(But At Least It’s Not A Wardrobe Malfunction)
In the fall of 1976 I was a senior in high school and spent a great deal of time playing the trumpet in the “The Pride of the Wiregrass, The Carroll High School Marching Band.” One hundred and forty members strong-- could we ever make some noise (and occasionally play some pretty darn good music.)
Since our football team made a habit of winning about two football games a year, the main reason for anyone to come to our town’s elaborate concrete multi-thousand seat high school football stadium was to see the halftime show that our marching band put on for each game. All of us teenaged musicians considered ourselves to be in “high cotton” back then.
What I want to know is, what the hell happened in the past twenty-eight years? Was there some memo from the Pope or Executive Order from the President that said that a halftime show couldn’t be successful with just the marching bands from the two respective schools delivering a spirited rendition of a few Broadway show tunes or some 60’s rock tunes?
Of course there is the prescient set by the USC Trojan band when they got to record with and perform the song ”Tusk” with the band Fleetwood Mac back in the 1980’s. What a long way down things have sunk since then.
When did it become necessary for every televised college football bowl game to relegate the respective educational institutions hard working marching bands to the role of scrambling around on the sidelines like so many oversized ants while a few scantly clad or skin tight clad, so-called pop divas undulate seductively on a stage surrounded by a freak show of unisex dancers and exploding pyrotechnics?
Case in point, tonight’s FedEx Orangebowl featuring USC and Oklahoma. Luckily, my indifference lead me to tune in at the end of a one sided first half that had yielded a four touchdown lead for USC. I just hate lopsided football games unless it involves Georgia Tech on the winning side and that rarely happens.
I tuned in just in time to watch the event that is now considered a “football halftime show” featuring Kelly Clarkson, Trace Atkins, and, of all people…Ashlee Simpson A.K.A. Saturday Night Live’s candidate for the Milli Vanilli 2004 lip sync award.
I felt sorry for Trace Atkins being the serious hard working artist that he is, but at least we didn’t have to look at anyone’s private parts tonight (such that I noticed…)
Tonight's problem was a sound system malfunction instead of one of the wardrobe variety.
As soon as Miss Clarkson took the stage it was obvious that there was a problem with the lead vocal microphone. Her first verse and part of the first chorus featured her doing her best “mute mime” impression while the base guitar and drummer ruptured everyone’s eardrums with the rhythm lines of the song she was attempting to perform. This chick, being an “American Idol” winner for whatever that is worth, kept her composure pretty well and the technicians finally sorta-kinda got the mike mix figured out although it seemed to fade in and out for the rest of the song.
Trace Atkins was next and the vocals to his country song were fairly evenly muted and almost indiscernible if I hadn’t recognized the song he was doing.
Next came Ms. Simpson whom I am sure was already petrified at the possibility of having a repeat of her earlier SNL debacle where she was caught lip syncing when the sound technician played the wrong vocal track. Apparently she was attempting to actually sing this song and in spite of the volume irregularities she managed to writhe, wiggle, undulate, and pelvic thrust her way through the process without having a conniption fit and running off of the stage like she did on SNL.
Meanwhile, the Sooner and Trojan bands were relegated to running around the edges of the midfield pop/country performance like an army of ants and at no point in the process could you tell if a single trumpeter was trumpeting or tromboner was tromboning. Where are Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nix when you need them?
Personally, I would really rather hear a nice John Phillip Sousa march just for old times sake once in a while….you know what I mean?
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Off Our Radar Screens
If an airliner full of people crashes, your local and national media is right there to tell you about it with film of all of the gory details. Better not get on an airliner lest you die a horrible, premature death.
If there is a high speed car chase in LA and a news helicopter following the crack-head-idiot-car-thief drivers, Fox News is sure to break into regularly scheduled programming with live aerial footage of the suspects. Don't let a car thief run over you unless you want your relatives to collect on your insurance policy.
If a shark chews on the foot of a Ft. Lauderdale surfer, all the newspapers have front page stories the next day showing the bloody stump. For God's sake don't go to the beach unless you want to feed the sushi they tell us.
