Hasta la vista to Spain Rodriguez, creator of “Trashman” and one of the original underground-comics all-stars alongside Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, S. Clay Wilson and the rest of ’em.
He died at 72 following a battle with (what else?) cancer. The old motorcycle hood couldn’t kick an ass that big and bad, though it seems clear that he tried, fighting the oppressor to the end.
The inimitable Charles P. Pierce gave us a heads-up yesterday about the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to “streamline and modernize” rules governing media ownership, which Charlie rightly calls the prelude to “sheer unadulterated brigandage.”
For starters, the streamlining and modernization would give his old boss, Rupert Murdoch — yes, that Rupert Murdoch — a chance to get his paws on what remains of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.
Beyond that, it would give media conglomerates the opportunity to get your local media by the plums with a downhill pull. How would you like to have ol’ Rupe or someone like him running your “local” newspaper/website, radio station and TV channel all at once?
Credo Action followed up with an online petition drive, and there’s something similar going on over at Free Press. Adding your name to the chorus against the FCC’s holiday giveaway can’t hurt and might even help.
Meanwhile, take a quick look around your own media landscape and figure out who the player(s) are. It can be eye-opening to see just who controls your local flow of information.
Here in Bibleburg there is only one locally owned newspaper, the weekly Colorado Springs Independent, which also owns (and shares some staff with) the Colorado Springs Business Journal. I didn’t bother to look up all the radio stations, because I only listen to one — NPR affiliate KRCC-FM, a.k.a. Radio Colorado College — but I did check out the TV stations I can get via rabbit ears. Following is a breakdown of who owns our “local” media.
Gazette — Freedom Communications, Irvine, Calif.
Colorado Springs Independent — locally owned
KKTV (CBS) — Gray Television Inc., Albany, Ga.
KRDO (ABC) — News-Press & Gazette Co., St. Joseph, Mo.
KOAA (NBC) — Evening Post Publishing Co., Charleston, S.C.
FOX21 (FOX) — Barrington Broadcasting Group, Schaumburg, Ill.
KTSC (Rocky Mountain PBS) — Pueblo, Colo.
KRCC-FM (NPR) — Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO
I don’t like being cold and damp, shoveling snow, or having to wear pants indoors. But neither do I care for the idea of watching the Front Range turn into the Sonoran Desert, only without the great Mexican food.
The local fish-wrapper reported the other day that Bibleburg has enjoyed just a tenth of an inch of moisture this month and for the year to date is eight inches under normal precipitation. This is not a positive development, even for those of us who reach for a cold beer over a glass of water on a summery afternoon. For example, you can’t make beer without water. Unless you’re Coors, which seems to do just fine with Rocky Mountain trout piss.
South of us, in the Land of Enchantment, Elephant Butte Lake is experiencing drought conditions unseen since the year of my birth, which as regular readers know occurred the better part of quite some time ago.
And there’s no relief in sight. Not here, anyway. According to the weather wizards, there isn’t so much as a hint of a whiff of a rumor of a whisper of any precip’ in the Bibleburg forecast over the next 10 days.
What there is, is a parade of 60-and-sunny that will delight me in the short term (I have two bikes to review and more on the way) but gives me The Fear as regards the long term.
This autumn, for the first time since we’ve lived here, a neighbor declined my offer of the usual dozen or so bags of fallen leaves from our silver maple for use in her composting. She has also downsized her once-elaborate front yard to something better suited to a high-desert climate.
“What’s the point in gardening if it’s never going to rain again?” she asked.
Whew. We appear to have survived another Thanksgiving-Black Friday combo. But it was a near thing. I don’t know how professional cooks survive all those hours on their feet — ’bout dark-thirty yesterday my dogs commenced to bark and they haven’t stopped yet.
A couple of friends popped round last night to split a bottle of sparking rosé and eat some leftovers, which I swear to God took nearly as long to reheat as the original meal did to cook. They also brought some killer green-chile-and-jack wontons with a guacamole garnish that put our heat-it-and-eat-it to shame.
Anyway, we stayed up too late and drank too much and today we all felt a tad listless for some reason, even the four-legged crowd, which does not imbibe (see Turkish, at right).
After a few hours of puttering around the ranch Herself toddled off for a short run and I took a break from work to ride the Jamis Supernova around Monument Valley Park, which proved a bad idea. I felt like a fat fly negotiating a spider web constructed of retractable dog leashes and feckin’ eejits.
Now I’m wrapping up the day’s paying chores, sipping a 5 Barrel Pale Ale and contemplating the evening meal. Whaddaya think? Turkey, turkey or … turkey?
Ah, Black Friday: The gift that keeps on giving. As some Walmart employees are agitating for a living wage, Sears customers in San Antonio are throwing hands and drawing firearms. Some people clearly did not enjoy enough mood-altering tryptophan on Thanksgiving.
At the higher-end shops, meanwhile, those mannequins you’re inspecting are inspecting you right back, with cameras and facial-recognition software not unlike that used by les flics. Hey, there’s one … whoops, nope, it’s just Mitt Romney.
Meanwhile, here’s something to leave on the shelf, no matter where we are in the shopping season. And fuck Weepy John Boehner and the horses’ asses he rode in on.
Mad Blog Media 