Even Dogs Like Getting Toys

I have to admit being on the radio has its perks. For instance, people like to send me stuff. Mostly, people send me music, whether it's their latest demo, album, or homemade cassette recordings of their kid bellowing at a talent show. I've lost count of how many recordings I've received.

Then there are people who send me 'other' kinds of items. Every so often, I get a huge box of Gevina coffee from a very cool guy who will always be happy because he won Superbowl tickets. Since there's always more coffee than I can use, I make all the people I work with happy as well. One fellow used to send me a book of poetry he wrote every day and little knick knacks such as scarfs and paintings. His gifts caused concern from my colleagues tho' since he was locked up in San Quentin. You know, San Quentin. That place they send criminals who do really really bad things to other people? Yep.

One guy gave me a beautiful engraved metal plaque but I had a feeling he wanted a date. And one woman was so enamored of my work, she even sent me a used hair tie, which totally flattered me. Luckily, the used hair-tie turned out 'useful' after all. It seems this was so interesting to one of my friends, she actually requested I give her said hair-tie. Needless to say, I wore latex gloves when I handed it over. I guess maybe she has a hair-tie collection...or something. I didn't ask and not sure I want to know.

For the most part, when people send me stuff, I generally say 'thank-you' and take them home. Sometimes I give them to friends but sometimes I actually use them. The most recent box of swag was really cool. One of my friends had a friend who apparently just started a Dog toy/clothing company called "Wag More Bark Less." I had talked online about adopting my new dog Indy, a most rambunctious Min Pin (Miniature Pinscher) for 45 bucks at a dog fair, so she tipped them off about being a new dog owner.

Just days before receiving my goody box, though, I had gone to Costco and bought a box of dog toys for 15 bucks. I thought they were really cute, but here's what one of the toys looked like after Indy played with it after two days:

Needless to say, I was very disappointed with the Costco Dog Toys. Most of the time, I can count on Costco to give me good quality items. But they failed me this time. I admit that at 15 pounds, with Doberman Pinscher looks, (albeit on a toy scale), Indy can be quite ferocious in his cute way. But you'd think the toy would last more than two days without the stuffing being so easy to pull/tear out by 15 pounds of fierce canine teeth. So I was very impressed when I opened the box of Dog Toys from Wag More Bark Less. After two days of Indy tearing into it, here is a photo of the "Fetch Bone."

Impressive, eh? Judging by the solid rubber, this toy is hefty enough to withstand the Indy onslaught!

Click here to get your dog one!

Indy snoozing with his new toys.

The Story of Cognitive Code or Lessons Learned Part 1

When I'm not on the air, I work on a cool Tech Start-up called Cognitive Code. CogCode is a company which specializes in a technology called SILVIA. SILVIA stands for Symbolically Isolated Linquistically Variable Intelligence Algorithms. And what is SILVIA? The short answer is that SILVIA is Conversational Artificial Intelligence. The long one is that this is technology enabling you to talk to your computer using natural language (or the language you normally speak) any way you want. And your computer will talk back to you, in different ways, in a more conversational way than other types of speech interactive technology like SIRI.

Yes, I just said SILVIA is similar to SIRI. But there are differences. First of all, SILVIA can run natively on your phone. Why is this pretty cool? Just think - all your interactions with SIRI and Google Voice are sent back to Apple or Google in the CLOUD and you have no idea what they do with your data. Aren't you tired of having no privacy? With SILVIA, it's all kept private on your device. It's encrypted so heavily, even we can't get into it. We don't feel it's good policy to be so nosy about what people are doing. She is also what they call, "context sensitive." This means she actually understands the gist of what you are saying and can, therefore, respond with a more meaningful answer.

