Deeper Meanings

I’m thinking about this song and how depressing it is. The lyrical content is what I am talking about here. I mean, the song itself is great. A treasure and a gem, the one standout tune in the 20th Century Songbook for sure. Miraculous even, for it has given me the gift of knowledge with regards to playing piano music, no, I mean what the song is about - this is what’s sad, very sad, you see it is about a loser. A sad and lonely loser at love who has lost out so bad he had to leave town in shame. I guess someone was fucking around or something. Whatever the case he’s suckered. The guy in the song is relegated to this freeze-dried Middle America that only exists for fucked-out truckers and spent meth heads. Vacant air conditioned highways and the sort. The lyrics rely heavily on the classic top 40 poetic device of using a radio dial to describe the endless wanderings of this broken hearted loser. Deep down he knows that it was “never meant to be” but he is still doomed to an existence haunting cheap hotel rooms where he endlessly packs, then unpacks his luggage, manically subverting his anxieties into an obsessive-compulsive disorder. If that weren’t harrowing enough of an emotional roller-coaster ride for the listener, the ending passage creates this ominous foreshadowing of false hopes and impotent yearnings as he asks ”maybe, just maybe…once in a while…” knowing full well that she has already forgotten him, never really cared to begin with, and will never ever think of him again, not even occasionally, but still he clings to his delusional state of denial, which makes him doubly cursed. It’s so dark and nihilistic; almost anti-human. It is one of the best depictions of the breakdown of sanity in the first person view of an afflicted mind. The song tears the emotional equilibrium to pieces. To hear it, puts one right into the same miserable state of existential angst as the protagonist. You wonder if the lyricist did not have sadistic intent, it is that effective in cursing the listener’s psyche, destroying their mental and emotional well-being. It’s like a kick in the stomach, truly gut-wrenching. This is possibly the greatest song that has ever appeared at the library in the piano books section. Even though it is not containing happy or joyful themes, one can redeem some positivism from it by learning from the hard and cruel lessons of its beleaguered singer…this being; never go to that Dark Cincinnati of The Soul for you may never return and live to see tomorrow. This can ultimately produce joy in the listener because thankfully you yourself are not so romantically doomed to total rejection and dejection and you can feel relief for this. Ultimately I take this song as a warning. It is a warning to me personally to not be taken up by the Passions and to stay diligent to my piano lessons and my piano lessons only. In this respect it is a masterpiece of meta-didactics for the piano because by learning it I learn to learn the piano even more so, and the more I learn the more I am compelled to learn further. If I keep mastering this one song, eventually I will master all of the piano, all learning, and ultimately the entirety of the universe itself.

Television In Revolt

This was a really good episode. It was the one where Johnny Fever tries to blow up the radio station. You can see here in the picture that Earl has talked Big Guy into doing a ventriloquist act where the Big Guy is the dummy and has to sit on Earl’s knee! The act, despite Earl’s best intentions and total professionalism, is a disaster. The Big Guy has no talent and keeps wrecking the act. Seen here they have just performed it for the rest of the wkrp gang and bombed out miserably. Their own friends and employees are disgusted and enraged by the thinly veiled insults that Earl is dispensing through big guy’s mouth, and the wkrp gang are not amused. He’s getting a little too personal and it’s not funny anymore. You can see in the picture that they are throwing lettuce and tomatoes and wadded up balls of paper at them.
Meanwhile Dr Johnny fever has been suffering an acid flashback and has accidentally locked himself in the janitor’s closet, and in his delusional state has decided to rig up a homemade bomb to free himself from what he thinks is a Viet Cong Prisoner of War camp. He’s got some binder twine and a pack of hotdogs that he has connected to his chest and he is going to blow everybody up including himself! It is the desperate action of a desperate man and you can see this by the close-up photography of sweat on his forehead and his eyes darting back and forth. There’s intense, heat-of-the moment incidental music that sounds like seconds ticking away. Then the most amazing thing happens. Instead of ending the program with the expected climax and denouement, the writers get all Beckett on the TV viewing audience and put the absurdist “To be continued…” on the screen, leaving it open, never to reveal what actually happens to Dr Fever or Earl & Big guy’s showbiz careers. It’s a double whammy that really made me think all those years ago, a real “what if?” moment. It was a unique and thought provoking way to design television and considered to be quite revolutionary for its time, changing the way we look at television, and in turn, ourselves.

