how powerful the medium can be:

Here’s one of his more popular radio sketches:

A couple of nice tributes are here and here.

And you can listen to more of Stan’s work here.

They don’t make ’em like Stan anymore, but they should, because the world would be a funnier place.

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Stan Freberg 1926-2015

The Phrase that Pays

by | Apr 15, 2015 | Funny Business | 0 comments

One of my goals for this year is to learn how to speak Spanish. (Another of my goals is to get Max Baer Jr. a Lifetime Achievement Emmy for his tour de force performance as Jethro on The Beverly Hillbillies. Long overdue.) 1390005760_8

I picked up several Spanish phrasebooks from the local library to practice my Espanol (hey it’s working already!). Most of the books have the same standard words and phrases that a traveler might find useful – where are the restrooms, how much does it cost, which bus do we take, etc. But one of the books had this phrase in it, and I’m pretty sure this sentence has to rank in the Top 10 of “Least Used Spanish Phrases”:

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Does anyone, in any country, Latin American or otherwise, offer waterskiing lessons? Do you need to go to a foreign country to take those lessons – can’t you just find a local lake and someone with a motorboat? I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard anyone say “Yeah, I’m sure the Mayan ruins are cool, but I really want to go to Mexico to learn how to waterski.” Oh well, at least I know that if I ever do go to a Spanish-speaking country, I can satisfy all my waterski-lesson cravings. I might need to be in the water anyhow if I can’t figure out how to ask where the bathrooms are. Muy bien! 

Fit to be tied

by | Apr 11, 2015 | Family, Funny Business | 2 comments

I’m 50 years old and I just learned how to tie my shoes. Wait, let me add a word to that last sentence so I don’t sound quite so moronic: I’m 50 years old and I just learned how to tie my shoes correctly.

Turns out I’ve been doing it wrong all these years, ever since I had to march up to the front of the kindergarten class at St. Anne’s in Jersey City, NJ and show my teacher, Miss Williams, that I knew how to tie a shoelace by demonstrating my proficiency on a Fisher-Price “Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe” toy.

shoe toy

I remember only a few things about my kindergarten experience, but being called up to show my shoe-tying skills is one of them, along with these other nuggets:

  1. Miss Williams mispronounced my name as “Da-MAIN” the entire year.
  2. The twins who sat at my table (a boy and a girl) kept telling me to correct her, but I was so shy I never said a word.
  3. Miss Williams’ perfume was rather pungent.
  4. The entire class was only allowed to take pre-scheduled group bathroom breaks… and by the time the final bell rang each day I really, really, really had to pee, so I would race to our family’s apartment 3 blocks away and pound on the door buzzer with one hand while pinching my… well, you know… with the other, waking my father, who worked the graveyard shift at the post office.

(While doing my typical exhaustive “research” for this post, I just found out that St. Anne’s School closed in 2012. Sad.)

Hmm, where was I before that detour down Memory Lane? Oh yeah, shoe tying. For years I’ve been frustrated by my shoes coming untied all the time, blaming the newfangled round shoelaces for the problem. (I miss my Pro-Keds with the flat laces… those laces would break all the time, but they stayed tied.) However, the real problem was my tying method. Here’s a three-minute TEDTalk that will change your world.

While we’re at it, let’s cut down the number of paper towels we use when drying our hands in public bathrooms:

 

The Prophet Chuck

by | Apr 11, 2015 | Music | 0 comments

I saw a fantastic concert last night by Chuck Prophet and his band, the Mission Express. I’ve enjoyed his albums for quite some time, but this was my first time seeing him live and he crushed it out of the park. He looked a bit like Andy Kaufman, tall and skinny and resplendent in a suit that was some sort of pinkish-red.  (I’m sure Sherwin-Williams has a name for the color, but I don’t.)

Chuck and his killer band (which includes his wife Stephanie Finch on keyboards, James DePrato on lead guitar, Kevin T. White on bass and Vicente Rodriguez on drums) rocked the Southgate House Revival (which is an old church) with a religious fervor. They played several tunes from his stellar new album, Night Stalker. Here’s a recent live in-studio performance they did at KEXP in Seattle, featuring 3 songs from the new release, as well as a tune he co-wrote with Alejandro Escovedo.

 

Chuck is a true road warrior – just a man and his band in a van. He even sings an ode to their mode of transportation on the new album with his song “Ford Econoline.” It would be easy to become jaded playing night after night in small clubs, but Chuck appeared to be enjoying himself immensely, even coming into the crowd to play guitar during his song “Willie Mays Is Up at Bat.” If Chuck Prophet & The Mission Express come to your town… and trust me, they will… please go check them out. You’ll love them. And “Love Is The Only Thing.”

 

I didn’t even know MySpace still existed, but apparently it does, and you can check out more Chuck there.