Oh, Deer!

Photo by Dwight Burdette CCA-3.0

Before this Halloween weekend kicks into high gear of scary fun, I had to share a call that was played by Gil Gross on his show on Thursday, October 25, 2012, Hour 3  (The Gil Gross Show, KKSF-Newstalk 910-AM).  For those who heard it, what did you think?  If you haven’t heard it yet, listen and let us know what you think about it.

I played it for my friend and he is certain it’s a prank call.  I’m not so sure.  It makes me laugh out loud every time.

It starts about 8:17 on the podcast.  It’s the caller Donna talking to a radio station in Fargo, ND.

You can listen to it here:

http://www.newstalk910.com/player/?station=KKSF-AM&program_name=podcast&program_id=gil_gross.xml&mid=22570644

If it’s a real call, I wonder if she thinks people are herding deer.  I can’t imagine she thinks the deer are reading the signs.  It’s the only possible explanation.  What do you think?

Moyers & Company Looks at Inequality and the One Percent

A new Moyers & Company broadcast is now airing on PBS channels.  It’s an interesting subject about the increased wealth of super-rich, with guests, Matt Taibbi, of the Rolling Stone and Chrystia Freeland, author of Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.

This quote by Matt Taibbi is excerpted on Moyers & Company website showcasing the program:

“We have this community of rich people who genuinely believe that they are the wealth creators and they should get every advantage and break,” Taibbi tells Bill. “Whereas everybody else is a parasite and they’re living off of them”

Here’s a link to the program:

http://billmoyers.com/segment/matt-taibbi-and-chrystia-freeland-on-the-one-percents-power-and-privileges/

I am startled by the information that companies are now forcing employees to work unpaid hours supporting the boss’s political candidate.  Unfortunately, it’s not included on the website video but the program I saw on PBS aired it at the end of the interview with Taibbi and Freeland.  Here is a link to that information found on Moyers & Company website:

http://billmoyers.com/2012/10/19/plutocrats-want-to-own-your-vote/

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“The plutocrats know it and love it — and the rest of us should be forewarned: When the Supreme Court made its infamous Citizens United decision, liberating plutocrats to buy our elections fair and square, the justices may have effectively overturned rules that kept bosses from ordering employees to do political work on company time. Election law expert Trevor Potter told us that now “corporations argue that it is a constitutionally protected use of corporate ‘resources’ to order employees to do political work or attend campaign events — even if the employee opposes the candidate, or is threatened with being fired for failure to do what the corporation asks!”

This is chilling stuff, people.  We need to wake up and do something about it before it’s too late.

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We can’t let them clip our wings.

A Guilty Confession

Since I no longer listen to radio station KGO, the first thing I do when I get into work is log on to the computer and listen online to BBC Radio 2.  I usually catch the last hour of the ‘Steve Wright in the Afternoon’ show (when my work day begins the Brits are on their way home) and then the ‘Simon Mayo Drivetime’ show.  One daily feature of Mayo’s show is a listener confession segment that is read on-air by the host and then others in the studio join in to decide if the confession should be forgiven.

I love this segment.  There is a confession every Monday through Thursday, and on Friday all confessions of the week can be downloaded from the BBC Radio 2 website or listened to online.  I’d recommend downloading the podcast because you can listen to it anytime and will always have it.  If you listen to it on the website, the audio (under ‘Play Recent Episode’) expires 30 days from the Friday it’s posted.

A few months ago, I posted a link to another hysterical confession about a guy and his microphone moment.  It was a great ‘Float On’ enhanced confession.  Remember?  Hello, and my name is Larry and I love everything and everyone…

I downloaded that Float On podcast so I can listen to it anytime for a good laugh.  Unfortunately, it’s no longer available online but maybe I’ll transcribe the story.  It will lose some of its entertainment value, though.  The most fun was listening to host, Mayo, mimic the voice of the confessor.

Most confessions on the show are throw-aways – I listen to them once, smile, and move on.  But, sometimes, a confession makes me laugh out loud.  These are the ones I share.  This one aired on Thursday, about a girl going to the library and discovering the music section.