So as you can tell, I'm pretty excited about this technology. It was developed by a geeky guy named Leslie Spring. One day in 2006, Leslie came up to me and proclaimed he had had a Eureka moment in his exploration of AI. (A little background, Leslie has been trying to develop HAL 9000 ever since his mom took him to see the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey, so he's been thinking about HAL ever since he was 4). At that point in time, SILVIA was raw, but I had a small inkling about how the computer works insofar as chatbot technology and I knew that SILVIA, even in the infant stages, was no chatbot. My miniscule amount of knowledge about chatty tech came from spending a summer cracking into the mainframes at Bowdoin College when I was a kid and encountering the early one known as ELIZA. Back in those days as a 12 year old, I made friends with the son of one of Bowdoin's Math professors. He snuck me into the computer room full of mainframes and he taught me some aspects of simple computer languages such as BASIC and FORTRAN and also showed me ELIZA. I was pretty excited to 'talk' to ELIZA, but quickly learned that it was just pure GIGO (garbage in and garbage out). In other words, the programming was such that if you typed in a sentence, then it would respond to that sentence specifically with a pre-programmed response. But it didn't really understand what you wanted. After asking ELIZA a few questions, I quickly became frustrated and shut it off to tinker with other things.

Back to SILVIA. Excitedly, I called my brother who I knew was already in the early stages of starting his own audio company. Our family has a long history in the audio industry, due to my dad having constructed the first language laboratory in the United States at Seton Hall University back in the '60's. On blind faith, without even seeing SILVIA, my brother agreed to help us and on that day, July 2006, the company was formed. At least verbally.

"They" will tell you, meanwhile, this is supposedly the first BIG mistake entrepreneurs make when starting up a company. Don't recruit friends and family. On the other hand, who else can you find who will work for nothing? Especially a new technology??

Take a look at an early demonstration of SILVIA here:

Early Version of SILVIA

My Dad on Father's Day

I was sitting with my Dad who started unveiling the secret portion of his life known as the 'early years that pre-dated his life as a dad.' He was a young super good looking guy. We all know I may be biased on that, but take a look at his photo here:

Anyway, my dad told me he was quite oblivious to the charms of women other than my mom. Case in point, he was telling me about how he took a flight on an American plane when he was a young 20 year old in China. This was around the year 1947, a year when airplane travel was exclusive and unobtainable for the average citizen, not to mention in China for an impoverish young guy like my dad. How did he manage to get on what would be considered inconceivable in the day and age?

The source, of course, was a young girl. Apparently she was the daughter of a man who was the Postmaster General or other high ranking official in China. They were flying from Chongqing‎ to Shanghai and instead of my dad taking the boat, she managed to squeeze him on the flight her family was taking. It was only later my dad realized she probably did it because she liked him. He then went on to tell me, had he taken the boat, he would have encountered cramped and squalid conditions as he had heard it was a horrible boat ride.

It was tough in those days. He told me how he had set up a school with a friend to teach. Even though he was poor, his dad made sure he obtained a fairly good education in typical Chinese fashion. Not everyone was able to get an education tho, so my dad had a fair amount of students and he told me how they would take the money they were given (which apparently was not worth much) in a wheelbarrel and use it to buy cotton fabric. As a commodity, the prices of cotton were variable, with much of it heading upwards and whereupon, selling the cotton, he and his friend were able to purchase much of what they needed to run the school as well as other essentials.

Even though the idea of studying in the US was unthinkable in that day and age for a guy who didn't have any money, he still dreamed. He made friends with an American GI who wrote to MIT, waxing on how my dad was a brilliant guy. Indeed, he had won what was considered to be the Math Olympics in China, no mere feat. As a result of that letter, MIT accepted him. It took a while for my dad to get to the US, finally getting a ride on a large boat which spent the better part of three months to get from China to the US. But by that time, MIT's invitation had lapsed, so he didn't really have anywhere to study. Still, he prevailed and won a three year full scholarship to St. Norbert in St. Louis, MO. It was tough and prejudiced in those days. My dad told me he suffered taunts from fellow students with someone slashing the tires on the broken down jalopy he managed to obtain. Finally, the Dean of the College wrote a letter that was posted throughout the campus, reminding people he was one of them and to stop persecuting him for the shadow of WWII and what the Japanese did to the Americans.

I'm hoping he'll be able to reveal other details of that secret era. I'm eager to find out more, he's 88 now and has quite alot to tell.

