Perez Hilton can kiss my...

I'm getting very tired of the controversy surrounding Miss California's performance at the recent Miss USA pageant.  First off, I didn't watch the show because I'm not a fan of Donald Trump, owner of the pageant.  Then psuedo celebrity Perez Hilton grabbed his share of the spotlight when he asked Miss California her opinion of gay marriage.  Nothing like dropping the poor woman into the middle of a mine field!

Carrie Prejean, who's otherwise known as Miss California USA is off on a promotional tour right now, promoting a newly formed group, the National Organization for Marriage.  She made an appearance with Matt Lauer on NBC-TV's The Today Show and I'm sure she's been booked for many other such appearances.  

In case you don't know who Perez Hilton is by now, he's an online gossip columnist who dishes the latest dirt on the hip and famous of Hollywood.  He also happens to be very much out of the closet.  

Now Perez, I believe you were made the way you are, so I'm not going to suggest you change your wicked ways.  But if you ask someone their opinion, you have a 50 - 50 chance they're going to disagree with you, so why are you so shocked?  

And to the California pageant officials who are criticizing Miss Prejean for using her pageant title to promote her religious and political views.  It was the pageant, in the form of Mr. Hilton, who opened the door wide for her to take center stage when he asked the question.  If you don't want your pageant winners to have strong opinions, then don't ask them questions that require an answer that's liable to piss off sizable portion of the audience.

There's gay bashing and there's Christian bashing going on out there and it needs to stop.  I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating.  If Jesus Christ came back to Earth today, judging from what was written in the Bible, I'd be willing to bet that he'd go after the Wall Street & corporate big big shot types before he went after the gay population.  Remember, Christ sat down and ate with the fallen women and sinners and he chased the money changers out of the Temple.

Small Town News

One of the most read columns in any small town newspaper is the police blotter.  Some of these are fairly bland, filled with statistics about the number of speeding tickets issued and the occasional DUI.  Others are a real hoot to read.

I happened across the Valley County Sheriff's report in a recent issue of the Glasgow, MT Courier.  There were some interesting items noted, the best one is the one I'll share now.

Monday April 13, 2009 time: 2004 - A Valley County Deputy says there is a bunch of old ladies in a van and they are sitting at the side of US 24 at mile marker 18.  They are going to be there all night waiting for aliens.

 How could you not find that funny?  Knowing the area, US 24 heads north to the Canadian border at Opheim, MT.  Were the ladies hoping to stop Al Qaeda operatives sneaking in from the north?  Or were they waiting for little green men who planned to make the airstrip at the former Glasgow Air Force Base into the next Roswell?

Unfortunately there was nothing else in the Sheriff's report regarding this matter.  

Controversy in Colstrip, MT

The Senior Class at Colstrip High School in southeast Montana wants to take a trip and being enterprising young folks, they held a fundraiser.  The students packed the school gymnasium for a Donkey Basketball game.  For the uniniated, an animal trainer brings in a truckload of donkeys wearing special rubber shoes to prevent damage to the hardwood.  Players are issued scoop shovels to take care of any "accidents" and they mount up to play an interesting game of hoops.

Most people in Montana have no problem with this sort of entertainment, save for a few PETA types.  However, one of the teams in Colstrip managed to stir up a rather nasty hornet's nest.  The team took the floor with the name "Retard Rodeo" according to a letter to the editor in the Billings Gazette.

Throughout the game, the announcer used the team name, offending at least one person in the stands.  And I will have to take the side of that person as I find the name to be offensive as well.  

Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not exactly "Politically Correct", but I like to think I draw the line at ridiculing a group of people who don't deserve ridicule.  It's one thing to make fun of politicians or yourself, but the person who named the team crossed the line in my book.

In reading the comments posted online after the letter, it was revealed by a parent of one of the team members that the name was decided on at the last minute by one team member, who didn't have the support of the rest of the team.  That student then told the team name to the announcer who went ahead and used it.

I can buy that explanation, and the mother says her daughter has already written a letter of apology.  I say good for the daughter and good for the mother involved there. 

But that still leaves the questions of what should be done with the person who came up with the name and where did the announcer leave his brain that night?  It's not like we didn't have a recent example of something very similar to this blowing up in the press.  President Obama took his lumps and moved on.  The people involved in Colstrip should be taught a lesson too.  I'm not talking anything drastic like drawing & quartering or staking them to an anthill on the prairie drenched in honey.  But seeing as how the name was offensive to those who participate in Special Olympics, why not make those involved in this whole mess spend the day as volunteers at a Special Olympics track meet?

The timing is right, they're being held around the state of Montana right now.  I'm sure they wouldn't have to travel far to find one.  And I think a day with these special people would go a long way to educating our clueless friends as to why they were wrong to use the name "Retard Rodeo".  