If you listen online, it will only be available for another 29 days from today (Saturday, October 13, 2012).  The podcast is titled – (and it includes the Guilty confession, the last one on the podcast beginning at 23:15):

Eau de Toilet and other tales 12 Oct 12

Fri, 12 Oct 12 (Duration: 31 mins)
Available: 29 days remaining (as of October 13, 2012)

This week’s concise collection of terrible tales includes a cassette catastrophe, some underhand underwear usage, toilet trauma, and rock royalty’s rebuttal…but will you forgive?

Here’s the link to the page with the podcast for download as well as the online audio you can listen to without downloading the podcast (on the right-hand side of the page):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/confess

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I especially enjoyed this confession because it reminded me of an incident that happened years ago to an animal-lover friend.  He’d rented a video at Blockbuster about puppies.  Another friend was thinking about getting a puppy so he lent the video to her as long as she returned the video to Blockbuster, which she did.

A week later her boyfriend brought his buddies over to watch a video of Tarantino’s ‘Natural Born Killers’.  They sank into the couch, beers in hand, grabbing handfuls of potato chips, and the guy pressed Play.

Yep.  You guessed it.  The puppy video.

I laugh now, even, thinking about it.  Not only at the thought of the look on the faces of the guys expecting two hours of blood and gore, but also at the thought of the poor soul in front of her television, sipping chamomile tea, ready to indulge her innocent passion for puppies.

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If you read this before October 17th, and want to take a trip down cassette tape memory lane, listen to the short discussion Simon Mayo had with guest, Jason Bradbury from The Gadget Show, on Thursday, October 11th.  This podcast will be available for another five days (as of today, October 13th).

Here’s the podcast, the interview begins approximately 18 minutes in (18:10) and goes through (22:50).  Also, listen to the new Rolling Stones song that plays after it.  ‘Doom and Gloom’.  It sounds a little like U2’s ‘Get On Your Boots’ song.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n63yq

I remember, do you?

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Also, speaking of remembering, on Simon Mayo’s show, Wednesday, October 10, 2012, was an interesting segment with guest, Hunter Davis, author of the new book ‘The John Lennon Letters’.   There is a clip of it online but it won’t play for me.  If you have the same problem, then you can still listen to the show’s podcast online – for the next four days.  It won’t be available after October 16th.  If you listen to the show podcast, the interview starts about 1 hour, 4 minutes in (1:04:30) and lasts about 20 minutes (to 1:23:55).

Here’s the link to the show podcast:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n635k

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Here’s the link to the clip of the Davis/Lennon segment (this is the one I can’t play on my system):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00zn2nj 

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Here’s a link to the book on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/John-Lennon-Letters/dp/0297866346

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If you want to poke around on the BBC Radio 2 website, here it is:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/

I’ve Been Waiting for your Phone Call for Eighteen Years – Could it be You Don’t Love Me Anymore?

I love that Len Tillem’s show on KKSF-Newstalk 910-AM is growing in audience numbers.  What makes his show are the stories, oh, the stories, as Len says all of the time.

Photo by Takkk CC-SA 3.0

I’m not so excited about his pitches and shows about the class-action lawyer he promotes and partners with on-air, but Len has a business to promote and I have no problem with him trying to make some money.  It’s just not that interesting to me and I half-listen to those shows in the same way I half-listen to Gil’s show when Rhoda is on.

So, when Len has a show full of stories, oh, the stories, there is no other show like it on radio today.  Love those callers!

Want to hear what I’m talking about?  Len had just that kind of show on Wednesday, October 3, 2012.  A 50-something guy called about a problem with someone he met on a sugar-daddy website.  Only Len would ask how good was the sex.  That call was followed by a woman lecturing Len on the way he handled the sugar-daddy call.  Then some guy called to say he went out for drinks one afternoon and woke up later that night in his old neighborhood and didn’t know how he got there.  Oh, the calls!  The calls!