On being a Boor and Nightstalking

Sometimes I think about this blog and then I find myself in a quandry. What to write about now? Every time I read about something in the news and/or hear an item on the radio, I want to blab about it. Maybe it's because deep down, I'm secretly one of those people who like to hear themselves talk. We all know someone like that. A Boor. Don't confuse Boors with Bores, Boors are people who don't stop talking to listen to what other people have to say. I think in my life I can be that way if I wanted to, but I know how people feel about Boors, so I stop and edit myself. However, Boors can be Bores too. So here I am blogging and I wonder, has my inner Boor decided to manifest itself? And if I am, could it possibly be, I am also a Bore?

In the case of Talk Radio, being a Boor is a good thing. This is for those times when you are by yourself in the studio with a four hour show and the phone is NOT RINGING. The one time I worked Talk Radio at a brand new experiment in San Francisco, "FM Talk Radio," which in the early nineties, was a station called KDBK, I found that I had to switch on my inner Boor. Which was tough for four hours. When you work at any new station, you have to accept you won't have much in terms of listeners. It would also mean that people would pass by the station idly and wonder "what the heck IS this?" But idly wondering "what the heck IS this" is not the same as picking up the phone to argue. Especially when the listeners didn't even know what the phone number of the station was.

In most Talk Radio stations, shows are limited to two hours. You also have commercials, news and sometimes, you get to run little 2 or 3 minutes features. But because we were new, I had a four hour show with mostly NO commercials, NO news and No little features. Indeed, a Talk Radio show host's nightmare. But I had to deal with it. I'm sure I was both a Boor and a Bore. But it's all water under the bridge, I refuse to sweat and/or make apologies for it.

These are the thoughts that plague my head every so often. Of course, because I am so peripatetic, I think about it for one nanosecond and then shrug it off. It would drive me batsht if I started to debate whether I was a Boring Boor or a Booring Bore.

Anyway, yesterday I woke up with the news that Richard Ramirez had died. Why should I concern myself about The Nightstalker? When you work at any radio station in San Francisco, there is a 'captive' audience that lives at the maximum security arena known as San Quentin. And if you are a woman DJ, you get letters from that audience.

One time I had a listener who was so captivated by my work, he would write me poems and fill a notebook with those poems. And then he would send me that notebook. You'd think, gee, how sweet. However, in his case, he was a rather prolific poet. He was so prolific that I was receiving the average of one notebook a day. Yup. People would get worried about the fanaticism, but I would remind them that usually the people who were sent to San Quentin were usually the worst offenders and usually, they were the ones who would stay locked up. Usually.

Somehow it was not comforting to my friends.

Anyway, the only reason why I take note of Richard Ramirez, the infamous serial killer known as The Nightstalker, is because he sent me a letter. Take a look:

What creeps me out was how he was so proud of himself. And of course, requesting songs with creepy names. Rot in Hell Ramirez.

WTF Asian Moments

So I really dug this video created by a very funny guy with the name of Ken Tanaka. He's a white guy adopted and raised in Japan! Anyway, if you haven't seen the video, check it out here:

What Kind of Asian Are You?

I laughed. I was born in Chicago, raised in New Jersey, went to school in New Jersey and New York City and now work in California. So I'm what people call a solid ABC - "American Born Chinese." In my travels around the US, having driven twice across the country, people are generally pretty nice to my face. But once in a while, you do encounter eyebrow raising incidents which tend to make one do facepalms inside ones head. The following is a TRUE STORY. As I said in the premise of my blog, I DO NOT MAKE ANY OF THIS UP!

In one of my cross-country drives, I had to do a pitstop in Kansas. If you've ever driven thru Kansas, you would know it to be the most grueling state to drive thru. This is because you suffer from driving dejavu every five minutes because the landscape NEVER CHANGES. Kansas looks about the same from one part to another. It is a long flat state full of those long flat boring plains you see in tornado videos and it is the most tedious and longest mother-effing state to drive thru. IF you do make the attempt, plan to lose at least 10 fracking hours or more of your life. Kansas is about as central as you can get in the United States, so suffice it to say, the people of Kansas are not the most metropolitan. (read: they don't have as many minority people as other states)

I took the pitstop to help keep myself awake. Walking out of the ladies room, a mousy brown-haired white gal looks at me and says, "Gee, sorry to bother you, but can I ask you a question?"