Then there are Tsunami. That’s right--Tsunami, not Tsunamis. (Octopus…Octopi…it’s the English language—I didn’t make up the spelling rules, I just try to adhere to them.)
My mother says she had never heard of a Tsunami before this recent international disaster. I admit that if it hadn’t been for the Professor on the TV show “Gilligan’s Island,” I wouldn’t have heard of the threat of Tsunami before the age of 21 or so. But, as it turns out, I had heard of “tidal waves” and Tsunami and I knew before Christmas that they were usually caused by earthquakes under and adjacent to the ocean floor. I worried that there could be a tsunami immediately after hearing of the earthquake Christmas weekend. I was right.
What I did not realize is that there were 796 tsunami observed in the Pacific Ocean between 1900 and 2001. According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, 117 tsunami caused casualties and damage in that same period.
What I want to know is, where the heck has the mainstream media been over the past hundred years? I thought that it was the media’s self proclaimed job to hyperventilate over every single thing that could possibly cause a “boo boo” on your knee or potentially cause the loss of human life. Viaox, lightening bolts, children's car seats, air bags…most Americans should live their lives in wild eyed fear to hear the TV talking heads tell it, but Tsunami?
Off our radar screens…
UPDATE: Before I could even finish this post, I have to add "herd of cows" to present international threats.
It seems that the main airport in Sumatra was closed to relief flights when a cargo plane hit a herd of cows on landing.
Where is the Transportation Security Administration when you need them? Do they have a procedure to pat down a cow entering airport property?
Just Wondering...
If there is a high speed car chase in LA and a news helicopter following the crack-head-idiot-car-thief drivers, Fox News is sure to break into regularly scheduled programming with live aerial footage of the suspects. Don't let a car thief run over you unless you want your relatives to collect on your insurance policy.
If a shark chews on the foot of a Ft. Lauderdale surfer, all the newspapers have front page stories the next day showing the bloody stump. For God's sake don't go to the beach unless you want to feed the sushi they tell us.
Then there are Tsunami. That’s right--Tsunami, not Tsunamis. (Octopus…Octopi…it’s the English language—I didn’t make up the spelling rules, I just try to adhere to them.)
My mother says she had never heard of a Tsunami before this recent international disaster. I admit that if it hadn’t been for the Professor on the TV show “Gilligan’s Island,” I wouldn’t have heard of the threat of Tsunami before the age of 21 or so. But, as it turns out, I had heard of “tidal waves” and Tsunami and I knew before Christmas that they were usually caused by earthquakes under and adjacent to the ocean floor. I worried that there could be a tsunami immediately after hearing of the earthquake Christmas weekend. I was right.
What I did not realize is that there were 796 tsunami observed in the Pacific Ocean between 1900 and 2001. According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, 117 tsunami caused casualties and damage in that same period.
What I want to know is, where the heck has the mainstream media been over the past hundred years? I thought that it was the media’s self proclaimed job to hyperventilate over every single thing that could possibly cause a “boo boo” on your knee or potentially cause the loss of human life. Viaox, lightening bolts, children's car seats, air bags…most Americans should live their lives in wild eyed fear to hear the TV talking heads tell it, but Tsunami?
Off our radar screens…
UPDATE: Before I could even finish this post, I have to add "herd of cows" to present international threats.
It seems that the main airport in Sumatra was closed to relief flights when a cargo plane hit a herd of cows on landing.
Where is the Transportation Security Administration when you need them? Do they have a procedure to pat down a cow entering airport property?
Just Wondering...
United We Stand
Three Bushes trump an entire flock of gold cufflink wearing UN diplomats and mindless yammering Euroweenies any day in my book.
I think that we are seeing a significant chapter of history in the making as George Sr., George W., and Jeb Bush all step forward to help tackle the massive logistical nightmare that is the Asian earthquake/tsunami disaster.
The situation also has eerie reflections of what might have been politically forty years ago had JFK and Robert Kennedy not been assassinated. How low the Kennedy family has sunk with the useless drunken sot Senator Ted Kennedy and a few woman abusing nephews left to speak for what once was a great American family—even if they were Democrats. I’m still waiting for Senator Ted to step forward and pony up a few million of his family’s vast holding to finance the relief effort. Instead, I’m sure he’s frantically working on legislation designed to increase the US’s share of the UN’s funding and raise our taxes. Go get ‘em Ted.
