Rodney Mullen meets Andy Anderson- The last Hawk vs. Wolf podcast of 2024

Rodney Mullen meets Andy Anderson.  Hawk vs. Wolf podcast.  I need to watch this whole thing Thursday.  I don't have a laptop right now, so I have to wait to use the library Thursday to watch it.  

No... really... this is my favorite Christmas album

I'm not kidding, this is my favorite Christmas album, A Partridge Family Christmas Card.  Really.  

The Partridge Family was an early 1970's TV show with a family of musicians who had a crazy painted bus they traveled around in.  Think hippy Brady Bunch musicians, something like that.  The show ran from 1970 to 1974, and this Christmas album was released in 1971.  

I think I was in third grade, my family living in Coshocton, Ohio, when my parents found this record album at a garage sale, and bought it for 25 or 50 cents.  I remember listening to this album when I was in 4th grade, 9 years old, while making Christmas cookies with my mom and sister the next Christmas.  We had moved to a big, yellow farmhouse, outside the tiny community of Shiloh, Ohio.  My dad changed jobs that year, and was designing locomotives at Fate Root Heath, in nearby Plymouth.  Somehow one of us managed to get flour all over this already used record, and thought we ruined it.  My dad cleaned it off when we he got home, and it was playable again.  We played that album every Christmas until I was in high school.  To me, this is the quintessential Christmas album to get in the holiday mood.  Watching Bad Santa is my other main source of holiday cheer.  Yeah, I'm fucked up, but these two get me feeling festive.  Enjoy.  

Here's the link to the album playlist, in case the embedded video only plays one song.  

Merry Christmas everyone.  Enjoy the holidays, because next year's going to be even crazier than the last five years have been.  

A Twilight Zone Christmas Carol? Sort of...

It's now Christmas Eve Eve, December 23rd, and I went looking for a cool video about the origin of Santa Claus, the actual person that was Saint Nicholas.  But I ran into a whole bunch of religious propaganda videos, rather than one that seemed fairly objective.  Then this odd video popped up, a version of Dickens' classic story, A Christmas Carol, written by Rod Serling, the guy behind The Twilight Zone.  This film was produced in 1964, and has rarely aired.  This isn't the actual full movie, but a cool doc looking at the story behind this unusual, made-for-TV movie.  Looking for something Chrismasy that you haven't seen before?  Interested in a deeper look at this holiday seasons than the Hallmark Channel crap?  Here you go.  Merry Christmas everyone! 

Party City closing all stores and Big Lots "going out of business" sales

As public officials continue to tell us the economy is going well, the Retail Apocalypse continues apocalypting in the background.  The word just came out that Party City is shuttingdown all of its  stores, and also that Big Lots is bankrupt and beginning "going out of business" sales.  Two more well known national chains of retail stores are going under.  This video above tells the story of the rise and fall of Party City.  It's December 20th, 2024 as I write this, office Christmas/holiday party season, and a week and a half before New Year's Eve.  Did everyone stop partying?  

I live in the San Fernando Valley these days, a place where there's a lot of wealth in the general area.  But one Big 5 just closed, and a Guitar Center store just closed as well, not to mention all of the 99 Cents Only stores that all closed down months ago.  This is in an area where there are hundreds of "mom and pop," privately owned, brick and mortar stores that are still in business.  But as the flood of pandemic stimulus money got spent, business has slowed back down for many stores, and major shutdowns are happening again.  Here's a video about the downfall of Big Lots.

The Rise and Fall of Big Lots

There are a whole bunch of reasons for these stores closing down, like the rise of online sales, getting bought out and loaded up with debt by private equity companies, and the sales slowdown of the pandemic.  These factors are part of the bigger picture of why these particular chains have closed down.  In any case, two more chains are going under, and hundreds of large stores are going to become vacant soon in cities across the United States.  

The term "Retail Apocalypse" popped up around 2016, as chain store closures and dead malls became a trend.  In reality, many stores had been closing for a decade before that, but those closures increased dramatically around 2015-2016-2017, as online sales surged.  Chalk up a couple more large chain closures to the list of dozens of other retail chains that have become extinct, like Toys-R-Us, Radio Shack, and others.  

