RIP Air America...

There was a time when I listened to AAR all day. The early programming was that good, and with the exception of the grating Randi Rhodes who I sometimes couldn't take, it was my touchstone of sanity at a dark time in American politics. At some point I realized that I was keeping the radio on all day as I went through my schedule, often stopping to write things down and look them up, always feeling like there was some small ray of hope in what had become a real national nightmare.

For AAR, still considered fledgling, its been a rough go of investors and owners who wanted to see a profit in a business that is guaranteed to not show a profit for years. The lack of patience that each management team has shown was uniquely American, causing the loss of its best shows, tinkering all the time rather than allowing momentum to grow, and missing chances to build on the incredible well of talent that had been assembled from the beginning. Someone was sleeping in Broadcasting 101, unless this was just another corporate fuck, with the attitude of 'how much can we get out of this sucker?' and leave the drained carcass to die. The teams that came and went certainly talked a good game about AAR being more than just a station; yeah, really, "a movement!!" but the problem is bigger than just that; Americans want their profit and their big screen TV yesterday. We haven't yet lined up our Rupert Murdoch, willing to lose billions of dollars in service to a message. The visionary part of that for the neocon very rich is the long run, where an administration like Bushco actually pays them and their friends back tenfold in contracts and breaks. Im not so sure that the very rich liberals are that tied in to the military complex or visionary enough in the same sort of cut throat take over the world vision.

The day that Ronald Reagan did away with the fairness doctrine which protected our airwaves from the likes of the sort of big business machine that has come to rule them, was the day that this all began. The airwaves belong to the American people and the push of capitalism to take over and privatize everything is uniquely ...um...neocon. Privatization with regulations cut, and batty uncle Ronny saying "why do we need regulations? Old Mr Floyd from the hardware store down the street is perfectly willing to police himself...? Right?" Of course, the legacy of that deregulation has come to fruition now in the Supreme Court ruling that corporations have seemingly endless rights...forget it, we're fucked...

So long AAR; it went into reruns last Thursday and no one even noticed. The New York Times had a piece the other day about how liberal radio has to be more business-like and in these troubling financial times it was a bad business proposition, yada, yada, yada....
OK, was anyone gonna get rich on this? They were fools if they thought so. The new corporate model of a quick payout doesn't work in this medium, and trying to force that made the thing messy and embarrassing by the end, with the likes of the well hated, smarmy, Mark Green and his infomercials and continual failed bids at being a political player..."hey, wanna go on a cruise?"...yuck!

AAR was a mad experiment cast by the minds that brought us the likes of the Daily Show, it had a different tone, and it expected more of the audience than to just sit back and absorb the lies; the early Air America challenged us to think, reason, and take control of our lives using the tool of truth. The entire weekday lineup was challenging and at a time where the government was spewing lies at us, echoed by the main stream media news outlets, so, it followed that this programming would take all the more time to find its audience and create the foundation upon which to grow. We sounded like conspiracy theorists before AAR came along and we had Al Franken fact checking everything thoroughly...to the point that no matter what anyone said about him and how ne presented things, they coulldnt say that what he said wasnt true. This was a revelation for me; you could hate Al and his persona, you could say "youre gonna believe that guy?" but you couldnt ever say that his facts were incorrect.
It did find an audience, in that the numbers were growing with the kind of fans that are loyal and long-term. The problem was to maintain an already screwed up business situation and for that they brought in the wrong person.

Danny Goldberg, CEO/investor/good friend of Don Imus, and a music industry "big shot", seemed to think that with Don's input he could program a radio station like he was rearranging the songs on a record or the members of a band. Coming into a situation midstream must have been difficult for him, and the pressure of the board and stockholders was an issue but really, what was needed was a firm hand in assuring everyone that tinkering too much would dislodge the invaluable hardcore fans in the service of passing numbers. According to Goldberg, he turned himself inside out fighting The Man, saving Rachel Maddow from obscurity, and if not for the stockholders and capitalism in general, he was going to save radio from itself.
This guy thought that his gut could somehow turn AAR into a profitable business, way ahead of schedule, and on top of that he would tinker with a lineup with steadily growing numbers to try to create a magic that he knew nothing about. If he thought he could show a profit at that point and presented himself in that light, he was full of shit. No programming, much less a new station which is building an audience could be profitable in that amount of time. In a way it was folly to put a non-radio guy in that job in the first place, but perhaps that was the only way that the investors could hear what they wanted to; that this thing wasn't going to hemorrhage money for 4 or 5 years at least. Goldberg quickly ushered in the beginning of the end of AAR and as much as I understand that he viewed this as production pre-release, he was unprepared for what would happen when he messed with what was a good lineup. His claims that he was hired to raise money fall on deaf ears here, because he clearly was rearranging the lineup more than he was out raising money. This was not the job for him.

