by Peter Boyles | Nov 21, 2014 | Blasting with Boyles
As a young boy growing up I could catch the Christmas spirit right after Thanksgiving. I attended a little blue collar working class elementary school, William McKinley, and we would sing Christmas carols — remember when you could do that? Such political incorrectness as Silent Night, Little Town of Bethlehem and Santa Claus is coming to Town. There’s now fatwa by the high lord executioners in political correctness that prohibits all such merriment in today’s public schools. All of this good cheer and peace on earth must be stomped out and be replaced by the winter solstice.
So here’s a list of holiday celebrations I knew nothing about as a boy. Hanukkah. Kwanza. Ramadan and, of course, Festivus.
So let me bring a little focus on this time of the year. The funeral home across from the main gate of the steel mill I worked in was O’Neil’s. Run by a bunch of Irish drunks named O’Neil. One of the great things the O’Neils would do is put a live nativity scene in their front yard that consisted of a couple of dairy cows, a couple of sheep and maybe a goat. But I remember being in the sixth grade and from the cradle there was a beam of light that shone at night because this was the bed of the baby Jesus. I snuck under O’Neil’s fence, which was right across the street of the Edgewater Tavern to discover that the micks had put a bare 50-watt light bulb and extension cord in a little wooden cradle and I was shocked to see that a GE light bulb represented the Baby Jesus. Looking back on that I think it was my break point. After that the holidays have pretty much gone downhill.
Here is what I think of the various elements that help make up the yuletide season:
Decorating
I hate decorating. My father and members of his relatives put up a string of lights that would stay there 365 days a year. Plug that baby in December first, unplug it a couple of days after the New Year and neighbors would tell the old man if a bulb was out.
Christmas Trees
I always thought that the tree was supposed to go up on Christmas Eve. It took my brother Jeff to figure out the reason we always got the tree on Christmas Eve was that it was as cheap as it was going to get. Selling a tree on Christmas Eve is like trying to sell a dead cat; no one wanted one. The old man would wait to 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, go to Allegheny Boulevard and buy a good tree. What are the odds he was not going to get a good deal? By the way, only later in life did I discover that bubble lights weren’t just for the rich people.
Shopping
I hate shopping. I’m not a good gift buyer or giver. I always like women that would do their own shopping and I would just pay for it and of course you can never go wrong with cold hard cash. I’ve written about him before but I had a wonderful Uncle Barnie who was a Seabee and worked on a dredge on the Allegheny River. The greatest gift package he ever gave me was a knife and a cigarette lighter that, when you tipped it upside down, the sailor girl’s clothes came off. For a sixth grade kid that’s the mother lode. A knife and a nude woman.
Fighting
Fighting may not be a standard Christmas night activity for all ethnic groups but it is a venerated Irish tradition. Now the Mayor of Glendale and recent gubernatorial candidate Mike Dunafon and I had discussed and pondered this question. How many times on Christmas Eve did the tree get knocked over? It’s like the Richter scale if you ever saw your uncle fall into the Christmas tree or somebody pushed him in. I’m telling you, that’s Christmas. Fighting is part of that.
The Blues
I know for many it is the most wonderful time of the year, but I find myself suffering once again from the Christmas time blues. I don’t seem to get them on Halloween or Groundhog Day, the Fourth of July or Labor Day. I know I’m not alone and as my friends say there’s standing room only at AA.
Santa
I don’t hate Santa but then again we have the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, God and Jesus. We teach kids they’re all real. But now with a grandson I think it will be most fun to watch him fall in love with Santa.
Let’s recap. How many times are we going to listen to Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is You.” Do you remember your drunk parents? Remember getting Christmas cards you have no idea who they were from? Living on nothing but turkey-based meals for a week after Christmas?
Once those presents are unwrapped it’s depressing. So I don’t want to be too middle class and we’ll ignore the obvious target of big box stores moving product. But doesn’t every one of us remember when they found out Father Christmas does not exist. Why it is shocking is because your sainted parents have simply been lying to you for the first seven or eight years of your life.
My real problem is that I never did get that pony.