You can't believe everything you read!

Back in the olden days, information came in the form of daily and weekly newspapers, hourly radio newscasts, the nightly news on one of the 2 or 3 TV stations you could pick up with your antenna, or in letters that the Post Office delivered in a week or so.  There was plenty of time to digest and analyze the information you received and make sure you had the story right before it got passed on.  Today, with the advent of 24 hour news networks and the internet, our society is bombarded with information from all sides.  

Being a bit of a news junkie, I find this a very good development.  In high school I was the guy who kicked ass when we played "Current Events", a Jeopardy style game using questions ripped from that week's headlines.  Mr. Bob Kuntz, my junior year U.S. History teacher at Plentywood, MT High School, used to make me play against the rest of the class and then cheat for the other side.  My edge came because I worked after school at KATQ AM & FM and read the Associated Press wire during each shift, keeping names and events current in my mind.  

Enough of my ego inflating trip down memory lane, back to the present day.  I'm amazed by what otherwise intelligent people will pass along as "news and information".  It's become so easy, you get an e-mail from someone you know detailing the latest assault on your favorite hot button issue and a simple click on the Forward icon and the e-mail is passed along to everyone in your address book.  

I don't have a problem with people sharing their fervor for an issue, but please people, do some basic fact checking before you resend that e-mail.  One item that comes to mind as I'm writing this is an assertion that "In God We Trust" was being left off the newest $1 U.S. coins that were minted.  I realize that not many people are using these coins, I've yet to get one in change, but all it took for me to determine this was not the case was to search the U.S. Mint's website where I found this to be UNTRUE.  The phrase is inscribed on the edge of the coin, something that had never been done before, but definitely not leaving it off the coin.  

Other commonly forwarded missives can be researched easily enough.  Simply Google the opening line or some other significant part of the e-mail and see what comes back.  Or go to the website called Snopes.  This way, before you alarm everyone you know about the latest gang initiation rituals or where a famous fast food restaurant is purchasing their beef, you'll at least have the satisfaction of knowing that the information you're sending along is reasonably accurate.  

There's an interesting article online that I came across today regarding Twitter and it's ability to disseminate information quickly.  Unfortunately, when it comes to one of today's hottest headlines, Swine Flu, Twitter is not exactly getting a passing mark.  Check out the article by Evgeny Morozov at Neteffect.ForeignPolicy.com.  It makes for some interesting reading.

Farewell to Dog River!

Growing up 15 minutes from the Saskatchewan border in northeast Montana, I was exposed to a lot of things Canadian. Summer fallowing in the tractor went a lot better listening to rock and roll on 800 CHAB and 620 CKCK. Everything from Rush, to April Wine, to Tom Cochrane in his pre-solo days as lead singer of Red Ryder to Trooper.

I've continued my enjoyment of Canadian media and culture into my adulthood. One of my favorite talk radio programs is John Gormley Live on News Talk 980 from Regina. And my favorite sit-com, American or Canadian, is Corner Gas. For those of you who haven't seen the show, it's set in the fictional town of Dog River, Saskatchewan and chronicles life in a town 40 kilometers from nowhere. For the last six seasons, the citizens of Dog River have been making people laugh, first on the Canadian CTV network and later on WGN in Chicago, which has the US broadcast rights.

For those of you who haven't seen the show before, here's a short clip from this season. The cranky old guy in the clip is actor Eric Peterson who plays Oscar Leroy, the former owner of Corner Gas. The bald guy playing the immigration guy is a friend of mine from Saskatoon, comedian Bryan Cox.




The thing I like about Corner Gas is it makes me laugh without having to resort to humor that tears people down or makes me feel uncomfortable in some way. It's genuine humor that can be appreciated by anyone, regardless of whether they've ever lived in a small town. Comedian Brent Butt grew up in Tisdale, Saskatchewan and calls his style "Coffee Shop Humor", the type of jokes you'll hear in coffee shops across the Prairies in Canada or in the Midwestern US.

Since it's inception, the show has been filmed on a soundstage in Regina and for exterior shots, on location in Rouleau, Saskatchewan, just outside of Regina. When chatting with Canadians for the first time, I'll explain where I'm from as being about 2 hours south of Dog River and most of them get it.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. The final episode will air on CTV Monday April 13th. Luckily, thanks to my friend James in Prince Albert, I have several seasons of the show on DVD to enjoy when I want and I will be purchasing the final season when it becomes available.

To my American friends who grew up in places like New Rockford, ND; Baker, MT; Powell, WY and the many towns like them, if you haven't seen Corner Gas before, find a way to watch. You'll see your hometown up on the screen and laugh your butt off remembering life in a small town. To those of you who grew up in a major metropolitan area, find a copy of the show too and you'll see why your friends who grew up in small towns in the US and Canada have fond memories of their hometowns.