Nodding my head in puzzlement, I stop and turned around. She says to me, "You see, I don't know anybody of your kind. So I'm just curious what it's like."

Having never encountered such a question, my brain slams shut on itself. I stutter, "well, I woke up this morning like most people, ate breakfast and got into my car to drive...like everyone else."

"Really?" she says, "I mean, how is it for you? Is it good?"

"uhhh, yeah, I guess. People are people, you see."

"Oh, that's interesting." (really? I say to myself. wtf?)"So," she continues, "you have a good life?"

"uhh, yeah. I have a good life." Then I start to walk out still thinking WTF? in my head.

Turning my head, I say to her, "Have a nice life."

WTF!

Another time I was driving around San Francisco (which if you don't know, in the main metropolitan areas, is about 80% Asian) Anyway, a guy drives past me yelling, "Go back to your own country!"

The guy was obviously Middle Eastern.

WTF!

Then another time I went into a movie theater and while in line to buy a hot dog, the lady in front of me turned and glared at me and said, "We'd be in better shape if it weren't for you gooks."

All the people around us froze.

I gave her the evil eye and said loudly, "WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

She calmly replied, "If it weren't for you gooks, we'd be in better shape."

People start to gather around.

Again, I said, "WHAT DID YOU SAY?

She said, "You heard what I said."

"What the hell gives you the right to say that to me?" I yell.

At that point I lunged at her and was blocked by some guy the size of an NFL linebacker, who turns to me and says, "It's not worth it."

I let her go inside. And then asked for the manager, who promptly took two bodyguards to find the woman. He asked me if I wanted her tossed out the building. Which I considered but then thought I should be the better (wo)man and said, "no, ask her if she would give me an apology in exchange for not being thrown out on her ass."

She apologized. I told her she needs to get the right race. For me, it should've been "We'd be in better shape if it weren't for you chinks."

So damnit, that old problem of we all look alike.

WTF?

Do Radio People Dream of Sheep? Pt 2

Back on the subject of dreams, Radio People share two common themes (there are more, but these are the two main ones that 'we' seem to discuss amongst ourselves). They are both anxiety type dreams. One is related to being on time. As I said, if you are late, it's more than obvious to the universe. No sneaking in late in radio.

I often have "Late Dreams" that arise from circumstances beyond my control. For instance, I dream I have taken a wrong turn inside the building and I have somehow wandered into my sister station and yet, for some strange unfathomable reason, I am unable to navigate back to the studio to which I belong, the building having turned into a weird kind of labyrinth covered with posters of Howard Stern, Don Imus and warthogs. There are also normal 'Late Dreams' that are due to the normal kind of situations everyone else in the universe experiences. We are talking, late due to alarm not working, late because of traffic, and late because you tripped over the dog getting out of bed and broke your nose.

Other anxiety dreams arise in relationship to the dreaded "Dead Air." Nobody likes the idea of 'Dead Air." See, I bet I don't even have to explain to you what that term means. But just in case you don't, "Dead Air" is nothing but complete silence on the radio. Either you stopped talking and you can't think of anything to say or somehow the song you were playing suddenly stopped, won't continue playing and you can't find ANYTHING else in the studio to play...except a hoary old obscure Lawrence Welk single covered with dust leftover from the previous format.

There is another type of 'Dead Air Dream' that resulted from having been locked out. However, it is more than real for many, the majority of times due to the location of the Porcelain god. My locked out nightmare was a reality. I was working in San Francisco, when after having checked out the facilities down the hall, I returned and realized I locked myself out (the door rigged to lock behind you once you leave). After bellowing and banging on the door (it was early, a little after 6:00AM in the morning), the news guy finally heard me and opened up the door. I was locked out long enough that the entire record had tracked thru. I distinctly remembered the sweating and the dread had he not heard me, altho' I'm sure he would've noticed me not patching him in for his 6:30 newscast. If I had significant amounts of "Dead Air" that morning, there'd be hell to pay. Luckily, it was Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, which tracks together, so there was no dead air in between the tracks.

