the RON JACOBS blog, brah

PRO BOWL FOR MEDIA DUMMIES

2012-01-26T08:59:00.000-08:00

Don Ho

(Born in Honolulu before “Pearl Harbor,” broadcaster and author Ron Jacobs began his sportscasting career as the backup trackside announcer when Roller Derby came to Honolulu in the 1950s. While in Hollywood he co-created American Top 40 in 1970. He has written extensively about traditional and popular contemporary Hawaiian culture. Jacobs' OBAMALAND: Who Is Barack Obama? is the #1 best-selling nonfiction book in Hawaii since its publication in 2009.)

Please pass this on to anyone you know at ESPN or the sports people at the other networks: It’s HO-no-lulu … got it?

Let’s begin with the most onerous transgression committed by the off-Islander TV and radio announcers: They often blunder into the mispronunciation of the name of the Aloha’s State’s capital city: Honolulu. Al Michaels gets it right since he kicked off his broadcast career right here in Hawaii. Boomer Berman gets it right because he always does with most things besides having frequently flown to and from Hawaii to qualify as an Honorary Kama’aina (old timer.)

It is not pronounced: HUH-nah-lula. To anyone who knows the Hawaiian language or merely just how to pronounce the name of my hometown saying it that way aloud is excruciating to the “local” ear or anyone who knows the correct way to say this word, which literally means “protected bay.” Anyone who let’s loose with “Huhnahlula” is thereafter known as not akamai (hip) to the place and everything about it. There even might be a spillover of doubt as to the mispronouncer’s credibility when it comes to other “details.”

It would be easy here to cite examples of how the names of pro and college athletes from Hawaii and the rest of the South Pacific have their names butchered up by some sportscasters who have never been west of LA. Worse even is when they just quit trying and “cleverly” assign a Polynesian player a convenient nickname. At this they are not particularly creative. When the NFL’s St. Louis Rams drafted tight end Michael Patrick Hoomanawanui of Illinois in the fifth round announcers threw in the towel during the preseason games that revealed that Hoomanawanui was a keeper. He was re-labeled: “Illinois Mike.” And thus was he known by the play-by-play callers unable to tackle “hoh’-oh-ma-NAH-wah-noo-ee” for fear of what we say in Hawaii street Pidgin English: “Make ass.”

There is one sure fire way to remember how to pronounce the name of this town: Think of its most famous son (other than the current President of the United States.) Who else but: DON HO.

Can you say “Don Ho”? Great! You are on your way to nailing it like a native. Take my dear friend’s first name—I knew and interviewed Don Ho over a period of forty years—and add: “No” and “Lulu.” HO-no-lulu.

A small thing you might think. Until you think about the last time someone blew the pronunciation of your hometown or whatever. But unless you’re from a major city the chances of the town’s name popping up in the news are slim. But hey, this is Honolulu, baby. You know, the place where the crew from HAWAII 5-0 patrols the scene, keeping it safe for all who arrive here, whether or not they can pronounce correctly the HNL designation on their baggage tags.

The Pro Bowl is played in Aloha Stadium. The word “aloha” indeed can mean both hello and goodbye but in connection with this venue it may as well translate into: White Elephant Rusting By The Sea. Actually to say that in Hawaiian you must pronounce it: He 'elepani ke'oke'o e ki'o kukaehao ana ma ka pili kai.

Aloha Stadium was conceived to be one of the first multi-sport venues, the kind where grandstands could be moved about to fit either a football or baseball configuration within its oval structure. Someone sold the reigning bureaucrats on the idea of, like, “floating sections” of seats that could be moved about from season to season.

To the best of my knowledge they never moved all that much after the Hawaii Islander baseball team left town. The all-metal structure opened in 1975, replacing venerable Honolulu Stadium, the old “Termite Palace” in Moilili in town, which had been the major outdoor arena since the Territorial Twenties. The old wooden structure wore down over half a century but it did not suffer from what has afflicted Aloha Stadium since day one: Rust. Park a car next to the Pacific Ocean for thirty-five years then have a look at what remains.

Of course Aloha Stadium is not a ’75 Chevy parked at Sandy Beach. So over the decades it has been as massive metallic political football, so to speak. But it all boils down to the place is still there and perpetually under repair with no viable alternative in sight. There have been studies, proposals, legislative boogies and all manner of suggestions but the place remains the only big game place in town.

Compared to the worst NFL stadium, whichever that may be, Aloha Stadium is bush-league and downright shoddy in just about every category except for Beautiful Weather in January. (The same can be said of Miami, but when the NFL shifted the Pro Bowl there last year it lacked the aloha and allure of the Fiftieth State so The Great Meaningless Filler Game is once again being played out in Halawa, within a few hundred yards of Pearl Harbor itself, with its metal-munching ocean saltwater. However the United States Navy keeps things shipshape unlike the rusting stadium that looks out at the USS Arizona Memorial next to the docked USS Missouri. Fortunately these historic landmarks have been preserved. As well they should be. They are not only perpetual reminders of the infamous December 7, 1941, sneak attack on the naval base but they are also the state’s number one tourist attraction. Officially the 2011 Pro Bowl generated $28 million in visitor spending and $3 million in state tax revenue.

These days the game is staged during the interregnum week between the conference championship playoff games and Super Bowl. This manufactured “all star” game, which originated in 1938 way before the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 but bounced around the country in eleven different stadia in search of fans who would fill the seats for this most exhibition of all NFL games. By 1979 someone figured out that high-paid pro football stars would compete in a meaningless game if it could be played in “paradise” and they could bring along their families and/or entourages while paying for the spree with their game check. Players on the winning squad take home nearly as much as Mitt Romney makes in a day: $45,000 per player to the victors and $22,500 each for the losers.

The rap has always been, “The teams mess around for three quarters and then play to win at the end so they can earn the victor’s share to help pay their wives and girlfriend’s shopping sprees.” A winner’s game check can evaporate at Waikiki’s “Luxury Row” on Kalakaua Avenue, a Rodeo Drive West, featuring stores like Tiffany & Co., Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and so on.

Meanwhile the game itself is always video-garnished with the same mai tai, waterfalls and hula girl images of Hawaii that are great for those who serve the “visitor industry” but bear less resemblance to reality than the polyglamorous picture postcards peddled at souvenir counters and tourist traps.

The stadium in which the Pro Bowl is played is located “about twenty minutes from Waikiki,” but that really applies only to emergency vehicles with flashing lights and screaming sirens. In that days when UH football was hot and all 50,000 seats were sold a game could cause traffic jams for miles in all directions, all aiming for parking lots too small to hold maximum crowds.

Nonetheless, islanders who have never seen an NFL game in person regularly show up for this faux battle, which is usually a high-scoring, no defensive game just a few notches above flag football. And for those who do go and have a ball—good for them.

In a display of how meaningless this game is NFL players will be allowed to tweet during the Pro Bowl. Sort of. Before you get too excited, realize players will not be using their own personal devices. Rather, they will be using designated kiosks on the sidelines. If people do indeed “roll over in their graves” Vince Lombardi must be spinning faster than a Ferrari engine at maximum r.p.m.

Most of us football fans who live here in Hawaii watch the Pro Bowl game on TV, if at all. And we understand that nothing much is at stake but that’s cool; good for the guys whose plays merited their selection to these elite squads. I just hope that those in the broadcast media, the same people who have mastered the pronunciation of such Super Bowl players’ names as the New York Giants stars Amukamara, Kiwanuka and Umenyiora learn how to say “Honolulu” correctly. Before they focus the following week on Super Bowl XLVI played at that stadium in Indian Apple Us.

FILLING SPACE ON TIME

2012-01-21T12:32:00.000-08:00

After decades of meeting deadlines for broadcast and print it is nice to throw off such commitments and write these things called “blogs.” The online Webster definition of such things is: “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.”

For those not keeping track (or giving a damn) the origin of the term "weblog" was coined by one Jorn Barger in December 1997. Wow—that was all of fifteen years ago. The shorter version, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who, in 1999, broke the word weblog into the phrase "we blog" in the sidebar of his weblog. Let’s ask Google, “How many blogs are there on the Internet?”

(Returns to keyboard after ninety-minute ‘net search for this statistic. Data is either outdated or wildly conflicting. If you know the answer please let me know. But from reading many reports and studies just now it is safe to assume that someone somewhere is blogging about something. Who those people are and what they blog about has been probed by intensive studies. And to me these cross-tabbed data dumps based on who-knows-what-kind-of-sample? or questionable methodology add up to nothing but confusion. Let’s just say that more people are blogging by the minute. But unlike library books that can be discarded, the blogosphere apparently can handle an unlimited mass of this stuff and of all society’s major problems, over-blogging ain’t one of them, like burned out dead space hardware dropping from orbit into your swimming pool or Yankee Stadium.)

My admiration is limitless for those pioneering and persistent bloggers who crank out a new posting each and every day. Interesting. Most all the studies I checked reveal that the majority of these folks do so without pay or any kind of monetary compensation. Once upon a time a “diary” was a closely held book (some came with locks and keys); a place to stash private thoughts and feelings. But with the advent of all this electronic connectivity these once solitary thoughts have become public domain in the most literal sense.

Blogs are like a mega-amped Speakers' Corner, which is located at the north-east corner of London’s Hyde Park. Outdoor public rants, debate and discussion are allowed. Speakers there may rattle on about any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches within lawful boundaries. Years ago, when I visited the spot many of the ravers accompanied their pleas and tirades with hand-made placards announcing the Main Point of the oration, which was usually something about the world coming to end in the immediate future.

Putting aside commercial blogs, which are merely the newest forms of advertising, PR, bulletin boards, etc., sponsored by business entities of all types. People who track this stuff say commercial blogs comprise about 50% of what is spamming out of monitors globally. The other half are posted by individuals who blog about virtually every subject known to (and yet to be discovered by) mankind.

I started this blog after urging the Scribe For All Seasons, Ken Levine, to offer his clever unscheduled emails to friends. Ken, who I think was born typing, had already made his rep as a screenwriter and beyond. He was a “Hollywood hyphenate” back when most folks thought the term referred to some form of sexual deviation. Meanwhile Ken was expanding into sports broadcasting. (In a Walter Mitty universe Ken Levine would be deliriously happy to be legendary sportscaster Vince Scully or a rockin’ Boss deejay like the inimitable Robert W. Morgan.

He quickly transitioned from sitting in the Dodger Stadium bleachers doing play-by-play games—into a small cassette tape recorder. This is how he honed yet another talent. And one of those cassettes landed him a job in a Major League Baseball radio booth. Since the team was located in Baltimore, about 2300 miles away from his home in West LA, Ken’s “travelogue” reports expanded beyond his dispatches about family vacations, usually spent in Hawaii and described in his well-honed style of observations punctuated with punch lines. I’m certain that I wasn’t the only one urging him to present his hilarious highlights in the form of the then-still new form of a blog. What matters is that he officially became an online scribe in November 2005. His first entry contained commentary on everything but key elements of home plumbing (and further examination might indeed find concealed, covert, coded messages about the kitchen sink itself given Ken’s facile use of multiple entendre and his consistently cool POV.) Basically a humorist by trade, Ken sums it up in this question from one of his recent posts: “Who needs to write satire when stuff like this actually occurs?”

But even as impressive as the content of his entries—named one of the “Best 25 Blogs of 2011” by TIME Magazine—it is Ken Levine’s ’ that continues to impress. Doing it daily for more than six “Internet Years” is a long time. The blogs tar were started and since abandoned in that period number in the mega-digits. Shit, unless and until the Internet crashes all these time pellets of trivia will be, like, out there…subject to recall at any moment. This will result in a rainbow of consequences. Folks whose electronic epigrams like Ken Levine’s are a true body of work deserve all the space required on the digital shelf or whatever the metaphor is for The Cloud, quickly replacing the trusty old library. Gone are Borders and Barnes & Noble and cheers for the “small independent booksellers” like the kind often featured on CSPAN’s “Booknotes”—which is my personal method of filling the TV void created at the end of the football season. Nothing beats the NFL for us junkies locked and loaded into it but “Booknotes” dwells in the nonfiction world and is methadone for pro football addicts on when post-Super Bowl Cold Turkey sets in. And it can be watched with one’s eyes closed, know what I mean?

Of course such programming deals with “serious” writers who may have or still blog but that is not at the top of their resume. Blogs are still somewhat the back alley of “literature.” But then again punctual pasquinades like those of Ken Levine and countless others may be “books in the making before our very eyes.”

Jack Kerouac’s monumental “one roll” approach to his masterwork “One The Road” was a Blog-A-Thon in its own way. In 1951 Jack Kerouac took a continuous 120-foot roll of paper, threaded it into his manual typewriter and began to write his masterpiece, which he did, fueled by whatever version of the legend one believes and punched the thing out. Or, how about what in my opinion is the most amazing chapter on sports ever written, “Ice,” from David Maraniss’ classic, “When Pride Still Mattered”—a/k/a “The Lombardi book” that spawned the Broadway play— was written by him, fueled on coffee, in a day and night marathon. If you not read the book, then dig up a copy of this fantastic work. It is also a great way to fill those non-football hours looming up on us.

So throw a random “something”-blog into your browser and play Internet roulette. And if this happens to pop up do let me know. Even if by the old school way: a note in a bottle that will someday wash up here on Oahu’s North Shore.

I have thus fulfilled my ulterior motive in putting this down in approaching 1300 words. That is to get rid of the last damn NFL-related blog. It was time-specific and I gotta get something up by kickoff Sunday or I will be awash in guilt and even more jealous of Ken Levine and all the others like him who pound out good stuff with the consistency of the changing of the Royal Guard at Buckingham Palace in London.

Speaking of which, to add an incorrigible blab of limited interest: In a precedent-setting move the St. Louis Rams of the National Football League have just announced that they will be playing one game per year—for the next three seasons—in London’s Wembley Stadium. It is superior in every way to the team’s home dome, one of the oldest and dilapidated in pro football. If only you could drive there from St. Louis. Not THAT would be some kind of tunnel.

NEW ORLEANS NIGHTMARE

2012-01-13T22:54:00.000-08:00

If "something happens" to Drew Brees this is who takes over.

After all this is the biggest NFL weekend traditionally and this year's matchups are as good as it gets. And as usual most all the "experts" are not about to stick their necks out. Even though they are "my" team's biggest rival I must pull for the NFC Western Conference champion San Francisco 49ers.

And let's not beat around the bush: the team who can take out the opposing quarterback usually has an instant advantage. I have nothing as Mr. Brees as a person and he is one hell of a ballplayer. But now he must be a matador in the mud playing against a strong defensive unit in a town praying for a return to the Frisco teams heyday.

So this is a little note that I can always erase if I am dead wrong: Across the line from the Saints QB will be Isaac Sopoaga, former defensive star at the University of Hawaii, and a full wrecking crew.

Would I bet against the Saints? Immaterial since I don't gamble. So let's be real: I've attended hundreds of NFL games in person. People holler, "Kill the quarterback!" They don't say, "Have a nice day." At least I hope so tomorrow in the city by the bay.

PS - Congratulations to the St. Louis pro football franchise for doing something sane for the first time in many a season.

CAMERON CROWE 40 YEARS LATER

2012-01-05T23:35:00.000-08:00

It seems that every jag off of a certain demographic wants to be some aspect of Cameron Crowe, whose talent erupted in sync with the rhythms of the times and the trends in technology.

Had he been born in Ancient Rome, young Cameron would have been chasing around Caesar’s gardens using his wit and love of the arts to ingratiate him with those who created it, and from whom he could get a breathless, exclusive interview.

Once I was a Wunderkind. Unless one has been through the barrage of expectations that increase with success at an early age, it is difficult to understand the yin-yang attached to being really famous in a world when once “almost well-known” was more than enough.

Forty years ago, Cameron walked into my office at KGB Radio-San Diego accompanied by two other hippies with chips on their shoulders. This long-haired barefoot trio showed up at the radio station to tell us what “the people” wanted — make that, needed — on and from the radio. I represented the corporate rats that stood in their way. At least that was my POV sitting there at the programming helm of the most messed-up radio station I’d ever signed up with in a town that everyone envied for its surf, sea and sun. All of this was manini kine stuff to me, born as I was in Waikiki where the real watermen of the Pacific dwell in the swells, and so many other sights and scenes are unknown in what was then billing itself as “America’s Finest City.”

To me San Diego was the anal sphincter of California in many ways. But one of my treasured memories is of watching the shifty-eyed kid who seemed to know more than he should about life and music for a high-school kid emerging from his nerd cocoon. Cameron hung around and our mutual passions bridged the age gap. I was 35-years-old and at the top of my professional heap: rock’n’roll radio. Cameron was a 15-year-old kid who wanted to snuggle up to Led Zeppelin albums until he could meet the group live and in person and live to tell the world the rest of the story.

In Pidgin English — the street slang of my hometown of Honolulu — Cameron would be called the “Sly Mongoose” type. His intellect and curiosity expanded like a sumo belly, overflowing with torrents of words that made you wonder: Is this kid writing that stuff? Mozart and cats like that have always confounded their elders but those were unwired days. Cameron plugged into and played back his way so far and so fast that the only way I could describe it as an observer would require my lapsing into sports writing clichés.

Many of the wannabe moviemakers now unleashed and unrestrained online write about an artist’s work as if they know or knew the person directly and they hold the key to revelations held within the world as seen through film.

I need not waste one word on those straining their brains to match words and wits, syntax and insight with a master such as Cameron, whose life is multi-faceted in ways that those who “analyze” his films cannot grasp.

To paraphrase the old Rough Rider himself — Theodore Roosevelt in his famous “Man in the Arena” pronouncement: those who don’t jump in and DO IT can go sit back and fuck themselves.”

While making movies and not measuring his mark in the intervals between doing so, Cameron whizzed through more life changes than a cartoon super hero. As Joe South once wrote and Elvis echoed: “Walk a Mile in My Shoes.”