I'm doing most of my writing now on a platform called Substack, designed specifically for writers.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

Nick from Reventure Consulting takes a look at California Real Estate- December 2024

Over the last couple of years, Reventure Consulting founder Nick Gerli has built an amazing app to look at residential real estate all over the United States.  In this video, out a few days ago, he takes a look at where prices are likely to go up, and likely to go down, around the state of California.  Hint: Here in SoCal, the region from downtown L.A. west through Beverly Hills, Brentwood, and Santa Monica is going one direction, and Orange County is doing the opposite.  Watch the video to see his overview of the state, and then check out Reventure App to check our neighborhood.  

There are no paid links in this post.  

I'm doing most of my writing on a platform called Substack now, which was designed specifically for writers.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

43 Years of people doing 360's on BMX bikes on video

Here is Andy Ruffel, doing a 360 off a jump, on a BMX bike in 1981, for a British TV show.  To the best of my knowledge, this is the first BMX 360 jump caught on video or film, and it happened 43 Years ago.  

In late 2021, I had a crazy idea for a blog post.  "What if I search YouTube for all the earliest, 'first on video' clips of BMX 360's and variations of 360's?"  I wondered just how far back the basic 360 jump on a bike went.  When I was first reading the BMX magazines every month, in 1983, I remembered a story saying that Eddie Fiola did a 360 over doubles in a race, at the Orange YMCA BMX track, I believe.  That was where I started my search, looking for the first 360 on video.  At the time, Mike Varga had just landed the first 1260 air, a few months earlier, at the X-Games in Riverside, California.  It seemed a good time to dig into the video archives of BMX spinning tricks.  

This basic search for the first BMX 360 on video opened a huge can of worms, and I wound up spending something like three weeks watching dozens and dozens of BMX videos, looking for 360's, 540's, 720's, 900's, and other variations.  The blog post was epic, with links to dozens of "first on video" clips of BMX spinning tricks.  Here's that post from November 2021:

 "Spinaroonies: A Brief History of BMX Spinning Tricks."  

In my research, this clip of Andy Ruffel had the earliest BMX 360's I could find, both 360 bunnyhops (also called a "360 whip floater" then), and a 360 over a small jump.  At about 25:20 in that clip, you see Andy Ruffel, in front of a moving airplane, do some 360 bunnyhops, among other tricks.  He also does a 360 off a mellow jump at 26:04.  Three years ago, that was the earliest 360 jump I could find, Andy Ruffel, in the U.K., in 1983.  Today, when I looked it up, the short video clip embedded above came up, again with Andy Ruffell, predating this clip by two years.  So now, it looks like the clip above, Andy Ruffell in 1981, is the very first 360 jump on a BMX bike that's out there.  That means we've now had 43 years of BMX 360 jumps on video, and that called for a blog post.  You can check that Spinaroonie blog post for dozens more "first on video" BMX spinning variations.  But here's a few more of the early ones.  

Hugo Gonzales- Big 360 out of the halfpipe and over the fence at Del Mar Skate Ranch- 1984? -  :43 in this clip

Eddie Fiola- First 540 air on video- Pipeline Skatepark- Summer of 1985- 2:16 in this clip.

Mat Hoffman- First 900 air video- 2-Hip KOV- Kitchener, Ontario, Canada- Spring 1989

Craig Campbell- first 720 jump on video- Ozone TV segment- Calabassas jumps- San Jose, CA- 1989- 1:49 in this clip.

I do most of my writing on a platform called Substack now.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

A very L.A. Thanksgiving

If you lived in Los Angeles in the 1980's and 1990's, you've heard of Angelyne.  According to one account, she started putting up billboards of herself in 1984.  I think the first one I saw was in Hollywood, probably 1988 or 1989.  It was around that time that I started to drive up there, doing runs, picking up equipment for my job.  It was also around that time I started going to punk gigs up there once in a while.  Angelyne is the single name L.A. Billboard Queen of the Los Angeles in the 1980's, and is basically famous for being famous.  Before the Kardashians, before Paris Hilton, before the internet, before influencers as a job title, there was Angelyne... and her hot pink Corvette.  

