Death and Taxes

I've been asked why I sometimes call people like this "stupid" and "idiotic" and I would like to respond. It is because I insist on being precise in my use of language.

That said, I want all you teabaggers out there to remember two things: Firstly, you didn't say a goddamn word when George W. Bush (and, by the way, conveniently hid the multi-trillion dollar cost of the Iraq while so doing) took us from the biggest surplus in US history to the biggest deficit in US history. Secondly, I can't remember what the second thing was. Oh, yeah. You lost. In paraphrase of the words of your leader, the drug-addled gasbag Rush Limbaugh, when you start winning elections you can talk. Until then, shut up! SHUT UP! Ronald Reagan is dead, and soon his policies will be dead, too.

Enough of that.

If you lived in Detroit in the late 1970's and early 1980's, the three biggest radio personalities in town were J.P McCarthy, Dick Purtan and Deano Day. My very first big-time (read: major-market) job was at WCXI in the late 70's and Deano Day was the AM Drive jock. He was big-time. He made more than the rest of the staff put together and probably times two.

Deano died last week. He was 70. I went to his wake yesterday and ran into more than a few people I hadn't thought of in years. Names were brought up of people who were once an integral part of my life but which, with the passing of time, I had forgotten completely.

Stories were told. The one I told involved the time I was filling in for the regular sports guy while he was on vacation and so there I was, a little nervous as I'm on a station with a lot of listeners and I've never done this before and all. I prepared assiduously. I came in early. I must have spent a couple of hours typing up my stories. (In those days you used something called a "typewriter" on a media known as "paper" to prepare items for broadcast.) While I was live on the air reading those stories I had worked so hard on, Uncle Deano reached over with his Bic and, while I was holding them in my hands, set them on fire. If this is not in violation of Federal Communications Commission regulations, I can tell you that it really ought to be. I actually started to read faster in hopes of disseminating the information before it turned into ash. The boys in the studio were hysterical. A couple of days ago when I told her the story, my daughter asked me why I had let Deano do it and I told her that to have not would have ruined the bit. "You don't want to be unprofessional," I said.

We told stories about about a day-long country music concert our station hosted at the Michigan State Fairgrounds where the headliner, one Johnny Paycheck, arrived four hours late and six sheets to the wind. He had to be picked up and carried from the bus to the backstage area and shoved onto the stage where he performed remarkably well all things considered and was then carried back onto the bus never to be heard from again.

We told a lot of great stories. It all served to remind me what a remarkable group of on-air talent I was associated with in those days and how lucky I was, as a very young broadcaster just starting out, to be a part of that group. I learned a lot and I remembered more than I thought I had.

Godspeed, Deano. You were a funny man and you were always good to me. Those hundred or so people who were there for you at the funeral home represented a mere fraction of the people whose lives you touched and who loved you because of it.