Yesterday Goldberg wrote what I'm sure he thinks is the definitive obit of AAR at Down With Tyranny , (and then much more in comments,) alot of pap about how he struggled under the finger of the money people, and how they stopped him from raising funds because of their feelings of asking for funds being unseemly...huh?...He said that maybe he was an asshole sometimes...he had such a hard time...etc...feel sorry for him?...No! He walked out of there with a big payout at a time when the station was foundering, and was one person who did OK in the situation; he didn't take a bath the way others did and he took his payout while others, like talent who didnt come into this rich, were owed money. Its not our problem that he accepted a job for less money than he normally makes; he did OK for doing not much that was helpful and alot that was destructive.

What I know from the inside and as the spawn of a radio family, is that you don't treat people, much less the working talent, like shit, especially in their last weeks. Goldberg might have made the mistake of his life by trying to "save AAR" instead of staying in the music business "where he belongs," but during his time at AAR he certainly tried to cut a bold swath of change, relegating the same Maddow that he supposedly saved from obscurity, FROM the 9AM-noon slot in the fantastic Unfiltered show, TO the dead 5AM slot. He then set about deconstructing Morning Sedition, which was one of the best shows on radio, period. He didn't like Maron and he didn't get the comedy. He didn't make a secret of that either, and to say that it was purely a business decision forced on him by the stockholders and other bosses is disingenuous at best.

Goldberg knows the truth, and regardless of the depths of his depression, which may have had him playing solitaire on his computer for hours on end in his office, rather than raising funds or whatever it was that he was supposed to be doing, he isn't going to be able to escape what happened and his part in it. Tying himself to the coat tails of Maddow is not going to change history either; sorry. The advice of Don Imus was wrong; Goldberg had no talent in programming and tinkering, and every move he made was to render the programming into a more and more dumbed down,happy, format. It did what AAR had never done, which was to pander to the audience. By the time he had alienated the base, what was left?

The Mark Riley Show was what Goldberg wanted, and it was junk....totally junk. It reminded me of the Whoopie Goldberg Feel Good Show, which was not what the base was tuning in for. Riley was a pawn in all of that, and his show was painful to listen to. What could he follow up that sort of brilliance with? The Riley Show was what Goldberg thought was good radio. Regardless of the corporate structure or the financial situation, this guy came into a tanking situation and instead of trying to shore up what was there and growing he decided to scramble it all up and put the best talent either out of a job or in the boondocks. Even with star power, had any been there beyond those with a strong following, it would have been starting over. I have alot of trouble with Goldbergs's line about firing Maron to save Maddow. I just don't think that's true at all...and I am sure that Rachel is not thanking Goldberg for her great career.

Rachel had star power when she started Unfiltered, and continued to be herself on the same intense level straight through to Olbermann regardless of and in spite of Goldberg. The first thing he did was to cancel her show!! Those who got put at 5AM or on Sundays were those with contracts still in effect as opposed to those who's contracts were up.

What became of those talented players? Check out Maron's fantastic WTF Podcast and of course the Rachel Maddow show, which is a must watch every night of the week on MSNBC. I am assuming that Maddow's radio show is no longer available anywhere.
For background on that one particularly brilliant show and its comedy bits, check out Sedition Radio for which we owe PJ Sauter a huge debt of gratitude. The rest is out there if you look for it: Unfiltered, Sam Seder, Janeane Garafolo, even Al and Randi who had their ups and downs, but still are sorely missed around here... Lizz Winstead deserves a shout for putting alot of it together; Its over for good.

AAR as it was in the beginning, brought me laughter, joy, relief, and a kind of deep misery at its loss, that I couldn't have expected. I always though that this was so much more than a radio station and should be funded by a Rupert Murdoch type of deep pocket investor, but for whatever reasons it was set up wrong, by the wrong business folks and that doomed it from the start. Its all about the money in the end, and the money wasn't there...but it should have been, considering how much money is out there in liberal land. Showing a growing audience of loyal listeners and tapping those listeners for funding would surely have gone further towards interesting investors than dismantling what they had back to zero.