A few days ago, I got a book from the library called Binge Times, by Dade Hayes and Dawn Chimielski.  I've read several books about L.A. and the San Fernando Valley in the past few months, after my backpack, including my laptop, got stolen.  As a homeless blogger/artist, my online time got cut, I'm using library computers for now, and I had more time to do something.  So I've read a lot about L.A. and The Valley.  Binge Times, published in 2022, dove deep into the "streaming wars," the battle in the entertainment industry for viewership... and money, since Netflix, YouTube, and video streaming began pulling millions of eyeballs away from TV and movies, and cable TV systems, in particular.  The book was incredibly well researched, and interesting, another major industry in transition, in today's world, something I've been writing about for years. 

Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I read chapter 15, which talked about the Peacock streaming service.  The chapter was called, "If you want to grab their attention, you have to tease," a quote from L.A. billboard icon, Angelyne.  There's a paragraph in the chapter about the feature Peacock did about Angelyne, which is what the video embedded above is plugging.  Angelyne, herself, wasn't happy with the movie.  Now, living in The San Fernando Valley, I've seen Angelyne's hot pink Corvette around a handful of times, at a distance.  Reading the book where she's mentioned a couple of days ago, it brought her back into my consciousness.  

The next day, Thanksgiving day, I wound up in a McDonald's in the afternoon, where my T-Day dinner was the $5 Meal Deal.  Not epic, but it was a cool, mellow day, I didn't mind missing the whole traditional Thanksgiving feast.  I was sitting there in the back, hanging out, and reading the final chapter of Binge Times, when a hot pink Corvette pulled up outside.  Yep, Angelyne herself.  She came in the restaurant, walked up to the counter, I think to ask of there was a restroom code, and then walked back to the ladies room.  She walked right by me, three or four feet away.  In all the years since I first saw an Angelyne billboard, over 35 years ago, it's the first time I've seen Angelyne up close.  The first thing that grabbed me was how tiny she is.  She's barely over 5 feet tall, maybe 5'2", I'd say.  Yeah, she's top heavy, and had the intsense make-up, unique outfit, big blonde hair, and a pink veil over her face.  But she's really small.  Her image is so huge, I always thought  she must be at least 5'9" if not a full six feet tall.  But she's a actually quite petite woman, except for the boobs, of course.  

As Angelyne was in the restroom, one woman ran out into the parking lot, and snapped a phone pic of the back of the pink Corvette, with the "Angelyn" license plate.  Myself, I wondered if I should catch her attention, and tell her she was mentioned in the book I had in my hands.  Hey, I'm a big, ugly, sketchy looking homeless guy, so I decided against it.  I didn't want to freak her out.  But I snapped a pic of her Corvette through the window.  After taking care of things, and walked back past me, and out to her car.  

What is it about Angelyne?  I've worked on several TV shows, worked with the American Gladiators, hung out for a day shooting footage on a Tom Petty music video, and seen Dennis Rodman, Geena Davis, Charlton Heston, Gene Simmons, Diddy, Pamela Anderson, Ashlee Simpson, and the a capella singing group Pentatonix in the wild around SoCal.  But seeing Angelyne up close, as a long time SoCal resident, is like a unicorn sighting.  There's a weird mysteriousness to this real life, Barbie-like character.  The odd little bit of synchronicity, actually reading a book she's mentioned, in when she rolled up, made it more memorable.  That was my L.A. Thanksgiving, seeing Angelyne close-up in a McDonald's.  Hey, it's weird out here.  It's L.A., shit happens.  That's why I'm here.  It's a good place for us freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos.  