I will even give the president credit for including the pantyhose-commander-in-chief Bill Clinton in a bipartisan effort to raise money. Actually, I don’t mind seeing Clinton’s gigantic mouth and ego brought to bear to publicly ask all of the compassionate left wing liberal elite and the Hollywood misfits like Barbara Streisand to put their money where their mouths typically are.
I also expect Clinton to not pass up the opportunity to get a few digs in against his Bush/Republican benefactors and inevitably make the process all about him. He just can’t help himself.
And then there is the UN and Kofi Annan. What a waste of oxygen.
I think that we are seeing a significant chapter of history in the making as George Sr., George W., and Jeb Bush all step forward to help tackle the massive logistical nightmare that is the Asian earthquake/tsunami disaster.
The situation also has eerie reflections of what might have been politically forty years ago had JFK and Robert Kennedy not been assassinated. How low the Kennedy family has sunk with the useless drunken sot Senator Ted Kennedy and a few woman abusing nephews left to speak for what once was a great American family—even if they were Democrats. I’m still waiting for Senator Ted to step forward and pony up a few million of his family’s vast holding to finance the relief effort. Instead, I’m sure he’s frantically working on legislation designed to increase the US’s share of the UN’s funding and raise our taxes. Go get ‘em Ted.
I will even give the president credit for including the pantyhose-commander-in-chief Bill Clinton in a bipartisan effort to raise money. Actually, I don’t mind seeing Clinton’s gigantic mouth and ego brought to bear to publicly ask all of the compassionate left wing liberal elite and the Hollywood misfits like Barbara Streisand to put their money where their mouths typically are.
I also expect Clinton to not pass up the opportunity to get a few digs in against his Bush/Republican benefactors and inevitably make the process all about him. He just can’t help himself.
And then there is the UN and Kofi Annan. What a waste of oxygen.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Can't See The Forrest For The Trees
It continues to amaze me how we here in the US go about attempting to defend air travelers from the threat of terrorism. All 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were of Saudi or other native Arabic descent. Not one of them was a long haired, sun-tanned south Alabama redneck on vacation nor were they a 95 year old German grandmother in a wheelchair, yet that is exactly who the TSA screeners are assaulting with wands and pat downs at airport checkpoints while Abdul and Mohammed and Rashee breeze through the gates unfettered.
The solders of Allah’s success was not a result of the deadly threat of the “box cutter” knives they wielded, but rather the lemming-like mentality that air travelers had been taught dating back to the “take me to Cuba” hijacking craze of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Pilots and passengers alike had been led to believe that cooperation with the assailant’s demands was preferable to standing up and kicking the asses of anyone that started misbehaving on an airplane.
Not anymore. You get out of your seat and start yelling about Allah while I’m on a flight and you’re going to feel what is like to have my 6’3”, 235 pound carcass opening an industrial strength can of whoop-ass and delivering it to you personally. I don’t care what the legal consequences are. I’ll make bail and then sue what’s left of your stupid butt in court. I might just get re-arrested for assaulting you again when and if I ever see you again.
I believe that most every red-blooded American man feels the same way.
Instead of devoting our law enforcement resources to the task of looking for potential terrorists, we spend most of our time and energy passing new laws aimed at looking for items that could be in some ridiculous way considered weapons. The latest items banned in the latest government’s Intelligence Reform Bill’s new “no fly” list includes cigarette lighters.
Cigarette Lighters…For some reason I don’t feel much safer.
Now, in addition to not being able to clip your fingernails in flight (I bite mine—can they ban teeth?), we are all spared the risk of some rabid cigarette smoker loosing his mind in a nicotine starved fit of insanity and lighting up a cigar or cigarette in the restroom of a Delta 767. The really bad news is that the smokers in the crowd will potentially be prohibited the ability to run to one of those airport “smoker’s aquariums” (you know, the glass walled smoking areas often found in airport concourses) between flights after enduring a white knuckled, nicotine free, two hours on a flight between Atlanta and Chicago.
