Odds & Ends

It has been almost a month since I last posted something but the world hasn't come to an end, has it? Maybe a few more cracks are exposed, for sure, but it hasn't ended.

Call it writer's block, call it being a little bit busy, call it Ishmael but I haven't had a lot to say lately. Nonetheless, here are some random thoughts on some recent events that you should be just as glad I didn't spend more time on.

Octomom
God forgive me but I just want to beat this woman senseless. Of course, I'll have to conserve my strength so that I have something left for the fertility doctor. My favorite part of her interviews is when they ask her - and they always ask her - how she is going to pay for all of this and she says, "It'll be okay after I get my degree." Oh yeah, I forgot. The usual sequence for these things goes something like this: Day One, Master's Degree; Day Two, earning enough money to support 14 kids. Phew! As Butch said to Sundance just before they were gunned down by the entire Bolivian army, "For a moment there I thought we were in trouble."

11-Year Old charged with Murder
So it's Christmas time out in Wampum, Pennsylvania and this guy buys his 11-year old son a "youth model" .20-gauge shotgun. (Whatever happened to an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle?) Anyway, the boy - let's call him Jordan Brown - is living with his dad, his dad's girlfriend, Kenzie and her two daughters. Kenzie is 8 months pregnant with dad's child. Jordan is feeling jealous of Kenzie and the girls (He's not too happy about becoming an uncle either) and reportedly told friends he was going to "pop her." So one morning last week he took his Christmas present and shot Kenzie in the back of the head from about a foot away, while she was in bed, then got on the bus and went to school. Kenzie died. The baby died. Jordan has been in jail but was moved to a youth detention center charged with two counts of homicide. Now, how many things are wrong with this story? The boy? Well, sure... there's definitely something wrong there that was apparently out in the open but no one did anything about it. Dad buying a .20-gauge shotgun for a fifth grader? Oh yeah. THAT'S a big wrong (of course, let's not lose sight of the fact that he thought it through enough to buy a "youth model"). But let's leave a little bit of justifiable wrath for a company that sells "youth model" shotguns in the first place, shall we?

Look out for the cheater
I heard an interesting albeit bizarre story recently about an old 60s group called Bob Kuban & The In-Men. Back in 1966, these guys had a one-hit wonder called, "The Cheater." The chorus went like this: "Look out for the cheater/Make way for the fool-hearted clown/Look out for the cheater/He's gonna build you up just to let you down." Can't you just hear those horns? Well, the lead singer of the group was a guy named Walter Scott and years later - a couple days after Christmas, 1983 - he disappeared without a trace. After a year, his wife JoAnn petitioned to have him declared dead. She was dating a neighbor named James Williams who had been recently widowed. Well, they found Walter's body in April, 1987, floating in a cistern in James' back yard. Did I mention that he had been tied up and shot in the back? It turns out that JoAnn and James had been having an affair for more than a year before they killed Walter. JoAnn pled guilty to hindering the investigation and got 5 years. James? Well, once they found Walter they exhumed his wife's body and, you guessed it... James is serving two life sentences. As Walter sang at the end of his song, "Tough luck for the cheater/Too bad for the fool-hearted clown." Indeed. File under, "Life imitates art."

Villanova
As many of you know, I occasionally teach a course in marketing research at VU, my alma mater. I joke that it is my ultimate revenge on the university but, truth be told, I consider it a privilege. Anyway, last night I attended a networking reception at the Villanova School of Business mainly to hear the keynote speaker, Bill McDermott, president of Global Field Operations for SAP AG. There were also two marketing presentations by VSB students. One was done by two young ladies and, as it turns out, one of them was a former student of mine. She was a first semester junior at the time but she's a senior now and will graduate in May. Not that I had any input whatsoever into their presentation but I felt a twinge of pride nonetheless. I realized again my big regret in life (no, not that) - that I didn't go into education as a career.

Score one for the dumbheads

A couple of years ago, my wife and I along with some of those eclectic array of friends I mention in my profile went down to St. Maarten for some unforgettable R&R. It was particularly unforgettable for Margie and me because, while we didn't have passports, we had our birth certificates which we were assured would get us there and back.

Well, yes and no.

My wife's certificate, issued by the state of Pennsylvania, was just fine. My birth certificate, issued by Uniontown Hospital and displaying a big gold seal the size of a pie plate, was not. "A souvenir" was the way the USAir ticket agent uncharitably described it. As a result, my wife could head to the Caribbean but, alas, I could not - at least not before I obtained a state-issued birth certificate.

So I figured my choice was to (a) get a birth certificate immediately or (b) stay home. I opted for the first choice, got a certificate that day (Who knew?) and joined my wife and friends the next day in sunny St. Maarten.

But now that I have been reading about the government delaying until June the date by which television stations must broadcast in an all-digital format, I realize too late that I had a third option. Maybe I could have gotten USAir to delay the flight until I was ready to go. Little kenned I that a lot of other people could be forced to wait for me to get my act together! Sure the plane was all fueled up, the bags were stowed and all seats were in their upright and locked positions but so what?

Excuse me, I... wasn't... ready.

I knew months in advance when the plane was leaving and what I needed to do to be on it but I screwed up. Should everybody else have had to wait for me? No, I don't think so. It would have been nice but, no, I don't think so.

