My Favorite Mayor

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch Dies at Age 88

Ed Koch

December 12, 1924 — February 1, 2013

Phyllis Diller: Pioneer Stand-Up Comic

Phyllis Diller at Retro Comic Spotlight

Phyllis Diller

July 17, 1917 — August 20, 2012

Phyllis Diller Dies at 95

Oil Wars: The Barons Strike Back

On October 17, 1973 OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) cut off oil supplies to the United States and The Netherlands because these two nations helped Israel defend itself from yet another military attack by Egypt. They helped Israel attack Syria in response to the Egyptian attack on Israel, which is about as appropriate as shooting the neighbor's cat because their dog bit you.

Then, while spoiled American consumers continued to commute hundreds of miles to and from work every week and who still went shopping at the drop of a hat for things they didn't really need, American gas stations began running completely out of gasoline. Not only that, OPEC's hateful, stubborn "hissy fit" against the West jacked up the price of OPEC oil being exported to Europe by 70%.

Everyone tried to blame the "Arab Oil Embargo" of 1973 on President Richard Nixon, whom everybody in the entire world hated for being a Republican and for simply being "an American president" during the Vietnam War. In fact, everybody in the world was so damn mad at the Israelis and the Americans and the Dutch they completely forgot that Egypt started the whole thing because Egyptian Arabs hate Israeli Jews more than any people in the entire world, except for Americans, who led the allied nations in saving the world from domination by Germany twice during the 20th Century. Wow. That's a funny thing to be hated for.

OPEC finally lifted the oil embargo against The U.S. on March 18, 1974, after getting the "Big Picture" that America will always defend Israel, probably forever, and that American oil speculators on Wall Street make a killing on oil stocks and oil futures every time tempers flare and bombs start dropping in the Holy Land.

What a world.

"All in the Family" in 25 Words or Less

American television producer Norman Lear's unbridled 1970's attack on WASP America, using situation comedy, stereotypes, social issues and hatred to make money for corporate America.

Why Rock Once Ruled

Although I'm a 58-year-old, over-the-hill recluse whose favorite music is jazz and big band (most of it before my time) and some classical, I'm still aware of how and why Rock music once ruled the airwaves in the 1960s and 70s.

It wasn't simply because Rock (or, Rock and Roll, if you will) was the banner music of Baby Boomers, the biggest generation in Earth's history, and that this was a generation in rebellion because of all the lies and deceit and corruption they had been born into. That was merely the catalyst. Rock music was a secret recipe for feeding the strongest human emotions of impressionable and vulnerable youths with more emotion. Rock was an addictive pabulum for the uncontrolled and seemingly uncontrollable thoughts, actions and hormones of a new generation of movers-and-shakers whose courtship with life had scarcely begun.

The formula for Rock music was to take two parts "anger", one part "personal discovery", add a dollop of "revelation about life" and a generous helping of "sex". Blend together with a driving beat, adding addictive guitar runs and tantalizing licks as you go. Sweet and sour vocals, spicy flute and exotic keyboards are optional. Bake uncovered at 98.6 degrees for about 20 years. Sprinkle with your favorite herb and serve immediately.

A Baker's Dozen*
Song Title - Artist (Release Date)

_1. Satisfaction - Rolling Stones (1965)
_2. Under My Thumb - Rolling Stones (1966)
_3. Somebody to Love - Jefferson Airplane (1967)
_4. All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix (1968)
_5. Born to Be Wild – Steppenwolf (1968)
_6. Layla - Derek and the Dominos [Eric Clapton] (1970)
_7. Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin (1970)
_8. Locomotive Breath – Jethro Tull (1971)
_9. Rock and Roll – Led Zeppelin (1971)
10. Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who (1971)
11. Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress) – The Hollies (1972)
12. Barracuda – Heart (1977)
13. Heartbreaker - Pat Benatar (1979)

*These music links were chosen for audio quality, not video quality. Video images may not reflect the release date of these songs. Headphones are recommended. I apologize beforehand for links that have changed. YouTube video links are not carved in stone. I'll monitor these links as best I can. It is also recommended that you ignore the comments posted by YouTube viewers. Many of these comments are unnecessarily crude and improper for a public forum.