YouTuber Paul Brooks interviews Angelyne inside her hot pink Corvette

Angelyne in the goofy 1988 movie Earth Girls Are Easy, which stars Geena Davis, with a couple of guys you may recognize

Angelyne in Boulevard of Broken Dreams- 1996

Lord of the Fries: A wannabe dictator, an unbelievable cabinet, and a slowing, and out of whack economy

Here's a real fight between male gorillas, in the wild, in Rwanda.  We're humans, male silverback gorillas can weigh up to about 600 pounds (270 kilos), and are much stronger than us.  There's a reason we have a saying "the 800 pound gorilla in the room," about huge issues we all ignore.  This post is not about gorillas, it's about the economic realities of the next few years in the United States of America.  But I'm starting this post with the economic "800 pound gorilla in the room." 

 

We have far too much debt in our economic system.  That's the huge issue everyone ignores on a daily basis.  Nearly all average people have far more debt than they can handle. Home mortgage debt, student loan debt, auto loan debt, credit card debt.  Businesses large and small also have huge debt loads in many, if not most cases. Local governments, villages, towns, cities, and counties, have debt issues.  States have huge loads of debt.  And yes, the United States of America now has over $36 trillion in debt, it just crossed to $36 T recently, according to the U.S. National Debt Clock, as I write this.  

Not all debt is bad debt, debt allows us to buy houses we could never afford buy paying cash for, it allows us to buy newer and better cars, go to better colleges, and businesses routinely use short term debt to buy merchandise, while giving their buyers terms to pay for items sold, allowing a smoother flow of goods and services all around.  

More important, the U.S. dollar is backed by debt, not gold, since 1971.  We're over 50 years into the largest fiat money experiment in human history.  Our entire economic system runs on debt.  Our system NEEDS debt to keep functioning.  But there's an amount of debt where things function smoothly, and an amount of debt where nearly everyone struggles to pay their bills, month to month, and everything slows down to a breaking point.  We're in the latter, right now.  

This country has an amount of debt that is dramatically slowing down consumer spending.  Consumer spending makes up about 70% of the economy.  This is the huge, underlying issue everyone is ignoring as we head into a new presidential administration that wants to make massive changes in many areas.  Their game plan has largely been created by Right wing, highly religious, "conservatives."  I put that word in quotation marks because they don't believe in conserving money like decades ago, they definitely aren't for conserving the environment, "conservative" in today's world seems to imply fundamentalist Christian social beliefs.  Conservatives aren't really into "conserving" much of anything, except the status quo.  

On January 20th, 2025 Donald Trump will be sworn in as president, a 78 1/2-year-old man who quite admittedly loves McDonald's French fries... and salt.  But this post is about what life will be like for Americans in the next few years, not fundamentalist social views or Trump's health.  In less than two weeks since the election, the stock indices hit new highs, and then dropped back quite a bit, and now are climbing higher.  Gold dropped over $200 per ounce from its recent all time high, and is now bouncing back a bit.  The U.S. dollar has surged higher, compared to other major currencies, which makes life and business harder for many other countries, including our allies.  Despite having The Fed lower their Fed Funds rate 3/4% in the least couple months, overall interest rates have been trending up.  The 10 Year U.S. Treasury, a common bookmark for interest rates is at 4.41% as I write this, a much higher return than through all of the 2010's.  

While small and mid-sized business owners tend to lean Republican, and believe the economy will take off in a Trump presidency, in reality there are all kinds of mixed signals in the financial world, contradicting each other.  Here are the major trends I see playing out now, and into the future months and years.  

Inflation- Inflation has been trending down, from a high 9.1% CPI, to around 2.5% recently.  Truflation, a wider, nearly realtime inflation indicator, got down to 1.01% annual inflation rate on September 13th, 2024, but has surged back up to 2.84% since.  The investment world, the big players, see a Trump presidency likely to push inflation back up. That's a recent trend change, and has kept going up since the election, about two weeks ago.  But there are major trends pushing overall inflation downward at the same time, particularly stagnant or dropping values in both commercial and residential real estate in some areas.  

