THE FRIDAY FUNNIES

Well hello there!

Here we are once again, Gentle Readers.

Where?

I thought you'd have that feeling.

You know why he's so excited, don't you?

Big news out of the White House last night.

How will that go?

Well in the famous words of one of the participants "We'll see."

All right, on with the show.

You didn't think I'd forget the pie chart, did you?

All right that's enough.

After all we don't want to have to go to the hospital to have that laughter stitch removed from your side, do we?

Whatever you do, however you do it, no matter how silly you look, please have a super-duper weekend, Gentle Readers.

And always remember to keep laughing!

Here, kitty-kitty . . .

(Yes, you.)

CYNTHIA/MIRANDA FOR GUV?

While I try to avoid politics in my blog I sometimes am drawn into it almost against my will.

Such is the situation today when I read in the New York Times that the daughter of an old pal I met in my Mexico days reportedly is considering a run for governor of New York.

Governor Cynthia?

A mutual friend in Seattle asked me this morning what I thought.

My response was that I knew Ms. Nixon had been a quite public activist dealing with the New York City public school system for a number of years.

I also said that 2018 is definitely The Year of the Woman in politics and that Cynthia is very intelligent.

But I'm also aware that running a state, especially one as large as New York, is a lot different from acting as one on stage or being an education activist.

On the other hand she does have that friendship with the mayor of the Big Apple to count on.

So who knows?

Maybe some day that young actress I got to know when she visited her dad in Mexico back in the 1980's may have a much larger platform in the 21st Century.

("Need a press secretary, Cynthia?") 

I do know one thing.

Her father would be even prouder of her than he was way back then in Guadalajara.

HOW ABOUT THE HEREAFTER?

How, indeed?

If I can get a blog post out of this I shall mark it up as an accomplishment.

As I was idly reading through various blogs today I was smote smack on the forehead with not one but TWO references to The Great Beyond.

Mr. Pudding began this frame of reference by taking a walk through a cemetery over where he lives in Sheffield, U.K.

Talk of gravestones put my mind into a reflective mood.

And then, as I was reading marvelous Val's latest post there was an aside about a gambler in her area of Missouri who had used a windfall to pay off his mother's headstone!

Well, when one has been smitten right between the eyes twice on the same day it calls to him to take up his duties as a scribe.

So here it is.

I have long planned for my imperfect body to be consumed by flames when it is through perambulating.

Cremation is my game and I had absolutely no plans for the ashes.

Dump 'em, said I to SWMBO and probably also to the BRD, whichever is called upon to take charge of the nasty task.

But having my mind joggled by these two other bloggers today got me thinking.

What if, to my great amazement, there may be someone who survives me who would want to visit my resting place?

Should I have a headstone somewhere with my name on it?

Perhaps with some amusing epitaph inscribed thereon, like "I told you I was sick."

That one has mistakenly over the years been attributed to Oscar Levant.

Then there's this fellow:

Or the voluble Merv Griffin.

Of course, all of these options cost money.

Just ask Jessica Mitford, author of The American Way of Death.

Oh, never mind, she's been gone since 1996.

But getting back to my point(?) what decision must I come to?

To lie under some shrine of some sort or to disappear forever?

Without becoming macabre here, what is your choice?

REFLECTION

Who is that down there coming after my food?

Nope, it's not Blackwell.

It's one of the BRD's tribe . . name of Jet . . looking back at himself.

THE FRIDAY FUNNIES

Vladimir and Donald have been dominating the news this week.

Gentle Readers, let's see if we can ignore them for a bit and put a little joy in our lives.

After all it's a great day to be out of one's cage.  

Heh, heh, a little play on words there for Oscar weekend.

All right, let us take a look in Catalyst's Closet and see what we can find.

There's nothing like a muddy puppy to bring a smile to your faces, right?

Now let's KEEP it there during a riotously rockin' and ribald weekend!

And always remember to keep laughing.

Here, kitty-kitty . . .

TBT - AND THEN I WROTE . . .

What good is a blog if the author can't brag a little, right?

Okay, I have dropped pieces of my many, many years in this blog before but let's put them all in order.