After my last post touching on dreams, I received this post from Jon Melander, a radio guy I connected with thru Google Plus. He wrote about his 'locked out' experience:

"I once worked for a station that was in the last 4 rooms of the ground floor of a Holiday Inn...the two bathrooms that were a part of the area the air staff had access to, had been converted to a record library and storage, so when you needed to go, you had to put on a long song (not real easy at a Top40/Easy Listening station, depending on who was in charge of the format that week) and then run down the hall to the restrooms by the pool area. One early morning, I managed to leave my key sitting on the broadcast console, realizing this right as the door locked shut behind me...I had to run to the restroom, then run to the hotel front desk and wait for the attendant to finish checking someone out before asking for their spare room key...I got the door back open just in time to key the mike as the song ended (didn't even have time to sit down), threw a PSA cartridge in and started it, then cued up another song, read two commercials, started the next song, grabbed my key, then ran back to the front desk to give them back the spare key...I still have nightmares occasionally where I can hear the song ending and can't get back through the door.

Do Radio People Dream of Sheep? PT1

One thing I know for a fact, is that true radio people share similar dreams when they are trying to slumber. First off, there are no great shifts in radio. This being because you must be ON TIME, if you are late, people/listeners/your boss/your mom, all listen and then EVERYONE KNOWS. There is a public shaming factor at work, you have to get to work on time to avoid people whispering behind your back what a lame-ass douchebag you are in getting to work, plus, when you do get there, the person in front of you stares at you with big disapproving reproachful eyes that say "you are a lame-ass douchebag for making me wait" and who needs to see that?

So, radio people are obliged to be punctual. That doesn't stop some people. For instance, I was hired one time as the third wheel for a morning show team in San Francisco and BOTH of the guys were notorious for being late. And we are talking two hours late at times. So if the news guy was two hours late, I did the news for two hours and if the jock (radio slang for DJ) was late, I was the jock for two hours. Of course, I didn't complain because it was nice to be able to rotate my job description. The only problem was when both of them were late, well, needless to say, that became a bit tricky. If you inspect the time-shifts people have to work, which in most stations nowadays aren't based on the previous 4 hour shifts of yesteryear, they all suck.

How can that be, you ask? Well, ok, let's take a quick look at the time-shifts (based on the stations I see nowadays, some still have different times). Mornings are from 5:30AM to 10AM. That automatically sucks because who really wants to wake up at 4:30AM? And assuming you live only 5 minutes away from the station (which I don't, more like 40 minutes) then the latest time you could wake up would be 5:25AM, assuming people you work with don't mind your obvious lack of hygiene.

Middays (10AM to 3PM) suck because you will never be able to keep a lunch date. That, and you will never get to make a doctor's appointment either, unless they have hours after 4PM, which, I don't know about you, is rarer than seeing a monkey's butt on the street. Not that I really want to see a monkey's butt. And don't even try a 9AM appointment, you will be sitting there in constant fear and sweat hoping the doctor is not late because then it will make you late.

I never worked the Afternoons (3 to 7PM) on a regular basis but I have filled in. While you don't have the issues of waking up and/or missing lunch dates, you have the issue of getting stuck in rush hour traffic. Of course, that could only apply to the bigger cities like NYC and Los Angeles. THis does not apply if you work in some bum-f-ck desolation like Midville, Idaho. So ok, afternoons are the least obnoxious, but then again, I don't know because I never worked Afternoons on a regular basis.

The Evening shift (7PM to Mid) has similar problems as middays, but during this time you are missing out on all kinds of events. We're talking dinners, get-togethers, cool TV shows and alot of concerts. Not to mention that you are out of sync with the rest of the universe because you probably ended up going to sleep at 1AM or later. And in one station I worked at, because the production guy didn't want to stay later than his alloted 8 hour shift, I ended up voicing and producing all the radio spots that happened to come in at 5PM. After a while, people nicknamed me production director. This doesn't happen to Evening people nowadays as most stations seem to be paranoid about jocks using the production room.