Making movies is like fighting a war and those involved should be cheered for getting out of there alive. When the paying customers emerge from the theater with a smile or a tear it makes it all worth it. Here's a shove your way Cameron: Congratulations and check back sometime during the next forty years

NORMAN CORWIN (Peace On Earth)

2011-12-21T13:06:00.000-08:00

Norman Lewis Corwin (May 3, 1910 – October 18, 2011)

Above all, my true “Radio Hero” was a man who lived and wrote during the 1930s and 1940s: what is now called, “The Golden Age of Radio.” Norman Corwin’s work is too prodigious, perceptive, personal and profound for me to even begin to list his “audiography,” let alone his work in other media. If you think it all began with Allen Freed and the rest of the Rock’n’Roll/Top Forty stations and deejays then you might want to learn more about the father of the “Theater Of The Mind” and most things good in radio, at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Corwin

Post-World War II American radio, as with cars then “Made In The USA,” began with extensions of what was produced in our country until 1941.

Then there was a hodgepodge “on the air” of everything from farm reports to the Metropolitan Opera’s live concert broadcasts. The style and substance of pre-TV radio emerged from war’s cocoon and began to fly as new innovators gave new ideas a try.

But even by 1965, when Bill Drake and Gene Chenault gained control of RKO Radio’s Los Angeles outlet, which we co-conspirators renamed 93/KHJ Boss Radio. Before the format switch (and the wakeup Robert W. Morgan Show) the morning program offering was a “bed in breakfast” program featuring Steve Allen and wife Jayne Meadows. The couple discussed the day’s events while snuggled in their Beverly Hills bed, sipping orange juice and nibbling bagels while Bill Mouzis handled the “remote” engineering chores back to the main studios and on to the transmitter and towers at Fairfax Avenue and the Santa Monica Freeway.

This affair was followed by the “Radio” Michael Jackson announcing from our fortress at 5515 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, just down the street from KNX Radio, at CBS Square. (Mr. Corwin started at the CBS Radio Network in 1938, when I was one-year-old and crawling around Waikiki Beach on Oahu, which had two stations, one of which was KGMB, the local CBS affiliate.) That is where Corwin’s masterwork, On a Note of Triumph, was commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to celebrate the victory of the Allies over Madness. Broadcast live around the world on VE Day, May 8, 1945. This program, in my blatant opinion, is the greatest long-form radio production ever made.

Later in 1972, while living in La Jolla, California and working at KGB-AM-FM, I began reading Corwin’s fantastic array of books about all manner of things, mostly veering to the socio-political. This was way back in the old days before email. So I wrote him a fan letter. Thus began an exchange via US mail between the master and myself, both who toiled in LA radio, albeit decades apart.

Norman Corwin was unaware of the 48-hour History of Rock and Roll, the KHJ original (and only cool) version, narrated perfectly by Morgan: the best announcer with whom I ever worked, besides all his other talents. I wrote Corwin about how disappointed I was that when my program finished and there were zero phone calls to the station about the epic event, neither good nor bad. Full specifics about the program are at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Rock_and_Roll,

I thought we had created a monster flop and had wasted two days of valuable airtime chronicling a subject that had been around for all of thirteen years (if one considers Bill Haley’s “Rock Around The Clock” as the first hit music of the “rock” genre; a major hit that exploded “rock” into global consciousness). This twelve-bar-blues-based song peaked at the #1 spot in the US and UK.

Returning to work the following Monday, February 24, 1969, I realized that in spite of my paranoid and insecure state of mind that praise for the HRR was pouring in, mostly in the form of those things called telegrams. Ratings revealed that one out of three Southern California radios were tuned to the production on which we had worked for months. (For the rest of the story of this program see: http://woodygoulart.com/wg/rock-and-roll-radio-history/people/jacobs-and-drake-on-the-record/history/

The outpouring of praise locally and nationally was rewarding to all of us. It is not every local radio show that is requested for inclusion by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institute. I wrote Mr. Corwin about that roller coaster climax to that project. In his return letter, Corwin told of finishing up his postwar tribute—which featured everyone in Hollywood fighting for even the smallest part and included FDR himself live from Washington—and staring at the studio “hotline” phone, which remanded deathly silent at the broadcast’s conclusion. Not a single ring. The genius writer, thinking he had launched his own bomb, went to a Gower Street bar and drank away his disappointment. Until the following day when acclaim for his artistic and patriotic effort showered him to his dying days.

Since it is “The Season” and the world goes through its beleaguered changes, I feel it my duty to place electronically the following words from Norman Corwin’s piece de resistance, the crown jewel of his unsurpassed body of work, On a Note of Triumph.

Today his words ring true to life as they appear on your computer monitor (or by whatever means you see this).

Mele Kalikimaka & Hauoli Makahiki Hou!

Lord God of trajectory and blast

Whose terrible sword has laid open the serpent
So it withers in the sun for the just to see,
Sheathe now the swift avenging blade with the names of nations writ on it,
And assist in the preparation of the ploughshare.

Lord God of fresh bread and tranquil mornings,
Who walks in the circuit of heaven among the worthy,
Deliver notice to the fallen young men
That tokens of orange juice and a whole egg appear now before the hungry children;

That night again falls cooling on the earth as quietly as when it leaves your hand;

That Freedom has withstood the tyrant like a Malta in a hostile sea,
And that the soul of man is surely a Sevastopol which goes down hard and leaps from ruin quickly.

Lord God of the topcoat and the living wage
Who has furred the fox against the time of winter
And stored provender of bees in summer's brightest places,
Do bring sweet influences to bear upon the assembly line:
Accept the smoke of the milltown among the accredited clouds of the sky:
Fend from the wind with a house and hedge, him whom you made in your image,
And permit him to pick of the tree and the flock
That he may eat today without fear of tomorrow
And clothe himself with dignity in December.

Lord God of test-tube and blueprint
Who jointed molecules of dust and shook them till their name was Adam,
Who taught worms and stars how they could live together,
Appear now among the parliaments of conquerors and give instruction to their schemes:
Measure out new liberties so none shall suffer for his father's color or the credo of his choice:
Post proofs that brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those who profit by postponing it pretend:
Sit at the treaty table and convoy the hopes of the little peoples through expected straits,
And press into the final seal a sign that peace will come for longer than posterities can see ahead,
That man unto his fellow man shall be a friend forever.

SILENCE THESE RAMS

2011-12-13T10:47:00.000-08:00

The Spag Wad

I was actually paid to watch football games back in the mid-1950s as the “technician” twisting “pots” for the four Honolulu Interscholastic League tilts played each weekend in the “Termite Palace” on South King Street and broadcast on KGU (NBC affiliate and “The Voice of Hawaii.”) Several years later in 1957 I would introduce Elvis Presley in his first island concert only on the field not high up in the rickety press box with Gene Good calling the plays and the Reverend Chuck Halter handling the stats and Capt. “Corky” Donahue of the HPD doing the color.

It is night’s like this that make me wonder why I have spent thousands of man hours pulling for this coalition of creeps. And I know I am not alone in my helpless rage.

The current empty-headed head coach of the St. Louis Rams—my first ex-wife calls him “Spag Wad”—hit bottom on national television tonight, December 12, 2011, bringing more momentum to the movement to see the fakir bounced out and away from the team (and the city, state and planet as far as possible as far as I care. And I’ve been observing this football team for forty-seven seasons and never missed a game one way or another and that’s not RJ hyperbole but rather a certifiable fact. Take 47 seasons at an average of 15 games including playoffs and that is at least 705 Rams games plus “exhibitions,” long called that since ATM (After The Merger)—a bit of statistical laziness that keeps people from knowing that Deacon Jones of the LA Rams Fearsome Foursome not only invented the sack in tribute to the raging warriors who ravaged all in their way, he who regularly got to the passer faster and meaner than anyone who ever played defensive end in the NFL including Reggie White, Bruce Smith, Mean Joe Greene. All those overpaid, babied chest thumpers of today who bleat when they beat some kid who couldn’t keep #75 in the blue-and-white from mashing the opposing quarterback into the turf of South Central Los Angeles and the LA Memorial Coliseum and everything in his way before his bust came to rest in Canton. But enough of real men and pre-digitized football.)

Tonight was one of the most inept Monday Night Football games ever “played” and shown for pubic consumption. A certain deranged demographic known as Rams Nation knowingly avoided dining during the massacre of their heroes, though I’ll bet Mitt Romney $10000 that the team’s performance did induce some vomiting and smashing of things lying around and officially licensed by the NFL with their horny, once Ram-ugh logo.

I have seen almost every important MNF game from the night they first signed on ABC-TV. Football went from Pop Warner to Marshall McLuhan. Tonight’s teams went into the fray with losing records and no chance of playing into the postseason--when the NFL rules the minds and wrenches the guts of most American males as well as women and foreigners.

And now the headline on the computer monitor display reads, “Seahawks stifle struggling Rams for home victory.” I have not written (only mumbled about and kvetched to select friends) about this team since they totally blew it in Seattle last year. Okay, maybe some snide asides but after the Greed Strike there was Hope for This Year. The recently concluded 30-13 beating was a thumping not accurately reflecting the ineptitude and confusion of the once-mighty Rams team. The loss must have least bothered the head coach whose mind dwells in a reptilian domain that relates to no one else’s reality while he is unable to relate anything to the media that isn’t straight out of “How To Point The Finger.” Or “Coaching For Dummiers.”

Everyone who has ever aspired to write for the entertainment and enlightenment of others somewhere secretly wants to be a sportswriter. Or at least they did in the horse and buggy days of the sports writing giants going back to Grantland Rice and Damon Runyon and those men spying from high in press boxes wearing fedoras while smoking Camel cigarettes and banging out the action and their opinions of same on a manual typewriter as pro football climbed up the ladder, weaving itself into the heart and soul of this county. Up rose pro football. Past Roller Derby and “professional” wrestling. Then beyond boxing. Dug in deeper than car racing and the ballet that is the NBA when well done. And finally topping baseball as the All-American game itself. And Dan Jenkins’ “Semi-Tough: A Novel,” a dreamy 1972 science-friction vision of US football imagining the game evolving and exploding into a media monster with print still feeding the globule village scores and stories to those masses who now have levitated this rugby and cannibal–inspired sport all to a patriotic orgasmic frenzy as the Super Bowl became the most important day in the Union while exponentially expanding technology probes the pores of sweat dripping down a tackle’s massive nose in highly defined live megapixels-by-da-million or whatever display the game is playing on—certainly one that would prove the grit and guts of what we dying farts call Old School. Oh but if we could see Sweetness in widescreen and Jimmy Brown defying hi-def or witness Bob Waterfield hit the “Coffin Corner” on every punt. Football before Velcro and polyethylene. No. We fall on our officially licensed NFL prayer rugs and bow in the direction of Lambeau or Soldier’s Field and chant some strange shit even too bizarre for the History Channel.

I figure the super bowl game with the roman numerals is the closest we come together as a nation—this country in its years as an Obama nation. Every Super Sunday I’ve always wanted to through a rock through the window of Tiffany’s on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki during a tight game while the entire island stay frozen watching TV especially if it involves the 49ers or Raiders or the Cowboys and the Steelers.

Taking the long view of this band of gypsies known as the NFL Rams has tested my patience beyond limits I didn’t know existed. (Only bet money on them but once and the loser. Mitch Fisher duly send a ten-dollar check to the rabbi up in Nuuanu. Having lived in Hong Kong for a year in 1964 I was forced to learn the real world’s “football” on Redifussion. That was the name for the telly in the Kowloon flat I spent my year out of the country pending trial sentencing and incarceration for possession of marihuana (sic.) It was grass (“reefer”) so weak that it required a pillow case full of Mexican weed with twigs the size of KFC bones to get a feeble hit in 1959 the year all manner of life-changing events happened personally for me including being present at the birth of the State of Hawaii and sampling all manner of people places and events. The Feds decided to make my scandalous behavior and example. It sure stopped millions of people from smoking pot. And I learned to watch other aspects of “soccer” that apply to our less subtle homeland game.

A dozen years later I received a pardon from President Jimmy Carter, which certifies that I am neither a drug smuggler nor a crazed maniac. And I could vote and own a gun again. One year later I was hooked. Insatiably hung up on the Rams for whom there is no expletive strong enough about now to describe my feelings about this alleged “team.”

Throughout my days I have spent hours out of my mind blown on all sorts of substances short of shooting myself up and I cannot think of any mind-altering stuff that would cause the coaching staff of the Rams tonight to (and “think” is not an available word when referring to these posturing okole) assume that doing something other than handing the ball to Mr. Rams Steven Jackson #39 after seven attempts to score within spitting distance of the goal line Pigskin Paul Allen’s Seahawk Playpen. I even got to see the ol’ KGB Chicken shtick now in its fortieth year of descenadancy from the artistry in (a hot stinking suit) of San Diego Sate’s Ted Giannoulas who made the fowl thing famous.

But of course I have run out of pre-Ram game drills for myself. The first one to topple is: “Fuck ‘em. Why should I was another second of my life and breathe caring about a bunch of people in a town that I wanted out of during the one day I was there in the 70s hustling CRUISIN’ albums?” Vinyl almost melted in the summer heat like it would collapse the arch. Passed through in 1997 to visit the then-state-of-the-art Rams facility and went along for the ride to the Miracle Season of the Greatest Show on Earth.

December 2011 in freezing Northwest. They score a touchdown. That is better than their last visit to the Land Of Costco when their no-brainer trust flew away having maneuvered the squad to scoring two field goals and blowing a fantastic chance to host a first round playoff game while winning the division Reduced tonight to a puddle of hopelessness. The crew is ready willing and able throwing them into the fray while above decks the baffled commanders display a lack of intelligence that would be dismissed in Pop Warner league battles. And probably result in the schmuck being punched out by an enraged father who cain’t take another second—another three-an-out while this tyrannical little man steers the ship into an iceberg or in the case of today’s misplayed waste of talent.

The only bigger dimwit who is the owner of the team. He is so out of touch he makes Mitt Romney look like Mother Teresa. He is the One Percent of the One Percent and doesn’t give a flying fuck about the paying customers. Let alone those of us who believe a group of mean trying to win a boy’s game and in so doing offering up an opiate for the otherwise miserable Monday night masses.

I will paste blow the section about the Rams owner and his concern or lack of it for his toy or however he regards this once proud NFL franchise that is a few weeks older than me. What who those would take the name of mighty Fordham’s Rams and enter the league for the 1937 having no imagined or foreseen any of this forgettable unit and its lack of coaching intelligence not just “inspiration.” The thing about “My way is the highway” people is that they too eventually get kicked out the back door. And they’re enough of those at Rams Park so this fool can exit having made off with three bad seasons and a lack of human understanding.

Last game last year in Seattle this pompous mini-person fired the Rams longtime equipment manager and my friend Todd Hewitt. Thus started the post-Hewitt era begun by Todd’s father in 1967 and making them the family with the longest service to a franchise with a sub-simian putz making Todd the fall guy for a game in which the idiot coach was able to generate two field goals and end last year’s season on the infamous day he showed Todd Hewitt the door.

I mean it would be easy to try and put things into football perspective not too mentioned what has transpired on the planet in the past seventy-four ears. In a long and boring story too often told be me the roots of my Rams addiction run deeper than when I first became a season ticket holder in 1965. A pair of tickets became six seats in the LA Memorial Coliseum when I was the only department head at RKO General’s KHJ Radio and Channel Nine in Hollywood. No one wanted the seats. The team that once was the toast of Gridiron USA had slumped in the mid-60s. And who cared the way drug sex and rock and roll were breaking out and away from the Ike years and before the Nixonian nightmare began and ended.

Caring less about who can read this I type on. There is a sort of democratic satisfaction in calling the owner of the St. Louis Rams and their head coach assholes and idiots. What can they do? Sue me for my signed Maxie Baughan card or Marshall Faulk cleats?

The most applicable point made be the Heirs of Cossell was when Super Bowl winning coach cum commentator Jon Gruden proclaimed: “The Rams could play a doubleheader and still not score a touchdown.”

This team would be better off with Herman Cain as its owner and Newt Gingrich the head coach. Let Sarah Palin take over the cheerleaders. It is difficult when those girls can kick higher than the boys on the field for whom they are paid to cheer.

The head coach of the St. Louis Rams—my first ex-wife calls him “Spag Wad”—hit bottom on national television last night December 13, 20011, bringing more to the movement to see him bounced out and away from the team. Tonight was one of the most inept Monday Night Football games ever played and I have seen most all of them. Both teams went in with losing records and no chance of playing into the postseason when the NFL rules the minds and wrenches the guts of most American males as well as women and foreigners. And the headline reads, “Seahawks stifle struggling Rams for home victory.” The 30-13 beating was a thumping not accurately reflecting the ineptitude and confusion of the once-proud Rams team.

Everyone who has ever aspired to write for the entertainment and enlightenment of others somewhere secretly wants to be a sportswriter. Or at least they did in the horse and buggy days of the Sportswriting Giants going back to Grantland Rice and Damon Runyon and men spying from high in press boxes wearing fedoras and banging out the action and their opinions of same on a manual typewriter as pro football climbed up the ladder and weaving itself into the heart and soul of this county. Up from war and depression arose pro football. Higher past dance marathons and Roller Derby and “professional” wrestling. Then beyond boxing. And finally topping baseball as the All-American game itself. And Dan Jenkins’ “Semi-Tough: A Novel” a dreamy science-friction vision of US football brought the game into evolving and exploding into a media with print the globule village feeding the scores and stories to those masses who now have levitated it all to a patriotic orgasmic frenzy as the Super Bowl became the most important day in the union while technology exponentially expanding peek into to the pores of sweat dripping down a defensive lineman’s massive nose in highly defined live only whatever display the game is playing on. It is the closest we come together as a country I figure.