What of the Fairness Doctrine? These are our airwaves and just because Rush Limbaugh is a huge corporate force barreling through all sense and reason, doesn't mean that this outlet shouldn't be regulated by the government so that one corporation can exert too much influence on people because of money...um...oh yeah...never mind; corporations are now individuals with rights. As it stands our free airwaves are being used to misinform the people of this country, leaving the Fairness Doctrine as perhaps the most important political issue to address because of the way it touches all other issues; voting on issues that you have been lied to about comes to mind.

It was an idea and a dream, and much like Obama not being a corporatist or Edwards telling even the most basic truth, its all gone now. Rush and O'Reilly can breathe a sign of relief because there is really only Sirius Left, for those who have the subscription money; Internet radio shows for those who can afford the Internet...the rabble will never hear a bit of truth. Maybe its when things are really bad and there is no hope left, that some sort of movement will begin that will rise up and again give voice to the progressive agenda. Heaven knows we're out here in Internet-land shouting into the black hole and hoping someone hears. But there is too much noise, and we need more than just one Rachel Maddow to move this thing forward.

Its kind of sad to let those dreams go. But somewhere out there in podcasts or blogtalkradio format the message still lives, and in that there is hope, even if its sketchy....
godspeed to our kids, that's all I can say...this is a very different country than any of us could have imagined.

c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

RIP Teddy

I grew up in a house that was steeped in the beauty of democratic politics.
My mother, sitting in her rocking chair in the dark dining room, set into the streets of Brooklyn. With windows at sidewalk height framing feet passing by, and through the iron bars set in place for protection, the late day sun slanting thru the dusty air there; she sat, slung across the chair with her legs curled to the side looking at the radio from which came the liberal voices of my generation ...and country music icons, (and a young Don Imus.)

Up above her on the wall were pictures and quotes torn from the magazines and newspapers that she was always reading. Some she copied down in ink on the kitchen door, or painted around the top of the bathroom up by the ceiling; many of these clips were from the brothers who had already been killed on those days when everyone in the neighborhood seemed to sit down on the nearest stoop and weep; those days when even in the pall of scandal and darkness, there were still those who stood up and stared into the face of their murderer, regardless of the effects on their careers and lives, for what was right and moral for all people. There was a kind of hope in those days, and underlying it all was this feeling that even though we spoke of alternativesas we negotiated through checks and balances, humanity prevailed.





When I remember Teddy it will always be as part of that dark, cool house in Cobble Hill, full of hope and love for the process...before it all went bad...and standing as a little girl seeing America's royalty go by in the back of big old convertible cars, with police in white gloves holding back a crowd, and them waving, all tanned and full of possibility...and my mother, a good Massachusetts girl, who believed in the rights of others and care of the poor. What is there left to believe in?

"What is it about (this) that drives you Republicans crazy?..." he asked. Why do you hate the working class so much?
What has become of us? What will become of us now?
Godspeed Teddy...



c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

RIP Kitty

...and in the middle of this craziness and tragedy there was a quiet island where I was sitting and just taking care of things, just keeping us afloat, or watching something, and Kitty was always on my cheek; perched precariously on my bra strap, leaning in to nip my lip, cuddling into my cheek, asking for a scratch....she was like a rock, that bird...stubborn, nippy, smart, chatty, loving...she loved me...heaven knows, I loved her.



The tragedy of this is that she was my very best friend for the last few years, and I could lose just about any of them sadly, but losing her is just devastating. She can't be replaced...she was just such an individual...and its so fucking quiet here now.
She called me Wooody...and Sweetheart, and she'd say Come Here, and Hello Sweetheart.
The night before she was hanging on to the top of her house and flapping wildly, like she was in the jungle. I was telling her that it was beautiful, beautiful flapping....she was so smart...She loved to play bird in a box, where she would roll around in her cardboard box with toys and bits of the box that she would chew off until there was nothing left....she loved the swing over the sink with the bell in the middle, and would swing wildly in the morning and attack the bell, screaming....I would go to the sink and she would hang upside down and put her face in mine and say Hi Wooody....


If I tried to put her in her house she would hold my finger and not let go, rolling onto her back on the flip down door and whipping her head up to bite me! I would tell her that I had to go and let the chickens out and she would then walk in and wait for me. And she loved to stay on her perch in the shower after I went downstairs...she liked to nap up there by the steamy tile! She would call me after a while and I would go and get her...If I tried to get her too soon she would bite me...not hard...just enough to let me know that she wasn't ready to step up. If I told her I had to get the chickens, she would know that I had to go, and step up really nicely. She seemed to understand that anything about the chickens happened outside, but she knew them from them hanging around in the window of the office.