So happy “ramanahanakwanzma. “ No “Merry Christmas.”
Put up your holiday tree and shut up. Remember this folks, Christmas trees are a pagan ritual. Happy New Year.
— Peter
by Peter Boyles | Oct 24, 2014 | Blasting with Boyles
Are you confused by the United States’ foreign policy in the Middle East? Let’s begin.
- We support the Iraqi government in its fight against ISIS.
2. We don’t like ISIS but ISIS is supported by Saudi Arabia who we do like.
- We don’t like Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him. But ISIS is also fighting against Assad.
- We don’t like Iran. But Iran supports the Iraqi government in its fight against ISIS.
- Some of our friends support our enemies.
- Some of our enemies are now our friends.
- And some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies who we want to lose.
- But we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.
- If the people we want to defeat are defeated they could be replaced by people we like even less.
10. Reminding you all this was started by George W. Bush invading a country to drive out terrorists who weren’t actually there.
- But are there now.
Now do you understand American foreign policy??
I am currently reading political scientist Andrew Bacevich. He writes, “Since 1980 the United States has invaded, occupied or bombed 14 nations in the greater Middle East. If you’re following along at home let’s count them.
- Iran
- Libya
- Lebanon
- Kuwait
- Iraq
- Somalia
- Bosnia
- Saudi Arabia
- Afghanistan
- Sudan
- Kosovo
- Yemen
- Pakistan
- And now… Syria
So once again let’s do the math.
Tens of thousands of brave young men and women are wounded or dead. No one knows how many trillions have been lost and no one knows how many people in the Muslim world are dead or how many have become refugees. And I ask you for what?
Pat Buchanan asks that wonderful political question, are you better off now than you were 30 years ago with American policy in the Middle East?
Which terrorist organization do we want to win this battle?
In the news last week, al Qaeda and the Arabian peninsula, who the United States has been attacking for years, (remember the mind of George W. Bush — if you’re a Muslim and don’t like the United States you’re Taliban.) they sent a suicide bomber in an explosive filled automobile into a hospital occupied by Houthi rebels. Remember those boys? Their slogan was “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and a victory to Islam.” As Pat Buchanan says, how do you figure this one?
The Houthis are fighting Al-Qaeda like Hezbollah is fighting Al-Qaeda. Both are Shia supported by Iran which is on our side against ISIS and Syria and Syria is on our side against the Islamic state in Iraq.
I have no idea what this is all about. Can you attempt to understand any of this?
I’ll leave you with this.
George W. Bush’s most compelling evidence for an invasion of Iraq was forged reports alleging Saddam Hussein had been secretly buying raw material to build an atomic bomb. Remember it. It was called the “Italian letter.”
Happy Thanksgiving.
— Peter
by Peter Boyles | Sep 29, 2014 | Blasting with Boyles
Cary Grant, Age 70
Maybe you can relate to this column, except if you have been happily married for 45 years, in which case you are the human equivalent of a unicorn.
I always described my mother and father’s marriage as being like the Vietnam war. They fought every day until they forgot why they were fighting but continued battling on anyway. I’m a big fan of Hank Williams Sr., who in the legendary country song Mind Your Own Business, declared: “Me and my old lady got a license to fight.”
I have long joked that I can’t do math and I can’t do marriage. This is not the Courtship of Eddie’s Father or Sleepless in Seattle. I can’t get it right. The protocols and practice of dating I think vary with each relationship to where you live, how old you are or whether or not you drink.
Back in the old days one of my many mantras was, “I can drink her pretty.” Or again, another country legend, Mickey Gilley’s Don’t the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time. I was a whirlwind at that. I couldn’t miss. There were degrees to my drinking. One of the levels arrived about nine o’clock on Friday nights when in my mind I became Robert Redford. I became bulletproof until about one-thirty in the morning when I became invisible. That worked well then. That was then, this is now.