Taking the long view of this band of gypsies known as the NFL Rams has tested my patience beyond limits I didn’t know existed. Having lived in Hong Kong for a year in 1964 I was forced to learn the real world’s “football” on Redifussion. That was the name for the telly in the Kowloon flat I spent my year out of the country pending trial sentencing and incarceration for possession of marihuana (sic). It was grass (“reefer”) so weak that it required a pillow case full of Mexican weed with twigs the size of KFC bones to get a feeble hit in 1959 the year all manner of life-changing events happened personally for me including being present at the birth of the state of Hawaii and sampling all manner of people places and events. The Feds decided to make my scandalous behavior and example. It sure stopped millions of people from smoking pot.

Throughout my days I have spent hours out of my mind blown on all sorts of substances short of shooting myself up and I cannot think of any mind-altering stuff that would cause the coaching staff of the Rams tonight to (and “think” is not an available word when referring to these posturing okole) assume that doing something other than handing the ball to Mr. Rams Steven Jackson #39 after seven attempts to score within spitting distance of the goal line Pigskin Paul Allen’s Seahawks Playpen. I even got to see the ol’ KGB Chicken shtick now in its fortieth year of descendancy from the artistry in (a hot stinking suit) of San Diego Sate’s Ted Giannoulas who made the fowl thing famous.

December 2011. They score a touchdown. That is better than their last visit to the Land Of Costco when their no-brainer trust flew away having maneuvered the squad to scoring two field goals and blowing a fantastic chance to host a first round playoff game while winning the division Reduced tonight to a puddle of hopelessness. The crew is ready willing and able throwing them into the fray while above decks the baffled commanders display a lack of intelligence that would be dismissed in Pop Warner league battles. And probably result in the schmuck being punched out by an enraged father who cain’t take another second—another three-an-out while this tyrannical little man steers the ship into an iceberg or in the case of today’s misplayed waste of talent.

Caring less about who can read this I type on. There is a sort of democratic satisfaction in calling the owner of the St. Louis Rams and their head coach assholes and idiots. What can they do? Sue me? Take my signed Maxie Baughan #55 cards or the custom Nikes that Marshall Faulk wore against Dallas in 2003 and hand-signed with a silver Sharpie?

The most applicable point made be the Heirs of Cosell was when Super Bowl winning coach Jon Gruden proclaimed: “The Rams could play a doubleheader and still not score a touchdown.”

The Team would be better off with Herman Cain as its owner and Newt Gingrich the head coach. Let Sarah Palin take over the cheerleaders. It is difficult when those girls can kick higher than the boys on the field for whom they are paid to cheer.

As with all things the buck stops at the top. The St. Louis Rams are owned by the most craven multimillionaire putz in pro sports. That is not just opinion of the raging citizens who should Occupy the Arch in protest until he dumps the useless pretentious inept faux Little Caesar whose makes me puke at the mere mention of his name. The Mussolini of the NFL. Go away. Vanish. And never appear anywhere again you lolo mea hoʻoulu pilikia.

If I were still "on the air" I would "spin" for you "This Could Be The Last Time" by The Rolling Stones. But the brains behind this Blogger software are as mooshy as the above-pictured horrid little man. So sing it to yourself. Or start something on Facebook to humiliate the owner of the sinking, stinking St. Louis Rams.

For Mitch Fisher who died today with the Patriots leading the division.

That leaves me, the last of the boys from Row 117. "I've got the key right here."

HEADLINE OF THE CENTURY

2011-12-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

Add for December, 2012: This is the link to PEACEFUL ARIZONA, which was written by Gordon Freitas in the the 1970s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qTF7KTo0sIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qTF7KTo0sI

FOR MP3 OF STUDIO ORIGINAL FOR AIRPLAY CONTACT: rj@hawaii.rr.com

Take a listen, please. For full story of the KKUA HOME GROWN album series see:http://archives.starbulletin.com/97/12/01/features/story1.html

Headline of the Century

by Ron Jacobs

In the mid-1930s, Ellen Carroll came on vacation to the Territory of Hawaii from San Francisco. One night, dancing under the stars at the Moana Hotel’s famous banyan tree, the pretty young woman with the bright red hair met my uncle, the tan, suave Samuel E. Jacobs, who had arrived in Honolulu in the early 1930s from New York City to seek adventure and fortune.

“Al Kealoha Perry and His Singing Surfriders were playing. You could hear the ocean. Uncle Sam cut in, we began dancing and it was love at first sight,” remembers my Aunt Ellen, “What a romantic setting!” My parents, who arrived in Honolulu two years later, witnessed the wedding of Sam and Ellen at Judge F. M. Brooks’ house in Nuuanu Valley on March 3, 1939.

My favorite aunt and uncle were avid golfers. Sam was a charter member of the Toastmasters Club and the Aloha Temple of the Shriners. He also belonged to the Honolulu Police Reserve and worked undercover with Army Intelligence to trap the infamous Otto Kuen, a German who spied for the Japanese, flashing signals from his home on Windward Oahu to Admiral Nagumos’s fleet.

In the winter of 1941, Sam Jacobs was selling Cadillacs, La Salles, and Pontiacs for Schuman Carriage. Ellen worked for Riley H. Allen, longtime editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

I recently asked my Aunt Ellen, now 76, widowed and living in Hollywoood, Florida, to share her memories of that day.

Dear Ron,

The following are some anecdotes that I remember from December 7, 1941.

Your Uncle Sam and I were living in a rented guest house at 274-B Lewers Street in Waikiki. That Sunday morning I was pouring a waffle when Web Edwards (“Hawaii Calls” radio announcer) issued an announcement with the memorable words, “This is the real McCoy.” Ben Glazer and Harold Davis—“selectees”—whom Uncle Sam and I met at the Jewish Community Center—were in the backyard with Uncle Sam and our springer spaniel puppy, Jakey.

The three of them had planned to go to town and clear a plot of land on which Uncle Sam was planning to open a used-car lot, down on Kapiolani (now the site of the Blaisdell Center). He had talked the Ward sisters into letting him have the area—something which no one else had been able to do.

In any event, they had this planned for after breakfast, which we never had. The radio also said that all servicemen were to report to their posts and that meant Harold and Ben. I remember saying goodbye to them and they scrambled back to Fort DeRussy on Ala Moana.

Then the radio told us to crawl under the bed, which we did, along with Jakey. I guess we were under the bed about 20 minutes when we looked at each other and said, “this is silly” and decided to get busy. I called Riley H. Allen, editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, for whom I worked as executive secretary. He was the boss and very much in charge. I enjoyed working for the Starbull and everyone connected with the paper. Back in those days we seemed to have a special camaraderie. Mr. Allen said he didn’t need me, but called back in a half-hour or so and said I had better come down to the paper.

I remember that we drove down Kapiolani Boulevard and then cut over to Ala Moana at the Honolulu Advertiser—don’t ask me why. All I know is we missed the Japanese planes which supposedly bombed the waterfront and we finally got to the Starbull at 125 Merchant Street, downtown. Uncle Sam took me inside, made sure I was safe, and then took off for Schuman Carriage on Beretania Street, which had some broken windows and, we later learned, a death.

Shortly after I got to the Starbull we had an air raid and Riley Allen, Paul McIree (the paper’s treasurer) and yours truly got under the lithograph tables, which they had decided was the safest place to be in case we were bombed. The all-clear sounded and we headed back upstairs. There were all sorts of rumors that had to be checked out. The big one was the destruction of the Japanese Sunday School class at McCully and King Streets. It was caused by falling U.S. Navy anti-aircraft shells. That was awful. Part of the ferocity of the attack was due to the fact that we were “on maneuvers” and had nothing but dummy ammunition. There was immediate censorship. I did what I was told to do until closing.

The 50 years since that day have become blurred details of the excitement, fear and activity. Betty McDonald, our society editor, insisted that Uncle Sam and I stay at her house together with Helen Smith and her husband, Don, a free-lance photographer. The McDonalds lived up against the mountains out at Black Point and figured we would be safer there than at Waikiki.

Sam and I went home, left Jakey with lots of food and water, and then drove out to Betty and Mac’s with our headlights covered with the blue paper they gave us at the Bulletin.

Dinner that night was soft-boiled eggs and toast. We were all fearful and bewildered. It was dark. I can remember getting dinner by flashlight. All the wahines slept together on the living room couch, which opened up. The men were protecting us and had worked out shifts between them. (Don, when it was his turn, paced the “widows walk” with a bottle in one hand and a gun in the pocket of his robe.

I laugh now, but at the time it was serious and we were plenty scared.)

Sunday evening, December 7. All night long we could hear the movement of troops and ammo. In addition, from our location up against the mountain we saw what we took to be Japanese planes returning Sunday night. ‘Thank God,’ we thought. They didn’t bomb us, but flew in quietly and secretly. They exited the same way. We actually saw the planes from the “widow’s walk.” I remember going out there and keeping very quiet—we were scared even more deeply, if such could be possible.

It was terrible trying to wrestle with the unknown while we were really in the dark in more ways than one. There is so much you know and so much you don’t. Don’t ask me why but the Army’s censorship bureau was in charge and all I know is that, at the time, nothing was said other than there were “sporadic raids.”

We later learned that a friend, Eddie Harris, had been talking on the phone during an attack, with one hand holding the phone and the other hand in his pocket, when an unexploded anti-aircraft shell hit his shirt. A fragment struck his hand that was in his pocket, leaving him not only with a constant memory of the day, December 7, 1941, but with his masculinity intact.

On Monday, we all headed for the paper as usual. Uncle Sam and I stopped at the house, checked on Jakey and then went on to work. I distributed gas masks until nearly 5 o’clock and remember wishing I could go home at 4 like everyone else.

They put barbed wire on the beaches because we didn’t know whether or not the Japanese would return. One night somebody got a finger stuck on a machine gun. What an eerie sound, especially in the middle of the night with it being so black and everyone under curfew.

The war sure played havoc with all of our plans and wishes for the future. Pearl Harbor taught us one thing though; and that is we must plan for the future. No one but the Good Lord has the final say and it is going to be done His way, come hell or high water. Looking back, in spite of the ruthlessness of the assault, we were able to organize and ultimately win the war.

I hope this letter helps you to remember Pearl Harbor.

Love and aloha,

Aunt Ellen

December 7, 2012

We, who were here on the most infamous day of the Twentieth Century,

REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR

ALOHA AHMET

2011-11-29T22:03:00.000-08:00

The Biggest Kahuna

Everyone's been buzzing about the new biography of Ahmet Ertegun, released earlier this month: The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun by Robert Greenfield. Amazing Amazon lets you search to see if you are in a book! DNS (Digital Narcissism Syndrome.) Let's face it: who does not do that thing first off with the arrival of a book and new ink smell?

There are two paragraphs about how our KHJ "exclusives" had radio people from all over the country screaming at him and Atlantic. He always acknowledged that KHJ launched Sonny & Cher just after they were Caesar & Cleo. Ahmet mentions Bill Drake once "because he was fun to drink with" or some such.

When Charlie Greene and Brian Stone took me with them to NYC at the peak of the S&C craze; FIVE hits on Billboard charts. We spent a week a week at The Plaza and who knows how much those guys spent in Manhattan’s jewelry district alone. Not to mention wine-women-and-song.

Or how Nesuhi Ertegun and I were the only haole (Caucasians) at the debut introduction of American Top 40, which Tom Rounds and I crashed as unregistered guerrilla ops. We had snuck into a convention in Majorca in the summer of 1970 and did our pitch (using Wollensak tape recorder in the basement of a little Catholic church with a handful of young girl students in their uniforms our audience. The name Casey Kasem might have been only thing that they could comprehend. To them it probably sounded like a food dish.

Ahmet was most intense genius record guy I ever knew. And he always credited KHJ and his hours drinking with Drake at Martoni's for much of Atlantic Records mid-60’s rise to the top.

This excerpt is from my book KHJ: Inside Boss Radio (2002.)

Sonny & Cher and The Real Don Steele. KHJ 1965.

Ron Jacobs: In the beginning, we had no superstar group to endorse the station by association. When I arrived from Honolulu in 1965 a friend from there, Judy Moll, told me that her bosses Charlie Greene and Brian Stone were down to selling their office equipment to keep going. So, Caesar & Cleo became Sonny & Cher. We did little promotions and they would do whatever we asked them to do. Sonny was confident that if he just came up with something good, KHJ would give his record his shot.

Sonny Bono: Actually, the song came to me quickly, as did most of my songs. Sitting at the kitchen table, I began scribbling lyrics on the back of a sheet of cardboard from some laundry just back from the cleaners. When it was half done, and I completed the song in about an hour, I sprung it on Cher, who grabbed the cardboard from the piano and grinned, “I’m going to save this forever.”

Sometimes you write a song and don’t think much of it. Then, surprise, it explodes. But other times, you know absolutely that the song is solid gold, waiting to happen. That’s the enthusiasm Cher and I had about, “I Got You Babe.” We couldn’t race to the studio fast enough. At the sessions, the electricity flowed at even higher voltage. Everybody from Charlie and Brian to our pianist, Leon Russell, was blown away. When everyone, from the artists to the writers to the musicians on down to the studio receptionist can’t stop singing and dancing when hearing a song being created, it’s amazing! But Ahmet Ertegun, head of the record company, disagreed on which song to release as the single. He really loved, “It’s Gonna Rain.” I liked, “I Got You Babe.” I tried to persuade him otherwise, but he wouldn’t change his opinion. After arguing unsuccessfully with Ahmet, I decided to go out on a limb and prove I was right. Atco was already promoting “Rain” when I cut acetate of “Babe.”

Charlie Greene: I remember the first time I heard “I Got You Babe” coming out of KHJ. Shit, man, it sounded so fucking good. It sounded incredible and that was it, the ballgame was over. The next day it virtually was a hit. The KHJ switchboard lit up and we weren’t doing it! We had everybody ready to start calling in when they heard it, you know, everybody call. But we couldn’t get through to the switchboard, man. KHJ was getting absolutely swamped with requests. Sonny and Cher became the Beatles of Boss Radio, so to speak. They would come down to the station whenever KHJ wanted them to. Any time. We would do all kinds of shtick ’cause Jacobs was coming up with new ideas that somehow included Sonny and Cher. They were impressed with everything about the station. Loved The Real Don Steele. I mean, they were happening and Boss Radio was happening. It all broke loose with KHJ, I’m telling you. There’s no question about it. As far as I’m concerned, KHJ helped make, or made, Sonny and Cher.

Ron Jacobs: And so Sonny and Cher — of course it was really Charlie — were standing by with a bunch of people ready to call KHJ the first time we played the record. The lines lit up so much legit that their callers couldn’t even get through! So Charlie and Brian and Sonny were going nuts and all of a sudden, ba-boom!

And KHJ went all out to establish the Sonny & Cher-Boss Radio connection. We commissioned Sandy Barron, the hip graphics designer, to do a special KHJ Sonny & Cher-KHJ logo and we ran those on bus benches all around town, you know, the kind that advertise funeral homes. Sure, “I Got You Babe” was a dynamite commercial hit. But the big push nationally came after KHJ got on the record. And that happened only because Sonny Bono and Charlie Greene would not take “no” for an answer. And, I like to think, because Drake and Jacobs could hear a hit.

Dexter Young: I remember when Sonny and Cher came to the studio to do on-air interviews. Jacobs had brought them directly from LAX where they had just returned from a European tour. Jacobs asked Sonny to get rid of a briefcase he was carrying and he said no, that it contained the cash, their percentage from the European tour.

Ron Jacobs: In the beginning, we had no superstar group to endorse the station by association. Judy Moll told me that her bosses Charlie Greene and Brian Stone were down to selling their office equipment to keep going. So, Caesar & Cleo became Sonny & Cher. We did little promotions and they would do whatever we asked them to do. Sonny was confident that if he just came up with something good, KHJ would give his record his shot.

OOPS: IGNORE PREVIOUS BLOG!

2011-11-23T02:39:00.000-08:00

I am NOT dictating this into any software or to a human stenographer. All the wowsie stuff about Nuance turned into a hellish 72-hours when the DragonDictate software turned softer than a day-old manapua. Blew the top off the Snowy Leopard.

Before I could even type this onto another limp software program - Blogger - which is 100-years-0ld in MacYears. Like turning a crank in front of the radiator to start your car engine. But first The Wrong Brothers of posted programs requires that I reset my password each time I compose a new post. But - before doing that one must type in those "security words" to prove that you are not a bot. Words like fleezrty and nortish and bwplyph and zazzzltu. Who doesn't enjoy going through that shit?

Then after the umpteenth email to me allowing me to Change Your Password I do that drill. I am

typing this one letter at a time. Nuance is an oxymoronic name for a company that looks slick online but whose customer service (extreme oxymoron!) call center offers one the chance to wait on hold for any hour - or more. If one is fortunate to reach someone whose English than Ilocano at their Manilla boiler room.

Affable and sincere reps are polite and eager to help - if they only knew something about their products. If NASA operated like this bogus company they would never been able to launch Walter If NASA operated like this bogus company they would never been able to launch Walter

Cronkite himself rather than send rockets to the universe.

Mabuhay: We have a problem. I better stop this before Blogger craps out or my password changes faster than Clark Kent in an iPhone booth.

I read the first chapter of Walter Isaacson's best-selling bio of Steve Jobs. Sucked in for a while until it occurred to me that the dude was on a roller coaster - never leaving the track. Yes he could be boorish and impossible in his attempts to deal with others and the comparisons with Jobs to Einstein/Edison etc. are absurd. It was their building an electronic DNA that allowed them to grow Apples in Job's garage.

Most "radio people" have never even read a biography of Guglielmo Marconi who actually followed in the footsteps of Tesla/Faraday/De Forest and others. Steve Jobs rat-in-a-cage

"focus" certainly contributed to the ways and means by which you are reading this? You are seeing it right? Have you noticed yet that their are no commas in this text? That is because the keyboard will not print a comma - hence the hyphens.

