by Peter Boyles | Feb 2, 2015 | Blasting with Boyles
I love medieval history. Disease was one of the greatest course changers in the history of the world. According to historians when certain diseases hit parts of the world, history is changed.
One of the interesting parts of the First World War was the arrival of what was called the Spanish Flu. That killed more American soldiers than the Germans. By far. And in fact a lot of people believe the flu ripped through the trenches on both sides. Because as I’m sure some of you know, the Germans believed they were ahead in the war before the flu struck.
When the plagues befell Europe in the middle of the 14th century they came in waves. Black Death and Red Death.
Red Death was smallpox and Black Death was bubonic plague.
If you read the stories of Columbus and the sailors of the 15th century, when picking out crews they looked for pock marks on the faces of recruits knowing that meant they had survived the plague and could go on the ship.
Sea captains were under strict orders never to come into port when they knew they had plague on board and would hoist a yellow flag telling people on shore that they had plague on the ship.
Also since I’m a cat lover, medieval Christians during the heights of plague believed it was brought on by Satan and of course Satan’s handmaidens, witches. And what rode on the tails of those brooms and lived with witches? You got it, cats.
What did cats kill? Cats killed rats. What rode on rats? Fleas. What did fleas carry? The plague. Are you starting to get the picture?
When I was a little fellow growing up in Pittsburgh I got scarlet fever. I have dim memories of it and remind everyone this was before penicillin was available to the average working class person. Today we call it strep but it can become scarlet fever and of course affects almost no one because it can be stopped in its tracks by penicillin.
The old man’s first floor apartment was quarantined by Allegheny County. No one was allowed into the house and I think only my dad would go out to work. One of the stories that was told to me about my mother is the Allegheny County health officials wanted to put me in a ward someplace in a Pittsburgh hospital. A friend of my mother’s said to her, “If they put that boy in that ward he’ll never come off it.” Things were so bad I may have died.
So after stuff like that, being sick, or as we say under the weather, doesn’t seem to be much of a big deal.
I also remember when the announcement came that Jonas Salk had cured polio. Now people won’t believe this but I remember the church bells ringing. I remember people hugging in the street because polio had been put to bed.
When I was in the fifth grade a kid up the street from us got polio. The panic that ran through the neighborhood was unbelievable. I make jokes today on myself that I can’t swim and a couple of reasons are that people believed you could get polio from swimming pools and that the river, which was close to the old man’s house was the wellspring for polio.
My dad never had a quarter for us to go swimming at a public pool and of course we were never allowed by the river. Because of polio I can’t swim.
In the last three or four months everybody I know is sick. In fact the publisher of this paper is also sick. I’ve been sick. And other people are talking about how everyone they know is sick.
You know we’re all going to get over this just as soon as this weather breaks (my mom used to say that).
But one of the things I think we can look at with pride is all the stuff that used to kill us, all the stuff that used to threaten us pretty much has been put to bed.
So now what do we have? We have obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attacks, diabetes, and all kinds of cancers.
But the little guys, like my grandson Liam and Chuck and Julie’s son Rev, will never have to worry like we did when we were little kids or some medieval Englishman about what was waiting for him in the shadows.
We do have good food. We do have clean water and the kinds of things that threatened my childhood will never threaten my grandson’s.
Be thankful. And that guy sitting next to you at work? Tell him to cover his mouth.
— Peter
P.S.: I’ve been sick since Thanksgiving.
by Mark Smiley | Dec 22, 2014 | Blasting with Boyles
I could almost hear Brenda Lee’s voice belting out “I’m Sorry” when Governor John Hickenlooper addressed a group of Native Americans on the steps of the State Capitol in November.
On behalf of everyone reading this and those of you who are not, John Hickenlooper apologized for you to native people for the massacre that occurred on November 29, 1864, in a place on the eastern plains that’s now known as Sand Creek.
He told the representatives of the Cheyenne people and Arapaho people that not only was he sorry, but he was in fact very, very, very sorry. For good measure he also apologized to a Navajo guy according to The Denver Post and about 20 other American Indian students as well as some kid who inadvertently happened to be walking down toward the City and County Building. Hickenlooper, helpfully, added that this is a healing process for everyone. OK fine.
I think it’s only fair that I make a list of people I want to apologize to and things I want apologies for.
Let’s begin with my apologies to the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As they in turn apologize to the citizens of Nanking who then apologize to the people in Tibet who are also apologized to by any of your sub-continent Indians who are apologized to by any member of the British royal family or who are apologized to by our gallant allies the Pakistanis who then must apologize to the Bangladeshis who are then apologized to by the Persians (what you call your modern day Iranian) who then apologize to the Shah of Iran who should apologize to his father who he helped overthrow because the old man was getting into bed with the Nazis. Of course the Nazis should apologize to everybody.
On the other hand the CIA should apologize to the people of Iran for overthrowing a clean election and reinstalling the Shah. And while we’re at it the British should apologize to the following people; the Irish, the Scottish, the French, the Welsh, the Cornish, any number of people who came to this country and had to kick their ass out.
And lest we forget the Hong Kong Chinese, the entire Mandarin class of mainland China (for introducing them to that fun loving drug opium), any number of tea merchants who they also had terminated and while we’re at it I believe the Japanese owe a universal apology to the citizens of Nanking and the entire peninsula of Korea and North Koreans to South Koreans. Which leads us to any number of Manchurians who have been had by Russians, Japanese, Mongols and Mandarin Han Chinese.
How about those French apologizing to Huguenots, any numbers of people who lived in Italy and hey, how about that Napoleon. Shot the nose off the sphinx, a couple of apologies to the Egyptian people.
The Italians should apologize to the Ethiopians and what about Hannibal? Somebody owes him big time.
And while we’re at it how ’bout those Romanovs? Yeah, they sure got theirs. Who apologizes to the Romanovs? Do you expect Putin to apologize to Nicholas and Alexandra? And the family. Can you see where this is headed?
This column could grow greater than the size of this entire newspaper. However, in the politically correct environment that Hickenlooper apologizes in, the only people who need to apologize are Anglo men. Everybody else is a victim. But when you really think about Hutus and Tutsis, when you think about Cortez and the Aztecs, when you think about Pizarro and the Incas or anyone historically who dared fight Zulus in sub-Saharan Africa, shazam, their fish was fried.
Now I realize there’s a lot of really great historians who read this. Those of you get the point of the column. Those of you who are offended by the column do a little bit of reading and I apologize to you.
I’m still waiting for an apology from Bob Beauprez for running such a horrible campaign.
So please send an email to newspaper@glendalecherrycreek.com telling me who you would like an apology from, and I will print them.
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