Some smokers I know may actually become terrorists if they are forced to go too long without a fix of nicotine as a result of this new hair-brained exclusion. In the future, expect to find large roaming herds of wild eyed smokers, feverishly lighting up entire packs of cigarettes outside the front door of an airport near you.
And I’ve got news for you. Nothing has changed relative to the basic security of commercial aviation, except that stupid, careless, or otherwise amateur terrorists like that moron “The Shoe Bomber” are excluded from the list of threats. If a smart guy like me or some of my friends (this means you, Tripp) wanted to assault a commercial airliner, none of the laws and bans we have passed to date would prevent us from doing it. The only thing that has changed is that the price of delivering the threat has gone up.
The Islamofascist terrorists don’t want to kill every single American. They don’t have the time and resources to accomplish that. What they do want to do is to scare us into changing our way of life. They want to cause us to stop supporting Israel. They want to get our military and our influence out of the middle east so that the kleptocrats and other little weird beard dictator wanna-be’s can dominate their people at will.
If we truly want to prevent a future terrorist attack, Al Qaeda or otherwise, we will start carefully screening the origin and background of everyone getting on an airplane—paying particular attention to anyone of middle-eastern descent.
To hell with political correctness. Profiling is not racism—it’s just common sense.
The solders of Allah’s success was not a result of the deadly threat of the “box cutter” knives they wielded, but rather the lemming-like mentality that air travelers had been taught dating back to the “take me to Cuba” hijacking craze of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Pilots and passengers alike had been led to believe that cooperation with the assailant’s demands was preferable to standing up and kicking the asses of anyone that started misbehaving on an airplane.
Not anymore. You get out of your seat and start yelling about Allah while I’m on a flight and you’re going to feel what is like to have my 6’3”, 235 pound carcass opening an industrial strength can of whoop-ass and delivering it to you personally. I don’t care what the legal consequences are. I’ll make bail and then sue what’s left of your stupid butt in court. I might just get re-arrested for assaulting you again when and if I ever see you again.
I believe that most every red-blooded American man feels the same way.
Instead of devoting our law enforcement resources to the task of looking for potential terrorists, we spend most of our time and energy passing new laws aimed at looking for items that could be in some ridiculous way considered weapons. The latest items banned in the latest government’s Intelligence Reform Bill’s new “no fly” list includes cigarette lighters.
Cigarette Lighters…For some reason I don’t feel much safer.
Now, in addition to not being able to clip your fingernails in flight (I bite mine—can they ban teeth?), we are all spared the risk of some rabid cigarette smoker loosing his mind in a nicotine starved fit of insanity and lighting up a cigar or cigarette in the restroom of a Delta 767. The really bad news is that the smokers in the crowd will potentially be prohibited the ability to run to one of those airport “smoker’s aquariums” (you know, the glass walled smoking areas often found in airport concourses) between flights after enduring a white knuckled, nicotine free, two hours on a flight between Atlanta and Chicago.
Some smokers I know may actually become terrorists if they are forced to go too long without a fix of nicotine as a result of this new hair-brained exclusion. In the future, expect to find large roaming herds of wild eyed smokers, feverishly lighting up entire packs of cigarettes outside the front door of an airport near you.
And I’ve got news for you. Nothing has changed relative to the basic security of commercial aviation, except that stupid, careless, or otherwise amateur terrorists like that moron “The Shoe Bomber” are excluded from the list of threats. If a smart guy like me or some of my friends (this means you, Tripp) wanted to assault a commercial airliner, none of the laws and bans we have passed to date would prevent us from doing it. The only thing that has changed is that the price of delivering the threat has gone up.
The Islamofascist terrorists don’t want to kill every single American. They don’t have the time and resources to accomplish that. What they do want to do is to scare us into changing our way of life. They want to cause us to stop supporting Israel. They want to get our military and our influence out of the middle east so that the kleptocrats and other little weird beard dictator wanna-be’s can dominate their people at will.
If we truly want to prevent a future terrorist attack, Al Qaeda or otherwise, we will start carefully screening the origin and background of everyone getting on an airplane—paying particular attention to anyone of middle-eastern descent.
To hell with political correctness. Profiling is not racism—it’s just common sense.
