Category Archives: People

More Sandra

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Okay so I was seeing if I needed to add any photos to my “1990s” winner Sandra Bullock, when I found way too many and just decided to do a separate post. Doing a little research I see she was born Sandra Annette Bullock in Arlington, Virginia on July 26, 1964 (she’s just 5 years younger than me, but might be slightly more attractive). In fact in 2015 she was voted People’s Most Beautiful. So its not just me. In fact I think I can speak for a lot of men when I say that perhaps her most amazing attribute is that she comes across as very, very, nice. The rest of her ain’t bad either.

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If that last one isn’t the sexiest picture you ever saw…

 

Corporate radio

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When you get older, you realize everything that you thought was, wasn’t. Life’s “operators” are nothing more than conmen. They’re not better, stronger, faster or smarter, they’re just willing to cheat. Businessmen like to portray that they are these rough and tumble titans of industry, working hard, taking chances. Ha! Big business is the world of monopoly and price fixing. Look at the lobbying of Congress, its nothing more than reducing risk. Every time there’s a new trade agreement (like the USMCA that just went into effect yesterday), you should really ask yourself, “Why is a free trade agreement 5,000 pages long?”

Radio used to be free. I think it was around 1926 the Palmer family started up WHO radio (I grew up next to the transmitter tower in Mitchellville). I read on Wikipedia that the Palmer family in 1997 sold to Jacor, who beget Clear Channel Communications, who beget iHeartMedia (“iHeart radio app! iHeart radio app! Brawk!). In 1996 the Telecommunications Act made radio monopoly legal, so Clear Channel/iHeart went on a buying spree. Like all corporations, they exist on borrowed money. So when the global financial crisis hit in 2007 and credit tightened, despite having a near monopoly, found themselves in tough times.

In March of 2018 they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (its not everybody who can lose their shirt when they own it all). With 855 stations they are the major player. Its interesting that AM radio which is one of the biggest media stories of the past 30 years, and has created many, many millionaires, should itself be in dire straights. There has to be something funny going on when you’re the only one drowning in a rising tide. So what we’re left with in central Iowa is all the same company (minus Des Moines Radio Group and maybe 1 or 2 other).

So what we’re left with in talk radio (WHO, KASI and KXEL) are 3 stations that are owned by the same corporation. No competition. No innovation. And the same ‘controlled’ formats. No wildcats like Alex Jones. Just nice, safe radio. KASI used to just be Trent Rice talking to himself for 2 hours. Now at least they have nationally syndicated Armstrong and Getty. KXEL’s Jeff Stein has been having some interesting stuff like yesterday a discussion about Jim Crow laws. I know this because WHO has hit rock bottom with Jeff Angelo in the morning.

I think Simon Conway in the afternoon could be better, but we’ll never know in the world of corporate radio. But at least I know what the other stations have now. But as its all iHeartMedia, you end up supporting them whether you want to or not. The only competition big business believes in is for labor, not for them. And the product suffers. Steel sharpens steel, and without the conflict of competition, radio becomes stagnant.

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Bike lanes to nowhere (Or: “How to choke off traffic without really trying”)

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[What I didn’t think of till later was that with the bus stop right there, when it parks to pick up people, all west bound traffic stops, including the traffic trying to come off of Grand Avenue.]

It is absolutely terrifying when you come to the realization you are ruled by idiots. The City of Ames has taken one of the busiest traffic choke points in Ames (the mall and Walmart), and taken it down to 2 lanes just so they could be stylish and put in bike lanes. Like bikers would choose to be inches away from speeding cars that are not looking out for them. The Captain of this municipal Titanic (Schainker) seems determined to hit every iceberg along the way. First Mate John Haila just says full speed ahead! They did the same thing for a 2 block long “bike lane to nowhere” on Clark (picture below). It doesn’t go anywhere, they just created a choke point, and a green bike lane to be stylish. Turning South Duff into a parking lot wasn’t enough.

When I first heard of their plan to take US Hwy 30 (Lincoln Way) down to 2 lanes (the major east/west thorough fare in Ames) I knew they were dumb enough to do it. They go to school to get that stupid, that does not come naturally. You have to work at it. Just look around you sometime when you’re driving. Bikers (I am one) don’t ride on busy streets! We choose nice, safe residential areas. Not these busy areas they choke off, further aggravating drivers. Its just mind numbing. The mall and Walmart, and you choose to choke off traffic?? It just blows the mind. Its not even some grand green scheme to interconnect the town, these bike lanes go nowhere!

[Seriously, to get that stupid, it can’t be a 4 year degree, that has to be graduate level stupid. No way could you complete your unlearning in only 4 years. They must use steroids to get that stupid. The Ames Tribune isn’t going to criticize them. That “Moron in the Morning” Mel Crippen isn’t going to challenge them, he goes along with every stupid harebrained idea they have! We are on our own.]

