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.
by Peter Boyles | May 27, 2014 | Blasting with Boyles
I can’t think of a time in my life that I didn’t want to have a gun. When I was a little boy I thought toy guns, real guns and guns in general were the coolest thing in the world.
The only benefit I ever had in life is that I could read. I started reading quite early and the other gift was a wonderful mom who knew we were dead broke, but always took me to the library. (Thank you Andrew Carnegie. You did a lot of rotten things to really decent people but you made it up by giving me a library card in 1950.) I read James Fenimore Cooper. Thanks to my Uncle Barnie I read Zane Grey. I read books about the American Civil War, the American Revolution, the Second World War, taming the Old West and gangsters.
Pretty simple trivia question, what do all of those books have in common? Simple answer, guns.
I have a theory the only reason the First Amendment stays where it is, is because of the Second. And of course both of those cornerstones of our liberty are under attack. And that same group of intellectual nincompoops wants to feminize and take away from little boys in this country their constitutional, God-given right to have a toy gun.
Hunting became part of my life when I was about 12-years-old. I always wanted to hunt, but my father was not a hunter. So by saving my money from paper routes, working in pool rooms and bowling alleys and a stint in a delicatessen, I raised enough money to buy a BB gun and eventually my first .22.
I bought a .22 single shot JC Higgins rifle. It had a little stinger on the back of the barrel that you had to cock to enable it to fire. Thanks to my friends and me there probably wasn’t a wren or a songbird that was safe from our hunting expeditions (Yes I know Atticus Finch — never shoot a mocking bird).
Guns and boys are an intrinsic part of life, but with the advent of what’s happening to young boys in America today, toy guns are becoming a thing of the past.
The picture we have used to illustrate this column relates to a 1961 Ideal Toy ad starring Roy Rogers. It’s a sneaky little ad that every guy I’ve ever shown it to loves. The Derringer is hidden in the hat so you can easily shoot another kid when he approaches you. Who among us didn’t play army or guns or cowboys and Indians (or the politically correct cow persons and Native Americans) and really love it?
I can’t imagine myself at 10 years of age learning to play cooperative games and how to play well with others. Toy guns, pretend swords and rubber knives are the arsenal of a childhood democracy.
Why do you suspect that the progressive educators throw first graders out of school for turning their hands into little pistols? I’m a great believer in Lenin’s saying, “the purpose of terror is terror.” When you throw that little boy out you’re setting fear in the hearts of other little boys. The word comes down. Don’t be that kid. These people believe that these boys are influenced, predisposed, if you would, to violent behavior simply by possessing a toy.
Kids can make almost anything into a gun. I watched my son make a banana a gun once. Oftentimes as a kid we didn’t have any money for real toy guns. But that didn’t matter. A stick made a good rifle. Two fingers extended from the fist made a perfectly fine pistol. And you know what? The good guys always won.
There were lots of guns in my neighborhood when I was a kid. It didn’t turn anyone aggressive and of course there were no school shootings. Banning toy guns — do you really think it’s the same as putting armed guards in a school to protect children against people with real guns? Do you think throwing a little boy out of school for drawing a gun will prevent a sick and deranged individual from committing those acts of violence?
And how about squirt guns? My God, when spring hit it was baseball and squirt gun season. Rather than avoid the subject and pretend there’s not guns all around us, let your kids play guns and when they become old enough, do as my dad did. Find one of his drunken buddies to take me hunting. One of the greatest days of my life.
Keeping guns from kids doesn’t mean they’re never going to shoot someone else. It’s the forbidden fruit. My mother’s warnings during summer vacation to all of us was “Don’t go near the river. “ When I was a boy the Allegheny River was a lure. I was in my period of reading Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and no power on earth was going to keep me from the river. My mother’s warning, “don’t go near the river” — first place we went.
Kids who play with toy guns use them to fight bad guys. How’s that a bad thing? I actually think it can help a kid feel safe and make sense of the world around them.
