I have been notified of a Trjoan Horse virus when going to this page. If anyone who reads this and experiences such a warning from your anti-virus program, how about letting me know at eightfeetdeep? I think my problem may be narrowed down, hopefully.
Thanks,
Dick
It has taken 30 or 40 years to realize what I should have known all along. The Byrds are among the greatest bands of the 1960s, or rock and roll, or country rock, one could argue. I suppose it has taken such a long time to come to such an epiphany since I came to know The Byrds incrementally through their actual participation with or influence on the Eagles, Poco, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, That is even through so many of their songs have placed themselves in my mind for so many years: “Mr. Spaceman,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “I Will Be Feeling a Whole Lot Better,” et cetera, no relation to Pete Cetera, bass player and vocalist with Chicago and later a solo singer of sorts.
These are just some thoughts as I attempted to embed a journalist video of The Byrds “I Will Be Feeling a Whole Lot Better” onto the blog and got a “Trojan Horse” warning from the lady on my avast antivirus program. Thanks lady. This is the second encounter I have had with a virus on this page. Well, maybe more than that if you consider page views, damn Internet jargon! So, it seems I will have to consult with Paul, my IT wizard in Japan. Maybe I’ll write a song about him. Maybe not.
Friday. What a concept.
I once lived for Friday to arrive. That is when I worked, roughly, five days a week. My record on such a schedule was rather spotty up until the last 20 years or so. That is, if you don’t include those four years I spent in college, during which time I mostly worked full time at a rate of 24 hours on and 48 hours off, which was a 56-hour work week. Now there was a concept!
These days, I no longer work full time. Well, sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. When I do it is usually more than a 48-hour work week. I had no illusions that working as a writer was going to be easy and, sure enough, it hasn’t been easy. In fact, I tell people these days that my part-time job “supports my writing habit.” I’m not lying much when I say that.
Still, I remember Fridays. My friends Robbie, Judy, sometimes Tonya, Brenda, Delia, Rick, Beth or whomever. Mostly Robbie, Judy and I — the Yellow Dogs. Long story. We’d go one place or the other for a margarita. Sometimes Judy’s artist husband would meet us and he and I would design water towers for small cities which looked like a large margarita glass, except it would be leaning. Like Pisa. Those were good times. Sometimes we didn’t even wait for Friday. Sometimes it would be a Yellow Dog Day — a day I’d describe as comparable to a day you’re sitting back watching the evening news and see your name as a camera pans down a lawsuit. Yikes!
I’m such a ham. I wasn’t going to write about much and already look what you’ve done.
Okay, I will do some good for a change on this blog instead of writing about politics or the weather or the craziness that passes for life. I will promote my old buddy Jonathan’s gig in which his trio, the Jonathan Sanson Trio will be recording a new, live CD. Jonathan just sent me an e-mail about it, albeit a mass e-mail, that’s what you do when you are a famous recording star in Fort Worth. Right, old buddy? Just busting your chops. I was going to buy some chops for dinner, but I didn’t. So right now, I’ve got no other chops to bust. So you’re it, pal!
The Jonathan Sanson Trio, featuring Dan Tcheco on drums, Chris Carfa on bass and Jonathan on piano and vocals will be recording Sunday, July 25, at Eddie V’s Lounge in Fort Worth. Too bad they couldn’t wait a week, since I will be heading for Denton exactly one week later. Hey, can’t you guys postpone everything for one week, just for me? Yeah, and pigs make scheduled flights between IAH and DFW!
I have heard some of the group’s recordings and I look forward to hearing them live some day. Jonathan and I are old high school chums who lived across our family’s field from each other. Later, we hung out during our military days, he in the Air Force and me a Navy squid.
Jonathan says that everyone attending will get a free copy of the CD the group is to record. The CD will come out, hopefully JS said, in September. The great piano man also reminds everyone of the happy happy hour prices, if you like that sort of thing.
If you mention you heard about this on Eight Feet Deep, Jonathan might buy you a drink or he might garrote you with a piano wire. That’s his call. So if you are in what my friends from that area call “The Metro Mess” during that time, check it out.
This all happens:
6-10 p.m.
Sunday, July 25
EV Museum Place
3100 West 7th Street
Fort Worth, TX 76107
Once again it is time not to panic, not to fret, not to stick your head in the sand, not to freak out. But just look and listen if you live along the Gulf Coast. Tropical Depression 3 may soon become Tropical Storm Bonnie, or not. It may even become Hurricane Bonnie, or not. All of this is not to be confused with Hurricane Bonnie that hit North Carolina in August 1998, inflicting more than $1 billion in damage, if you believe Wikpedia.