I guess you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure why the Overnight shift (Mid to 5:30) sucks. But here is actually one shift that has a big advantage over other shifts and that is, you stay out of the way from the whining and office bulls--t that eventually spew around radio stations like a constipated monkey butt.

I should stop now, yes, more useless and unimportant information in my next post about the nocturnal habits of radio people.

Why Ten Bucks is Ten Bucks, eh?

Oftentimes people pepper their speech with jargon that nobody else understands. I know this to be true in the rock world. For instance, when I say jokingly to people in a Canadian accent "Ten bucks is ten bucks, eh?" I often get blank looks. What IS she talking about? That particular saying relates to an instance in time when Geddy Lee, the bassist/vocalist for the band Rush recorded with Bob and Doug McKenzie, a fellow Canadian act, albeit a comedy act. He sang the chorus in their tune "Take Off." Very funny stuff, the video is here:

Take Off Video

"Thanks for coming down to do our hit."

"Well, it's my pleasure, eh."

"Did, did our lawyer call you?"

"Yeah, um, I, you know, ten bucks is ten bucks."

Now don't you feel smug knowing what that means?

My Connection to Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin was a one of a kind singer. Many singers, such as people like Melissa Etheridge, aspired to be like her, the raspy voice, the effortless passion, the 'being in the moment' kind of singer. I love to sing, but I'm a different kind of singer. I sing in a pure and simple way. I'm not into the current craze for curlicue. Sometimes I just wish some of the singers nowadays would just calm down and sing. But, maybe that's just me. I'm guess I'm an old-fashioned throwback kind of singer. Sure I wouldn't mind being able to sing like Janis, but truthfully, I never wanted to sound like that. Singing is a very personal kind of activity and I'd rather just sing like me.

Back to Janis. At one point, she did have a vocal coach. And here is my connection to Janis Joplin. Her coach was MY vocal coach. OF course, Janis was long gone by the time I studied with said coach. Judy Davis was her name. Judy was famous for the litany of singers she'd trained, including Judy Garland (yes, Judy Davis was already really old when I met her), Barbara Streisand, Steve Perry and other very well known singers. She didn't accept just anyone to train with her. I remember she told us that she had one requirement in accepting singers. She said that they had to be able to sing on key because there was no way that singers with bad intonation could be trained to sing on key. And if there was one thing she couldn't stand was singers who sang off key. She said she tried one time and discovered it was an exercise in futility. Judy is up there in heaven with Janis now. I'm sure she'd be horrified to hear the excessive use of auto-tune on today's recordings from people who pass themselves off as 'singers.' I say that word with sarcasm because these folks truly can't sing better than a box full of yowling cats.

I remember her talking about Janis Joplin. The way she related her story was tinged with sadness and regret, so I could tell she cared about Janis. Judy said she studied with her for three years. And in all those years, there was nothing she could do to 'save' her. She was alluding to Janis' tendency for self-destruction. Guess we'll just have to continue to curse alcohol and the drug laden lifestyle that burdened young people back then for taking her away from us too early.

More On That Oyster Cult

It's not that I go around thinking about Blue Oyster Cult every day, it's that something happens to remind me of them. This time I blame it on the new movie from Tom Cruise, Oblivion. There is a scene where the name pops up and then then I'm stuck with the mind worm. Oh, alright, I won't do a spoiler. I'll be more specific with a short sentence at the end of this missive and if you don't mind spoilers, that is where you can find exactly what I'm talking about in terms of what reminded me of them in the movie.

But when I mentioned this to a friend, this is what she wrote to me.

"Here is my BOC story. Somewhere in 1972 my friends and I went to the Pocono Fest. You know a big hippie festival. I do believe we all ate some acid and after it came on my G/F and I were separated from our group of friends. We walked for something that seemed like decades and found ourselves in a big wide open field. It was early evening and a rain storm was coming. As it began to sprinkle we saw a big tent. These guys were waving to us motioning to come in the tent and get out of the rain which we did. They were very nice fed us and let us spend the night in their tent. The were all gentle men just in case you though differently. We had the usual hippie fun, they took out their guitars and played music and we all sang James Taylor song. Thorugh the course of the night the boys told us they were in a band and invited us to come see their show in NYC. We asked what the bands name was and they said. We call our band Blue Oyster Cult.