Jobs loved to pull tricks both digital and on people. So now thanks to a whiz-bang tech who came here to straighten things out after an Apple Support guy in North Carolina spent an hour with me on the phone (after waiting on their sonorous hold for 45-minutes) informed me that he and no one there had heard of what happened to my iMac desktop: I could hit the keys but only hear them click. Nothing came up on the screen - just the clackety-click of keyboard sound effects.

Imagine inserting the key in your car's ignition but the motor won't move; instead the speakers blast stereo sounds of the vroom-vrooming vehicle. Or putting a pencil to paper and while nothing appears on the page you hear the scratching of the pencil. Cute little trick Steve-O.

From my earliest days in radio 60 years ago I posited: "The biggest problem in the communications industry is Lack of Communication." So what else is new?

WARNING: Stay away from this dictator stuff. Worse than Hitler or Mussolini or Saddam Hussein.

OLD DOG, SEMI-NEW TRICKS

2011-11-18T17:22:00.000-08:00

This is my first “writing” using the DragonDictate™ software program from Nuance. It allows me the time to actually get out my thoughts much faster than I can “talk” them. Having dropped out of typing class during summer school in ninth grade, my hunt-and-p-p peck method has yielded several books and many magazine articles since I started to write for money. The death of radio was so obvious while outlets for writing for print and publication somehow managed to appear––and may stuff bcame somewhat well received.

You are looking live at my first dictated blog. Playing while in the big leagues of corporate radio I always had access to someone who could "take dictation”---the best of whom was my administrative assistant, Mrs. Shelly Morgan, when she was Shelley Gordon— someone every bit as responsible for the success of 93/KHJ Boss Radio as any of those more publicized players.

So here I sit looking like millions of folks wearing a headset with microphone attached just like your basic customer service rep, phone operator or someone dictating orders about where and when the next drone strike should occur.

I have been fortunate to know and associate with noted writers, authors, journalist, etc. And I’m amazed at their productivity considering that they most often use a typewriter, word processor or pencil and paper (like Cameron Crowe has always done). Plus whatever it took to produce the Dead Sea Scrolls or carve Hawaiian petroglyphs. Wow! This thing actually typed out the word “petroglyphs” correctly and without my looking it up for the umpteenth time.

There are good things to be said about Nuance, the company that distributes Dragon Dictate. Some thoughts are quite good; others involve the non-nuanced, nightmarish experiences I have endured since attempting to use this thing back in October. This software is not particularly friendly, even to myself, someone who began using computers in 1979.

How do these ultra-prolific writers do it? One can go back to Prof. Marshall McLuhan’s works and read his 1960s distinction between oral and aural. Shoot, if this thing can distinguish between the last two words in the previous sentence it is indeed pretty amazing. Yeah, considering I have only been at this for thirty-minutes. Sorry about any typos but at least they are being “typed” almost as fast as I think and pronounce them. And surely easier and more direct–from-the brain, which is why broadcasting, MC work, one flawless Bar Mitzvah speech and hustling on the street never have been a problem. Those of you who have dealt with my interminable telephone rants, raves and redundancy know this well.

It took two months for the correct "nuance"product to arrive after three misses. Today, following a record one-hour wait on hold, I connected with Gavin in Manila who talked me through the entire process as if it were NASA giving instructions to the astronauts. Now, I can finally say, “Houston, we no longer have a problem!”

Kindly indulge my desire to post a blog straight from my mouse (not my mouse) to your monitor. It is an otherworldly experience for someone who began with carbon microphones, shortwave and 78-RPM records. The original intent of computer dictate programs was to assist people with physical disabilities, some of which are happening to me, like difficulty reading and typing. I have a kilo of ideas about how to apply this thing to my future work.

I am, by the way, dictating directly into a word processing device called Scrivener™, which can be difficult to learn. But is the choice of many professional writers because of its versatility. I have been working since 1994 on an autobiography entitled “From Doo-Wop to Duopoly.” I doubt that it will ever see the light of day or the glimmer of its contents on a computer screen or an-book, but I visited audio-dictate from time to time. Some of it strikes me as well done and arduously researched while other sections seems like they were written by a dummy.

That reflective manuscript, only takes me through the 1970s. It is on the burner behind my treatise on the death of radio, which hopefully will be concluded and my conclusions will be seen by those who pontificate and kvetch about the sorry state of a medium that many of us love as much as life itself. This is painful to someone whose FCC license is dated Christmas Eve 1952 and has seen so many changes it boggles what is left of my mind.

While hoping and praying that this thing actually would work I contemplated how I would do things that have hereto been impossible. My initial application of Dragon was to send an e-mail to Gavin thanking them for teaching me something that is deeper than Excel, more refined than MegaSeg™––the best kept secret in radio––and all the other stuff that I began learning with my 1979 purchase of the notorious RadioShack TRS–80, now the equivalent of a hand-cranked ice cream maker or images captured on Edison reels.

“Running at the mouth,” has been my problem since the moment I was born and the doctor asked me, “ What is your mother’s maiden name?” Thereafter I lived and several times nearly died by the tongue. Now, using a combination of mind-boggling soft and hardware, I am able to DLOG or whatever you call dictating into a computer. Steve Jobs rest in iPeace.

This post begins with the photo of me strapped in and ready to Dragon taken after the installation was successful and I can send it to Gavin, the tech rep in the Manilla. Ever been there? Hi-tech amidst low-tech. Growing up in Hawaii, I respect those who arrived from the Philippines for their diligence, grace and respect for authority. There would be no Aloha State without their soul and strength. RAMBLING!

Perhaps most of you this is just more high-tech razzmatazz, but my fellow writers and/or folks with disabilities should at least know of this option. Sure, I went through digital Hell to get this far. The time I put in to reach this point will pay dividends as I learn how to rap into this THING. I calculate that I have read 930 posts, reviews, comments and all da kine rabble/babble about using the confusing Dragon Dictate. But hey now, it is slowly learning Hawaiian pidgin English, my first language. I will dictate, “Hello, how are you today?” in pidgin. Let’s see what comes out! “ House and knowledge you doing how you stay today line that.” Well they only advertised English not our unique and wonderful local slang talk.

Never could I have produced what are now 1200-plus words in this short a time. Thanks to all who encouraged me to see this through; there is still so much to get down before I make, which is Hawaiian for “ death or dying.”

I recalled how in 1951 Jack Kerouac took a continuous 120-foot roll of teletype paper (above). jammed it into his manual typewriter and began to write his masterpiece, "On The Road." How about the most amazing chapter on sports ever published, “Ice,” from the David Maraniss classic, “ When Pride Still Mattered.” It was produced by him non-stop, fueled on coffee, in a day and night marathon. If you've not read the book then dig up a copy of this fantastic piece and perhaps you’ll see why I am so stoked about Dragon––and I don’t mean my street racing days in the infamous 1958 deviously souped-up draggin' Pontiac Bonneville!

All I just said was “new paragraph” to begin this one. Being neither Jack Kerouac nor David Maraniss I decided to resume my autobio by word-of-mouth, so to speak. Perhaps it will sometimes see the light of day a glint of a pixilated screen. Mega-mahalo to Todd Hewitt, world’s greatest equipment manager and the one who convinced me that this is a winning program, unlike a certain NFL team that ignominiously let him go––he and his dad served the team for 44 seasons. Ah, Todd is now with a winning program, head equipment manager for the California Golden Bears.

For old times sake I’ll sign off with my standard DJ show closing riff: “Keep your lukewarm spoon adjacent to your electric bowling bag, bunkie.” Tell me what that means and I will tell you Tina Delgado’s middle name! Meanwhile I must learn not to speak to people in this manner. One ends up sounding like a computer, barking out commands.

Happy Birthday to my oldest off-island friend, Mitch Fisher, KHJ accomplice and the real Zelig. What times we had, brother.

The previous blog goes on and on about me and written words.

BOOK 'EM

2011-11-08T12:44:00.000-08:00

The first piece that I wrote was published during eighth grade in KA PUNAHOU, the school's paper. Sadly, it was an obituary for my lifelong friend, and one of the few Jews in the place, Donald Milbauer. It was a shock to us all; Donnie being the first of my young peers to pass away. Before that I drew juvenile cartoons In the elementary school paper NA OPIO .

Later, I wrote at least 93,000 one-liners for what was then called “radio.” As the form died I became more interested in writing. My heroes were/are Poe, Whitman, Mencken, Hemingway, Mailer, Ginsberg, Roth, Tom Wolfe, Maraniss, Lord Buckley and on and on. I played music on the air ... but the printed word has more meaning than what is writ to be merely heard. Once.

Reminds me of an all-night session while I was at KGB-San Diego in 1972. “Mr. Pipes,” Michael C. Gwynne, and I were stonily speculating about things, specifically radio. I said, not for the first time, that one major head hassle with the medium that bothered me was that once one’s jock shift was over, there was nothing to show for it. Gwynne is both a gifted announcer and also a fine actor. Plus, the man is a suave big band jazz music man, a drummer mostly. He and I were employed in the 1960s by the company that owned KPOI-Honolulu and a few stations in Southern California. Through a series of circumstances that are bizarre albeit nonfiction, Gwynne worked in Honolulu as a "Poi Boy."

Mike first encontered Frank Terry at KMAK-Fresno. Terry’s infamous KMEN-San Bernardino "Drum-A-Thon" inspired KPOI PD Tom Rounds to stage one here in the islands with Gwynne on the sticks. And shticks. Both drew huge ratings. Ah yes, before I made it to Hollywood and KHJ in 1965. More than anyone knows our “Circus Radio” (as Art Laboe called our KPOI on-air shenanigans when he first visited KPOI in 1959).

Back to Mike and me in La Jolla in ’72 and our brain-wired rap. I bitched about radio’s SDS (Simultaneous Disappearance Syndrome.) He said, mellifluously, “Well let me tell you something, Ronny boy.” He told me of radio astrolnomers at the London Royal Observatory, who back in the 1950s were doing round the clock surveys of all they could see and logging that results. About three in the morning the scientists saw and logged something unseen for the record. Several days later during follow up on the records, it was discovered that the “thing” they saw was actually a radio station in Texas… which had signed off ten years earlier.

Hmm, spooky and “chicken skin” (Hawaii slang for “goose pimples.”) Anyone who ever performed on radio should contemplate the physics and universalpuzzlement over this tale told me in all honesty some 40 years or so before,

Mike worked with me on some of my most important works: “The KGB Documentary,” the “Child’s Garden of Grass” album on Elektra, to this day a "cult classic." It is rare to find someone as diversely talented as Gwynne. Mega-mahalo to Uncle Ricky Irwin’s ReelRadio.com, a gift to the future for folks curious about was once called radio much of the best of Top 40, a total labor of love. Go there and check out sample of Michael C. Gwynne’s collaborative work with me. versatile, he once was employed on a “R&B” station in Oakland, the only white dude on the staff. Cool old school radioman.)

Ever since that San Diego flash I always think about permanence vis-a-vis. flashes in the pan. Now, with some of my work is in the Bishop Museum and the Library of Hawaii are preserved for the ages wthin thick cement and lava rock structures. If you get high on a whiff of new ink on a printed page might relate to this sensory sensation.

After doing “stage, screen, TV and radio” I was drawn to my IBM Selectric typewriter and began writng poetry about my days back in Waikiki where I was born before it became Tijuana-Tokyo-Tsurisville. Poetry? Hey, gotta grab it when the muse strikes. Titled “Back Door Waikiki," it was published it in 1986. Now out of print, the slim paperback still brings back fond memories to us keiki o ka ‘aina (child born in the islands). It was composed with the invaluable aid and comfort of Mac Simpson, who produced it on the first Apple computer (Mac’s Mac) in his kitchen. Mac has been with me on my subsequent books.

In 2002, when I was asked 93.000 times to publish my KHJ jock memos, meticulously saved by Carol Williams, wife of Boss Radio’s first all-night man, jovial Johnny Williams. Carol sent them to me in the 1970s when Johnny was at WTAE-Pittsburgh. I had them bound in a leather volume and everyone wanted a peek at “how we did” 93/KHJ during my term as PD, 1965-69. After loaning this volume to a trusted friends, the material became the nucleus of “KHJ: Inside Boss Radio.” When I backed away from radio in the 1980s I became a free lance writer with over 300 pieces published in various magazines here and on the Mainland. The KHJ book, even at $93 for 455-pages it resulted in a second edition, published by Mr. Magic, San Berdoo’s own Don McCoy. Now out of print the boss book sometimes shows up on eBay.

My most ambitious effort, it began in 2008 when Carl Hebenstreit, owner of Trade Publishing in Kalihi (between Republican and Democrat streets) and the first face on Hawaii TV in 1952. He was known as “Kini Popo,” more local pidgin English for “right on,” bought my concept of a heavily illustrated history of Barack Obama’s first 18 years when he was born in Kapiolani Hospital until he left for college in 1979. And yes, this is the first work to pront both the 44^th President’s BIRTH CERTIFICATE and BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT in Honolulu newspapers. It happened because of dozens of friends/colleagues here and off-island. It became the #1 best-selling nonfiction book in Hawaii, selling out 15.000 copies, mostly all in Hawaii. For more info, reviews, photos, etc., check: http://tinyurl.com/7lnyd9m.

I won’t go through the hideous mess for two years. Now it's time to tell the world that the book is now available for $20 plus $5 shipping for a BRAND NEW PRISTINE COPY of the book, which I will happily inscribe to you. (Used on eBay the book sells for as much as $108. It is collectible: the first book published about Obama on Inauguration Day 2008. All volumes about our nation’s leaders grow in value. And I am told this is the case with "OBAMALAND: Who Is Barack Obama?”

Payment please by PayPal only to rj@hawaii.rr.com. Kindly contact me with any questions about the book, how you wish it inscribed or group prices.

So, what I have been “saying” in twelve-hundred WORDS is: My book is back and my girl friend’s got it. (See: The Angels, 1963.) And now it is ready for you, a perfect Christmas gift or keepsake for future generations when we are alll gone, Obama included. Nice ending, good karma, after two years of anguish for me. We are now delivering copies arond Honolulu for the huge Obama-hosted APEC Convention (esimated 20,000 coming) starting November 10, 2011, at the Honolulu International Convention Center so please allow one week for delivery. And remember, radio’s past, but OBAMALAND will last.

Warmest regards from Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii …currently 77-degrees. Below: your "best-selling author" in action at the Kamehameha Swap Meet last Sunday. Retail, on da street is where it's at! Just ask The Big Kahuna.

Apologies to the hundreds of folks, dead and alive, who have aided, assisted,

put up with and supported me since I started in 1952: you know who you are.

THANK YOU for your invaluable contributions, memories and wonderful creative input.

THE GREAT CHEVY KILLER

2011-10-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

By RON JACOBS

CAR & DRIVER, MAY 1999

In this Fifties memoir, the first Bonneville coupe gobbles up the ruling ’57 Chevys. Uh, with a little help from some friends.

It was 1957, and for a guy who was just 20 and a high-school dropout, I wasn’t doing badly. I was a hot-shot deejay on KHVH-AM in Honolulu at the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, making more money than I’d ever dreamed of. I even owned one of the coolest cars of that or any other time—a ’57 Ford Skyliner, the car whose steel top retracted into the trunk sort of like Mercedes SLK’s.

Fast cars were my weakness. My problem was the shortage of paved streets on our little island of Oahu—exactly 58.82 miles. And the highest speed limit was 45 mph.

Most drag racing in those days was conducted—illegally, natch—in the cane fields far from Honolulu. Although there were no freeways in operation, the first stretch of the planned Lunalilo Freeway in town had been completed. Of course, street lights hadn’t been put in place, so in the late ‘50s it began to be used as a moonlit race strip.

One of my friends at the time was a guy we called “Big Z.” His father owned Kapiolani Motors, the only Pontiac dealership in the Territory of Hawaii (statehood was about a year away), and Z was its general manager.

Some nights, Big Z and I would sit parked in one of his demo cars at the end of the strip of freeway and watch the “power pack” ’57 Chevy V-8s destroy all comers. The growing arrogance of the Chevy crowd was beginning to annoy Z and me. It anyone was going to develop some snotty drag-racing arrogance, shouldn't it be the hotshot deejay? Big Z was annoyed because Pontiacs were cars for dentists’ wives.

Then one day just before Christmas of 1957, an excited Big Z called me at the radio station and told me to get over there immediately. I was soon walking across the marble-floored showroom, and there it was.

I was staring at a 1958 Pontiac Bonneville Custom Sport coupe, decked out in two-tone green, a dark “Darby” color and the lighter “Seaforth” shade. That model year, Pontiac offered four V-8 choices in the Bonneville: two with four-barrel carbs making 255 or 285 horsepower, a 300-hp engine with three carbs, and the fuel-injected Tempest 395 that put out 310 horses and 400 pound-feet of torque.

I know that data today having looked them up but was ignorant of those offerings back then. The fact that the Bonneville before me was the e 285-hp four-barrel version, and not the big fuel-injected version, didn’t put me off at all. Besides, the ’57 Chevy’s fuel-injected V-8 put out two fewer horses, although it was about 600 pounds slimmer than the Pontiac.

But that Bonneville was the coolest. It was big and long—riding on a 122-inch wheelbase—but its curves, like the best hula dancers’, were in all the right places. The recesses in the rear-fender sheet metal suggested Corvette bloodlines and looked as though they were intended to hold rockets. The little chrome ribs inlaid down the trunk were sharp. What gave it real style was its hardtop-coupe design without B-pillars. Its two-tone paint mirrored the tropical foliage ~~steel~~ still generously visible in those days before skyscrapers. It’s amusing to recall that it all ran on skinny little 8.00-by-14-inch white-sidewall tires.