An article in this morning's Wall Street Journal included this: "Citing data from Nielsen Company, Rep. Rick Boucher (D., Va.) said 6.5 million households are unprepared for the shift. This represents 5.7% of all homes. 'If almost 6% of the nation's households lose all of their TV service, I think most people would declare the digital TV transition to be a failure,' Rep. Boucher said."

Yo Rick! If after two years of notification and relentless promotion, over 94% of the nation's households don't lose all of their TV service, I think most people would declare the digital transition to be a success! I'm willing to bet that no one on that plane thought that their vacation would be a failure because I wasn't there (well, maybe my wife - bless her - but that's about it).

I'm waiting for some Republican to get wind of this comment and say something like, "If almost 47% of the nation's households voted for the losing candidate, I think most people would declare the 2008 presidential election a failure." Actually, no, probably only about 47% of people would feel that way but, hey, that's the way the majority-minority provision works. And come June 12th, when 5.9 million homes are still unprepared for the shift to digital (but 108.1 million are), I hope that someone remembers that.

As for me, well, Margie and I got passports - real nice. They come in a leather case and there's pictures and pockets and everything. But I still have my birth certificate from Uniontown Hospital. I love that big gold seal!

The day the music grew

This being the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, everyone is talking about the day the music died. I reckon that's true but I also think that when that plane hit the ground, a lot of new and great music grew from the ashes.

You can't over-estimate the impact of Buddy Holly on popular music. I mean, here is a guy whose entire career was shorter than the time Elvis Presley spent in the army and yet, 50 years later, everyone is talking about him again - still! No less than the Wall Street Journal published a long article about him this morning!

His life, and death, touched the careers of pop and country stars alike. Buddy Holly and the Crickets were among the first groups to write and produce their own songs in the studio, a stance that the Beatles would revolutionize less than a decade later. [Ironically, like the Beatles, Buddy Holly was passed over by Decca Records after an audition. Boy, those Decca people knew what they were doing, huh?] Holly went from playing rock 'n roll in Lubbock, Texas to charting string arrangements for some of his songs in less than two years. I firmly believe that, had he lived, we would have seen collaborations between Buddy Holly and some of the top artists of the 60s and, perhaps, the 70s. You know that he and his biggest fan, Paul McCartney, would have gotten together.

The music sings for itself. "That'll be the day" was John Wayne's oft-repeated line in the movie, The Searchers (see what you can learn from watching TCM?). A few years later, a group from England called, oddly enough, the Searchers would create a popular but short string of hits sounding very much like the Crickets. Listen to "Don't Throw Your Love Away" by the Searchers and then play "Everyday" by Buddy Holly. Sound similar? You bet.

Certainly in terms of popularity and promise, Buddy Holly's death was the most pronounced. Ritchie Valens was only 17 years old and just coming into his own. He didn't want to ride the bus again so as they were walking out of the Surf Ballroom, he asked guitarist Tommy Allsup if he could have his seat on the plane. The two men flipped a coin...

I'm not sure where the career of the Big Bopper would have gone. Everyone knows "Chantilly Lace" but Richardson also wrote a couple of songs for other people, "White Lightning" for George Jones and most notably "Running Bear" for Johnny Preston. He and Jones also provided those (politically incorrect by today's standards) Indian sounds as back-up vocals. The Bopper would not live to see it become a hit in the fall of 1959.

We also can't forget the late Waylon Jennings who in the mid-50s was a disc jockey on radio station KLLL in Lubbock, a friend of young Buddy Holly. Buddy helped teach him guitar and produced his first record. Waylon was playing bass in the band on the fateful Winter Dance Party tour but had given up his seat on the plane earlier that evening (no coin toss necessary) to J.P. Richardson because Richardson had a cold and didn't want to squeeze into the bus. Buddy told his old friend, "I hope your old bus freezes up," and Waylon responded, "Yeah, I hope your plane crashes." For years, Jennings felt somewhat responsible for his death.

Bobby Vee had a band and they went on in place of Buddy Holly in Fargo on February 3rd. The odd, tragic circumstances helped launch his career.

Finally, there is Sonny Curtis, another old friend of Buddy's from Lubbock. Curtis played fiddle on a radio show called Buddy & Bob and then went on to a successful career, mainly in country music. In 1960, the surviving Crickets asked him to join the group and he did for awhile but Sonny Curtis was actually more popular as a songwriter. He wrote "Walk Right Back" for the Everly Brothers and "I Fought the Law" for the Bobby Fuller Four. The Crickets also made a recording of it. Speaking of similarities, listen to the guitar intro to "I Fought the Law" and then listen to the guitar break in "Peggy Sue." See what I mean? Oddly, most people probably know one of Curtis' most famous songs without knowing that he wrote it - the theme song for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, "Love Is All Around." So if you have ever wondered what is the straightest line between Buddy Holly and Mary Tyler Moore, wonder no more.

Paul Simon sang, "Buddy Holly still goes on but his catalogue was sold." Sold, indeed, to that big fan, Paul McCartney. Sir Paul knows a good business deal when he sees it but money aside, I can't think of anyone else to whom I would rather see the music entrusted.

The music isn't dead. Rave on.