Guv, this one's for you

My friend Richard Hoffman wrote the Wikipedia entries for both New York TX and Texas NY. Here's an interesting factoid from the latter:

"Texas is a hamlet in Oswego County, New York ... It is officially part of the town of Mexico."

So next time someone shoots his mouth off about secession, you can stop him in his tracks by truthfully informing him that, six-flags history notwithstanding, Texas already belongs to Mexico.

By the time he figures out what you were actually referring to, you'll be safely off the Capitol grounds.

Memory dump 3: KLIF

Very early in my working life, I was Kelly Clarke, a disk jockey (ahem, radio announcer) at what had been the birthplace of Top 40 in years past, KLIF. As an AM station in a world where FM ruled music radio, we had to try harder to get attention, so we regularly appeared at onsite promotions. It was only natural that KLIF would sponsor the local premiere of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie (starring Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees!), and the promo department announced that it would involve some "very special guests."

The premiere was scheduled for a multiplex in the Dallas suburb of Garland. (Garland was a major inspiration for the setting of the cartoon King of the Hill, so try to imagine what kind of movie premieres there and what kind of "special guests" might actually show up.) We, the on-air talent, learned that WE would be the special guests, dressed in colorful band jackets rented from a costume shop. Y'know, like on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album, right?

So Allen Farmer, Steve Scott, Harry Nelson and I arrived at the premiere in a limo, but stayed inside hidden behind the darkened windows, building what we were assured was a frenzy of anticipation and excitement, until the audience was seated in the theatre and ready for the movie to start. Then we walked in together under a spotlight -- like anyone would recognize our faces anyway since we worked in radio -- and the only reaction was "Hey, that isn't Frampton and the Bee Gees!" We had to sit there in our cordoned-off seats wearing smelly old band jackets through the entire awful movie (rated 3.4 out of 10 on imdb.com; the Zap2it.com description is "Sgt. Pepper's grandson and three other guys form a band and fight bad guys. Based on a Beatles album."). The promo guy wouldn't let us leave during the screening while the house lights were safely out. I hope he's shilling for the ghost of Enron now.

I recall discussing that evening with my fellow suffer-ees only once afterward, when we decided that the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati, while billed as a sitcom, was actually a documentary.

(NB: Possibly the most bizarre twist in this story is that my cousin, the late Terry Southern, also had a connection with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ... the original one. He was among the faces on the cover of the album -- wearing dark glasses, not a short red band jacket. Sigh.)

Memory dump 2: Before he was a wild and crazy guy...

Imagine being a 15-year-old standing in the high school hallway (sporting what looks like a strawberry-flavored Mickey Mouse mask because you didn't apply sunscreen before you donned ski goggles and hit the very sunny Colorado slopes over winter vacation, but that's beside the point) and telling people that the best part of your trip was going out to a club one night and seeing this breath-stoppingly hilarious comedian whose shtick involved playing the banjo while wearing a fake-arrow-through-the-head and ended with a poem about all the things he had done and seen, including the memorable line "I've put a telephone in my nose and called my mother."

Imagine the looks you would have gotten, even from people who usually got your offbeat sense of humor.

Of course, we all know now who that comedian was. In 1973, nobody in San Antonio did. What fun to remind my classmates years later that I discovered Steve Martin. At least, before they did.

The show was a benefit for the Aspen Free Clinic, and most of the talent had local connections, such as headliners John Denver and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and other, less famous acts. Albert Brooks presented his one-man performance of "Blue Moon" as the Albert Brooks Big Band, providing vocals, instrumentation and backup vocals -- all a capella. Then there was the guy with the banjo ...

Think about Steve Martin's old standup act. How do you explain his brand of performance -- usually punchline-free -- to someone who's never seen it? And how does a 15-year-old girl convey the hilarity of the line "I've done terrible things to my dog with a fork"?

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Memory dump 1: KZEW

Today I tripped down memory lane when I heard The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" playing in the improbable venue of Walgreens. Here's the trippy thing it reminded me of:

I was a disk jockey on KZEW-FM in Dallas. It was a huge deal for me at the time, and I still love the memory.

Getting on the air at the Zoo was the dream of my radio career (many thanks to Ken Rundel for pointing me that direction), and I managed to be there at the tender age of 21, soon after I graduated from college. While I was in school I had worked briefly at some other interesting stations -- notably, KEXL in San Antonio and KLIF (the Mighty 1190, home of Top 40 radio a few decades before I arrived) -- but the Zoo was where I wanted to end up. And that I did: At the end of my tenure I left both KZEW and radio behind forever, thinking I should put my newly earned college degree to better use. Still wondering whether that was the right call.

What a great station -- you still find diehard Zoo Freaks, even though its AOR format we knew and loved went quiet more than a few decades ago. People still want to buy Zooloo window stickers (see here), and I'm still kicking myself for not keeping one of the satin bomber jackets that the station had made for the staff that year.

I had the great fortune to work with the amazing LaBella & Rody & Rhyner, the adorable Jon Dillon, John B. ("Viacom.") Wells, sweet Beverly Beesley, Michael Brown and Charley Jones. It was the Zoo's sixth year on air, and to commemorate it, some of the on-air staff posed for a publicity shot in our birthday suits ... with strategically placed birthday cake and sound board.

I wasn't there long, and my presence was hardly a dimple in the station's big ol' public face, but being there meant enough to me that I still smile thinking about it. I loved giving the station ID ("You're listening to the Zoo [sound effect: synthesized elephant roar] ... KZEW, Dallas Fort Worth") and coming up with great sets and segues, and in a weird way even the jerkoff who phoned in and, well, jerked off while I gave some long, involved answer to a stupid question he asked -- took me awhile to figure out what he was up to because I had the call on noise-cancelling speakerphone so I didn't hear his, um, utterances until I finally shut up myself. (Beverly later congratulated me on getting my first beat-off call ... with many more to look forward to, she predicted.) Of course there are better, more interesting, celebrity-laced stories but I've saved those for my other, anonymous blog.

Good luck finding that.

The movie Almost Famous weirded me out when I first saw it because Cameron Crowe's kid-in-the-bigtime story felt so familiar. Not that I was as young at the time as Crowe was or could hold a candle to him in talent then or now ... but I felt every bit as awed to be in my situation as he did in his and that movie brought it all back for me.

Fixing John LaBella's mic

Even so, I didn't realize just how big an impression these folks had made on me until years later when I learned about the untimely death of John LaBella -- I cried as though I'd left the station only the week before.

So Beverly, guys, others I didn't mention, and even you, Jeff and Tom -- your faces and especially your voices are permanently embossed on my memory. Maybe one of you remembers mine. Hint: There were two cute young redheads on the air around that time -- I was the one who didn't marry Jones...