How many really cool singles places are there for guys my age? I tried the websites. My personal favorite is bikerplanet.com, where you want to take her with you in case there’s a bar fight. I love these women, they’re my dear friends, but it’s not my idea of a partner in an intimate relationship with eyes on the future. I also gave millionaire.com a shot where everyone is a liar. But, if I had millions stashed away, I wouldn’t have to work so hard for a date.
Also, there’s the Christian singles but for a practicing pagan like myself that leaves me little room. I looked at OurTime.com but these people were born well before the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor.
I’ve tried them all and I’ve given up on matchmaking services, family as matchmakers, Ouija boards and TV shows.
Some of my friends are seeing women in their 20s. Their so-called “nieces.” We have talked about downtown Denver hotels where you can see older men saying goodnight to their “nieces.” But I think that’s a little over the top.
As guys approach septuagenarian status they like to see themselves as being Cary Grant squiring around Dyan Cannon, except they are not Cary Grant. Plus Grant and Cannon were reportedly miserable together. She divorced him before he even hit the big seven zero.
This is a quandary. I know there are many men and women my age who feel like this is the last chapter of “What’s the use.”
How do you go about being a single guy or gal in this part of our lives? I have a homosexual friend who once said to me. “Nobody loves you when you’re old and gay.” I think that’s true for straights, too.
So if you have any suggestions, let me know. We could make a fortune because I know a lot of people out there who share in my dilemma.
I have therefore decided to forget about relationships and I am going to take the time I would otherwise have devoted to dating and building a relationship to helping others. There are lots of vets from Iraq and Afghanistan with physical disabilities, PTSD and TBI that could use some support that the VA is not providing. Moreover, there are going to be a lot more on the way with our latest insane Iraqi/Syria incursion.
There are also plenty of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts down at Step 13 who, as they say, need a “hand up and not a hand out.” I have found helping others is the best way to stop worrying about myself. Moreover, you never know who you might meet when you are not looking. As the inestimable Scarlett O’Hara so pithily stated, “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
— Peter
by Peter Boyles | Aug 29, 2014 | Blasting with Boyles
Years ago as a young man in the radio business, I had the ultimate pleasure of working for one of the most gifted general managers I ever knew. His name was Joe Ryan (another Irishman in radio — who knew?) He came up with the concept and idea that’s driven me through the rest of my radio career. Ryan called it the “triple bank shot.” And it went like this.
You have the cue and you hit the ball. It hits the first rail. At that point the station makes money. Off of that rail, it hits the opposing rail. At that point the DJ makes money and if the ball is fast enough to make it to the third rail, the sponsor can make a buck.
This is my “triple bank shot” of how bad the Denver media is.
Number one. There’s a Washington organization called CREW, known as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. About a quarter of a million dollars came to Colorado to the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) just before that group, headed up by John Suthers, donated (i.e. washed) the money for a third party that gave Tom Tancredo his last hurrah. Bob Beauprez says he has no idea where the money came from. And John Suthers, erstwhile Attorney General who happens to be one of the driving forces in the RAGA and a huge Beauprez booster, also ‘“Schultzed” it that he had no knowledge of anyone’s involvement in the Colorado gubernatorial primary.
Now, my mother raised a lot of ugly children but not a lot of real dumb ones. Bob Beauprez wants to be your next governor and has no idea how the money got here? John Suthers, on the other hand, has not returned my phone call. And then lo and behold almost like the genie in Aladdin, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie shows up to take a victory lap with both-ways Bob. Oh and BTW, Chris Christie chairs the Republican Governors Association. In the words of Gomer Pyle, “Surprise, surprise.”
Next: The Return of the Native, Michael Huttner. Huttner has recently been lionized in The Denver Post by Joey Bunch. With a headline “Michael Huttner’s return to Colorado politics ups the campaign season ante.” It’s a glowing piece on Huttner. We’re told Huttner has returned to Colorado because he’s tired of Beauprez’s “extreme backward views” and Beauprez’s history of “unethical conduct.” Oh, by the way, he’s arrived with $1.7 million in TV ad contracts, according to the FCC.