The Frisbee in 25 Words or Less

Playing catch with a little, plastic, flying saucer replaced baseball as the national pastime for youngsters in the 1960s and 1970s. Now dogs could play.

Disco’s 15 Minutes

Future Past
Disco  Link

By the late 1970s a lot of people had gotten pretty tired of what had been left of the American pop music scene after the British Rock invasion in the mid-1960s. Rockers were a dime a dozen by 1977 even though their music was still very popular with the beer-drinking and pot-smoking counterculture that had spawned on the heels of head-banging American rock-and-roll. Southern Boogie bands and Heavy Metal bands and even Glitter Rock were about to be upstaged by a pop music phenomenon that had less to do with rebellion and more to do with celebration.

Disco had arrived.

Disco music was much more than just another wave of night crawlers who had come out of the American nocturnal woodwork to act up, act out and carry on until three in the morning. It meant people could now dress up again when they went out. It mean that there were more musical instruments in the world than the electric guitar, harmonica and drums. There were brass horns, electronic keyboards, electronic percussion instruments now. Violins and flutes were making a comeback, only they weren’t playing stiff-necked, watered-down versions of old worn-out rock songs for elevators or mood music for a new generation of Beatniks or Hippies with no place to go as 1980 rapidly approached. Disco bands played upbeat dance music for couples to dance to while touching one another once again.

It wasn’t Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey but Disco was certainly something to celebrate in its own right. It’s just too damn bad that the new counterculture that invariably attached itself to Disco music eventually turned out to be twice as socially rebellious, drug-related and lascivious as the previous rock-and-roll and just plain rock culture. Beer and pot were quickly replaced by cocktails, cocaine and an unflagging desire to be bad when the world so desperately needed people to start being good again.

By 1980, all the counterculture freaks had arrived, as they always do whenever creative minds give the world something new and wonderful, and by 1982 Disco's death rattle was heard around the world. And, yes, Disco may have “died”, as its retractors are always fond of saying, but the Punk Rock, New Wave, “Grunge” Rock and other flash-in-the-pan musical fads that eventually replaced it unfortunately played host to the same counterculture of predictable moral decay and wanton behavior, just like a mutating virus that simply moves on once its host is sucked dry and all washed up.

“Elevator Music” in 25 Words or Less

The tacky, watered-down, string orchestra versions of mostly old Beatles hits that got piped into elevators and doctors' offices, mainly in the 1970s and 1980s.

“The Jet Set” in 25 Words or Less

In the 1960s and 1970s rich, vain, shallow people — mostly from Hollywood — flew everywhere in jets without any purpose and thought their shit didn’t stink.

Women’s Lib Fib

The so-called “Women’s Movement” actually began in the late 1960s but it wasn’t really evident as a “generational cause” until the early 1970s when Baby Boomer women began worshiping the “mother of feminism", that hideous pagan idol Betty Friedan (a.k.a Betty Goldstein) and her diabolical protégée, Gloria Steinem.

What began as an American cultural movement to free women from the stigma of being second class citizens and to fight for equal employment opportunities for them soon degraded into a surreptitiously orchestrated, life-long, man-hating event.

The fact that Betty Friedan was a homely and miserable hag who simply hated men seemed to go unnoticed by everyone except the beautiful and sophisticated — and unscrupulous — Gloria Steinem, who stuck herself to Friedan and her bilious diatribe like fly paper and who subsequently exploited the American man-hating movement for her own personal aggrandizement.

Throughout the Seventies decade Steinem almost single-handedly duped millions of Baby-Boomer women into not only hating the men of their father’s and grandfather’s generations for all the alleged abuse suffered by their mothers and grandmothers, but focused her own man-hatred on instilling in feminine youth a hatred for the men of their own generation, young men who were hated for things they didn’t even have a chance to think about yet, let alone be guilty of.

Besides, an awful lot of them were dying in Vietnam, without ever having the opportunity to try on “a male chauvinist pig” mask to see if it actually fit.

Just like the Nazis who preceded them and who successfully hated an entire world for no reason at all, the feminists of “Women’s Lib” also proved to the world that a philosophy built upon hatred can, indeed, move a nation forward.