At last!
Just sat down with printmaker-extraordinaire Danielle Urschel and Nicci B, one of the bosses at The Back Door, and got the full dope the big Inaugurate the Revolution bash a week from Friday here in Bloomington.
While President Gag is being sworn in on Jan. 20th, the rest of us who possess any remaining shreds of sentience’ll be swearing at him and the entire electoral racket that put him in power despite his losing the popular vote by nearly 3 mill. His swearing will, of course, be broadcast around the globe and throughout the immediate solar system while much of ours — I’d been figuring to this point — would be done in private.
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No more. At least in this sprawling megalopolis, we’ll get a chance to meet and greet other anti-Trumpists, actually do positive, productive things to reverse the regressive course our holy land is apparently on, and then scream our fool heads off at an evening rally. Inaugurate the Revolution, it’s hoped, will be the start of something big. Here are the highlights:
- Four locations around town
- Nearly 40 workshops
- Activist art exhibits
- Resistance poetry
- Movies
- A march
- A rally
Click on over to the event website for a detailed schedule of events. The day begins at 9:00am and runs through 8:00pm, so wear your comfortable shoes and pack a lunch. Then again, if your endurance is iffy, you can pick and choose, cafeteria-style, the events and activities you want to participate in.
While some of our lucky sisters are hieing over to the nation’s capital for the Women’s March on Washington, we Hoosier-bound souls can start making things happen right here at home.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
[MG Note: Keep an ear on WFHB radio, 93.1 FM, for more words about Inaugurate the Revolution. I’m told by News Director Joe Crawford that Doug Storm’s Interchange and Clarence Boone et al‘s Bring It On! programs will feature bits on the event over the next week.]
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Big Talk Is Back, Babies!
Speaking of WFHB, tune in tomorrow afternoon at 5:00pm for the latest installment of Big Talk on the Daily Local News.
My guest will be Anne Hedin, one of the brainstormers behind Sunday’s “The Fierce Urgency of Now”: Time to Choose environmental advocacy event in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s b-day.
Tune in Thursday afternoon for the broadcast and, remember, if you miss it, you can always catch the podcast on WFHB’s website or on this global communications colossus.
I’ll talk to you then.
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The Start Of Something Big
Steve Allen was one of the coolest guys ever to host a late night TV show. He was one of the pioneers of the genre, as a matter of fact. He was so popular as the first host of the Tonight Show that network bwanas gave him his own prime time, eponymous variety showcase that aired from 1956 through 1964, and from which the clip below is taken.
Allen’s repertory company included the likes of Don Knotts, Tom Poston, Louie Nye, Pat Harrington, Bill Dana, Gabriel Dell, Gene Rayburn, and Skitch Henderson. The Steve Allen Show featured some of the earliest national TV appearances by Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Louis Jordan (with his Tympany Five), and The Treniers. Allen’s shows were noted for their uproarious shticks, gags, and bits, many of which continue to inspire the writers of today’s late nighters like Conan, Colbert, Myers, and even that Phallus…, er, I mean, Fallon guy.
Anyway, Allen, who’d been praised by Lenny Bruce as “the most literate and … the most moral comic I ever met,” railed and raged against the Mob’s influence on Hollywood and Las Vegas, America’s entertainment Babylons. [For more info on that, check out the Gus Russo books, The Outfit and Supermob.] For his efforts, Allen was frozen out of booking top talent for his prime time show, leading to its eventual cancellation.
It’s said Allen wrote more than 1000 songs — although critics liked to say most of them were variations on this one:
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