But let’s call for a time-out on the field and maybe somebody other than this newspaper will tell the truth about Michael Huttner and his butt boy Jason Salzman. In August 2009, the two published a book titled “50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America.” At the time this was out of Progress Now. Huttner and Salzman promised a round trip ticket for two to Hawaii and a visit to the birth hospital of Obama. The winner would leave on Martin Luther King’s birthday and go there and volunteer to help the poor in Hawaii. No one ever won that prize. No trip was given away and like a thief in the night Huttner split town.
Now, I can’t be just the only person who remembers that grift, the long con. When you promise an award and then not give it you have violated Colorado and federal law. That’s according to the Colorado Consumer Protection Act (attention Tom Martino). I have not been able to interest John Suthers or, for that matter, Mitch Morrissey, Denver’s fighting DA, to take a look at Huttner and Salzman. Frankly, Michael Huttner talking about unethical behavior is truly laugh out loud funny. I got your way to help Obama change America. In January of 2017 when, like Huttner he will leave.
Note to Huttner and Salzman. Anytime you two clowns want to come on the radio show, it’s 303-696-1971. I’m sure you’ll appear right after Suthers.
The next person in the triple bank shot is Colorado’s modern day Fagan with his band of little thieves. I’m sure you’ve not heard or seen the story of the last of the Romanoffs greeting and meeting a carload of little dreamers who came to chalk up the sidewalk in front of Iron Mike Coffman’s headquarters. The video is classic. You can see it on my website, 710knus.com.
On the 27th of June former Colorado House Speaker Andrew the last of the Romanoffs brought a couple of carloads of little dreamers to Coffman’s office. Is this guy truly not smart enough to realize there are surveillance cameras all over Denver? On the video you watch Romanoff welcome the carload of little dreamers and then when they’re confronted by the building manager, Romanoff jumps in his Prius. OMG, a Prius. What a getaway car, and drives off the lot leaving the little dreamers to clean things up.
Now myself and my audience have been trying to shop that story to The Denver Post, Denver TV outlets and in particular KUSA, Channel 9. And thus my third bank shot — Kyle Clark and the entire crack KUSA news team. These people care about you so much that Kyle has a standard spam response to anyone who would offer the video or ask him why KUSA ignored it. The response from Kyle is laughable, including there was no evidence Romanoff directed students to the chalking. Which would mean he just happened to show up in a parking lot in the Prius at 3300 S. Parker Road by happenstance. Now come on. But we jumped into the time machine to watch Kyle Clark chase Mike Coffman down the street accusing him of then, God forbid, a birther thought which became the lead story on KUSA. Hmmmm.
You have Andy Pandy doing the dirty work and then escaping in his Prius but the confrontation that Kyle had with Iron Mike is worth revisiting the motion picture Rainman. Where all Coffman could say was, “I stand by my statement I apologize.”
In conclusion, several things. One, all the above-mentioned politicians are holding public office or want to. Two, the other names above mentioned manage your sources of information. I have this strange vision that on the evening news with Brian Williams he should open with, “Good evening, I’m Brian Williams. This is what we’d like you to think tonight. The door’s open boys anytime you want to walk in, come in. The weather’s fine in the studio.”
— Peter
by Peter Boyles | Aug 1, 2014 | Blasting with Boyles
Blasting With Boyles
Hard to believe my daughter Shannon turned 40 years of age on July 7 of this year. The first morning my voice ever appeared on Denver radio was on the day she was born. I was the traffic reporter’s assistant at the AAA Auto Club on Colorado Boulevard and on July 7, 1974, the traffic reporter failed to show up for work. I had been at the hospital that night when Shannon was born, went in to work, he didn’t show up and so I went on the air. Something about westbound I-70 or a gaper’s block or one of those hackneyed traffic reporter overused clichés. You remember when I-70 and I-25 were the mousetrap? When traffic reporters used to report that cops were “taking their pictures” as they went speeding out 6th Avenue? Yeah, that was me.
