When the music’s over…

Posted: September 26, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Two longtime friends—who helped me in my celebrated but short career as a rock ‘n’ roll singer—died this past week, causing me to recall the fine times we had with the band.

Ken Mills, who died at 75 in Minneapolis, served as the manager and booker of my band, The Trippers. Steve Ettles, who died at 72 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was the first roadie for the band.

Based in Sioux Falls, the Trippers played gigs throughout the Midwest, first as a cover band for rhythm and blues and later as an emerging acid rock group in the 1960s. We weren’t good enough to make it beyond the Midwest, but we earned spots in the Rock Halls of Fame in South Dakota and Iowa. Our one hit reached No. 99 on the Billboard’s Top Tunes.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh2r3G7a1Tg&list=PL48ywZUEnrB7ZhkJPP5VfwPw3nHIze2Kb

I’d kept in touch with Ken and Steve over the past 50-odd years and seen them both a few years ago.

In the 1960s, Ken fell in love with rock ‘n’ roll. He began managing, booking, and promoting bands as a junior in high school. After promoting bands, Ken started working in radio as a disc jockey and worked at KISD, KLOH, KELO, KXRB, and KLYX in the Sioux Falls area, as well as developing and launching his own station, KSKY, in the Black Hills. Ken was inducted into the South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009. As he got older, Ken developed a problem with his vision and became an advocate for those with severe eye disorders and blindness, using his voice to communicate with his audience.

Steve had a tougher life. His engaging smile earned him friends throughout his life. Unfortunately, his smile also got him entangled in a savings and loan association scandal. He spent a year in federal prison for doing what he thought was a favor for a friend. It turned out the friend was embezzling money unbeknownst to Steve. I told his story and those of others in a book I wrote a few years ago, Flyover Country. The book focuses on the 1969 high school graduating class from Lincoln High School in Sioux Falls.

As the introduction states: “Flyover Country focuses on a group of baby boomers who graduated from high school in 1969 in the Midwest before setting off into the world in a time of turbulence to fight in Vietnam, to protest against that war, to find jobs, to have families, and to live lives throughout the United States and overseas. Many of these people have made significant contributions to their communities as business owners, doctors, lawyers, ministers, politicians, and teachers. Many have suffered through tough times, losing their way due to alcohol or drugs or facing family crises from divorce to the death of a spouse or a child.”

Steve’s story was one of those lessons. Over time, he managed to regroup and rebrand, never losing that smile. See https://www.amazon.com/Flyover-Country-Boomers-Their-Stories/dp/0761853324

Already, two band members are gone: Mike Ward, a prominent news executive, and Terry Park, a psychiatrist. Only four of us remain.

Together, we played until the music was over. Long live rock ‘n’ roll!

ICYMI, here is my swan song at the Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Music Association Hall of Fame. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6xwsQzygtA&list=PL48ywZUEnrB7ZhkJPP5VfwPw3nHIze2Kb

Shock Revelation, Men Don’t Buy the Cow When the Milk is Free and other things my parents & grandparents knew

Posted: September 25, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

The lack of shock I get when read this piece about “successful” women freezing their eggs because they can’t find the “right” mate is palatable:

why and how some people wind up partnered and others remain relentlessly single is an impossible question to answer with either data or anecdotes. Nevertheless, certain patterns emerge. Take Kayla, a professional with an Ivy League MBA, who had frozen her eggs at 38 while dating Matt, until she finally realized after a year and a half that he was “never going to commit.” Or Lily, a curator whose long-term partner Jack ran down her reproductive clock over nearly a decade, dangling the prospect of marriage and children but never following through, leading her to freeze her eggs at the late age of 43. Or Tiffany, a woman with engineering and MBA degrees living in Washington, D.C., who, after dating men from all educational backgrounds, still hadn’t found a partner and put two egg-freezing cycles on a zero-interest credit card.

When I read this I keep going back to an informal class reunion I attended with DaWife (who I went to high school & college with but we never dated during that time). We sat with three women who in school would have been considered “out of my league” and still looked good but all were alone and never seemed to find the “right” guy and where horrified when one of our successful classmates entered with a woman 20 years younger than us.

I’m wondering if they followed the rules that Glenn Reynolds talks about here:

I hear single women talking about the “three sixes” — at least six feet tall, a six figure income, and a six-inch penis. The Venn diagram where those characteristics overlap doesn’t offer much hope.

I must confess that I fail in all three of those data points yet DaWife said “yes” when I asked and it’s now been 35 years. But when you’re in your 20’s or late 30’s and full of yourself and the promises of modern feminism those data points are more important that the prospect of realizing that being unmarried and childless in your 40’s means no mate or children when you hit your 50’s and nobody cares if you live or die particularly if you have only one sibling because who wants a big family anyways. And thus in the original article they hit on the revelation that people knew for centuries before feminism came along:

Are these fewer educated men realizing that the numbers are in their favor, and with a limitless supply of women served up on dating apps, they don’t feel the need to commit? 

Let me give women in their 30’s a piece of advice. You want a good man who will marry you and be a father to your children so that in your 60’s or 70’s you aren’t alone in a nursing home without even your degree on the wall? Find a catholic church, start attending it and look for a man there. A man who is faithful to God, doesn’t believe in divorce (that’s why I specified “catholic” and works for a living. Those are the men you are going have a long happy life with.

