Here I am, again being coarse and luridly descriptive in my own, highly imitable way: Today’s post can serve as the very dictionary definition of circle jerk.
Or, at least, a picture of the post would accompany that dict. def. — that is, if any dict. carries a def. of same (besides Strong Language: A Sweary Blog about Swearing).
Anyway, my guest on Big Talk later this afternoon will be Limestone Post editor Ron Eid. He jumped with both feet into the frying pan that is journalism a few years after he’d graduated from Indiana University back in the early ’80s. It was an airline mag piece about a guy’s bike trip through New Zealand that put the bug in his ear. He figured, Hey, if some sonuvabitch can make a paycheck writing about traveling to cool places, why the hell can’t I. Eid promptly enrolled in a master’s program in journalism and saddled himself with so much debt that it was almost impossible for him to chase around the globe trying to write articles about cool places.
Life does get in the way when you’re making plans, doesn’t it?
Eid — A Long, Long Time Ago
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The Limestone Post, as loyal Pencillistas know, is a partner in Big Talk, along with this global communications colossus and WFHB radio.
Hmm. Next thing you know, I’ll be interviewing myself. Which, BTW, someone suggested to me with a straight face the other day. The only concern I’d have? That I might lie to myself. Something I’ve become adept at, lo these last 60-plus years.
So, tune in at 5:00pm to WFHB, 91.3FM for the Daily Local News and the regular Thursday feature, Big Talk. And don’t forget, I’ll post the link to the podcast here tomorrow AM.
Talk to you then.
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Cool Jerk
So, yeah, like, you thought I was gonna post a Circle Jerks vid here, right? C’mon, man, that was too obvious. Rather, I selected this 1966 gem from The Capitols.
Here’s a great genesis story about the hit that reached No. 2 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 7 on the Hot 100 chart. Some members of the Motown house band, the Funk Brothers, used to see pimps dancing at Detroit clubs back in the mid ’60s. The pimps adopted a cooler-than-thou attitude, natch, and it carried over to their dance style. The hot dance at the time was the Jerk but the pimps, being too cool to Jerk with, shall we say, the requisite gusto, opted instead to perform their own version of the dance with icy restraint. Myself, I recall thinking about such cool dancers some years later when I was a club kid, Man, that dude’s dancing so cool he’s not even moving!
Anyway, one of the Funk Brothers wrote a song about those guys and named it the Pimp Jerk. When the Bros. brought the tune to their Motown bosses, the label guys said, Uh-uh, mang, we ain’t puttin’ a platter with that title out, dig? So the Bros. renamed it Cool Jerk and there you are.
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