So if you’re teaching your children all of these nonviolent, politically correct new speak thoughts, remember this. In the words of Mike Tyson, “Everybody’s got a plan till they get punched in the nose.” And then maybe it would have been better to teach your son to fight back.
Happy trails.
— Peter
by Mark Smiley | Apr 29, 2014 | Blasting with Boyles
The Monfort Brothers Won’t Let Street Vendors Wet Their Beaks
If You Can’t Fix It With A Hammer Or Duct Tape, It’s An Electrical Problem
Opening day. Your Colorado Rockies. The music. The topless girls on the buildings across from Coors Field. Walt Weiss as the skipper. Your Colorado Rockies, the major league baseball franchise based in Denver, Colorado, takes the field.
But this year the game is being played outside. There are a group of men and women who have started brats and gourmet hotdogs and sausage businesses with carts. They have sites all around Coors Field. Now it’s important for you to remember and put you in the “way back” machine to when your Colorado Rockies were born.
In 1989 when professional baseball’s National League announced it would expand by two teams for the 1993 season, Colorado powerbrokers and legislators, bankers and bond daddies went yard. Those of us who have kicked around awhile remember 1980 when Marvin Davis almost brought Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s to Denver. Somehow the deal fell apart but my understanding is Mr. Finley still has representation in the Mile High City. That of course crushed the dreams of local baseball enthusiasts. But in the middle of all of that, then Governor Roy “Deep Kiss” Romer, walked forward with a couple of real decent, clean handed, honorable men. Romer and National League President Roy White presented to the public John Antonucci and Michael “Mickey” Monus July 5, 1991. These boys were in the spotlight for about a year when the wheels came off. I know you all remember Phar-Mor, the financial scandal that sent Mickey to jail and Antonucci headed to the mattresses.
The next man in the batting order was Jerry McMorris, who, lest you forget, re-hired Antonucci. And by opening day that year, 1993, Johnny boy was gone again. Most recently I saw an interview where Mickey said he was responsible for major league baseball in Denver. I’m sure we’re all very proud of that moment.
So one of the things we all learned in the building of Coors Field is that the taxpayers were clearly on board. You paid for that sidewalk and you paid for that infield. So, as we say, the taxpayer, the everyday guy has a little skin in the game.
The naming of Coors Field to the Coors family and naming rights is another bright shining lie but that’s for another fun column. Street vendors with carts were told after paying licensing fees to lease the area of Lodo that for 20 years the city of Denver had made a mistake letting them be there. Each mayor from Wellington Webb to Michael Hancock, safety managers, council members, public health officials, police officers, DAs, sundry law enforcement and health and safety bureaucrats have walked in the main gate seeing the food cart entrepreneurs without realizing they were law breakers.
And with the crack of a bat and the opening of the fun party deck you can no longer buy water and inexpensive brats and a pretzel from vendors with carts.
Now The Denver Post has written some absolutely absurd columns but it’s hard to top the column that appeared saying that those vendors had to be moved out so the fans could have a clear path to the ballpark. By the way, isn’t it interesting The Denver Post is a minority owner in your Colorado Rockies.
Having worked my fair share of baseball opening days for radio I can tell that it is the media companies with their broadcasting vans, endless cables and other mass communication equipment that are the ones that present a real hindrance and danger to the public walking to the game and not a few push cart vendors selling hotdogs and brats.
The Rockies have their roots with some people suspected of being involved in organized crime. So does it really shock you that on or about the anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre that a bunch of hard working young guys and gals would be beaten down and forced out of business because the Rockies and their management group wanted that little bit of money?
So as you can see, they couldn’t fix it with duct tape or their political hammer, so the Rockies, with all the help from the mainstream media in the city, declared these small businessmen an “electrical problem.”
Play ball!!
— Peter
by Peter Boyles | Mar 13, 2014 | Blasting with Boyles
April Fools Question
What do Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, John Hickenlooper and Lamar Alexander all have in common?