What happened? I made the mistake that was my worst fear, and everything aligned wrong...and it was a fatal error for her. The details matter little; thats my own cross to carry and I will be raking over those coals for the rest of my life....I buried her out back under a new azalea that Ive been meaning to put in....what else is there to say?

At this point, it seems pretty hard to form these kinds of attachments, only to lose them. And the worst thing is that life is about this very thing; impermanence. Regardless of how careful you are or how hard you try to control it, death sneaks in more and more as time goes on...and we all just want to know the details. I am too sensitive about those who are close to me, animal or human...so, what can I say?



She lived a great, active, life....it was way too short...and I am really gonna miss her. We were just looking at falconry supplies because I was gonna let her fly outside. She was growing her wings in and practicing...
I don't know how I go on in this quiet cave except to put one foot in front of the other and move past this....

It seems silly that an animal can become so important like that...she was supposed to outlive me. I couldn't miss her more if she had been a person...Its not the same thing, but it is at the same time....
So long Kitty...if there is a heaven, I know you're there.

Michael Jackson Dies of Cardiac Arrest

TMZ was the first to break the story; Michael Jackson had a heart attack today while preparing for a comeback tour. What an eccentric, brilliant, and troubled life!...I'm thinking of the Jackson 5 Cartoon, and the Grammy's performances; the first extended length video, and the dancing! The childhood forever, and the children that he sucked into his own madness. And his children with various mothers...the mothers of those children surrendering them to him...the veils and disguises and toys...and Neverland Ranch, forever blemished by the pedophilia charges....
His music wasn't much my thing, but it was on my periphery for as long as I can remember....and I think that we all can say that to one extent or another.



He was just a kid when I first saw him, half crouching on the edge of the balcony of Studio 54 watching the choreography of the theater lights being raised and lowered by techies pulling ropes; the snow machine and the half moon prop swinging out from stage left to meet the coke spoon swinging out stage right. There was this little black kid with a 'fro, doing what I liked to do, which was to watch the specter of it all, and how it all came off every night like a Broadway show. And for those of us that worked there, it was a Broadway show, and 4AM brought the cleaning crew and another day of preparing for the next show.



I loved those catwalks and how I knew by heart the height of the tunnels in the basement so I could get anywhere quickly, and the smells and lights and craziness that you could creep around the edges of and try not to get caught up in. Later we had dinners with a military garbed Michael arriving with Brooke Shields on his arm, looking frail always and very sweet and private. By the time we brought in a huge screen to watch him perform at the Grammys from theater seating, he was a huge star already and as when I was little, watching the Jacksons on TV, his dancing was breathtaking.

I didn't know him besides to just say hi on the phone when he called the boss of that club, and he came in alot, hiding in the shadows for the most part; appearing only for charity or big deal events. I don't now really know what to think of him, but he was a big piece of my pop culture childhood, and man, what a talent he was!

Among my son's crowd, his name is synonymous with pedophilia and crude jokes, and who knows whatever happened with him; he was definitely inappropriate and confused. He was looking for love and seemingly had weak boundaries and too much money.
His kids?....well, what a mess that is.

So, the couple of police cars at the hospital with a straggler or two, have mushroomed into a huge, huge crowd....and this is apparently pretty big. I dont know if its Princess Diana big, but its pretty big. What a day!

RIP Michael Jackson and RIP Farrah Fawcett, both groudbreaking culture changers in different ways, but they both will be missed...for the drama if for nothing else!



Brilliant at Breakfast

Kodak Takes Our Kodachrome Away

The Kodak Co. announced today that they will be discontinuing production of Kodachrome film. This marks the end of an era for not only many of us who lived in the innocent days of being able to think that all the world could be a sunny day, but the end of an art form that deserves to be preserved somehow. There is nothing like film photography, and doing away with the tools involved in that is akin to getting rid of paint brushes. Still, you cant keep a company from discontinuing a product that doesn't sell well; I just hope that a specialty market will emerge for this vital medium; and there will still be other types of film available. Its just that Kodak was the ground breaker in this, and the quality has been unsurpassed in history.

Check out some of the pictures here from the 1940's if you want an example of how well this stuff holds up. There are endless examples out there on the Google machine.....and here's a big hat tip to Rhymin'Simon, who sure did his part to add to sales of what has become a true American icon. For more information on this check out the Kodachrome Project Forums, which covers just about every aspect this film.

RIP David Carradine

He was an old soul, and maybe sometimes he believed his own publicity a little too much, but for someone who lived a life as a true popular culture icon, he managed to be as good of a person as any of us could hope to be.