Now a lot of the weather forecasters, including the most always careful National Hurricane Center, do not have a lot of high expectations for what is now called TD 3. That’s a good thing, Martha. There is all that oil there in the Central Gulf floating around that the national media seems transfixed upon. Okay, that is a low blow. I too am concerned about the oil and the attempt to permanently stop the leak and get the mega mess cleaned up. It just seems the national media never really shows the concern that they should for the not so sexy spots on the map. That is, they don’t pay attention to it until a hurricane comes and gives a good shot for an anchor to do a “Dan Rather” and perform the now highly-cliched exercise of standing in a wind that is potent enough to knock one down.
Hey, there are people out there in places other than New Orleans! Cameron, La., was obliterated 53 years ago. The National Weather Service in Lake Charles now puts the total deaths at 500. The unknown toll has teetered between 300-500 for years. Audrey came in with a 12-foot storm surge on the town some three feet above sea level with winds gusts estimated at 150 mph.
Some 50 years later, Hurricane Rita socked the little town and parish seat of Cameron once again with a storm surge of around 12 feet and with 100-mph winds in tow. The death toll has always been screwy with Rita but one report said one person died in Cameron. Nevertheless, from one who visited not long afterward, little stood there after Rita other than the Cameron Parish Courthouse.
As was the case with Rita, the 1,200-some odd residents of Cameron had long ago learned when a hurricane is coming, there is no reason under the sun you can’t see to stick around. So when Ike once again flattened Cameron in 2008 with massive 22-feet tidal surges, folks got out of its way.
Cameron is only one town. There were many others in the path of Rita and Ike and Gustav and Katrina and on and on. I just picked Cameron because I visited it for a vacation day less than a year after Rita slammed it. I sat around on a rainy, cold afternoon at some bar in the tiny downtown Cameron — impressed that it had more than one bar — that disappeared after Rita, listening that afternoon, laughing and drinking some beers with a bunch of aging Cajun men and later with a dazzling Acadian lady who was probably the best looking woman in Cameron. Then, I visited that same place a year later for a story I was writing and saw very little I knew that remained of this pleasant little place I had once visited other than the big, old courthouse which seemed to be perched up on a hill, if you can call three or four feet a hill.
TD 3 may not be much more than it now is. It may be a tropical storm, which is what a lot of the models seem to predict. It seems headed for the middle Louisiana coast, although some models put the center of the storm landing around Cameron or Sabine Pass, Texas. The latter of which is about 45 miles north of where I live.
But as I have said and have said again, now with experience, tropical weather flare-ups seldom go where they are supposed to go. They also sometime do what they aren’t supposed to do. I say that not to scare anyone, nor to make it look as if I am smack dab in the middle of danger, like I have been before with a couple of these storms. I am just saying what I am just saying. It’s hurricane season, ya’ll. Time to keep heads up. Crank up the old The Clash CD and fixate on “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” and dance around until you have a plan in case things start getting nasty.
Does that sound like a plan?
It seems that a travesty of the size of the latest so-called “viral video” could not have happened. A heavily edited video of a speech that made Shirley Sherrod, a black U.S. Agriculture official in Georgia, look as if she had purposely discriminated against a white farmer. This got her fired by Obama administration officials who are racially sensitive. Sherrod was instantly made a pariah by Fox News, who ran with the story either before they knew the entire contents of the video or purposely jumped on the story because they seem constantly on the look out for high profile blacks who can embarrass Obama.
Here is how that warm ray of Fox sunshine Bill O’Reilly played the story:
O’REILLY: Well, that is simply unacceptable and Ms. Sherrod must resign immediately. The federal government cannot have skin color deciding any assistance.
This was on Tuesday, a full 24 hours after the story initially aired on Fox. Bull O’Really insisted that since some sanity — albeit limited — existed on other news outlets and the story was slow to surface elsewhere than Fox, the liberal media was obviously afraid to hurt Obama. This after the so-called “mainstream media” was slow to jump on other stories involving blacks with alleged ties to Obama such as those in ACORN and the New Black Panthers.
O’REILLY: In the big picture scheme, this is a small story. Every administration in history has had employees do dumb things. Ms. Sherrod made a mistake and is paying for it.
But what about the American media? Why the news blackout when things become unpleasant for the Obama administration?
The simple answer is bias. The establishment press tilts left and is reluctant to do damage to a very liberal president. I think that is absolutely true. There is no other reason to spike stories that bring millions of viewers to the Fox News Channel.
You’d think the other TV news operations would want to attract that large audience as well. Apparently, they don’t.
Well, Bull O’Really you’d think those operations would also want to get the story right, but all didn’t. Now it turns out that the story as reported by Fox was maddeningly wrong. And now Fox is all looking like their complicity didn’t exist.
I can’t give the great synopsis of all that is wrong with the Shirley Sherrod story that is examined by St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans. A wonderful read.