Your feminist friends won’t respect you but friends like that are why you are alone today.

100 Word Fan Fiction: Prologue: Statistically inconsequential Tweaks

Posted: September 25, 2023 by datechguy in fan fiction, fun
Tags: ,

“Will there be any other side effects?” asked Amy.

“Well you know” said the Doctor readjusting his Bowtie then reaching for a new Fez, “It’s a universal reboot there’s bound to be a few minor changes.”

“Minor Changes?”

“Little things Rory”, he continued circling his console & flipping switches. “A massacre averted here, a failed Dalek invasion there, the odd Traken Union not being destroyed by an entropy field, you know tiny inconsequential things.”

Amy Gasped, “Tiny?”

“Given the history of all space & time, yes.” he answered with a grin remembering red velvet.

Next:

Story 1: Surprises in Sequence:

Story 2: More errands

Droogs’ paradise: Rough first week for the “Purge Law” in Illinois

Posted: September 24, 2023 by John Ruberry in News/opinion, opinion/news
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By John Ruberry

A legal challenge, struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court, delayed the start of Illinois’ ludicrously misnamed SAFE-T Act, but it finally went into effect last Monday. 

The SAFE-T Act’s opponents refer to it as the “Purge Law,” a reference to the movie about a generally peaceful dystopian society, except for an annual 12-hour period where all crimes, including murder, are legal. The SAFE-T Act abolishes cash bail. Accused criminals are either set free after their arrest to await trial. Or they are locked up with no bail. The latter category is reserved for the most heinous criminals, as well as flight risks, and those who are suspected of being likely to intimidate witnesses, and the like.

Most accused criminals in Illinois, public safety be damned, will walk free, albeit some while wearing an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, which, in case you didn’t know, are very easy to remove.

Of course, without cash bail, which often is paid for by a friend or relative, accused criminals can be expected to be more likely to skip out of town and blow off their trial dates.

Welcome to Illinois, the criminal paradise, where Alex and his “Droogs” of A Clockwork Orange fame, will feel at home.

Here are some of the lowlights of the first week of “the Purge.”

One of the first accused thugs arrested and set free pretrial was a woman raising hell during an unofficial, and at times disruptive, Mexican Independence Day automobile caravan celebration in downtown Chicago. Esmerelda Aguilar of suburban Cicero allegedly attacked four Chicago police officers with pepper spray. Prosecutors didn’t even ask the Cook County judge presiding over her hearing to detain Aguilar.

Cook County prosecutors, in another case, didn’t ask for another accused criminal to be detained in another egregious case. A Ukranian national, Ivan Muryn, was ordered by a Cook County judge not to drive, to submit to electronic monitoring and to surrender his passport. According to CWB Chicago, Muryn has been “charged with failure to report an accident involving death.”

That death was of his wife. According to the Arlington Cardinal, Muryn was arguing with his spouse while driving in Inverness. His wife removed her seatbelt and she “fell” out of his car, and then she was fatally struck by another vehicle. Muryn kept driving. Yeah, she “fell” out of her car.

Outside of the Chicago area, two California men were pulled over in Henry County, near the Quad Cities, driving an old bus that contained over 5,000 pounds of marijuana. The value of the drugs is estimated to be worth between $6 million and $14 million. They were not jailed, even though the duo is accused of committing an Illinois Class X felony. The drug bust is being called one of the largest in Illinois history. 

Eight days ago, the sheriff of Williamson County in southern Illinois released 30 jail inmates, because of the SAFE-T Act, the sheriff said he could no longer detain them as they awaited trial. 

Back to the spiritual descendants of Alex’s Droogs.

Criminals are risk averse. If criminals believe they can get away with lawbreaking, or if they are caught, they won’t get locked up, they become emboldened. 

Early Thursday morning, at least 10 people, including a 72-year-old man who was beaten, were robbed on Chicago’s North Side. 

In an encore performance on Saturday night, in at least five incidents, a dozen people were robbed at gunpoint in a two-hour period on the city’s Northwest Side.  No one has been arrested for either wilding spree.

That last story led CWB Chicago to quip, “Did anyone in Chicago NOT get robbed or shot last night?” Oh yeah, of course people have been shot in Chicago this weekend, including an 86-year-old man.

Violence also hit DePaul University’s North Side campus on Saturday night. Four students were mugged, and one of them was beaten, another was pistol-whipped.

The Purge is here.

No one has recently heard from the SAFE-T Act’s primary champion, possible presidential candidate Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is on an extended vacation with his wife. Citing “security concerns,” the Democrat governor’s staff isn’t saying where Pritzker is. The governor, laughably but repeatedly claimed that the SAFE-T Act was about, “Making sure that we’re also addressing the problem of a single mother who shoplifted diapers for her baby, who is put in jail and kept there for six months because she doesn’t have a couple of hundred dollars to pay for bail.” The truth is, and Pritzker knows it, is that these Jean Valjeans of motherhood weren’t being jailed in Illinois, and they haven’t been so in quite some time.

Oh, back to Pritzker and his vacation: What about the security concerns of Illinois’ 12 million residents?

Kim Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney who is more of a social worker than a prosecutor, says Illinois is “on the right side of history” now that the SAFE-T Act is up and running.

Well, history sometimes takes an evil turn.

John Ruberry regularly blogs, more nervously than ever, just outside of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

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