To the folks of Dog River, farewell and Woolerton (spit) still sucks!

Montana's Drug of Choice? Alcohol!

An editorial in today's online edition of the Billings Gazette caught my attention. A study released by the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research shows just how big the business of alcohol is in Montana. (A PDF of the study results is available by clicking this link.)

One of the highlights, in 2005, Montanans (and presumably those visiting the state too), consumed 33 million glasses of wine, 124.7 million shots of distilled spirits and 279.6 million 12-ounce cans of beer. That's 473.3 million single servings of alcohol in its various forms. Considering that the population of Montana is under one million people, that's an amazing amount of alcohol.

Now, according to US Census figures I found on Wikipedia, the population in 2006 was 997,670. So that means enough alcohol was consumed to provide an almost daily buzz for the entire population, even when you factor in tourists and other travelers.

One of the more disturbing statistics was the level of binge drinking among high school seniors. In Sheridan County, where I grew up, 51.2% of high school seniors in 2006 had experienced binge drinking in the 2 weeks before the survey. Binge drinking is defined as 5 or more drinks over the course of a couple hours. Now granted, the number of high school seniors in Sheridan County is low - I'm making an educated guess here that Plentywood had probably about 35 seniors, Westby maybe 5, Medicine Lake maybe 10 and that might have been the final year for Outlook so there was one more student there. But we're still talking about half of all the seniors at the county's high schools. There were only two counties which reported a higher percentage, Big Horn County, which has a fairly large population (Hardin & Lodge Grass would have been two of the high schools surveyed there) and Garfield County. The seniors at schools in Big Horn county reported 55.6% of them had binge drank while the Garfield County students (Jordan) reported 71.4% had. Jordan High School has a total enrollment of less than 70 for grades 9-12, so the senior class at the time was probably around 15 students.

Some of these students will be lucky enough to grow out of their binge drinking phase; others will struggle for years, in and out of rehab or jail; still others will not make it to their high school graduation.

What can be done? I think we need to start thinking of alcohol as a drug. It is, although it's one that is legal for consumption by adults. I'm not advocating prohibition. That doesn't work, as evidenced by our country's experiment in the early 20th century and with the Great War on Drugs currently underway. Instead, we need to determine what is lacking in the lives of our younger generation that they are trying to fill with alcohol.

The cry of "There's nothing to do in this hick town!" has been around for years. I remember saying it myself and while they won't admit it now, I'm sure some members of my dad's generation said it too. Of course we were wrong when we said it. There are things to do, they just don't always seem to be enough fun at the time.

The community has to get together to make sure we don't forget there are things to do that don't involve alcohol. A good start would be to organize fewer events that involve an open bar. Growing up, the message I got was "It wasn't truly a party" unless there was at least some alcohol available.

Go ahead and enjoy a glass of wine, a cold beer or your favorite cocktail tonight. But at least think about the message you're sending to the younger generation!

Winds of Change in a Small Town

The following was written by Lynn Loucks Newnam, who graduated from Plentywood (Montana) High School after I did. She posted it to Facebook, and since she doesn't have her own blog, I asked if she would allow me to repost it here to give it a potentially wider audience. Dave

Like so many others who were born in raised in Eastern Montana, my family homesteaded our farm over 100 years ago. My grandfather broke his first 40 acres walking behind a plow. He and my grandmother lived in a sod house that first winter in 1908. Over the years they raised 6 children on that piece of land. My father and all 3 of his brothers served when their country called and their sisters taught in schoolhouses in towns that no longer exist. The ghosts of that time still echo in the rotting timbers of the old barn, the rusted metal of an ancient thrasher and the worn dates on tombstones.

In the past few years, our governor has come to Eastern Montana twice to speak at high school graduations in dying towns that have one graduating student. These were communities that used to be bustling with church socials, community square dancing, and swelling with pride when their basketball teams won. Today, the governor shows up for one student? Why didn’t anyone show up when the price of wheat was $2.25 a bushel? Why didn’t anyone show up when farmers were auctioning off their land for pennies on the dollar? Where was our governor when those schools were graduating 20 to 30 students? Why show up for the requiem when you never bothered to show up to celebrate the life of rural Montana? A message of hope rings hollow in a rural community where people drive 40 miles to the nearest grocery store and 300 miles to the nearest trauma center.