People pay taxes on the basis of the money being used for roads for their cars. When they get gas they’re paying another tax, a road use tax. When they pay their cars registration that’s another tax. It comes with the tradeoff of your tax money in exchange for the use of the roads. Bicycles don’t pay tax. Every time you take out an entire lane of traffic that a car can no longer use, you just stole half their tax money.

Dick and a half

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You get get to the age when you are forever saying, “What in the Sam Hell?” You’re thinking life is too short people, why do you have to be so damn stupid? 3 years ago RAGBRAI (a rolling bicycle powered drunk fest) came through Ames and stopped for the night. The main camp was at Brookside Park, right next to the train tracks. At 3:30 in the morning the train came through. It must have been a heavy one, it took nearly 20 minutes to get through town. It blew its horn every 3 seconds, for a 4 second blow. All – the – way – through – town (half a dick does it for half second blows all the way through town). Ain’t no way anyone was sleeping after that. It was a clear, quiet summer night where you could hear a squirrel fart at fifty yards. What kind of Dick does that? With crossing arms and localized warning bells there’s absolutely no legal requirement for Dick to wake the town.

That started me on my learning quest to find out what kind of idiot does that? Then it started coming back to me. 25 years ago the Ames City Council actually tried to deal with this. The second picture above is a fruit of that project: “No Horn Crossing” signs. They made a big production of it for “downtown” people complaining about being unable to sleep because of train noise. They talked about crossing specific bells, crossing guards and flashing lights. Because of their new and improved genius, trains would no longer have to blow their horn. And for the most part it worked. Except for one Dick.

And they didn’t. Except for 1 and 1/2 men (boys really). Probably 30 trains a day go through Ames, depending on the day of the week, Thursdays and Saturdays seeming to have the most traffic. Those guys are mature adults and emotionally balanced. But! There’s one guy… on RFD’s train show they talk about RR people can tell who’s driving by the way the horn blows, everyone has their signature. Another thing I found out is that regulations are different for a “protected” crossing (gate arms), than a unprotected crossing, no arms. Then they wrote the regulations over a hundred years ago when they only hired men to drive trains.

They wrote in a caveat, assuming only adults would ever be driving trains. They said in effect, if something comes up, that we didn’t anticipate, and you need to blow your horn to warn someone, blow that horn! Union Pacific has a couple of morons that took that to mean they had carte blanche to blow their damn horn whenever they felt like it! That’s not what it says! “And if, for any reason you see a need in an emergency, the horn can be blown” (rough translation). Well Dick and a half see a need every morning the entire way through Ames. That’s not how emergencies work. Emergencies don’t happen every morning, the entire way through town.

And of course the Federal Agency that deals with trains doesn’t give a shit. The City Council threw up their hands. The police could probably issue a disturbing the peace citation but never would. The people of Ames could get off their ass and complain, but never will. And I’m left shaking my head. I live a mile and a quarter from the tracks and it wakes me up, I can only imagine what its like for those in the immediate vicinity. Seriously. Can you imagine what its like for people in the first 4 – 6 blocks of the tracks?? I can’t imagine. I remember when I was looking for a house, the 3 criteria was: Not in the flood plain. Away from the students. And away from the tracks.

That was 30 years ago. I used to think I was such a poor sleeper for other reasons. I used to think the reason I slept longer on weekends was because my body was finally catching up for the lack of sleep through the week. Uh-huh. It was because dipshit didn’t work Saturday and Sunday mornings! It took me forever to figure out I didn’t happen to wake up when the train horn was blowing, I woke up because the train horn was blowing. So in the end I’m left shaking my head. Why do the powers that be let one Dick ruin an entire town? On July 29, 2019 TV channel 13 did a story on the downtown revitalization project in Marshalltown. Turning lofts and old warehouses into downtown apartments. It never took off. Know why? Funny thing, no one wanted to live downtown, the trains made it unbearable.

 

 

What happened to, “Leave it better than you found it”?

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The old camping adage was to, “Leave the campsite better than you found it“. I want to say “today’s generation” doesn’t get that. That may or may not be true, I’ll look into it more. Its also the motto of the shooting club I belong to. This picture shows a lot if you know what you’re looking for. The broom on the ground should be hung on its nail so as not to be a tripping hazard. Why its on the ground is beyond me, as you can see all the spent brass is still on the concrete (you’re supposed to sweep the brass into a bucket), so its clear they’re not using the broom. You can see the giant hole in the cardboard on the pistol target was shot out by a shotgun.