Some Reflections

Cincinnati Comes Alive

For today’s lesson I want to cover some Theory, mainly dealing with the history and cultural significance of the song that I have been working on learning to play on the piano. This song, “WKRP in Cincinnati”, was a chart-busting mega-phenomenon super hit when it came out and it spawned a multi-million-dollar entertainment and luxury Product Empire for not only its writers and publishers, but also its singer, legendary starlet Loni Anderson. Her rendition of this standout hit from the television theme music / adult-contemporary genre became an instant classic then and has reached iconic status as of today. But few remember the TV show that started it all. Come with me as I take you down the hall to a special room with a magical TV set that sees into the past and shows forgotten television programming from days gone by. It’s coming in clearer now. Here it is, it is about this radio station where Loni Anderson works and all of the action revolves around her. The station is run by this mean old bald headed dude known as “The Big Guy” He is always furious because his radio station is in the toilet and he is losing his shirt. The Big Guy has two lackeys that that are always by his side. The one was Fred or Earl or Something, he sold used cars and was a really good singer, the ladies couldn’t get enough of him. He was the most hilarious character in the program and most of the time he was having wild adventures trying to get Loni into show business with little success. He would always show up, late, and clueless as to what all the fuss was about; he’s so laid-back, always with the lit cigar in his bejeweled manicured hand. The patchwork on his suit was not sewn-on denim bits, but actually a pattern printed onto polyester. The other stooge is this guy called Les Nesman. He is basically the brains of the operation, running the operation from behind the scenes. He is so diabolically clever as to run the entire station at a loss so as to provide the perfect cover for his more sinister machinations. He’s a mad genius with a shady past and whisperings of Nazi lineage. The on-air talent at this radio station is made up of two guys only: both of them doctors (!). The one guy was “rock and roll all day” acid casualty and Viet nam vet Dr. Johnny Fever, who is out of his mind and always doing things like playing records backwards and going up on the roof naked. He is on the air during the daytime; at night it’s dr. Venus. He’s a total Mack daddy, all pimped out and he plays the “sweet soul music to carry you into the night” He has an Afro and a dashiki and always give the black power salute. But mainly the show was about Loni Anderson. The rest of the characters were all so stupid that they thought she was beautiful. This was meant to play out as a running comic gag because; she was played by Loni Anderson who is fucking harsh looking. There is also Bailey, who was Playboy Pet of the Month in real life but the producers of the show felt it best to put glasses on her to convey that she was a dog. Except for occasional cameo walk-ons by sleazy record industry types and crazed fans of the DJs the only other actor was the ghost of Big Guy’s Mom. From time to time The Big Guy’s mother speaks to him from beyond the grave. She was only on once in a while, and was represented by a voice emanating from a haunted oil painting in BG’s office. I forget the actress who did the voice; she used to be in bewitched. Apart from those people, the station itself is like a character. It throbs with the energy of true rock & roll, and every time Johnny Fever puts on a wicked Bob Seager track or some smokin’ Kenny Loggins lightning hits the transmission tower (see illustration) and all hell breaks loose. The place literally explodes and everyone, even Bailey, is doing air guitar, jumping around on one leg. “Long Live Rock!” Shouts doctor Fever, and the live studio audience bursts into applause signaling the end of the episode.

Great Expectations

HERE I AM MAKING ANOTHER BRAVE ATTEMPT AT WKRP IN CINCINNATI.
IT DOESNT SOUND ANYTHING LIKE THE ORIGINAL. ITS EITHER that I’M DOING SOMETHING WRONG OR that THE GUY WHO TRANSCRIBED IT doesnt know what he’s doing! Its starting to sound worse.I MAY GIVE UP TRYING IF IT DOESNT SOUND BETTER SOON. there are some kenny logins songs in this book I am anxious to get to.

On A Brief Note...

I had to take my “Greatest Hits of the Eighties” piano book back to the library because I had already renewed it twice and I didn’t feel like waiting around for them to put it back on the shelves because the library makes me have to go to the bathroom, so I don’t have it anymore and can’t play the WKRP song for you this week, but I will get it back next week and we can again go together down the wonderful pathway that is my journey into piano lessons (self-taught)

Meanwhile, it has come to my attention that certain internet websites, namely ones that are run by foreign interests and primarily concern themselves with making fun of pictures from ratemyvomit.com and comparing teenage girls to ice cream cones thinks there’s something funny about my P-log.I don’t know who they think they are, or even who they are for that matter, but I will not take this lying down. I am going to launch a one man campaign and go running to a larger more public organ crying my fucking eyes out. those assholes-they really hurt my feelings, I’m gonna fucking destroy them. They don’t know who they’re fucking with. I’ll tell everybody I know not to look at crappy websites on the internet run by miserable losers! If I’m so fuckin funny why don’t they come down here and say it to my face. I’m not afraid, but I wont tell them where I am because I don’t want to impose on my neighbors as they will all have to run out of their houses to see the mister-I’m-so-funny-on-the-internet not be, so much, anymore! You Fuckin’ Goof!