Inside, this ultra-50s masterwork it was a riotous array of chrome and steel and paint. The big two-tone rear leather seats had a center armrest that could be lowered. Chrome, real leather bucket seats wrapped the upholstery and a wire mesh of it was set into the dash. The gas and brake pedals were chromed. On the floors were “loop-pile Lurex flecks carpeting.” And not least of all, the Bonneville had “dual ashtrays” up front. It had 21 miles on the odometer.

And before I was 22-years-old, I would own it, handing over the endorsed pink slip to my 1957 Ford Skyliner as a hefty down payment. It was a big price for those days: $3481, plus freight to Hawaii. In no time, it would become known on Oahu streets as “da Bonnaveel.”

We took it for a drive on the H-! freeway when it was known as the "Mauka Artial." This innocuous looking baby had great power, but the Hydromantic transmission, and its girth, gave me second thoughts about my chances of becoming the Great Chevy Killer. Big Z and I decided to load this stock car to the gills.

To this day I don’t know what exactly went on in that far corner of the Kapiolani Motors shop where Z’s gleeful mechanics fought to work on “da Bonnaveel.” Z’s father spent considerable time mollifying dentists’ wives and other patrons since work in the shop had mysteriously slowed down.) Parts were ordered from mainland hot rod shops and flown in Special Delivery.

I do know that in the next two weeks, as I waited anxiously, the engine’s displacement of 375 cubes was bored out to “400-something.” Aluminum racing pistons replaced the stock ones. Solid lifters were swapped for the factory hydraulics. What the hell’s an “Isky cam”? The “Tri-Power” package, involving three two-barrel carbs, replaced the four-barrel. Later, even that was replaced by a log manifold, which was the next closest thing to fuel injection at the time. Goodbye, Hydromantic.

Hello, four-on-the- floor. Hello, big stiff truck clutch. And hi to the new rear-end gears, 4.10:1. The Bonneville was lowered a bit and a tach was installed.

The point of all this was to sandbag those Chevy showoffs. I could just hear them when they saw “da Bonnaveel”: “We goin’ keek dis big peeg’s ass!”

Hawaii’s most notorious street vehicle debuted of what would become a Saturday night at Honolulu’s most popular drive-in restaurant. called “Kau Kau Korner” (“kau kau” means food in tourist Hawaiian. The kosher word for food is Meaʻai.)

I hadn’t come alone. With me were Pigsy, Ba-Boo, Bobby Evans, and Big Al, who always threw a loaded Colt .45 into the glove box when he came aboard. After parking front and center at Kau Kau for an hour, nursing coffee, trying to appear aloof—and really enjoying all the commotion we were causing—it was time to pop the hood. And then teasingly close it as soon as anyone ventured near it enough to peek inside. That was tradition. Within the next hour, hot cars from all over the island were arriving for a look-see.

Folks in Hawaii have a unique system of communicating with the arch of an eyebrow, the shrug of a shoulder, the flick of the head. A smirking quartet of local Japanese guys in a turquoise and white ’57 Chevy indicated they’d like to meet us up on the west side of the freeway where the paving was complete. The finish line was about a quarter-mile away at Bingham Street near the UH. This always made for excitement because an overshoot could propel a speeding car into the rear wall of the Varsity Theater.

Those were low-tech days. The Honolulu police broadcast on a high-frequency AM band, a bit past 1550 kilocycles. All serious street racers tweaked their radios to monitor the HPD whose call letters were KUA-205. We knew where they were. And all they knew was where we weren’t. Heh-heh.

Even though I was terrified—days before, Evans ~~had~~ snapped an axle shaft on a test run and the truck clutch was a bitch to work smoothly—it was my duty to drive the Bonneville’s inaugural race.

Headlights at cockeyed angles lined both sides of dimly lit virgin road. I moved up, torquing starboard whenever I revved the monster. Sounds of elephant orgasms. The pavement whizzed underneath at what seemed like Sputnik speeds. King of da Road!

And then in the murky macadam distance, a guy waved a flag. Taking my time with the clutch, the competing Chevy left me like I was a tractor in mud—for the first 100 yards. The only time I saw it again was when I blew past it with still some rpm to go and a lot of third and fourth gear left.

We drove triumphantly back to Kau Kau Korner. It would be the high of my automotive life. Big Z said he felt like his idol: Aga Kahn III, the Mideastern playboy millionaire.

“Da Bonnaveel’s” legend increased; we beat all comers.

Then one night in the summer of ’58,, while we sat parked in another drive-in near the airport, a shabby-looking Triumph TR3 wearing a sloppy coat of primer crept ~~back~~ into the back row of the joint. An emissary arrived with a challenge. How could we have known it was powered by—aarrrgh!—a Chevy V-8. Its driver was one of Hawaii’s top pro racers, Moki Maemori himself, he who raced against the Unser boys in old Honolulu Stadium, which was converted into a racing oval within 24 hours of a football game.

This “make ass” desolate defeat was even more ignominious when I popped that dreaded clutch and gave birth to a puddle of metal on the road. I could hear all the car horns celebrating the demise of the Great Chevy Killer.

By October 1958 I was bored with the car and the 8-mpg it sucked up. Still, I was oh so saddened when the car was stolen, stripped and burned. With the insurance money I bought a stock black 1959 Catalina coupe. We dechromed it, tinted the windows, and lowered it a bit.

It carried “da Bonnaveel”s” reputation. And it never lost a race—mostly because no one ever dared to challenge its successor.

Much mahalo to Paul Maddox of Holualoa on the Kona side of Hawaii island--who has done much of the graphics on various projects together--and who pushed me for ten years to dig up this story and deal with it for use on his terrific site. With photos and other neat stuff, including all the original text, which was updated with this post. Check out http://www.hawaiimotorbeat.com/

TRICK OR TREAT?

2011-10-27T16:24:00.000-07:00

I did not purchase the bright orange crotch piece, though.

RON JACOBS CLEARANCE SALE

2011-09-22T16:18:00.000-07:00

Ron Jacobs, 1955, reporting Kilauea eruption for NBC Radio

For some reason—probably because I have been in radio so long (1952 !!!)—I have acquired mixed reviews re. My professional resume, I think, contains many more positives than negatives.

When one is responsible for hiring (and firing) of any member of a SEVENTY-TWO person staff, as was the case at KHJ-Los Angeles when I became Program Director in April 1965, giving someone their walking papers is about the worst “executive” duty I had to perform. Fortunately at KHJ this only happened with Boss Jocks only a few times.

Now, I take the second word in the job description—“Director”— perhaps the most important of the two whether in the “big-time” of Hollywood or a small, clumpy cinder block station located in the midst of a cow pasture in San Bernardino (1962), it is equally depressing and also a sign that I failed. I had to reexamine my motives carefully. In the days of Real Radio, especially with a small staff and people multi-tasking, the entire crew from General Manager to weekend intern comprised a group who, thrown together in a stuff bunker all day and night tend to bond “socially.” Much more so than the hundreds, or even thousands of employees of large companies where it is possible to work for years and never meet co-worker(s).

In the days when radio meant something I was on the receiving end of all kinds of perks not generally available to PDs in smaller markets. Shoot, (no pun intended) Phil Spector used to send a bunch of the finest filet mignon's to my house in Laurel Canyon. I can go on about these goodies, some of which I have written about, but this blog is about the DOWN side of everything that people might think they know about the above “extracurricular” goodies. No, this is about the non-glamorous aspects of my career: The part where one ends up with a nice reputation, but no money.

Original AT40 logo by Paul Gruwell, 1970

When I moved to San Diego to program KGB-AM-FM in 1972, and with American Top 40, (which I co-created with Casey Kasem and Tom Rounds), having become the most-listened-to radio program on Earth,) well, I figured I’d seen just about everything. Nope. The studio-offices on Pacific Coast Highway were too small for “normal” operations. But three extra people worked in the place doing legal work for the owner, Willet Brown, ho was being sued by a former salesperson who made all manner of spurious claims against KGB. Plus, the sales staff left over after the format change was skeptical of my new ideas and concepts. First, the “account executives” hated rock and roll more than not and second, at night they would hang out in the parking lot, drunk and loudly putting down what we were broadcasting from the building ten feet away.

I told Willet about the chaos into which I arrived, which somewhat justified my being the highest paid PD in the biz at that time. He ordered the GM to find separate office quarters for the unsmiling attorneys and, of more importance, the virtual enemy—most of the sales stuff—were move out of our tent. We could then worry about fighting the competition (KCBQ, KDEO, KPRI) rather than the internal uptight vibes that consumed much time uselessly).

KGB hit #1 in the ARB by November 1972, seven months after we kicked off the new format on Easter Sunday, but only after playing the infamous “KGB Recycle Documentary,” a 30-minute infomercial disguised as a history of the station. But it was really a giant half-hour promo for the “recycled” KGB, which ran continuously, over and over, for 48 hours before we went live with our new sound and image. As the Easter sun rose over “America’s Finest City” we launched our “radical” new format. When KGB was named 1973 “FM Station of the Year” by Billboard magazine. I was name PD of the year and a special, “Woodstock: Max Yasgur’s Farm,” was cited as one of the top long-from programs of the years. I think I earned the (then) big salary.

Bobby Ocean's version of meeting RJ for the first time.

Came back to Hawaii in 1976, became PD and morning drive person at KKUA. And again, it was a “worst to first” deal, in the ratings. Returned for last time to LA area in 1994 to assist in creating The World Chart Show, which is still on, and in hundreds of markets worldwide. By ’97 I returned here to stay … and things have been going downhill ever since, with flash moments of accomplishment … ever since I returned home four years ago.

The details are ugly and I’ve written about some of the precarious situations in which I’ve been involved, particularly since my 72^nd birthday two years ago. (Yeah, a Virgo, with all that involves :)

Now: I find myself needing to unload many of my memorable items, selling them to those who love radio, at least back then. Sort of like the title of Norman Mailer’s “Advertisements For Myself,” I am attempting this method to spread the word of this Online Yard Sale.

Original 1959 Poi Boy shirt, before there were promo T-shirts.

Or, hopefully, forward this to any collector of such items as (at random): 1959 KPOI deejay shirt, only 18 ever made (mine is the only one I know of and it is mint, been in storage for decades. Items from the KHJ 25^th Reunion in 1990, such as the limited edition Silver Anniversary cap, which Robert W. Morgan designed and produced; only five were made with fancy “scrambled eggs” embroidery on the bill. Or, how about the original show about Elvis? The one that he called the best bio done on him at the time. I have the complete show fantastically transferred to DVD, all thirteen hours. And, for the right price, there is my original, now-leather bound script for the award-winning “Elvis Presley Story,” complete with notes, revisions, every word of narration (by buddy Wink Martindale), music cues and clearance info, original music by the late, great Dick Rosmini.

First US program purchased by British Broadcasting Company.

I am also selling most of my Los Aneles / St. Louis Rams memorabilia, most directly from the locker room. Anyone who knows me is aware of my acquisitive interest in Rams equipment, cards, may autographed 8x10s of the franchise's roots in 1937. You want Rams collectibles? I have a toe, literally, of this and some great NFL stuff. The game-worn autographed golden cleats worn by NFL Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk is just one example. Too much to list! Or how about a giant color poster showing the Famous KGB San Diego in one of his bizarre poses and inscribed by Ted Giannoulas to me as, “The person who hatched me.” A bunch of song sheets from 1959 through 1978, Hawaii and California. Autographed photos from Loretta Lynn to Tiny Tim.

RJ Hoku Na Hanohano award, first year of "Hawaiian Grammies" 1977

Then there’s my longtime interest in vintage and contemporary Hawaiian music, pretty much unknown to those on the Mainland, where I am associated with rock music and global syndication. This is an entirely different when it comes to items I am selling: CDs, promo material, artist interviews and The Biggie: The 102 square foot (17’ x 6’) mural painted for the home/studio from which I began the first site streaming Hawaiian music and artist chatter in July of 2007.

It was custom designed by noted local artist Mark Brown. Check out his no ka oe website: http://www.marknbrownfineart.com/. This fabulous piece is painted on quarter-inch composition board that was given a white background. We fitted the blank sections that Mark then took to his Kalihi studio to create the images of four of my heroes, brothers who have passed on: Israel Kamakawiwi’ole, Gabby Pahinui, Don Ho and Alfred Apaka. If those names mean nothing to you, either Google the bios of these musical geniuses or, hopefully, pass this info on to someone into Hawaii’s music.

"Four Legends" by Mark Brown with David Kahiapo performing, 2007

Fortunately the mural was not damaged at all in the fire of Halloween 2009, which burned down portions of the house. And hundreds of hours of LIVE music and interviews were backed up at another location. I hope to sell this to someone or company here on Oahu. If so, Mark Brown will install the mural at its new home. Mainland shipping might prove too much to ship. Besides, this work of art was made in the islands and should “live” in Hawaii. I have sent the info re. The “Hawaii 5-0” production people here are considering using the mural as background for all manner of possibilities. Also: During the time the mural was up, dozens of local musicians (all stars of Polynesian music) inscribed and autographed this giant painting, below the art itself.

The one and only Jack Lord.

Speaking of “5-0”: I have the script of the last original episode, autographed by Jack Lord.

Actually, there is too much to list. Please contact me if YOU are interested in any item involving KHON, KGU, KHVH, KPOI, KDEO, KCCN (all Honolulu) plus KMEN, KMAK, KHJ, KGB, KXOA. Have one dozen replica TINA DELGADO IS ALIVE buttons, etc.

( California) and the CRUSIN’ album series, “The History of Rock and Roll,” “American Top 40,” “The Elvis Presley Story” (global syndication) and all kinds of bits and pieces.

I also have a collection of “T.H.” Material (stands for Territory of Hawaii, 1959, and earlier. Some wild things for the right kama’aina or “Hawaiian at heart.”

My health is slipping and I wish for this material to find cool places where they can be displayed, enjoyed and all have interesting/odd back-stories. Beside my own physical problems I am having trouble with all things computer. So please be patient. But DO email me at rj@hawaii.rr.com for any questions or comments regarding what I am posting today on September 23, 2011.

Original 93/KHJ studio phone, with "Batphone"

FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED ON ITEMS

FROM THE RON JACOBS COLLECTONS.

Mahalo from Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii.

rj@hawaii.rr.com

93/KHJ BOSS RADIO CURATORS, DIG:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2khqW5oohGA&feature=player_embedded

STILL AWAITING NFL

2011-09-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

Well, back again after the Byzantine path my life has taken since my last post. Some team with horns on its helmets "played" on Sunday. It was such a letdown I have purged my mind and hard drives of all the stuff about that horrific display. So ... with great memories of NFL Past, here's something for you football junkies and/or those with time to kill amd who still READ ...

Still waiting for MY season to start.

I am the fan the Rams left behind. My addiction began in 1965 when I took over as Program Director of KHJ Radio in Los Angeles. Among the job perks: Six Ram season tickets. Harlan Svare was in his third and last year as the team’s head coach.

The glamour and victories of the Fifties had vanished. The Rams had plenty of tickets available to pass out to the media.

Coming from Hawaii, I thought a big time football game was the high school Thanksgiving Day Doubleheader played yearly in the old Honolulu Stadium. How old was the place? Built in 1922; by the 50s it was known as the "Termite Palace." But that didn’t hold down attendance. Crowds of over 20,000 jammed into the place, which officially held 17,500. Arch high school rivalries like Punahou vs. Kamehameha, which dates back to the 19th century, would be fought out, often in the autumn mud.

When I first moved to California in 1962, after a few months in San Bernardino, I moved to Fresno for two years. (I had seen enough of the Fresno State Bulldogs in their visits, playing the University of Hawaii. The crowds were much smaller at UH games than for the high school battles.) Roommate Frank Terry and I drove north from the San Joaquin Valley early Sunday mornings, to Kezar Stadium to watch the 49ers play under the seagulls and their droppings.

But it was the Rams that hung me up. On my first trip to Los Angeles in March of ‘62, while scouting for talent for a new radio station, I often hung out at the Gaiety Delicatessen on Vine Street. That was the gathering place for disc jockeys who were “on the beach” -– radio jargon for unemployed. One such was Bill Watson, an L.A. native who grew up in the San Fernando Valley when the Rams were the most glamorous team in the ascending sport of professional football. They won the league championship in 1951 with a team packed with future Hall of Fame players.

Watson was the perfect age to go crazy over that. He was a jock. Not just a radio deejay, he ran track for his Burbank high school. Watson raved on and on about the Los Angeles Rams the way an L. Ron Hubbard disciple proselytizes Scientology. We went to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to see Watson’s idols play. I can’t remember many specific details.

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

The place seemed huge enough to hold the population of the island of Lanai – about 20 times over. The action on and off the field was too fast for me. But actually I identified with the Rams in many ways. They were born the same year as me, in 1937. Their record was as bad as the ratings of KHJ Boss Radio, the L.A. radio station that I joined up with in '65.

In 1966, George Allen arrived to coach the team and vowed to turn things around—fast. (He accomplished that but we actually did it even quicker. KHJ went from the cellar to the top of the L.A. radio ratings in five months. You can look it up.)

The mid-60's were energized. Indeed, "The times they were a-changin'." KHJ presented Bob Dylan at the Hollywood Bowl for his first "electric" performance. The Doors were a local house band, playing the Sunset Strip. A record company gofer and his acne’d angular teenage wife hung out at our radio station, eager to promote their first record—after changing their name from "Caesar and Cleo." They are now known as former US Congressman, the late Sony Bono and the glamorous Perpetual Diva, Cher. On KHJ the hits just kept on comin' as "Boss Radio" became a national fad. And the Rams commanded more respect as the years went by.

Longtime Rams announcer Bob Kelley – he came west with the team from Cleveland, then died of a heart attack in 1964. He was replaced on KMPC, the Rams flagship station, by a rookie play-by-play man, Dick Enberg.

At work I met people like Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles and ALL the rest while trying to play it Hollywood cool. On Sundays, five other allegedly mature men and I motored to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in what was then known as Watts; now it’s usually called South Central. We’d turn over our complimentary tickets (valued at $6.00), pass through Tunnel 7, traipse up the stairs from to Row 72 and climb over people to Seats 124-129.