Are you going to want to be the next person to use this spot? You’d have to clean up the other person’s mess before you started. What amazes me about it is that the club has cameras recording this spot and all of them. They don’t do anything to correct the slackers. So what ends up happening is 5% end up degrading the place for everyone. Most shooters are “color between the lines” people. In the gun world if you’re sloppy, if you don’t follow the rules, bad things happen. The other thing it does is create a climate of “we don’t need to cleanup”. Other people start getting lazy.

The picture is of the 7 yard pistol position (see, pistols are supposed to be shot there, not rifles and shotguns). So every Friday and Saturday night these assholes show up, blast a hole in the pistol stop with a shotgun, leave 9 mm aluminum all around, and .223 (a rifle round that should be  at a rifle position) brass all about. Oh, and if you have to “pattern” your shotgun, go to Walmart, buy a cardboard box, and you have 3 sides to shoot. They’re pigs. They do this because they can. There’s no consequences.

Cool seventies photos

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Fiddling around with my blog formats, I seem to have found my favorite layout. It allows pictures to go nearly from “edge to edge”. Being a photo guy, I like that. And being a boomer, the seventies are “my decade” in a way. There are strong ties to the sixties and eighties, but the seventies are kind a ‘it’. The cars, women and fashion were…. timeless? Unforgettable? Stunning? Breathtaking? Whatever adjective you use, I think you’d have to agree the decade was visually appealing.


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Street Life of Americans in The 1970s (10)

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Cutting through the crap

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I’ve been a radio listener since the 60’s, I know a little bit about it. I know most people aren’t ‘crap cutters’, they’re bull-shitters (spellcheck liked that better with a hyphen). They have diarrhea of the mouth. That’s probably enough bowl movement metaphors. But anyway, I just heard another fantastic segment of the early morning show Coast to Coast.  A wonderful, wonderful radio show. Most people will never hear it. Most people aren’t insomniac radio geeks. I grew up watching Leonard Nimoy narrate episodes of In Search Of. Coast and Search are very similar shows. Bigfoot, Loch Ness, UFOs, shadow people, ghosts, demons, the Bermuda Triangle, ‘Greys’, cloud seeding, Knights Templar, I’m talking seriously neat stuff.

But you have to get to it! Commercial broadcasting whether it be radio or television has one annoying requirement: they have to make money. Newsflash eh? A radio “hour” is about 33 minutes long depending on the show (I timed it). At the top of the hour you have at most 1 minute of news. Then about 6 minutes of commercials, weather forecast, traffic report, station promos and maybe a public service announcement. A show like Coast to Coast will then have another 3 1/2 minutes of commercial to replace the 20 minutes after break, so they can have one uninterrupted segament about 16 and 1/2 minutes long to the bottom of the hour. They will then repeat the process for the second half hour. That my friends is 1 radio hour, 33 minutes.

Ya get what ya pay for. On Coast to Coast the host has 2 formats: guest or ‘open line’ time. Both generally involve callers. Callers can be the best of times and the worst of times. This next paragraph is one I put on the Coast to Coast Facebook page. Not that it matters, but it gets something off my chest.

“Great stuff, can’t believe I missed it. As I get more TOP (time on planet) I really came to appreciate Coast. Never though (at least in this lifetime) will I understand callers who can’t get to the POINT. Do callers really think they have 40 minutes for the windup? No, you don’t, make the damn pitch. A radio “half hour” has about 18 minutes in it, and despite what your parents told you, you are not the most important person on earth. A nation is listening, and we really don’t need to know in a story about you seeing a “dark figure cross the road in front of you at 2 am in July of 1978 in Fort Smith, Arkansas that scared the hell out of you”, that your momma Maybell who goes by ‘May’ cause her daddy liked springtime and wanted her to always remind him of spring, had fallen asleep in the passenger seat and didn’t see the creature because she was so tired from working 2 jobs after the plant closed down in Jonesboro and the job at the Quicky Mart didn’t pay enough, what with her having 7 kids…”

I have literally heard the host take a call at :25 minutes past the hour, giving the caller nearly 5 minutes to get to the point before the hard break at the bottom of the hour, and the caller could not/would not do it. They had a great story about a ghost, or Bigfoot, or an alien abduction or whatever! But we’ll never know because they could not be succinct. Just mind numbing.

[Just the picture used for this post has several aspects to it. Is it for a remote station downlink? Is it a dish “listening” for ET? Is it a military dish outside Area 51? Who knows? Art Bell started a radio show in 1978 called West Coast AM. In 1988 it became Coast to Coast. I just read Art died in 2018 of an accidental drug overdose at age 72. Sad and pointless. Currently the big dog is George Noory. There are also weekend and fill in hosts Ian this and Jimmy that and some woman host and who knows all. They generally all have incredible patience. Its like they know that aside from the entertainment value of the show, they are providing on-air group therapy for a lot of disturbed people out there.]

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In Iowa, even when you win you lose!