I hope it was an easy death. Godspeed, David, you will be missed.

RIP Sandy Girl....May 18, 1995-May 11, 2009

The day I got the tiny Sandy Girl Brown, I put her in the stroller with Will and he smiled and squealed. I guess that Will was almost one, and Sandy was maybe 5 or 6 weeks old. She was the happiest, most loving dog, with her ears always perking up and her tail going nonstop. She was chihuahua all the way, serious when it counted but pretty happy go lucky most of the time.



Coco was already the senior dog and they made quite a pair, with crazy Jess screeching on the side and taking off into the night. I don't even remember who all else I had by then, but Sandy blended in naturally as the middle child who was always needy and wanting love and attention; she was a love sponge.

I named her after one of my very favorite Springsteen Songs, which I sang to her every time I bathed her (the dogs all used to have songs for the tub.) We played it today when we laid her to rest, in a deep hole beside the house, with a Flying Dragon tree planted over her body and a temporary stone, marked with Sharpie:





Even in her old age, having trouble walking, and with her heart and kidneys failing, she remained the happiest one in the pack...deaf and mostly blind, she could still smell a Chinese rib across the house, and she would stagger over for a piece; Sandy always was a food dog and had been pretty fat for most of her life. In the past weeks, knowing that she was at the end, I was able to give her alot of rib and Beggin' Strips, and all that stuff that I consider junk food for dogs. I took her up into my bed yesterday and she was so happy there. She had a whole Beggin' Strip at bedtime and as I went upstairs I heard her snapping at Spike to get away from her treat. She was a tough old broad to the end....the vet thinks that she didn't suffer from my explanation of how she looked when I found her in the morning. It was probably a stroke...her heart was going...

RIP old girl...She was a very good girl....I'm gonna miss her....

Farewell Bozo...

I am, I guess, of a certain age...and this guy, slightly scary and brilliant, was somewhat of a formative influence along with Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans. Larry Harmon was not the creator of the character of Bozo, nor was he the first actor to play Bozo, but he was smart enough to trademark the character and then spent the rest of his life carefully training and licensing Bozos across the country. The show was actually produced until 2001, and seats in the studio audience were sold out for years in advance.

Most TV characters like this last only 3 to 4 years, but Bozo kept going strong for over 50. This is due in no small part to Harmon's positive attitude. love of the character, and careful attention to detail in the licensing process.

RIP Bozo!

RIP Daisy....aka Lovebird....

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

She lived fast and she flamed out too young...Daisy was my favorite bird and my faithful companion who was always snuggled on my shoulder making a little clicking sound, riding inside my shirt, or hanging on by a fingernail from my jeans. She was sweet, playful, troublesome, loving, nippy when cranky, and she bit my nose last night so hard that it bled....but she was my girl, and everyone's favorite. Sunday isnt going to be the same without her to help us read the newspaper and cut the coupons, and reading the mail is going to be lacking without her beak shaped stamp of receipt on all the bills. Daisy loved paper...any kind of paper. She also loved a certain stuffed black spider who was magnetized to a light in my office.
I don't know why these things happen, just like I don't know what exactly happened to Daisy this morning. It was a normal morning and she was playing around as usual... and when she felt bad, she made it upstairs to Will, (who is down with what has become very bad pneumonia,) and then into his hands...and then she went to where little birds go when they die.... It sounded to me like a stroke, and that can happen from shock even if a car just backfires. It could have been any number of things, really...they can live a very long time and they are so very smart, but they are also fragile...and this one was a daredevil from the first moment we met and she stood up in the middle of a pile of baby birds in the middle of a nursery tank and ran towards the me she saw through the glass. Later, when I'd hold her perching on my finger, she would kamakazie towards my face over and over.
Daisy was probably the bird who was closest to me, and I liked her more than I like most humans. She was a no nonsense girl, with a mind of her own, and when she was put in a cage she would pace and fret until she was released. When she slept in a cage at night, she hung on the corner frantically waiting till daylight...and when I went out, she sat either on top of Kitty's cage in one spot, or on a curtain rod by the door waiting....
She was a really special little girl and I don't know if her space will ever be filled...its already really quiet around here.
Godspeed Daisy...you were loved and I'll miss you...horribly...

So Long to Kurt Vonnegut...Catch You on the Flip Side: RIP....

Kurt Vonnegut died last night at 85, after a fall left him with brain injuries. The NY Times has a great slide show and article about him...need I say more? What a spirit...what an interesting guy...irreplacable....he will be missed.