"Mama" Cass Elliott. RIP

Our core group of six fanatics were Mitch Fisher, Chuck Stein, (the wonderful) Bill Kelly, Milo Periichitch and one “revolving” seat for Peter Gardiner/Allen Daviau/Mama Cass or some other rock star who dug pro football, someone's guest or even my first wife, Lenore.

We'd sit down still gripping one of the world's most revolting hot dogs, a cuppa over-fizzed Coke or putrid coffee — and go berserk for four hours screaming for Merlin, Deacon and the rest of the Dee-Fense to make the big play again. And we'd holler ugly slurs at the offense (led by Roman Gabriel) when they sputtered, which happened much too often for our liking. Fisher called him “Pineapple Head,” because he was somehow “ethnic.” Between us all, in full fury, we could hit 120 decibels to express disgust at what the Rams were not doing.

L.A.'s pro football fortunes were changing fast. Previously anonymous defensive linemen became the "Fearsome Foursome." traveling to Ram home games was an adventure in the mid-60's, during the NFL season. Every Sunday always started with the same argument: Where to stop for bagels? Which delicatessen, Canter’s or Ma Gordon's? The bagels were better at Canter’s, but Ma Gordon's was the perverse alternative because the proprietor was a retired, bald professional wrestler.

Next came the debate over which route to take to the Coliseum? I was the designated driver. Why not? I had a new Cadillac Coupe DeVille. Lovin' Spoonful on the radio. KHJ – BOSS Radio. Rams gonna win today? Do You Believe In Magic? Fisher mentioned THAT title just as the song came on KHJ. The five passengers smoked unauthorized cigarettes and tried to out-bellow the navigational suggestions screamed by the others.

"Hey, man, you know Santa Barbara's screwed every time they put the 'No Left Turn' sign up on Santa Barbara, man." Puff, puff. "Hey man, take the Harbor Freeway. Stay left, cut in at the last second and come off on Figueroa. Then you got the parking lot on the right, no sweat." Toke, toke.

After the route argument was resolved we'd pull into the parking lot — and become really frustrated. We switched on the pre-game show on KMPC. We looked up and saw the rear of the press box where the program was coming from. And we waited for what seemed like forever to be shunted into the spot the Lebanese Parking Gestapo had chosen for us. It was always a space that meant waiting long after the final gun before we even got the car out of the huge lot and onto the jammed surface streets.

1966. Our second preseason opened with the traditional Los Angeles Times Annual Charity Game. The L.A. Rams vs. the Cleveland Browns. Just as I pulled into the Santa Barbara parking lot one of our gang, Chuck Stein, a sly accountant, demanded that I stop at the entrance. He got out of the car and walked up to the first parking lot attendant he encountered. Mumble, mumble. Israel-Arab Handshake. Friendly waves to one another. Chuck returned smiling. For a mere twenty dollars he had permanently ingratiated us with "The Lebanese Underground," our name for the stadium's parking crew.

Lebanese National Flag

We repeated this opening day ritual every year until the team moved to Anaheim. You know what they say, "If you wanna slide, you gotta grease."

Thereafter, for the rest of the Rams' Coliseum games we parked in just about the best spot available. It was on the sneaky little alley on the South side of the stadium, next to the old Olympic swimming pool. We'd usually end up behind the limo that brought the Mayor of Los Angeles to the games.

During the fourth quarter, the parking crew let down the chain that kept anyone from pulling into the alley. This gave Mayor Bradley, ourselves and a few others a direct shot right out of the lot. While thousands of other Ram fans were still crammed in the Coliseum aisles and tunnels or searching the lot for their cars, we were on Hoover Street and heading home. VIP, cool.

Cruisin’ through Watts, the Caddy windows wide open, we screamed with what was left of our voices: "L. A. Rams, baby! We're Number One!" We were at one with James Brown. I Feel Good!

Being a radio guy, I was impressed with one player's voice, class and intelligence during post-game interviews. He also remains my all-time favorite Ram player on the field. That's when I discovered how articulate #74 Merlin Olsen was, besides possessing a resonant radio voice and always remained a gentlemen, no matter what had transpired on the field. After his Hall of Fame career he became as fine a broadcaster as he was a defensive tackle.

During their last season in Southern California, two other Ram greats from the 60's served as color analysts for their radio broadcasts on KMPC, which continued airing the games through to the bitter end. Those former players cum announcers were Deacon Jones and Jack Snow. One of the first homemade banners ever displayed in the Coliseum read, "Deacon—for Secretary of Defense." Prophetic. In retrospect, it turned out that David Jones' Pro Football Hall of Fame career positively shines, compared with that of the actual Secretary of Defense at that time, Robert McNamara. Revelations in McNamara’s autobiography about his role in the Vietnam War qualify him for the Political Hall of Shame.

Then there was Jack Snow, whose little boy would grow up to be major league baseball standout J. T. Snow. According to Dick Enberg, then the Rams' radio play-by-play announcer, Jack Snow was “never caught from behind." In the 1960's, until Bernie Casey arrived from the 49ers, Snow was the closest thing to a deep receiving threat the Rams had. But "Bullet" Bob Hayes he was not.

"Never caught from behind!"

Each game, Snow, the All-American from Notre Dame, would somehow get open, gather in a bomb thrown up by Roman Gabriel and take off for the goal line—only to be tracked down and tackled by some speedy 49er, or Colt or Packer defensive back. This was glossed over by Enberg. The next week, it was the old, “Never caught from behind" routine by again. Ah, radio, "Theater of the mind." We guys in Row 72 really dug Enberg, so we just ignored his snow job descriptions of #84’s prowess year after year.

It was during the next-to-last game of 1967, against Green Bay, winners of Super Bowl I, that we learned a major rule: Never, ever, leave a game early. The Packers and Rams were in the same division back then. The Pack’s nefarious head coach,Vince Lombardi, symbolized all that was evil in The Universe. As usual Lombardi’s team was kicking the Rams’ butts. So with just minutes left in the season’s penultimate game and Green Bay beating the Rams who managed only a lackluster offense that day, we headed for the exit.

We nearly reached the Coupe DeVille. Following the silence of a time out we suddenly heard an ecstatic roar rise out of the Coliseum. Huddled around our portable radio we heard Enberg scream that Rams linebacker Tony Guillory had blocked a Packer punt near their own goal line. Chaos! Confusion!

Incomplete Ram pass. Then, on second down, Enberg described Gabriel’s perfect lob pass to Bernie Casey in the corner of the end zone. Touchdown! Rams win, 27-24. Riding home, we were too pissed off at our disloyalty to fully savor the victory. It was George Allen's greatest moment. And where were we? In the parking lot, listening to it on the radio. Thereafter our crew remained in our seats, even if the Rams were down by four touchdowns.

While driving away from the games, win or lose, we always listened to the post-game shows on KMPC From the very start of my Ram addiction in 1965, there was always a consistent, mysterious sound in the background of every Ram post-game locker room interview. We began to call the unknown person who made it, "The Whistler." No matter if it was a chat with Jack Pardee before the game, or an interview with Dick "Scooter" Bass after a great rushing performance, there was always one constant: The same haunting melody, whistled in the background.

We spent years trying to figure out who was doing it. Was it an equipment man, a coach, a player—what? Out best guess was that "The Whistler" was a bulwark of the offensive line, guard Joe Scibelli. He had been with the Rams since 1961. Was it just coincidence that the background whistling came to a stop in 1976, the year after the former Golden Domer Scibelli retired?

The identity of "The Whistler" was the big ongoing mystery and the subject of much debate for years, until it was replaced by a much more ominous and perplexing question: "What was the real story on the death “by drowning” of team owner Carroll Rosenbloom?”

Who killed Carroll Rosenbloom?

Superstition and voodoo. There are certain rituals we fans partake in to assure (or at least encourage) victory for the team. Well, I have a confession to make. The Rams would be undefeated right now [five games into the 1995 season, after suffering their first defeat] if it wasn't for something really stupid and masochistic I did one summer.

This story has its origins in 1967. George Allen took over as head coach of the Rams in '66 and in one season turned the team from losers to winners, just like Rich Brooks has been doing with the Rams this year. Allen inherited a seventh place team with a 4-10 record and finished the next year at 8-6. In his second year, he took the team to the old Western Conference championship game before losing to the Super Bowl-bound Green Bay Packers. Still, Allen's sophomore record was 11-1-2 . (Ties counted in those days.)

In 1967 I was still the Program Director of KHJ Radio, the job that came with six Rams season tickets. Mitchell Fisher, the first friend I made when I arrived in LA in April 1962. He also worked at the KHJ in charge of promotion, and also one of the original Boys In Row 72 who went to all the Ram home games with me.

The year before, the Rams lost the final game of the season to Vince Lombardi's fucking Green Bay Packers. In '67 it all came down to the final game of the year, against the Baltimore Colts. The Rams under Allen had played the Colts fairly even since he took over. But the Colts possessed perhaps the single most deadly offensive weapon in the NFL: Quarterback Johnny Unitas, #19.

Unitas broke our hearts as often as any opponent. And on December 17, 1967, Johnny U. was coming to town for the last regular season game. Fisher and I were young, crazy and totally committed to the Rams by then. We read in the newspapers that the Baltimore team would be staying at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotelnear our radio station, which was located on 5515 Melrose (before that street became famous). Further, the papers said the Colts had scheduled their Friday practice at the Hollywood High School football field, a few blocks away from KHJ.

Mitch and I, both of us being "executives," decided we would wander over and heckle the Colts. We got there before the team's busses arrived. Separated by a chain link fence from the bus stop seemed to be Hairy Mammoths. We positioned ourselves just five feet away from where Unitas and his team mates would depart the vehicle and trot onto the field. The first bus pulled up and the players disembarked. Linemen appeared much bigger than they did on TV. Up close, runners and linebackers looked like Superman. Then a frail, pale guy with a crew cut and high top black shoes stepped off the bus. Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas, #19.

"How's it going, Johnny?"

We went nuts, bellowing things like: "You'll get yours Sunday, Johnny U!." "Hey, hot shot, the Fearsome Foursome is waiting to eat you alive." These exclamations were liberally sprinkled with expletives, which we felt safe shouting since we were separated from the target of our derision by that chain link fence. We felt like spectators at a zoo, jeering the dangerous beasts, hoping to not show the deep-seated secret fear we felt if the fence ever gave in. One of the NFL's earliest monster defensive linemen, Bubba Smith, glowered at us. We were harassing the great Unitas and Bubba snarled, eager to wring both our necks— simultaneously. The Colts jogged off winners. Fisher and I went back to work, knowing we had unfavorably influenced the outcome of the game in favor of Baltimore..

And, of course, we did. Final score on Sunday: George Allen's Rams 34, Johnny Unitas' Colts 10. Los Angeles finished in first place. We were on Cloud Nine—for six days—until the Rams went to Lambeau Field and were blown out by the Pack 28-7. But we had won something, first place in the division, and beat the Colts to get there and on to the playoffs.

Cut to July 15, 1995. The Rams have left California and I'm looking forward to the new season in a new city with a new coach. Believe me, after seeing most of their games at Anaheim in ‘94, both the team and the crowds couldn't have been more apathetic, drunk and lacking in knowledge of the NFL . I was ready to watch them win on satellite rather than sit there in person and watch them self-destruct.

On this July day I drove to Anaheim again, but it was to attend a big Sports Card and Memorabilia Show. (My obsession was to collect every Ram card ever issued.) These shows feature big name star, there to sign, for a fee, various items: photos, balls, bats, helmets, gloves, etc. At this show, signatures ranged from $14 (Kellen Winslow) to $135 (Magic Johnson.) In between were superstars, from Dick Butkus to Stan Musial to Juius Erving.

I spotted a beautiful magazine—Legends Sports Memorabilia, November-December 1994 issue—which featured color paintings of the Rams great "Fearsome Foursome," which Sports Illustrated had just proclaimed one of the two greatest defensive lines of all time. (The Vikings' "Purple People Eaters" were the other.) The magazine that caught my eye showed Merlin Olsen and Deacon Jones in the Rams' late-60s blue-and-white uniforms and Roosevelt Grier and Lamar Lundy in the in the early-60s blue-and-gold jerseys. The magazine was autographed by all the guys. I didn't think twice. Bought it for $90 on the spot.

Later, while sorting through thousands of cards displayed by a dealer from Houston, looking for obscure Rams, I heard an announcement on the P.A. system: "Johnny Unitas will be signing for 15 more minutes." Suddenly I flashed on all those thrilling moments in the Coliseum, the Foursome charging, Unitas standing firm in the pocket, releasing the ball at the last second.

I was under the influence of a higher pigskin power. I walked out the lobby and purchased a $30 ticket for a Unitas autograph. Looked like a computerized concert ticket. I checked out the 8x10 photos of the Hall of Fame QB on sale for five bucks each. The one I bought showed Johnny U. standing alone in a field, with trees scattered in the background. There he stands, ball cocked over his right shoulder, left arm extended, stoic look on his face. Perfect.

I walked back to the autograph area. There was Unitas, alone with one autograph dealer, signing 8x10's with a blue Sharpie pen. Like a production line, one every ten-seconds, headed for fans all over the country, completely impersonal, just a scrawled "Johnny Unitas." I strolled up and mumbled something like, "How's it going, Johnny?" Without looking up or stopping his routine, he said, "Great."

I started to blabber about how the last time I "talked" to him in was in 1967, when he was getting off the team bus at Hollywood High School. The man at Unitas' side stiffened, like I was some sort of deranged Colt-hater with a 9mm pistol in my pocket. So I quickly began to ooze things like, "Hey, John, you were the greatest the Rams ever had to play against. Remember those games in the old Coliseum?"

Unitas, who had huge, gnarled hands and sported a large gold ring, actually stopped and looked up. His companion relaxed. The great quarterback looked up at me and said, "Yeah, those were good times." I asked him if he would write something personal on my picture. "Sure," he said, "what should I put?”

My mind froze. All I could remember was this immortal passer in the white helmet with the blue horseshoe on it. I recalled how many times we drove away from the Coliseum disconsolate because Unitas had whipped the Rams on the last series of the game. How unstoppable he was. Meanwhile, Unitas strained at me. So I blurted out my request.

Now, I have the photo, neatly framed, on the wall right next to the Fearsome Foursome magazine cover. It's a great metaphor. Four monsters trying to claw their way at him, while the legendary QB stands there with impunity, poised to burn the Rams secondary. That's cool. I could start a sports bar with the other stuff on the walls: Autographed Jerome Bettis picture, 1994 Rams Throwback poster, etc.

It's just the inscription on the Unitas photo that I KNOW personally cost the Rams to lose their one game so far. By three points at that. Forget Marshall Faulk ripping off those long runs. Don't blame Johnny Bailey and Todd Kinchen for dropping key passes. Un-unh. Blame ME, the guy with the picture of the greatest Colt of all-time up there on my wall. And written in bright blue ink, "To R.J. — Loved Beating Those Rams. Johnny Unitas. July 15,1995."

Since this is being written after the 1995 Ram-Bear game, it's an appropriate time to recall some previous meetings between the two original pro teams. But first some background. The Cleveland Rams fifth game in franchise history was played against the Chicago Bears on October 10, 1937. The week before, the Rams took on the Windy City's other team, the Chicago Cardinals, which as readers of this journal surely know, would become the St. Louis Cardinals in 1960. In the Rams' inaugural year, they lost to the two Chicago teams by a combined score of 26-2.

Ditka. #89.

So you see, the Ram's rivalry with both the Bears goes way back. But, the 1985 Chicago Bears, coached by Mike Ditka, have Super Bowl rings to show for those 58 years. The closest the Rams have come to winning it all, since their 1951 pre-merger NFL championship, was on January 20, 1980 at the Rose Bowl. They would win Super Bowl XIX in the 1999 season. Also time ran out in the third quarter, the Rams led the Pittsburgh Steelers 19-17 in Super Bowl XIV. Sorry, but I have a permanent mental block about the remainder of that game. (However, I do suffer recurring nightmares of John Stallworth running wild with Terry Bradshaw passes.)

Back to 1995's fourth opponent. I remember many things from watching Ram-Bear battles in the L. A. Coliseum from high up in Row 72. Consider the second game of the 1965 season. Ram owner Dan Reeves (not the ex-Cowboy who also coached the Giants, but the Real Dan Reeves), had stolen away defensive genius, coach George Allen from the Bears to coach his team. "Papa Bear" George Halas, the Chicago team’s founder—and coach spanning 34 years—was enraged. He complained to the league office and threatened to sue the Rams. George Allen had directed the Bear defense, winning recognition in 1953, the year Chicago won the NFL title with its strong D. After that championship game, the players carried Allen, not Halas, off the field.

As Halas' protégé, it was assumed Allen would take over when the Old Man retired. But George Halas seemed destined to coach until he died—he kept doing it until the age of 72—so Allen left to become head coach of the Los Angeles Rams. Southland fans were still reeling from Harland Svare's previous three seasons as head coach, during which he won 13 games and lost 41. We didn't know it, but George Allen was about to turn a 4-10 team around in one year, going to 8-6 in his first season as head coach of the Rams.

The first game between teacher Halas and pupil Allen was a long-awaited, much-hyped affair. The previous week, the Rams lost their first game under Allen on the road against the Detroit Lions. The Rams were shut out 20-0. Didn't score a point. No one gave L. A. a chance in their next game, the home opener against Halas' "Monsters of the Midway." When the Bears hit town for the September 26, 1965 match up of mentor versus disciple, Chicago was still employing George Allen's ferocious defense.

In those days, the Bears wore jerseys with very small numbers. I guess Halas didn't think TV would last. But no one needed a "#51" to spot Dick Butkus. Greatest middle linebacker I ever saw. On offense there was #40, the immortal runner Gale Sayers. The day everyone had been waiting for arrived at last. Los Angeles held its breath. What revenge would Halas extract on his mutinous former disciple?