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Back in the early 80’s Iowa Governor Terry Branstad signed Iowa’s first form of gambling into law the Iowa Lottery. Soon after he signed perhaps the funniest. Iowa puritans being what they were wanted more revenue from gambling, but not the guilt that would come with it. So they threw a little glitter on it and called it “Riverboat Gambling”. See if you had to be on a boat on water, it wasn’t a vice. Don’t ask questions. In their mind, throwing your money away under the guise of ‘tourism’ made it pure as the wind driven snow.

Before long we had greyhound tracks, and horse tracks and bunny tracks (no wait that’s ice cream). Then they did away with the water requirement for casinos – kind of. Prairie Meadows was landlocked, but Lakeside down in Osceola had a pond and a boat, at least to start with. It gets all rather messy. Just never get between a State Legislator and a new revenue source. So now nearly 40 years later we have the most forms of gambling this side of Vegas! Oh and I almost forgot! The most recent new form of vice is online sports betting! Does it get any better than that??

What is interesting about it, and is a testament to the stupidity of Iowa voters, is their taxes never even went down! In the days pre-1970 or so Nebraska financed most of their State Government off the income from their horse track Ak-Sar-Ben. Did Iowa? Heck no! Our property taxes stayed in the stratosphere, our income taxes were still sky high, we still had local option sales taxes. Nothing went down! We had all these personal bankruptcies and families destroyed as addicts gave their life savings to the State in all the various forms of gambling, and we still paid out the ying yang in taxes!

So enter the March Reader’s Digest: The Case of the Broken Lottery Machine. In 2015 one Pauline McKee was playing the slots at the Isle Casino Hotel in Waterloo (water, see) when she came up a big winner! $41,797,550.16 was what the machine said she had just won! But what’s strange, the casino didn’t wheel out the pallets of cash. Not at all. Their buddies at the Iowa Supreme Court never even let the case get to court. They just dismissed it out of hand! They just said the machine had malfunctioned and that the casino didn’t have to pay. Well isn’t that convenient? Not $41 million, not $4 million, not $400 thousand, not $40 thousand, not $4 thousand, nothing! Your government at work.

[P.S. – notice the picture above? Everyone is under 40 and stylishly dressed? The sophisticates  out ‘gaming’. Go through Prairie Meadows slots area sometime. Its 73 year old housewives from Altoona in sweat pants and curlers plugging the one-armed bandits. Glamour is the last thing it is.]

That scraping sound is the bottom

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WHO 1040 am radio seems to have hit bottom, they were doing a half hour long infomercial from scammer Dr Michael Pinkus! If it can be ground up, boiled and powdered, Pinkus will sell it as a “supplement”. The people who make money off a scammer are no better than the scammer. When you’re playing infomercials, that screams lazy program director to me. KPSZ Praise 940 has been playing this guy for at least 25 years. They just have it scheduled into their 11:30 am time slot, just as if it was a show.

Trying to figure out what this bizarre early morning movie was on TCM I went to their website to find out (‘Papillion’, 1973). Up pops their little ad, “I want to invite you to join TCM Backlot!” shouts the little Ben Mankiewicz icon. Not a chance in hell Benny boy, I saw you on election night 2016 on the Young Turks Show. You were sitting there dissing half of America and the greatest president this country will ever see. True colors, I saw them.

[What’s funniest about WHO is they run a disclaimer before their Christian shows on Sunday morning, but they don’t before they run the scam artist.]

 

T.G.F.I.

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They have a saying in New Hampshire, “TGFI” (Thank God For Iowa). They know as long as we go first in the Presidential voting system, they’ll look like Einstein. Iowa sets the bar so low the pressure is off for them. This year especially the mood was high. When it took Iowa a week to tally a 2 hour result, they were absolutely giddy. Staffers at Election Headquarters in Manchester were doing ‘High Fives’ with loud exclamations of “Yes!” when they saw how easy it was going to be for them. It would be like falling off a ballot box thanks to the Tall Corn State. Sounds of “Happy Days Are Here Again” filled the hallways.

They saw they could go “full Iowan” and not get the election results in until 1 am and still look like geniuses compared to Iowa. For some reason New Hampshire has always been so good at the whole ‘counting thing’ (rumor has it they don’t even have to take their shoes off). Them and their fancy counting tricks, they probably have special school funding that turns out these math whiz’s. Just because their knuckles are smooth and not scarred up, they think they’re so smart. Hell, I hear the horses there can count to 10. That NH Governor better be sending flowers to Gov Kim Reynolds after the gift we gave them. Hell, they could take until 2 am and CNN would be blowing them kisses.

[Just to rub it in those bastards already have results pouring in from 3 small New Hampshire towns. Dixville Notch, Millsfield and Hart. And its not even daylight yet! On Tuesday, let alone midnight! Witchcraft.]