In the morning we all headed down to the stage area. A year or two later they were on the radio.

This is a true hippie story."

I don't know about you, but these chance encounters always strike my imagination, how they always leave a small imprint on people and make for great stories. I suppose this is why I decided to start this blog. People just tell me so much good stuff that needs to be told."

And as for what happened in Oblivion. It's where Jack goes to this idyllic retreat and rifles thru his album collection. One of the albums is...ta dada dah! A BOC album, of course!

So Who Coined The Term "Heavy Metal" Anyway??

At some point in my sordid rock and roll life, I met and dated the rock producer Sandy Pearlman. (I know, I know, people roll their eyes because well, if you know Sandy and if you knew me, I've had people ask me, "what the hell?") But Sandy is one of the most brilliant men I've ever met. Some background, Sandy was not only a manager for Black Sabbath, but also one of the founders of the group Blue Oyster Cult. There is a reason why some of the lyrics you find on Blue Oyster Cult albums to be so esoteric and that is because Sandy is a rather cerebral type, prone towards talking at length about the supernatural aspects of physics and the universe. But no worries, he also loves the physical universe, especially if it involves a fancy restaurant that serves salmon heavily encrusted with garlic. Luckily for me, that is still one of my favorite dishes. I've learned the hard way that if you are with someone who is eating garlic, you must do so as well.

I get truly amused that Sandy is credited with the phrase "More Cowbell." But there is a better phrase in which he is credited with in coining and that is the relationship of the phrase "Heavy Metal" to music when in 1968 he wrote about The Byrds in a rock mag for their supposed "aluminium style of context and effect", particularly on their album The Notorious Byrd Brothers. How fitting that his love of science and metaphysical relationships would produce that type of association. For a long time, I have had a fight with Wikipedia about Sandy's involvement in coining that phrase, because they kept citing the use of the phrase in the song Born to be Wild, saying that was the first time it was used. I was not alone in this dispute. Other long time music journalists have also argued that Sandy was the one who originally coined the phrase. Finally I discovered that today, this wrong has been rectified. The page on Heavey Metal at Wikipedia has now been changed!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_music

So kudos to Sandy for our love of "Heavy Metal!

I'm happy to report that Sandy is now basking in his role of professor at McGill University in Montreal, where he hangs out with another ex of mine, lol.

More on that later.

About Innocent Intentions

So today, I see this article from Rolling Stone about the famous Rock Photographer Jim Marshall. It features some of his iconic photos: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/iconic-rock-shots-from-em-trust-photographs-of-jim-marshall-em-20100301?link=mostpopular4%22 I remember once meeting Jim Marshall, at the time I was a 20 something gal and he was an older guy who was a pretty established well-known rock photographer. He invited me to his place to take a 'look' at some of his photos. Of course, not sure what his intentions were, I declined. Then I posted about this to one of the facebook pages I moderate. Here's one of the responses I got about Jim from a lady called Susan:

He was definitely into hitting on women. He got me in a lip-lock that I didn't see coming and practically wrestled me to the ground... but he was a very talented guy, gotta give him that. I wouldn't go to his studio either... he kissed me on the street or else I wouldn't have been caught offguard...

So maybe I wasn't so offbase by declining. In retrospect, maybe he was just trying to show me his photos! But maybe not. The answer, of course, is now lost in the cosmos.

Meeting George Jones

Today George "She Stopped Loving Me Today" Jones passed away. I was surprised because I thought he had already left the universe. Anyway, I came across this little tidbit about a friend who met George:

I met George Jones once. The owner of the restaurant I worked at asked me to drive a limo to the airport to pick up Jones and his group. After I loaded their luggage, I closed the trunk, but it didn't close all the way. I ran my thumb under the edge of the lid and only then discovered that it had one of those gradual-closing-and-locking devices, and the lid slowly crushed my thumb. I screamed and somehow got it out. Then we all got in the car and I drove them to the restaurant. No one said a single word to me. And that's how I met George Jones.