Dan Hopkins, who retired as Governor Bill Owen’s Press Secretary some years ago (it seems like everyone I broke in the business with is either retired, dead or lost their jobs due to some form of substance abuse) hired me to b
e the assistant to the traffic reporter and steal traffic reports from radio stations that had airplanes overhead giving traffic reports. That was pre-helicopter days. I’d like to take this moment to thank Don Martin, Dick Dylan and the guy that flew for KOA for allowing me to steal their hard work and reproduce it as a traffic report for the AAA Auto Club. After a series of Mr. Big Voice traffic reports, Hopkins gave me my break and let me be the on-air traffic reporter. In fact I was Alan Berg’s traffic reporter and the traffic reporter for the man who became my first mentor in the business, the late great Bob Lee.
During that time I was in grad school at DU. My daughter was a baby, my father had passed away and, as Ray Charles says, I was busted. Not Hillary Clinton dead broke. Real dead broke. And then a miracle happened. The late Jack Merker, who had once been Billboard Magazine’s program director of the year, asked me if I wanted to be a weekend disc jockey on KAAT radio. A 50-thousand watt daytime only radio station that broadcast on the floor below the Playboy Club at the Radisson Hotel — Pete Boyles meets the occasion of sin.
Jack said to me, “You’re pretty smart and you’re funny and I’m looking for a weekend guy.” I needed money and probably would have done anything short of selling heroin to keep the ball in the air. I wandered into the very first radio station in my life. I spent the first Friday watching Jack cue records, load cart machines, read the log, pull the commercials and all the things that on air guys did before the digital age. The next day, a Saturday, I returned to KAAT, watched Jack again and then about 4:30 in the afternoon he said, “Switch seats. You take it.” I got behind the console, Jack walked out of the studio and I threw up in the wastebasket where the AP wire machine used to dump its paper. I did probably the worst half hour in Denver radio history. Now it gets good. True to form, Jack said, “Hey not as bad as you think, let’s go get a drink.”
And they gave me weekend work. But what I had to do was go in at night (remember this is a daytime only radio station, at night it was, as they say, in the black) and practice doing radio. I specifically remember the night, and I’ve only told this story to very few people, I was sitting behind what to me looked like the console of the Starship Enterprise practicing radio. And I heard a little voice say, “ Hey, where you been? We’ve been waiting for you.”
That was either the best or worst moment in my life. Later in that week, another great influence, the late Gus Mircos who was also working there, took me to a little greasy spoon restaurant on Colfax and told me, “You seem like a really nice young man. If you’re as smart as you seem, you will stay the hell away from this business.” Not me boy. I already figured out you could drink for free in the bar of the Radisson Hotel and I wasn’t going to give that up. That same wonderful influence, Gus Mircos, also took me to that same restaurant several months later and said, “Hey kid, you ever notice when you turn on your radio on Christmas there’s somebody there?” I said, “I never thought of it but yes.” To which the Greek said, “This year kid, it’s you.” After that I think I worked every Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Labor Day, New Year’s Eve because that is what you did.
During that time period I met my next mentor, the late Bob Lee and went on to become the Lee and Boyles show on KLAK radio. People still talk about that show. I don’t remember it. That shows you what a good time we really had.
I’ve been fired twice, had three radio stations fold around two marriages, my best friend murdered and crawled into recovery from drugs and alcohol 30 years ago. And with the exception of losing Alan, I wouldn’t have traded any of it for anything in the world. When people today, and there’s plenty of them, complain about being in the media business I want to smack them in the face as hard as I can. I saw my father go to work. Since I got a job in this business 40 years ago I’ve never really worked a day in my life. I remember the first day I went to work in a steel mill at 17- years-old and came home laying on the couch in the old man’s living room. And he walked in the door and looked at me and said, “Well, now you know why they call it work.” I’ve never felt that way about radio, TV or the newspaper business.
Gawd I’ve had a great time. I’ve met the most amazing people. I’ve gone places, done things (some of them I regret), but if it were all to end today I’ve gone further than anyone I grew up with thought I ever would or ever could. But I guess in a strange way I owe it all to Marconi.