A CALL TO ARMS

I just got off a rousing round at the forums over at <WKRPinCincinnatiBlog.com> and I must say the support you all have for me is warmly and deeply felt. The Internet is the greatest advancement for the human species, and its good to know all my buddies in Cyber Land got my back when the flak comes beaucoup. Just because some peck o’ wood sees fit to use the world wide web for slander and hate-mongering, it does not and will not deter upright tax paying citizens and Decorated Veterans our Constitutional Right to enjoy our enthusiasm for that fine program WKRP In Cincinnati. Across the Internet fans of WKRP are uniting, banding together and rising up the banner as a people’s cyber-militia. One conversation in particular I had with my good buddy and fellow vet fire4fever over at WKRP in Cincinnati blog stood out for me. We served together and were reminiscing about the ‘Nam, and through all the names, Sarge., Goodall, Corp. Whitelaw, and Stodges, he broke off into a long pause and out of the middle distance, unexpectedly reels into the strangest idea.

“When The Doctor was on the air, he seemed to always come alive, you know what I mean? Its as though he were becoming complete for the first time. It was a look that came over him and I’ve seen it before. In Paan Nang back in ‘67 when we were nearly ambushed doing recon in the foothills. You remeber…The look on Stodges’ face, you were there… back then… “

And I knew exactly what he was talking about. We had both traveled immediately to that moment in the past that neither of us had spoken about since, nor could we, if we could even find words, but we had both blacked it out, simply as a survival instinct.

“We ALL knew full well what was going on with Stodges,” he continued, “he’d been in it deep for weeks now, it was starting to just seem normal” He was speaking of the mental state that Stodges had been slipping into, and we all had seen it before, like many a young recruit serving in the ‘Nam for the first time and living under inhuman circumstances on a daily basis he was suffering the initial stages of PTS and was gripped under a psychosis we all witnessed the onslaught of but were powerless in our own struggles for survival, to intervene with or help. He was able, as if by remote control, to fulfill all his duties and remain at the ready as we were constatly under fire, yet he had adopted, casually, a strikingly disturbing trait. Sometime in the chaos of battle, and in the wreakage of his deepest mind something had already snapped. He had become a cannibal. At first it was like a joke, he did it so casually.We were surrounded by death 24 hours a day, so the humour turned sort of dark, another cruel survival instinct the mind comes up with under duress.One day Stodges comes up to us all around the fire and he’s holding a tiny arm, a baby’s arm charred from where it was blown off, and jokingly he’s holding it like bugs bunny with a carrot and he’s chewing the end, tearing off peices and eating them and making the same “nyahhh, nyeahhh” noises, grinning a cold blooded macabre grin like skin peeling off a skull roasting in the sun Its not something a civilian can comprehend. Stodges was still the most A1 Front Line Honor Roll blood and guts soldier any of us had ever seen and I have yet to see a more steadfastedly efficient combatant nor more fearless warrior since. We trusted him with our lives no matter how low he sank And he had that same look, the look on his face like Johnny Fever would get years later on WKRP. No matter how bat-shit crazy and whatever regrettable actions he may had taken in the past, he was a soldier, first and foremost, bound by duty, to Search and Destroy in the name of Rock And Roll.”

And you know what? He always did, no matter what. That’s why WKRP has always had a large and loyal following amongst our armed forces personnel, especially for me, a vet and DOUBLE AMPUTEE, it is for its accurate and sympathetic portrayal in the character Johnny Fever, of vets living at home and the challenges we face on a daily basis. With that in mind it would be preposterous to challenge the faith and passion of the many thousands of Americans loyal to Land, Liberty, and WKRP

INSPIRATIONAL...

ONE NATION UNDER GOD AND THE MIGHTY 'KRP!

Part # Two. NUDES of Loni (get in here bros)

"Sources close to the star say... that Loni Anderson has been known to bathe in the nude and has also been witnessed as having taken public showers sometimes in gymnasiums & the like.

 

She also dabbled in psuedo-erotic no-core movies in the late 80's; after her TV career had gone "tits-up"
(more on that later...)

Still, even worse, before she got so 'large', she did commercials...



I know, I know...it doesn't look anything like her, but trust me, & trust my sources. That IS pre-reconstructive surgery Loni...Full-on and in-the-flesh. A rarity indeed. Her first appearance, and on half-inch video tape, no less. (also you can see where bailey quarters ripped her entire act off from!)
So stay tuned here, my babies, to WKRP-LOG, DOT - Blogspot, dot calm, for more salacious, down n dirty Loni Anderson XXX tape reviews deemed Too Hot For teh internets but brought to you here anyways, courtesy of me, your friend, informant, and dogged reporter...
Until next report...Over & Out!

"Wait for it! The payoff comes at 2:11"