Potpourri

Just a semi-random sprinkling of itemery here, to get some blogging in before I leave on the Great November Jersey City Road Trip, '06 version, this weekend.

• Dick Biondi jobful again. Robert Feder of "The Bright One" reports that oldies station doubleyou whatever it is (94.7 FM) has rescued legendary deejay Dick Biondi from Dante's first circle of aging radio talent Gehenna (aka, unemployment) to host a nightime show. Along with their recent hire of John Records "Yeah, I've made a career for 40 years based on pointing out that my real middle name is in fact 'Records'" Landecker, that makes three actual local human beings on that station. The third? Oh come on, it's Scott McKay. You didn't know that? I have more things to say about Scott McKay than Dick Biondi (whose appeal, frankly, I still don't get), so this bullet point is now about him. McKay kind of lost me when he admitted on-air during one of his first shifts for the station that he didn't really know much about, you know, rock music made between roughly 1954 and 1976 ... as in, "oldies" music ... but gee whiz, he was sure game for a college try! It also galled me when he'd say idiotic stuff like, in reference to the Kinks' "Victoria," for example, he said, "Wow, that came out in 1969? I always thought that was much more recent, like 1980 or something." But I guess he's OK. He plays what Scott "I'm the industry genius in New York who tapes and syndicates all the rest of the shifts" Shannon tells him to. At least they have a relatively large playlist, perhaps in an attempt to answer the plea of Carl from The Simpsons: "How 'bout some new oldies, geniuses?"

• KISS-tastrophe. I dropped a deuce when I heard this one. Our correspondent in New Jersey reports that his local Best Buy has sold out of the new KISS "Kissology - Volume 1 (1974-1977)" DVD box set, which was released on (skeddy, keeds!) Halloween. Allegedly, they sold 160 copies in two days.

• Maybe this one will be on volume two. In this YouTube embedded veddeo from 1979, enjoy Peter Criss and his buddy Johnny Walker Black having some trouble with the words (and, apparently, general theme, tenor, mood, and implications thereof, from, and within) to token chick ballad, "Beth."



• Paging Dr. Frood. I dreamed last night that I was at a big party in some kind of barn on a sprawling estate someplace, and I had an embarrassing moment with Keith Richards. Yes, Keith was at the party, and so was Mick. Jagger. There was a pizza on a table, and Keith and I both kept trying to grab the same slice. I'd go for one, and he'd reach at the same time, and then we'd mumble "sorry" and move to another one and the same thing would happen. It was like the pizza equivalent of the awkward hallway dance when you're trying to pass somebody coming from the other direction.

• No sir. One time about 10 years ago I was sitting in a crummy apartment next to the projects in Champaign watching a bunch of black gang bangers play Dungeons and Dragons (I shit you not) while I waited for my "friend" to get back with "some used books" I was buying from him. Somebody asked me what I did for a living and I mentioned something about how I used to be a lawyer but I got fed up with the lying bastards. One guy turned to face me and said, "My lawyer got me off of two counts of Murder One. I don't think he was lying to me." I wasn't sure what that meant, but I shut up real fast.

• Back in the New York groove. Friend of the Blog "Mr. Jacobson" (or is it "-sen"?; I can never remember) relates that his downstairs neighbor where he used to live in Northwest Edgewater or Southwest Rogers Park or wherever the hell it's called there, used to suffer under the delusion that she was the lover and soulmate of Ace Frehley. That's all there is to this story. Anyway, under the makeup, Ace looks like a Ramone in this veddeo.



• They really really hate them. The numero uno Google referral phrase for this blog for the past several weeks has been "I hate meeces to pieces." I wish I had more to say on the subject that I didn't have to look up on Wikipedia to come up with. The subject of Mr. Jinks the cat hating Pixie and Dixie the mice, that is. In their eponymous(e) Hanna-Barbera cartoon, that is. Which was produced from 1958 to 1962 but lived on for decades more in reruns. Featured one of my favorite cartoon voice artists of all time, Daws Butler. (Of course, Mel Blanc was the king, and June Foray and Stan Freberg did great work as well, but I digress. If you don't already know about those people you probably do not care. The Daws Butler wiki-bio is actually worth reading, though. Because I say so.) And then there was also Don Messick, the Baba Looey to Butler's Quick Draw McGraw. And come on, he did Scooby Doo. I mean, not in the Rick Santorum way. OK, maybe I'll just wrap this bullet point up.

• By the way. I hate it when people give me or anyone else shit about split infinitives. Everyone except the nuns that taught English to the baby boom generation -- and the people taught by them -- has joined the consensus that they're "unobjectionable." I like what Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary says: "There has never been a rational basis for objecting to the split infinitive." Which is probably why every person I've heard object to them proclaims that they are objectionable because Sister Inguinal Hernia said so.