There’s gotta be at least a million answers to that question and counting. Of course the immediate reaction is “they’re all idiots,” and one way or another have managed to screw up your life. And, although it’s hard to believe, they can possibly screw it up even further by using Common Core as their educational guide.
Let me put you in a very brief time machine. Former Florida Governor Jeb (known as the smartest of the Bush brothers) may be eyeing a run for president in 2016 on the GOP bandwagon. On Friday, March 22, 2014, the big doofus made a speech in Florida, that revealed some of his stances on issues like immigration and — remember these words cause you’re going to hear them a lot — Common Core. Jeb (who’s starting to look more and more like Cousin Eddie) said those who oppose Common Core are supporting the status quo. And he wants to know how American society is going to be the winner in the 21st century. My real question for the 21st century is how are you gonna stop Jeb, his brother’s political party and the Democrats from eating everyone’s lunch?
And as an aside, Jeb says people who come here illegally are “risk takers.” With this logic if you’re living in rural Guatemala and you come here, you’re a bigger risk taker than those who are already here.
That kind of logic obviously produces a formidable candidate for the 2016 elections, according to the brilliant thinking of the GOP. This is just a reminder but he is the brother of former President George W. Bush, and the son of the other former president George H.W Bush, and older brother of Neil. All you folks in Colorado remember Neil. If Neil lost four more IQ points you’d have to water him once a week.
The Jebster then went to Nashville to join Tennessee GOP Governor Bill Haslam and former Secretary of Education currently GOP Senator from Tennessee Lamar Alexander. He quipped, “Trust me, I know there’s not a whole lot of people who are standing up to the avalanche of criticism.” Tennessee, along with Colorado and the vast majority of states, has adopted the standards developed for the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers by so called education experts.
Currently U.S. Education Secretary Arne, the Carney, Duncan is promising to improve education by pushing for the implementation of Common Core standards. This year 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted those standards. Carney doesn’t seem to care much for people who criticize Common Core. He has insisted that it’s all a bunch of white suburban moms who all of a sudden realized their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought and their schools aren’t quite as good as they thought they were. As you can plainly see this is the attack on soccer moms taking that hackneyed phrase “angry white men” and now applying it to white suburban mothers — gawd these people are becoming ever so predictable.
Now remember I can’t seem to do math or marriage but on everything I hold sacred this is a question that’s on that part of the Common Core curriculum. I think this used to be called word problems and as a youngster I would automatically tune out of any question that began with “two trains go out of a station…which one…” and then I go blank.
Here’s the question.
“Juanita wants to give bags of stickers to her friends. She wants to give the same number of stickers to each friend. She’s not sure if she needs four bags or six bags of stickers . How many stickers could she buy so there’s not stickers left over.” I kid thee not. Apparently there are any number of answers to this question.
This question appears in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt textbook on Common Core. On their website they promise to be “a partner who will share the responsibilities of Common Core.”
I find myself always returning to George Orwell and those of you who recall the ending of his novel 1984 when Winston Smith learns to love Big Brother. It’s done with math. When he leaves the Ministry of Love not only does he know that two and two are five, he believes it.
Also they are teaching fourth graders, i.e. nine year olds, how to put on condoms. And this one is my favorite. Teaching kids how to masturbate. Don’t you find that interesting? No one needed to teach me.
But in my vast reading so far I found nothing in Common Core to explain why the framers beat feet from mad King George, how the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence protect our God given rights. And Mark Twain doesn’t exist.
By the way, John Hickenlooper and The Denver Post roundly support Common Core.
I can hardly wait for the debate when Bob Beauprez has no idea what Common Core is and John Hickenlooper roughshods him.
The serious part of this is this process will bypass parents and state and local school boards.
Obama wants to fundamentally transform America by transforming education and what your kids and grandkids will learn or not learn. Of course the progressives will love this.