Most of the people who influenced me, as I said earlier are gone, or out of the business. But I hope there’s someplace right now where Hal and Charlie are doing mornings, Bob Lee’s doing middays, Gus Mircos is hosting a news show, Jack Merker is playing the top 40 hits, Alan Berg is telling some old lady on Capitol Hill to paint her dog’s toenails and quit bothering him. And some young kid is stealing traffic reports and putting them on the air. And somebody says, “Hey kid there’s some woman on line 3 and she says her husband knows about you.”
Remember, always give the call letters, always give the time, always give the temperature and back sell the record. And, the 40 years have flown by.
— Peter
by Peter Boyles | Jun 20, 2014 | Blasting with Boyles
If you read Buddhism, three things the Buddha says cannot remain hidden for long. The sun, the moon and the truth. And it should dawn on everyone that the truth is finally hitting home about George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, the neocons and what they did to another generation of fine young men and women in a series of tragic wars.
Occupation, which is really what it is, of Afghanistan has gone on for 13 years. That was ushered in by 23 years of war between the Soviets and the same group of happy campers, mujahidin and various mujahidin fac
tions. The final result — the Taliban.
Remember in October 2001, the U.S. invades Afghanistan for harboring Osama bin Laden. No one will ever know the numbers of people killed and lives of people destroyed. And the Bushies put the chosen people in power in Kabul and tried to make deals with war lords, who themselves often hired the Taliban.
After that in March 2003, the Bush Administration took on Saddam Hussein. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others made repeated claims that Iraq possessed chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
This, George Bush and the screaming neocons said, was a direct threat to the security of the United States of America and the rest of the civilized world.
Following the invasion of Iraq, months and months of investigations found no stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. In fact, no evidence of any active “wmd” programs were ever found. The evidence now indicates their program for nukes ended in 1991 following the first Gulf War. Iraq destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile in ’91. Its biological stockpiles in ’91 and ’92. Through 1998, UN weapons inspectors repeatedly checked suspected facilities, installed cameras and nothing was ever there.
Remember this is the first time in the history of our nation that, unprovoked, the United States of America invaded a sovereign country.
George Bush invoked this war using two repeated mantras. One was weapons of mass destruction. The other was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, that Saddam had ties with Al-Qaeda and therefore was complicit in the 9/11 attacks. Both are giant lies.
In fact, today there is no evidence or even an email or a conversation between the regime and bin Laden. Saddam Hussein hated the religious crazies and did everything in his power to destroy them and did.
In August 2006, a report from Congress under the direction of John Conyers, “found that members of the Bush administration misstated, overstated and manipulated intelligence with regard to links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.
We are now able to read minutes and notes in reports commissioned by Dick Cheney about invading Saddam well before the terrible attacks of September 11, 2001.
The documents speak for themselves. Cheney’s secret energy task force that includes maps of Iraqi oil fields and pipelines, refineries, terminals and a whole section titled “Foreign suitors for Iraqi oil field contracts.” These documents and studies are dated March 2001, six months before 9/11, two years before Bush invades Iraq.
When the 9/11 Museum opened in May, and they were all invited, not one neocon attended. Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld conspicuous by their absence.
So now, as we write this, we’re witnessing the fall of Baghdad much like the fall of Saigon. Puppet governments, corrupt individuals, lies told by the Administration (remember Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin incident where Johnson claimed that the USS Maddox and sister ship the Turner Joy were attacked at night by a nonexistent navy in the Gulf of Tonkin).
I find myself like so many people drawn to this insanity and asking ourselves how can we get rid of these people?
I believe that the Administration invaded Afghanistan but the primary target all along was Iraq. They sold the war with lies and now the great sadness comes home. A lot of brave young men and women’s lives will never be the same. Middle East is in turmoil, the despots that kept their thumbs down on religious crazies are gone and we’re watching the birth of an insanity that will rage across Sub-Saharan and Saharan Africa into Europe. And of course you cannot say anything bad about Islam because the politically correct will call you an “Islamophobe,” the modern equivalent to racist.
I rest my case.
— Peter
P.S. It’s going to be fascinating when Mrs. Clinton begins her run to the Oval Office and millions of racists will suddenly become anti-feminists. Mark my words.