Here’s the link:

http://www.newstalk910.com/player/?station=KKSF-AM&program_name=podcast&program_id=tillem.xml&mid=22501078

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Speaking of 50-somethings who go after legal young things, I’ve never been a fan of Jim Gabbert, but that was based on his creepy-factor seeing him on those old Dance Party shows and then some salacious headlines about his private life over a decade ago when he lied about a stalker who was blackmailing him.  That’s about all I knew about him. It wasn’t until this whole KGO fiasco unfolded with those Dick-eys at Cumulus that I’ve learned some of Gabbert’s history.  Yes, it’s based on what he’s said about himself on-air, but when I listen to his shows it’s apparent that he knows what he’s talking about based on his own media experience.  When he fills in as a host on KKSF-Newstalk 910-AM it’s always a show I go back to the archives and listen again for each hour he was on the air.  He sat in for Gil Gross on Wednesday, September 26, 2012, talking about capitalism and a healthy economy and one thing I noticed is that he took many calls.  That surprised me.  I’d always thought Gil didn’t have many callers because of the time of day the show airs when most people are in their cars heading home after work.  If that’s true, then why does Gabbert get a board full of callers?

I guess it’s the differing styles.

For Len, it’s the callers who make the show.  On other shows, even, I learn something from callers, no matter if they agree with the host or not.  There’s always another level of discussion introduced.  For whatever reason, Gil seems to prefer interviewing experts in the field of topics chosen for his show.  I enjoy hearing their viewpoints as well, but the most interesting shows are always made by the people who call in.  Gil leaves little to no room for call-ins.  People with opinions are squeezed in at the end, and I mean the very end, time for only one or two calls.  I wonder, if, after months of this, callers have given up and that’s why there are so few calls on his show.  I miss those callers.  Still love Gil, but part of the pleasure of listening to talk radio is the unexpected conversations brought up by the listening audience – not the rehearsed bits by prepped guests and host.  I miss the spontaneity of calls.

So, let’s hear some calls.

Links to Jim Gabbert filling in for Gil Gross on Wednesday, September 26, 2012:

Hour 1 – Budget Cuts to Public Education

http://www.newstalk910.com/cc-common/podcast/single_page.html?more_page=3&podcast=gil_gross&selected_podcast=gross_09-26-12_h1_1348717954_20720.mp3

Hour 2 – Capitalism and a Healthy Economy

http://www.newstalk910.com/cc-common/podcast/single_page.html?more_page=3&podcast=gil_gross&selected_podcast=gross_09-26-12_h2_1348718939_806.mp3

Hour 3 – More Capitalism and the Dumbing Down of America

http://www.newstalk910.com/cc-common/podcast/single_page.html?more_page=2&podcast=gil_gross&selected_podcast=gross_09-26-12_h3_1348719664_7274.mp3

For the same reasons I still read that strange media blogger.  Not for what he posts, but for those wonderful comments made by the readers of his blog.  It can get very heated over there and there are many detailed discussions by informed readers that far exceed the content of the blog itself.

That media blogger guy has really gone off the rails this time around.  One of his recent posts about talk show hosts wanting to kill themselves is the most inane and confusing I’ve read in a long time.  The only thing that brought it back to the land of sane were commenters who took out the weird animal noises and went in a direction that made it readable.  Without them, it wouldn’t be worth the minute it takes to read that guy’s blog.  Time spent in the comment section is usually time well spent.

Finally, I was surprised to read that Armstrong and Getty almost had a incident on-air but it barely evoked a yawn.  I read about it days afterward in a short mention over at the Facebook page of FormerKGOListeners.  It’s funny that no one else has ever mentioned it.  Even that media blogger guy is uninterested and that guy posts rumors that turn out to be untrue just to get more readers.

I guess I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to waste time listening to the screeching of Armstrong and Getty.

I could say the same about the number of people who don’t waste their time reading this blog, but that’s another post for another time.

Not that many people will see it when I do get around to posting it anyway…

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By the way, the name of this post comes from the title of a song by Beatrice Kay.  I can’t find a video for it on YouTube, so I’ll have to post another one of her songs ‘Hooray, Hooray, I’m Going Away’.  Love the broken record at the end.

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If you want to hear the song, here’s one that’s not performed by Beatrice Kay but the full song is there.