The Old Man, who always wore a rumpled dark suit, stalked the sidelines. George Allen, who during games always appeared on the verge of a massive heart attack, implored his new Ram team to shut down the Bears. The Ram defensive line—not yet christened the "Fearsome Foursome"—help hold Chicago to 28 points. Somehow, the Rams scored two more than that. Halas, sulked off the field. In Row 72, we went nuts. Los Angeles finally had a winner.

The next year, during a Bear game in the Coliseum, a spectator did the stupidest thing a fan can do: He jumped onto the field in an attempt to prance 100 yards across it to impress his friends and the huge crowd. (It was the late-60s, who knows what substances he consumed before this act of madness?)

Starting in the West end zone, this kid pranced around the Ram defense, which looked on bemused. The officials stood in place, hands on hips, waiting for the folly to finish. The fool thought he had it made—he merely had to dance past the team in the blue jerseys with the orange trim. As he ran by the Bear huddle, a very big guy with a very small "89" on his jersey leaned out of the Chicago huddle and delivered a forearm smash to the throat of the poor fan who had been running at full speed. The victim dropped like a Scud missile. Yes, Bear tight end Mike Ditka—who played even tougher than he talks—had knocked the interloper out cold. The game was delayed for what seemed like an hour, as the crowed booed deafeningly each time the Bears lined up to resume play.

Then, there was the most surrealistic series of downs I've ever seen in an NFL game. It happened when the Rams were played the Bears in the Coliseum in 1968. By then, Los Angles was a serious contender in the old Western Division. They would finish the season in second place with a 10-3-1 record. But—it would have been 11-2-1 and possibly first place, but for the last Ram offensive series of the game. Los Angeles was just inside Chicago territory, trailing 17-16, with little time remaining.

Quarterback Roman Gabriel, in his blue-and-white #18 jersey, stood back in the pocket and tossed three long passes into the Bear end zone, all tantalizingly close, all incomplete. Then, with seconds left in the game, the offense trotted off the field and the Bears ran out the clock.

Only my friend Bill Kelly spotted it instantly. "Fourth down, fourth down!" he screamed. The Rams radio announcer, Dick Enberg, didn't notice anything odd. The P. A. announcer merely announced, "First down, Chicago." I focused my Bushnell wide-angle Rangemaster binoculars on the Ram bench in front of us. The players and coaches were hanging their heads. I swear we weren't hallucinating. It was "Three and REALLY out."

Even though L. A. was the capital of the psychedelic world at the time, I swear this TRULY happened. An NFL professional football team's pivotal game of their season, threw three diffused bombs into the Chicago Bear end zone—-and left the field. Bears 17, Rams 16. Remember that the next time you hear about George Allen, stickler for details and coaching “genius.”

DEAR READER

2011-08-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

Art is anything you can get away with.

Marshall McLuhan

During the past two years I: broke two ribs, awakened to my house catching fire that shut down my fulltime online Hawaiian music website, was evicted (so owners could rebuild with insurance money and raise the rent 40%), moved all my stuff (the second most traumatic thing that can happen to you according to several psychological studies, which is only topped by death of a child), slipped and broke two bones and tore up tendons in left ankle, watch all my assets disappear, have been sued by a contributor to my Obama book (no one was paid anything for written contributions; this totally fabricated suit demands that I pay $1,00,048 ... yeah, total b.s. ... and then last month I fell, again, this time injuring back, muscles and vertebrae to the extent I was barely able to move (or sit.)

So the previous blog is now-ancient, pretty much irrelevant. I was wrong re. the NFL scene where it came to the Hall Of Fame Game. My expert friends miscalculated by a few days, The Rams-Bears game was dumped. One cool thing: From April to now I lost FIFTY-SEVEN pounds on my WhodaDiet of hummus (mucho varieties), salmon and protein-power smoothies made with just-picked Oahu fruits and vegetables.

Shit. Back pain returned, must shut down. But this explanation/apology at least gets this info out there ... to any of you who might check this site from time to time. If you do read this regularly unscheduled thing, finding it interest.ng/enertaining/nostalic and/or weird enough to want more, drop me a note at rj@hawaii.rr.com. That will brighten my day and perhaps convice me that someone gives a megadman.

Also, if you have a spare Mac laptop you might wish to contribute, please advise to same address.

Me ke aloha and "You can't keep me down,"

"NFL LOCKER ROOM CONFESSIONS"

2011-06-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

This is being written on June 28, 2011, which is 143 days since there was any professional football played in the USA. Yes,” last year’s” 2010 National Football League season ended at approximately 9:45 p.m. EST on Sunday, February 6. 2011, in Cowboy Stadium, Arlington, Texas . The Green Bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 31-26, to win Super Bowl XLV, i.e., the forty-fifth one played since Vince Lombardi’s Packers won Super Bowl I in 1967. (Don’t these recent Roman numerals look more and more like T-shirt sizes?)

The 2010 Packers never trailed in XLV, building a 21-3 lead with thirty-nine seconds remaining in the first half before the Steelers scored their first touchdown. The game was somewhat in doubt until around the third minute of the fourth quarter when Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers threw his third TD pass of the game. It was a spectacular day for Rogers: he became only the fourth quarterback in SB history to throw for three TD’s, 300 yards and no interceptions. The Pack beat the odds, the opposition and went all the way. The Lombardi trophy went back to Green Bay, Wisconsin for the first time in fourteen years.

All in NFL World was groovy and gravy until March 11, 2011. Then the league’s “billionaire owners” and “millionaire players” could not agree on how to divvy up their reported nine billion dollars in annual revenues. How many US dollars is that? More than the Gross National Products of Algeria, Romania, Nigeria, Peru, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Morocco, Viet Nam, Puerto Rico, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Croatia, Ecuador, Slovenia, Libya, Guatemala or Luxembourg. Regardless of the of economic shifting smorgasbords in these countries nothing on the scale of the NFL’s present impasse has occurred there. What has become the longest work stoppage in pro sports began 110 days ago and counting as I type this.

When asked if and when there will be NFL games this year my reply, based on what I’ve heard from league “insiders,” is that the first exhibition contest will take place on August 8, 2011, at the annual Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio. I was informed by those in-the-know that, “The St. Louis Rams and Chicago Bears will suit up, play, and get paid for that game on just one day’s practice if that’s the deal.”

By karmic coincidence or as an act of “The Football Gods” I’ve “followed” one of these teams since 1965: the Cleveland/Los Angeles/Anaheim/St. Louis Rams. Between the team's crumby last game and the lack of NFL news, there's been no story about the Rams in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since June 20 and that is civil litigation news about a player best-known as "Mister Irrelevant."

Plummeting from appearances in two of the first three Super Bowls in this century, the former “Fastest Show on Turf” finished the 2009 season under a rookie head coach with a record of one win and fifteen losses. The only legitimately good thing about finishing last among the NFL’s thirty-two teams is that the franchise with the absolute worst record receives the overall number one draft choice for the coming year.

Slingin' Sam Joins The Rams

Last year’s NFL draft was held on April 22, 2010. Most observers figured that Sam Bradford, All-American quarterback from Oklahoma, or All-Everything defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh of Nebraska would be the first pick. The Rams, owners of the lousiest record from the previous season, held the number one choice. If they focused on their offense, which had been wretchedly declining for several years, they would opt for Bradford. If they hoped to add instant punch to an equally poor defense the choice would be Suh. Of all the players available St. Louis selected Sam Bradford. Great! The rookie QB never missed a snap during his first pro season and was named NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year. (Suh played brilliantly for the Detroit Lions and won the defensive rookie award.)

But even with Bradford’s spectacular play the Rams struggled, losing some close games by frustratingly close scores, games that could have easily gone either way. Of the Rams first five losses of 2010 the total margin of defeat was ten points. But heading into the sixteenth and final game of the season with a seven win, eight loss record, the Rams were still in the running to make the playoffs as champions of the worst division in pro football, the NFC West. The winner of final regular season game between the Rams and the Seahawks would move on to the first round of the playoffs and actually host the first game. The loser would go home, pack it all in, do exit interviews and watch the remainder of the season as spectators, if at all.

Dwelling on details of that dreadful debacle still sends me into pissed off paroxysms of pessimism. The Rams, particularly because of some inexplicable/insane decisions by their head coach, managed to score a total of six points in their final outing. The Rams tallied two field goals by kicker Josh Brown, who played his first five seasons for Seattle and tormented the Rams along the way before joining the club in 2008.

Mark Twain once said, “Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.” No matter how one spins the stats on the Rams last defeat in what should not have been the final game of their 2010 season there are no numbers flexible enough to deny the facts. One touchdown was scored that day in Seattle by the home team during the first five minutes of play. Seahawks kickers past and present made all the other points on field goals. The Rams were crushed in total yards gained: 184 to the winner’s 333. Bradford’s passing performance was his second worst of the season: 19 of 36 completed plus one interception.

But most disappointing and distressing to Rams fans, players and staff was the use (actually non-use) of running back Steven Jackson, one of the NFL’s elite ball carriers. The Rams coaching brain trust (or is it “no brains, no trust?”) allowed Jackson carry the ball eleven times in the entire game.

Put in context, this was the most critical matchup for the team in nine years since they played in and lost Super Bowl XXXVI to the New England Patriots by a score of 20-17 on a field goal as the final gun ended the game. The Rams dreams of a dominant dynasty vanished. Since that day, February 3, 2002, Rams partisans and many “experts” debated the Rams coaching “wisdom” that called for the incorrectly labeled “prevent defense” to stop Pats quarterback Tom Brady from marching his team down the field into three-point field goal range as the clock (and the season) ran out.

But this Monday morning speculation was wiped away when football fans consider the haphazard, seemingly random play calling by the Rams coaching staff headed by second-year head coach Steve “Little Caesar” Spagnuolo. Ironically his lone win in his rookie year put the team in position to draft Sam Bradford. Then in what turned out to be Bradford’s last appearance of the year he was never put in position to win this game. Rams lose, 16-6. “Spags” coaching record of eight wins against twenty-four losses leaves him with a winning (losing?) percentage of .250. That is the worst record of any Rams head coach since Hugo Bezdek won one game and lost thirteen, a career .071 percentage. That was in 1937, the first year of the franchise, eight decades prior to the meltdown on the day after New Year's 2011.

The Todd Hewitt Family

So how did the Rams boss man handle the ignominious conclusion to last season? Did he consider reevaluating personnel, strategy, tactics or his own role in the matter? Did he own up to any responsibility for the crash-and-burn climax of what coulda, woulda, shoulda been a magic year? No.

Spagnuolo returned to St. Louis. Five days later, about 120 hours after the fact, he fired the team’s equipment manager, Todd Hewitt. Huh? Todd began helping his dad and predecessor, Don Hewitt, back in 1967, XLIV years earlier. (Don’t these Roman numerals look like the call letters of Mexican radio stations?)

Reporter John H. Tucker of the Riverfront Times conducted the first in-depth interview with Hewitt on January 12. For the facts of the matter (and a great photo of Todd), you might want to check outhttp://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2011/01/todd_hewitt_fired_from_rams.php.

Nearly 1400 words into this blog/rant brings me to the point of the above back story: Although Todd Hewitt was ignominiously released by the Rams at year’s end, he is one of a very few NFL team employees who has been working since he was literally tossed out of the Rams facility and into the snow.

In addition to Hewitt the team released a handful of other longtime, loyal employees who, like Todd, would soon qualify for full medical coverage until they become eligible for Social Security and other government benefits. Many of them are bringing legal action against the St. Louis Rams for a variety of alleged violations.

When it comes to the dismissal of Hewitt and the others to this day the Rams have assiduously issued versions of “No Comment” on the subject. Spagnuolo’s most pertinent quote on the matter is something like, “We are moving in another direction.”

I met Todd’s father in 1967 when he was hired away from the University of Southern California to accept the similar position, head equipment manager, of the then-Los Angeles Rams.

Todd and I became friends in 1997

when I moved back home to Hawaii

and he had been in St. Louis for two years,

having moved there with the team in 1995.

We hit it off from the start. Todd has been here in Honolulu often enough to know the territory better than most visitors; besides vacationing here with his family he also worked at several Pro Bowls played in Aloha Stadium. And, by now, the obsessive maniac that I am know more about the Rams than the “average” fan.

Put it this way: I can spend the rest of my days wearing clothing by “Van Hewitt of St. Louis,” which is what former Rams Pro Bowl defensive end Fred Dryer called all the Rams clothing when he joined the team in 1972.

That aside, the question is “What has Todd Hewitt been doing since his (and the league’s) season ended?” Answer: Writing his book NFL LOCKER ROOM CONFESSIONS © 2011.

I am along for the ride as co-author. It is my fourth book. If you think you “know about” professional football and its players, coaches and fans, then hang on. Most all of this book is about the off-field adventures of Sunday’s Heroes during the 164 hours or so during each week of the season when they are not playing on the gridiron but just playing. Big boys with expensive toys. Muy grande amigos with mammoth egos. Millionaires just out of their teenage years. Rolexes to Rolls-Royces to rock’n’roll and rolls in the hay (or wherever they could tackle a feminine fan).

Here you go, the first official word about what Todd and I have been working on for nearly six months. Like most of America’s sports fans you are ready for some football (presuming you have read this far.) And whether or not there will be NFL this fall there will exist one of the most revealing and outright hilarious books about pro football coming your way, hopefully by the Thanksgiving Day doubleheader. For any and all other info, feel free to contact me at rj@hawaii.rr.com.

Item: Here’s one fact you might find strange or contradictory to what you have thought about the game: Hardly any NFL players wear jock straps. Or “cups.” Just a glimpse of the naked truth coming your way.

LETTER TO LESLIE WILCOX, PBS HAWAII

2011-06-15T01:06:00.001-07:00

Original Halekulani Hotel

An Open Letter to Leslie Wilcox, PBS Hawaii and whoever wrote,

researched and directed the recent musical special taped at the Halekulani Hotel.

Contrary to the reviews, which were full of oohs, aahs and platitudes as often is the case in Hawaii, more so by the day as Old Timers pass on and others like yourself try to maintain some semblance of professionalism when it comes to the one commodity in our islands that is sweeter than malasadas, cooler than the trade winds (the ones that can weave their way through the cement jungle sections of town), more fun than mahjong, betting on high school football or even a trip to Vegas itself. What could that possibly be?

It is Nostalgia. We who lived it rather than heard about it second or thirdhand or “learned” it on Wikipedia or manifest some of the other symptoms of the semi-informed when it comes to the subject of what happened, where, when, how and who was involved. It is a measure of the weakness of the University of Hawaii’s journalism and communications curriculum and methods that becomes obvious when their graduates assume responsibility for accurately and fairly reporting on what is happening today let alone venture into the slipstream of our kama’aina lives, those of us who lived the events, smelled the lei, were friends with legends many have only heard of nowadays and doing the stuff that is now purveyed in “media” as The Old Days.

When I was born seventy-three years ago my parents lived in a cottage a Kuhio and Seaside Avenues in Waikiki. I read recently in the sad remnants of what used to be our daily newspapers that, “The most dangerous spot in Hawaii,” is now located at that very intersection.

Growing up I did not see picture postcards of Diamond Head, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Kapiolani Park, the Ala Wai and so on. No all that was my playground. I grew up with my dad constantly reminding me, “When you were born we didn’t need to lock the doors at night.”

Back then the two only hotels on the beach across Kalakaua Avenue were the Moana (1901) and Royal (1927). A long hike to the ewa end of the beach took you to the Halekulani and the Niumalu. I was in and out of these hotels and those that followed. The ice cold pineapple juice in the public fountain in the lobby of the Royal. The coming and going of the Waikiki Biltmore built with a missing elevator shaft. Signing off the air every morning I met Henry J. Kaiser while he was building the Hawaiian Village Hotel in 1957. I witnessed the changes, for the most part all for the worst: the honking for tourist dollars in gaudy ways that remind me of Tijuana or Kowloon, the street hustles and the other intrusions on the Aloha Spirit that must be dealt with to even park and get inside any of these formerly grand hostelries. But how would anyone your age, or younger, know, Leslie?

As you are aware I worked with and was friends with your father, Paul Wilcox, back at KPOA in 1958 when Tom Moffatt and I first joined that station. Not only was Paul a fine broadcaster but in his autumn years he became a great teller of tales of the way it used to be here. As it really was. So too did Don Blanding, Armine von Tempski, Franklin Marshall Davis, Ed Sheehan, Bob Krauss, Dave Donnelly and the others who have passed on. They have not passed on much of a torch to those who succeeded them.

I related scores of stories about those days now called nostalgic on radio, TV and my writings including four books. The second one is called “Back Door Waikiki.” Within are word pictures and photographs from the 1940s through the 1980s of my old neighborhood. If there is one thing I know it is the truth about what happened. And, of course, I know what didn’t.

In life there are actions and omissions. All have consequences, many of which these days are preserved on a gazillion memory chips and the devices to which they connect. I did not watch your Halekulani special. From the names mentioned it was obvious that no one had done sufficient research into the history of the Halekulani Hotel, specifically those who contributed to its musical heritage, which was from what could tell the purpose of the program along with paying tribute to Emma Veary. And running commercials for the not-very-much-owned-by-Hawaiians Hawaiian Airlines.

Ms. Veary is a nice person whom I’ve known for decades along with members of her families. But I cannot find anywhere online or otherwise the production credits for your program saluting her. I did read one blog entry by you, Leslie, that apparently confused the identity of which of the two Cazimero brothers participated in your program. Surely you know the difference between Roland and Robert. The first of which, Bozo, is a good guy who’s never let success go to his head; not the case with his toploftical brother. The preceding sentence is not the type to be found in print locally of since the media and some entertainers have been doing their circle-jerk for years madly patting one another on the back.