I heard the governor speak to a group of high school students once. He said, “The future of Montana lies in Eastern Montana. We will not forget about you.” I guess that’s the problem with words. They are so easy to say, but so hard to mean. Teacher’s make $22,000/year starting pay in Eastern Montana, correctional officers make $15 an hour, and over 500 oil field workers have been laid off in the Williston Basin in the last 6 months. Most of these guys were locals – home owners and contributors to the local tax base. To add insult to injury our government just made it easier for these same oil companies to hire Mexicans with Mexican driver’s licenses to drive trucks and work on rigs here in the Williston Basin.

I too left the comforts of rural Montana for the excitement and lights of the big city. I moved to LA and I lived there for 15 years. I took a $30,000 pay cut to move home, but I’m home now. It saddens me that we our losing our rural culture, a way of life, and the opportunity to make a living and a future for our children.
We reminisce about the “old days.” My dad reminisces about buildings, businesses, post offices, schools and towns that just don’t exist anymore. I hope that my children and grandchildren we be able to experience the places I reminisce about and not just hear about them in stories.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Some philosophers think this statement suggests that turbulent change doesn’t affect reality on a deeper level…….I guess they’ve never seen a farmer covered in the day’s sweat and dust praying at sunset for rain.

The Bailout!

Ok, so this is a lazy way to do a blog, but it looked like fun so I thought I'd try it.

Dave

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Political Correctness

I'm not the most politically correct guy out there. Over the years, I've told my share of jokes that could offend and I think that there are some people in our society who are too thin skinned for their own good. But today I read about a man who has a summer home 25 miles outside of Billings, MT who's been fighting with the county commissioners in Yellowstone County about the name of the road leading to that home.

The road running past his place is called "Squaw Creek Road". The term squaw has become controversial in the past decade or so. Even though its origins appear to be pure, it comes from the easter Algonquian Indian word for "woman", over the years the term has come to be associated with a less than desirable connotation for woman.

You wouldn't name a road leading to a Catholic Church "Mackerel Snapper Way"; if a family from Italy lived there it wouldn't be "Dago Drive" and if someone of Polish descent moved in you wouldn't call it "Polack Place"?

It's time to eliminate place names that do nothing but show how insensitive we are to our fellow man!

Sandbagging...another way to look at it!

The Red River at Fargo has crested and slowly things are returning to normal. So I thought I would pass along an interesting blog post by Matt Chambers, who recently moved from Fargo to Boulder, Colorado. Matt apparently does computer based modeling and design for a company called concept3D, an architectural design firm. He took a program called "Sketch Up" and put the sandbagging done at Fargo into a whole new perspective. You can check it out here.

Job hunting

My search for a new full time radio gig continues. The economy and radio consolidation have made job searches a bit tougher than when I got into this business back in the dark ages. I'm grateful for a lot of the changes that have occurred in the business over the years. I don't miss playing 45's and albums (sorry if you're a purist who dislikes digital music). I also don't miss having commercials on carts (these are tape cartridges that look kind of like 8 tracks - remember those).

If you're reading this and are in the radio business or know someone who is, I've posted a demo of some of my recent work in a quick YouTube video. Check it out and if you like what you hear, my contact info is on the video screen.

Thanks. I'll keep you posted.

Dave

Flooding & Hate

I thought the recent flooding in the Red River Valley was the result of too much snow this winter, but apparently I'm wrong.

According to a press release from the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, “God sent the flood waters to cover the evil people of Bismarck and Fargo, ND, where you flipped off God and raised your hands against His anointed by criminalizing WBC’s gospel preaching against” gays and their supporters.

The Westboro Baptist Church is run by the Reverend Fred Phelps and his family. Their the ones going around the country picketing the funerals of servicemen and women who were killed in Iraq, all in the name of spreading "the gospel". They're upset because the North Dakota legislature, in 2007, passed a law requiring them to remain at least 300 feet away from a funeral service with their pickets.

Rev. Fred, you don't like homosexuals...I get that. I don't agree with your stand, but our country gives you freedom of speech. However, that right comes with responsibilities and it should come with a sense of decency. The servicemen and women who are killed in Iraq have nothing to do with the issue of gay rights. So why do you feel the need to picket their funerals? I'll answer that question myself, you're a publicity seeking bigot!

Why aren't you picketing outside the homes of Wall Street executives. I'm no biblical scholar, but I believe Jesus was much more critical of the money lenders than he was of homosexuals!

Every society has it's radicals, from the fundamentalist Muslims of the Middle East to the Bible thumpers of Kansas. Let's just hope that the radicals we have in the US remain in a small minority.

Weird Winter Fun

Here in the Upper Midwest, it's been a long winter. So long that it's driving some to drink. This unfortunate deer had a run in with a vehicle in a western North Dakota oilfield and some of the roughnecks took advantage of the situation.

Please don't complain to me about animal cruelty. The deer was already harmed when this was done.