[Kzyxtalk] A bolt from the blue.

[Marco McClean]

Subject: A bolt from the blue.

Here's the recording of last night's (2023-07-28) 
virtually-eight-hour-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 
107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and KNYO.org:
https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0551

This time, a bit about Sinead O'Connor and Biff Rose, who (separately) 
left us this week, and some of their music; an expanded local 
announcement/news/editorial section, poetry by Notty Bumbo, Ezekiel, 
John Donne, Hugh Blumenfeld, and Mazie Malone. Mitch Clogg's latest wry 
report on the train wreck of old age, Harper's Review, Wikipedia on The 
Erfurt latrine disaster of the year 1184, Giulia Poerio on the curse of 
daydreaming, Caitlin Johnstone on the one-two punch at us all of 
bipartisan politics, Louis Bedrock's translation of Manuel Vicent on 
Andy Warhol, petitions for this and that, jokes by Dobby Sommer, /Lois/ 
by David Herstle Jones, /Lost Animals/ by Geoff Manaugh, Part 2 of the 
revised /Requiem for a Pasha/ by Eleanor Cooney, Juan Cole on slavery 
and what slaves knew, Philip Marks on the rights we all have under the 
Constitution whether we're citizens or not, masturbation for prostate 
health, a Brazilian musical cab trip with Erik S. McMahon; Warren 
Hinckle, Kent Wallace /The Blind Steal/ Chapter 10, /The Peyote Seekers/ 
by Paul Modic, how to tell if your neighbor is secretly a serial killer 
(this could come in handy), Ezekiel again about Flaco and Lucky and the 
perils and sheer staggering weight of street people's electronics, 
Lauren Geall on how to quit self-sabotaging (also good to know), and it 
all wraps up with the Deadikase project's episode of dozens of great 
musicians' anecdotes about their experience of Frank Zappa, and then 
Zappa's quirky live /Stairway To Heaven/.

Email /your/ written work on any subject and I'll read it on the very 
next Memo of the Air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a 
fresh batch of dozens of links to worthwhile items I set aside for you 
while gathering the show together, such as:

Kris Kristofferson – Sister Sinead. I meant to play this on the show but 
misplaced it somehow. Here it is on the web. You'll find the entire 
story-behind-the-story by looking up Sinead O'Connor in Wikipedia.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2023/07/sister-sinead-kris-kristofferson.html

The entire Biff Rose catalog, all in one place. Every note he noted, 
every quip he quipped. There's a hundred hours of material here. (The 
recording labeled Live at KMFB is his appearance on my show at KMFB in 
2006, regarding which Late Night Liz wrote, "Marco had better luck than 
I did [with Biff]. As my Wild Hair Radio interviewee, Biff backed up 
against the shelves of LPs, made faces and totally clammed up. Cut to 
cued-up LP..."
https://biffrose.bandcamp.com

Juanita and I worked for awhile in the middle-late 1980s in a Creole 
restaurant in the Old Coast Hotel, run by Carol Hall (of Carol Hall's 
Jams and Jellies) and Dick Haymes' daughter Joanne. I cooked. Juanita 
was a hostess/waitress. That was during the time I taught at the Albion 
Whale School, and we were still doing the Radio *Free Earth Teevee Show 
on the public access channel from the back room of the pink house, and 
there were sound effects jobs for local theater shows, one of which I 
think was what got me fired from the restaurant, when I left during 
dinner for twenty minutes –well, half an hour– to race across town to 
fix the sound system for Gloriana Opera Company's full-length /Wizard of 
Oz/. (The sound-deadening blanket on the clunky reel-to-reel tape deck 
had got sucked into the back and it stopped the motor right in the 
middle of a show, and the sound operator, Eileen, who looked a lot like, 
I realized years later, once I'd seen /Deep Space Nine/, Ezri Dax, 
phoned the restaurant from the payphone at the theater.) Busy time. Dick 
Haymes' giant piano filled the restaurant side-door lobby so you had to 
sidle around it to get to the bathrooms or the banquet room. He'd been 
dead maybe five or six years by then. His daughter Joanne looked very 
like his young self about the face. She was a sharp doll, about 
five-foot-two, with long blonde hair in a pony tail. Her husband, a 
wise-seeming man with bushy eyebrows, had a Harley Davidson motorcycle 
and spent a lot of his time sitting, dressed neatly and well, quietly 
talking with guests in the bar. It was a ritzy place, the fanciest 
restaurant I ever cooked in. Now it's a homeless-serving facility. They 
have some beds in the back and upstairs, and a contract with the city 
and county. For awhile they used the kitchen to teach homeless people to 
be chefs, but I don't think they're doing that anymore. Once, after 
closing, I was cleaning the convection oven parts with the special 
chemical bath you used for that and I got my face too close; the vapor 
from the chemicals stopped my breath, it just locked my diaphragm like 
slamming a door. I went outside and sat down so I wouldn't fall down and 
gradually could breathe again. I'd forgotten all about that. Something 
like that happened to me in chemistry lab in high school, too. Anyway, 
Dick Haymes, Harry-James-era jazz crooner, expressive baritone, handsome 
guy:
https://www.vintag.es/2023/07/dick-haymes.html

And Meow Meow – Ne Me Quitte Pas. The snide Eliza Doolittle accent just 
kills me, especially in the French parts. And the directed hands-on 
assistance with the act. They don't make 'em like that anymore. (via 
MyOneBeautifulThing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoE0mh4bHcE

Marco McClean, memo at mcn.org
https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com