I see from the lineup (assuming you had no further misinformation) that there were some fine performers with long-established records of excellence featured on your program. Nina Keali’iwahamana and I started doing teenage radio show on KIKI-AM in 1952. There is no one finer. Will there ever be? Jimmy Borges was and always will be a sweetheart and a hell of a hip vocalist. Your “Hawaiian music historian” (and my Aina Haina ex-paper boy) Harry Soria like yourself has a name to maintain along with the tradition of his grandfather and father who I knew, worked with and wrote about.

From what I’ve heard (from friends not the fuzzy-wuzzy “reviews”) there were some musicians with less of a key than the House of the same name. I see that beautiful Beverly Noa performed. I remember Bev from her 1952 Miss Hawaii days and her husband, Freddie Noa, The Flyin’ Hawaiian. We worked together at the Roller Derby in the old Civic. (How many people reading this remember either Fred or the Civic?)

I recall small kid time when the Halekulani was on our family’s Sunday Dinner A-List along with the Sky Room, Canlis, Alexander Young Hotel, Lau Yee Chai, Tropics, Trader Vic's, Ciro’s, South Seas, Wagon Wheel and a few others. I spent hours laboring over the jigsaw puzzle in the Halekulani’s original lobby back when the main building was on the beach with cottages flanking the driveway. One thing that remains monumentally sumptuous there are the hotel's ono Sunday brunches.

Nalani Olds

Then an akamai friend emailed that this program of yours did not include or make mention of Aunty Lei Collins (noted singer, dancer, composer of Hawaiian songs and Halekulani program director), Mamo Howell (who at the age of three danced at the Royal with Aunty Lou Beamer) and most grievously absent: Nalani Olds. Among her many other achievements Nalani was one of the original Halekulani Girls. While still attending Punahou, Nalani sang there once and was hired on the spot.

“Of course you know Nalani.” But apparently not. If you are unaware of Nalani and her many accomplishments since high school consider this segment from Punahou’s 1955 class notes from two years ago when Nalani was named a "Living Treasure of Hawaii": “The recognition marked a lifetime of entertaining, honoring a woman who expresses her enduring love for Hawaii by sharing its culture the best way she knows how, with humility and grace.”

I’ve known no more modest person than Nalani, who I first met when we were in third grade. This woman never mentions that she founded the Prince Lot Hula Festival in 1979. Or that at eighteen she travelled to New York City for a few months and performed at the famous Luau 400 restaurant in the theater district. She appeared in places such as the Biltmore Hotel along with Haunani Kahalewai and at the Kahala Hilton years ago.

Nalani never tosses about her deep knowledge and expertise of Hawaiian culture that has kept her busy, including spending years traveling throughout the state, the US and abroad lecturing and performing.

Your promise when you were hired to run our Hawaii public television channel stated, “[Wilcox is] committed to ‘breaking the glass’ of the TV monitor to engage with people in all of our communities, including online.” Well, it’s four years. When I click on Channel 11 (or whatever it is on DirecTv) the only progress of note is the upgrading of nationally produced programming.

If the best you can come up with is commercial-oozing, saccharine-dripping shows such as that from the Halekulani then it gives my pause to consider if the public funding upon which you rely is being used to the best effect to inform and entertain the public. I always encourage bosses to read their own company’s Mission Statement often. Do you?

By the way, the Leahey boys are the one lively exception to PBS Hawaii's otherwise slumber-inducing local programming.

Being in the communications business professionally for fifty-eight years I am familiar with the limitations induced by advertising agencies, sponsors, promotional partners, boards of directors, corporate mandates and so on, all of which suck the air out of what we called The Creative Ones. Compared with many mainland publicly financed television that I watched and worked with on the mainland what you are transmitting now only furthers Honolulu’s image as a bush league “media market.”

That is not said without some background. I hosted and produced my first local TV show for KHVH-TV in 1957. One of my programs, “Pictures of Paradise” on KGMB-TV, was Hawaii’s first “magazine” format television show, winning many awards when it debuted in 1979. The program morphed into something called “The Hawaiian Moving Company” hosted by two announcers, Kamasami Kong and later Mike Perry, one of whom I hired and the other I didn’t fire when I programmed KKUA Radio in the 1970s.

It is unfair to mention mainland and global experience when discussing local media product and talent. Some of your best employees, particularly Steven Komori and Paula Rapoza, are longtime friends and professional colleagues. I know that they were not responsible for what was and was not on the Halekulani show.

That effort was as if one were covering Hawaii sports rather than music and had chosen a host with a huge profile but as uniformed in the deep history of local sports as say Robert Kekaula to host a program that failed to included Pump Searle, Herman Wedemeyer, Wally Yonamine, Red Rocha, Bobo Olson and so many others worthy of at least a mention.

First, since I cannot seem to locate the information online I would like to know who was responsible for the research and writing of your Emma Veary tribute? And second, rather than humbly apologize to Nalani I suggest PBS Hawaii devote serious resources to producing a program about Nalani Olds and her lifetime, which has always been blessed with the true spirit of Aloha—something that regretfully does not come across on the TV channel for which you are responsible.

Kūlia i kō ikaika,

Ron Jacobs

Kaneohe, Hawaii

July 14, 2011

ALOHA & MAHALO, HARI KOJIMA

2011-06-09T19:36:00.001-07:00

Describing Hari Kojima as a “fish cutter” is like calling Jim Leahey a “word reader” or “Jesse Kuhaulua” a “big guy.”

I first met Hari in the 1970s. We were both involved in those still-pioneer days of Hawaii television. I sold myself as “Whodaguy?” Hari told the world about Tamashiro Market. Thanks mostly to the tube I became bigger than just KKUA Radio and Hari himself evolved into a brand name, way beyond just a worker at a North King Street fish store. It was even easier in those days to become a “celebrity” in our little home town.

My choice memory of Hari at his finest is from the summer of 1978. It was my daughter’s baby luau, my first and only as a proud papa. Plenty musician-friends volunteered to play at the party. They usually brought their instruments to luau for the informal cha-lang-a-lang that inevitably breaks out when you bring a bunch of entertainers together on their day off, feed them non-stop and provide continuous beverage service.

I wouldn't put that chore on the performers who comprised more than half the guest list. Neighbor Don Ho had an off-island gig that afternoon. He dropped by early in the morning and spent a half-hour with adoring grandparents and so on. That afternoon the crowd of musicians and civilians were entertained by one group that volunteered to play for the entire luau: The Makaha Sons of Ni’ihau. I first met the boys when Skippy and Israel were teenagers; they performed live on one of my first Aloha Friday morning radio shows in 1976.

The guys stopped by my Diamond Head home the day before the big party. They wanted to be sure that I had chairs strong enough to hold them without collapsing for what turned out to be five straight hours. No moving to go to the lua. No changing seats. The quartet just plopped into the heavy wood and leather chairs and never moved. Guests enchanted by the music fought for the chance to bring them plates of food to Skip, Iz, Moon and Jerome, all of which came from one of the best lunch wagons in Kaka’ako. And they never repeated a song. Just one humongous medley, from "Hi'ilawe" to "Sloop John B." As awesome as the taste treats.

Besides ono plate lunch of every variety there were chocolate chip cookies freshly baked by my friend Wally Amos. We met during my Hollywood days in the Sixties when he was becoming the very Famous Amos. Standing beside Wally's commandeered oven was brother Hari Kojima. “I’ll handle the fish, RJ,” Hari volunteered when I invited him to what I hoped would be Keiki Luau of the Year.

On luau day Hari was at the dock before the sun came up. Of course Hari had first crack at everything hauled from the sea. He arrived at our house by 8:00 a.m. and began doing delicious things to ultra-fresh fish that he showed us on TV all those years. Fresh aku poke made by Kojima-san himself, served by a beautiful wahine dancer from the Makaha Sons halau (that they brought along as a surprise), placed under the nose of Israel Kamakawiwi’ole while singing and strumming was a scene that I’ll never forget, ever.

Hari and Wally did all this out of the goodness of their hearts—both as large and generous as anyone I’ve ever known. When I brought up the subject of even reimbursing the Makaha Sons for gasoline, Skippy replied “no way” with a stink eye.

“But, you guys played six hours straight, no break, brought dancers and everything, bra,” I told the older Kamakawiwi’ole brother. Skip replied, “No sweat, RJ. We already did two hours at OCCC before coming over here.” (For the uninformed that is The Oahu Community Correctional Center, the largest jail facility in the State of Hawaii.)

So now Hari is off with the brothers and so many others there that day nearly thirty years ago, dear folks waiting to share again in his love of life and people. The pioneer group Videololo shot much of Miki’ala’s luau on then-new Betamax tape. The images flicker by. Hari is there, cheerful as ever. Not on TV, but in my kitchen, slicing, dicing and smiling. Along with Skippy & Iz, Dave Donnelly, Teddy Randazzo, and so many other friends who have moved on. How happy they will be when Hari shows up.

ON EBAY ~ FROM MY INTERESTING ARCHIVES

2011-06-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

You are bidding on producer-director Ron Jacobs' personal archival copy of the complete and final thirteen-hour original Elvis Presley Story radio documentary. It has been transferred from unused copies of the original vinyl records using the highest quality 2011 professional audio technology.

http://tinyurl.com/3tjequl

The Elvis Presley Story
Remembering the 1970s Radio Bio

I first heard the radio documentary The Elvis Presley Story in the fall of 1971. As a college graduation present my father had given me my first “boombox” (although that term hadn’t been coined yet). Besides having an AM/FM radio it played and remotely recorded on newfangled tapes called cassettes.

One day my roommate pointed out that my mini-stereo could actually record radio broadcasts onto cassette tape. Amazing! So when I heard a radio station announcing its coming broadcast of a twelve-hour documentary called The Elvis Presley Story, I ran out to K-Mart and bought a cheap package of blank cassette tapes. When the broadcast began early on a Sunday morning, I was ready to record The Elvis Presley Story all day long.

The documentary was the work of noted rock author Jerry Hopkins and legendary producer Ron Jacobs, at the time VP of Watermark, Inc. Although many of Elvis’s songs were included, the dozens of interview segments in it were the heart of the program. First, Hopkins culled these excerpts from his two years of recorded research for his Presley biography to be published in 1972. Then he and Jacobs hit the road to Tupelo, Memphis and Nashville to conduct first-hand field-recorded testimony about Elvis by his friends, relatives and colleagues dating back to the day he was born

Listening to The Elvis Presley Story for the first time was a revelation to me. Although I had been an Elvis fan for eight years at that point, I knew very little about his life and work. The up coming Hopkins’ biography would be the first serious attempt to document Presley’s life. Assorted biographical sketches on segments of Elvis’s life comprised all that I had previously known about him.

Suddenly, heretofore shadowy figures in Presley’s career came to life as I heard their voices on the radio that Sunday in October—Colonel Tom Parker, Bob Neal, Sam Phillips, Scotty Moore, Marion Keisker, George Klein, D.J. Fontana, Gordon Stoker, Ray Walker, Alan Fortas, Otis Blackwell, Bones Howe, Marty Lacker, and many, many others. Wink Martindale, a famous Memphis DJ and TV host with ties to Elvis in the fifties, enthusiastically narrated the The Elvis Presley Story originally and on all following updates.

Watermark promoted The Elvis Presley Story in a full-page Variety ad on August 21, 1971. “A twelve-hour radio documentary on the most spectacular figure in the history of rock and roll,” the headline read. The text added, “Until now The Elvis Presley Story has gone untold, cloaked in legend and mystery. But now Elvis’s life, his music and his impact have been documented in twelve hour-long taped chapters for exclusive radio broadcast rights. In this radio biography you’ll hear over 70 voices—the people who know Elvis best from his childhood to the present. You’ll hear dozens of rare tapes. You’ll hear the music that made him, and nearly 150 of the songs he made. You’ll hear the legend and how it was created and sustained. You’ll know Elvis Presley, The King, and the man.”

The Elvis Presley Story was been offered in July to stations that carried Watermark’s weekly “American Top 40 with Casey Kasem” program. Ninety-nine radio stations around the U.S. had booked the exciting new Elvis program for their markets. Billboardannounced that The Elvis Presley Story had been licensed to the British Broadcasting Corporation, which planned to air it exclusively in the U.K. beginning in January 1972.

So fascinating to me was The Elvis Presley Story, when it first aired on September 4, 1971, I listened to it several more times in the following months. During the summer of 1972, I drove from Biloxi to Washington D.C. for a reunion with some of my fraternity brothers. I brought my boombox along and listened to my recorded tapes of the Elvis documentary in the car until the batteries ran out.

Another time in Biloxi, a radio DJ friend of mine showed me the box set of Watermark vinyl LPs his station used to broadcast The Elvis Presley Story. Decades later, these radio masters have virtually disappeared or are of poor audio quaiity. A thirteenth chapter was added in 1975 to update the Elvis documentary

In January 1975, Watermark marketed an expanded version of The Elvis Presley Story. Hopkins, Jacobs, and Martindale gathered in Los Angeles to record a thirteenth chapter to cover the three years that had passed in Presley’s career since the original version aired. The show now comprised thirteen chapters of 51-minutes each, with 60-second commercial slots available. Radio stations could order the program in stereo or monaural. Included now were more than 80 interviews and 18 new songs, bringing the total number of tunes in The Elvis Presley Story to nearly 180.

Watermark announced that The Elvis Presley Story had been revamped in honor of Elvis’s 20th year in show business and his 40th birthday. Billboard reported that radio stations in over 300 markets had already ordered the program and that orders were still pouring in.

The third and final version of The Elvis Presley Story was rushed out soon after Presley’s death in August 1977. Among those who offered tributes to Elvis in the revamped final chapter were D.J. Fontana, J.D. Sumner, Carl Perkins, Alan Fortas, George Klein, and Sammy Davis Jr. It’s been more than 40 years now since the original The Elvis Presley Story was first heard on radio airwaves. Over the decades there have been attempts to recreate, duplicate or achieve the depth and quality of the original. Many people who offered revealing interviews have since passed on. But, just listening occasionally to sections of those tapes that I’ve kept for all these years can still bring back that special feeling I knew as a young Elvis Presley fan.

In the final analysis, Jerry Hopkins and Ron Jacobs monumental production of The Elvis Presley Story accentuated the Presley myth, the fairytale that all was bright and beautiful in his life at a time when his seduction by the dark side was well underway. I don’t know if The Elvis Presley Story is commercially available these days. Until it is I’ll keep my old tapes and listen to them occasionally through the years when the mood strikes me. After all, fairytales have their place in life. It’s nice to recall the days when Elvis’s life appeared to be one and when being an Elvis fan felt like being an extra in a movie with a happy ending. Alan Hanson, 2008

OFFERED FOR PERSONAL HOME USE ONLY. NOT TO BE RE SOLD, DUPLICATED OR OTHERWISE USED FOR ANY AND ALL COMMERCIAL AND/OR PUBLIC PURPOSES.

Ron Jacobs' ORIGINAL LEATHER-BOUND SCRIPT for The Elvis Presley Story complete with production notes, full text, discography with detailed song information, publicity photos, radio broadcast operations manual, ad layouts and a press kit is now for the first time being made available from Jacobs' personal collection of one-of-a-kind pop cultural memorabilia.

If you are seriously interested in acquiring this unique Elvis Presley collector's item for personal or institutional use please contact:makuahe@gmail.com for full details. THERE IS ONLY ONE COPY AVAILABLE--SINCE IT IS THE ONLY ONE IN EXISTENCE.

MEET MY PERSONAL ASTROLOGER ...

2011-06-02T02:30:00.000-07:00

Hi RJ! Here is your Daily VIRGO Horoscope for Thursday, June 2

Your left brain is working so smoothly it feels like a high-speed computer -- and you should reach some interesting conclusions. Make sure you're ready to act, as you might not have much time to work.

(Note from Ron Jacobs, born September Third: I am not responsible for the sloppy, off-the margin, inconsistencies of this blog entry, but the people who designed and made it, BLOGGER.COM, are the most fucked-up "communications" corporation on the planet. Aloha.)

People who are left brain dominant are usually good with with things that left brained people are good at or they like and things that are done in the left brain.

Prefer Classical Music BACH ON TOP
Your Left-Brain controls the right side of your body GOOD, MY LEFT IS IN PIECES
Prefer things like instructions to be done verbally MOVE THAT SENTENCE!
Good at math THAT’S FOUR THINGS
Like to read EASIER THAN WRITING
Follow Western Thought* FROM MIDDLE OF PACIFIC
Very Logical WHY INSANITY MAKES SENSE
Dog lovers MY OWN AND ONLY RIGBY, RIP
Don't enjoy clowning around MUCH
Can't be hypnotized SO FAR
Usually remember things only specifically studied WHAT?
Need total quiet to read or study HUH?
Like to read realistic stories ONLY
Like to write non-fiction DITTO
Prefer individual counseling THIRTY YEARS OF SHRINKAGE
Enjoy copying or tracing pictures and filling in details FOR MONEY
Also like to read action stories BRACHHH! WRONG!
Usually rational USUALLY
Usually do things in a planned orderly way USUALLY
If you have to answer someone's question, you won't let your peronal feelings get in the way UNFORTUNATELY
Good at algebra PLEASE ADVISE PUNAHOU SCHOOL
Can remember verbal material OUR FATHER WHO, WHO …
Almost never absent minded ART IN HEAVEN, FOR GOD’S SAKE!
Like to tell stories but not act them out UNLESS FOR MONEY
Can think better sitting down HOLY OKOLE
Like to be a music critic OF MELE O PAKALOLO NO KA OE
Attentive during long verbal explanations PLEASE ADVISE ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOL
Prefer well structured assignments over open ended ones RATINGS SWEEPS
Read for specific details and facts BETTER WHEN PAID
Skilled at sequencing ideas “PROGRAM DIRECTOR”
Likes to be Organized BY SOMEONE ELSE