I was born and raised in Stanley, a tiny town in North Dakota not far from the Canadian border.

Me and my dad

Even as a wee tot I struggled manfully to survive the deadly climate I was forced to live in.

Me and my big brother

Rushing on ahead, when I was in my early teens I discovered electricity and then ham radio, which helped me through those long wintry days and nights.

I moved on to college, where I was known as a diligent scholar.

That was also where I first worked for a commercial radio station, KEYJ in Jamestown and met a fellow I worked with and maintained a friendship of more than half a century with, Dan Brannan or, as I've always called him, Danny Bananas.

Even back then Danny didn't know enough to come in out of the rain

Beginning my "real" life in the outer world I landed a job at KCJB Radio in Minot, where I was known as the rock and roll disc jockey Bruce on the Loose.

That lasted a little while until I got fired and ended up with a t.v. job in Aberdeen, South Dakota . . at KXAB-TV.

Covering the birth of the Fischer Quintuplets

Then it was back to North Dakota and a job in both radio and television at KFYR in Bismarck.

I had a mentor, Bob MacLeod

And later I mentored, in turn, Bob Barclay

I learned to interview newsmakers live on television . . .

Newly elected Congressman Tom Kleppe and I

. . . and how to film politicians while walking backwards in front of them . . .

. . . I got a handshake with Chet Huntley, back when he was doing the Huntley-Brinkley report.

(I also met his partner, Brinkley, and I have such a story about him but I can't tell it here!!!)

. . . and I met the legendary and lithe UPI man, Ed Stattmann . . .

. . . and a pal I later followed to Indianapolis (and Ed followed us both), Orly Knutson who retired after 50 years as a radio announcer.

The Happy Norwegian at the Indy 500 during practice around 1969

During a 3-year stint at WIBC and WNAP in Indianapolis, I met a couple of young tyros, Tom Cochrun and Chris Connor.

Cris, as you can probably tell from this picture, was the dj;

Tom and I, in our ties and striped shirts, were the newsmen

Those ties were kept around our necks by the news director, the late Fred Heckman.

Then, before you know it, it was off to Phoenix with a new wife, the storied and fabled SWMBO.

There I landed a job with KTAR-TV, which later became KPNX-TV.

Weekends spent writing and producing newscasts were gruelling

But I got to have some fun with some big stories.

A "stand-up" in front of the U.S. Capitol with Baseball Steve

Giving reporter Ron Talley the benefit of my vast experience during the Sandra Day O'Connor Supreme Court nomination hearings

Wally Athey, Talley, Linda Alvarez and I feeding a story from Washington home to Phoenix

And I worked with some great people there.

Bill Redeker, later of ABC News

Diane Kalas, veteran of the radio wars in Pittsburgh, Boston and San Francisco

Jerry Foster, Bill Denney, Kent Dana, not long after "crossing the street"

Lin Sue Cooney and Mark Curtis

Lew Ruggiero, Baseball Steve Torbeck, Karl Kindberg & I

I even made enough money to be able to afford a month-long tour of Europe with SWMBO in 1985.

Well, shut my mouth!

We came back from Europe and a couple of months later I walked out of Channel 12, due to a variety of reasons.

A couple of years later, we moved to Mexico, where we were met by some welcoming gringo expatriates.

Brent Bogdonavich & Terry Taylor (no relation)

We met a lot more people down there.

The ones still alive are still our friends.

We also celebrated our 20th anniversary with many of them.

We spent a little more than four years living in the land of palm trees and eternal springtime sunshine in the Guadalajara area before moving to Austin, Texas.

Less than two years there was enough and it was back to Arizona.

Judy worked in a used bookstore for a couple of years and then we built our own, Bookends in Prescott Valley.

It survived 7 years before we gave it up.

I still had a couple of years to go to retirement so I went back to radio, working as the news director at KYCA in Prescott.

One of my compadres there was big Jeff Demand.

Finally in 2006, I cashed in my chips for good and have been (mostly) enjoying retirement ever since.

That's the short version.

One of these days let me tell you about . . . .