By the way, did anybody ever read Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer in a school library? Today it’s the equivalent of finding Barack Obama’s real birth certificate. See you on the radio.
— Peter
by Peter Boyles | Dec 5, 2013 | Blasting with Boyles
The Butcher, The Baker
And The Candlestick Maker
In New Mexico there’s a case of a wedding photographer by the name of Elaine Huguenin who has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling by New Mexico’s
highest court that she was required by the state public accommodations law to take pictures of a female couple’s committed ceremony.
Three weeks ago a judge here in Colorado ruled against a baker who refused to supply a gay couple with a cake for their wedding reception. Religious thought is the issue in both cases. As is free speech. This is important.
The first amendment protects not only the right to express one’s own views but also the right not to be compelled to convey someone else’s. In the New Mexico case the photographer warns that the decision against her would threaten other artists and “expressive professions,” including marketers, advertisers, publicists and website designers.
In as much as I support and have verbally fought for same sex marriage and very much oppose discrimination, there is a distinction between businesses that provide the same products or services to all comers and those that collaborate in a personalized message.
In July 2012, Dave Mullins and his husband Charlie Craig walked into the Masterpiece Cakeshop. They were there for about 50 seconds when Jack Phillips told them he would not make the top of a gay wedding cake. At that point Mullins and Craig stood up and said “f-you and your homophobic cake shop,” and gave him the finger as they walked out the door. How nice.
What we now know is a month before that, a lesbian couple went into the bake shop and were told by one of the employees that they would not make the wedding cake for the women. True to form, Phillips also will not make Halloween cakes with werewolves, demons or satanic decorations. This also offends Phillips’ religious beliefs. And he has made that clear on numbers of occasions. Now one of his critics has said he was willing to make a wedding cake of two dogs. My response to that is, dude, that’s make believe.
There’s no consenting adult involved in dog weddings. How far the progressives will go to stretch a point.
I’ve been to Masterpiece Cakeshop. It’s very out of the way in the back of a shopping center off of South Wadsworth. Mullins and Craig were shopping there to cause Phillips a problem. They had the ACLU in their back pocket as well as the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and, frightening enough, I believe Colorado Attorney General John Suthers is in on this, too.
So when it comes down, the Administrative Law Judge Robert N. Spencer ruled that Masterpiece Cakeshop discriminated against the couple “because of their sexual
orientation by refusing to sell them a wedding cake for their same sex marriage.” Spencer also said Phillips must “cease and desist” discriminating against gay couples. Although his Honor didn’t have the stones to impose a fine, therefore kicking the can down the street for some other black robed fascist who will fine Phillips if he continues to turn away gay couples that want to buy cakes.
Here’s the kicker. Phillips says you can buy anything else, all your pies and muffins and cookies and cakes are yours. He won’t, as an artist, make the top of a gay cake. He told me the other day on 710 KNUS he can’t back down. He won’t make the cake. So now the ACLU, the state of Colorado and the cake police are going to put this man out of business. He’s been there for over 20 years. He truly is an artist and I believe that his career is coming to an end.
What is it about the left that’s screams tolerance? That would put this humble guy and his employees out of business, hurting everyone who sells him supplies, who he pays rent to.
For the store will close. Because an appointed judge is telling this man what he must believe. How soon after gay marriage (which I openly support as well as gay adoption) before someone walks into the Catholic cathedral, conservative Jewish temple and evangelical Protestant church and tells them that they’re either hate speakers for saying a marriage is between a man and a woman and telling they must cease or be fined. Or better yet, when the hate police walk in and say it’s hate speech for you preaching that marriage is between a man and a woman and you must serve everyone’s interest and marry two men and two women on demand or be fined and put out of business. If we had enough space in this paper I could list historically nations that have pulled that stunt in one form or another. All of them are now in the dustbin of history. So I leave you with the words of the original motion picture, “Watch the Skies” — This stuff is scary!
Happy New Year!
Peter