Consumers are broke- Advanced Auto Parts is the latest large business to announce mass store closings and layoffs because consumer sales are slowing, and everyday people are broke.  McDonald's, Starbucks, and several other major corporations have been saying the same thing for about six months now.  As I mentioned above, most consumers are saddled with high levels of debt these days, and working hard to pay day to day expenses and keep current on their various debt payments.  Consumers spending is about 70% of the U.S. economy, and I see nothing coming in the next couple of years to change this issue.  To increase consumer spending, either wages have to increase by an unprecedented amount, quickly, or TRILLIONS of dollars of some forms of debt need to be written off.  I don't see either of these ideas as having a chance in Hell of happening anytime soon.  This issue alone, broke consumers, makes the strongest case for a recession that has either started, or will start soon.  We have been slowly, steadily dropping into a recession, and it would have happened either way, under a Harris or a Trump presidency.  But how the government reacts and responds would be quite different.  

Commercial real estate collapse- The collapse in prices of commercial buildings, across the U.S., has been going on for around a year now.  Buildings worth tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars have been selling for up to 90% discounts, in some cases, for several months now.  This is happening nationwide, to these large office buildings, along with many vacant retail stores and malls, which have been struggling for the last decade or more.  Here's a 20 story building in Denver that recently sold at an 80% discount.  One of the tallest buildings in Texas sold in May for more than a 90% discount.  Here's an office building in San Francisco that sold for nearly 80% off of it's peak value.  You get the idea, this isn't just happening in the few biggest major cities.  The overall values of many retail stores, malls, and office buildings are dropping all over the country.  Lower values mean lower tax incomes for cities, which means those cities will ultimately have to reduce services somewhere, to compensate.  Like broke consumers, there is no quick fix to this problem, and it is a part of our transition out of the fading Industrial Age era and into the building Information Age society, which needs different types of buildings in different places.  This trend will just have to play out over many years, probably two or three decades, just like the closure of factories did in the late 1970's through the 2000's.  

Residential real estate slowing down- In this video by Nick at Reventure Consulting (from mid-November 2024), he shows multiple homes that have dropped tens of thousands in value, to a $400,000 loss in a home's value in one case, over the last two or three years.  Much of Florida's residential real estate, in particular, is turning down quickly right now.  I think most of us know that home prices vary tremendously across the United States right now.  For example, the median home price is now $1.2 million in Los Angeles, California.  Yet, there are cities that have gone downhill in recent decades, mostly from the loss of factories and high paying manufacturing jobs.  There are many areas where homes are for sale for incredibly low prices.   

I won't pick on the well known cities of Detroit, Michigan, Gary, Indiana, or Youngstown, Ohio, which are known for these issues.  Here's a house for sale for $59,900 in Mansfield, Ohio, where my grandparents lived until I finished 8th grade.  I spent a lot of time in Mansfield as a kid, going to the now closed Richland Mall, playing on my grandparents' swing set, and getting yelled at by my drunk German grandpa.  Mansfield was a thriving Midwest industrial city when I was a kid, in the 1970's.  Now, like most of rural, small town, and mid-sized city America, it's struggling.  There are probably 150 or 200 mid-sized and small cities in the U.S. that have been struggling since the early 1980's, and Mansfield is just one of them.  If all these towns and cities really had the potential for large numbers of people move in and live really well, Americans would flood back into those cities.  If that happened, new businesses would rise up in those towns and cities, and the overall real estate prices would rise in those places, and even out across the country.  But that is not what's happening, over the long run.  Though the pandemic reversed the migration flows for two or three years, the long term trend is that Americans, overall continue to migrate to the larger metro areas.  

These are just three of the really big, long term trends, that are playing out now, and will continue well into the future, regardless of what President-elect Trump, or any other politicians do.  Trump's much trumpeted ideas for tariffs could easily lead to higher prices and more inflation, or a full blown trade war with China, neither of which helps working Americans.  

Yes, stock prices, and particularly crypto prices, are rising right now, which helps the relatively small number of Americans who own large stock portfolios.  But stocks are largely overvalued overall by long term standards, which is why people like Warren Buffet, one of America's best investors, have been selling large quantities of stocks, and is now sitting on over $320 billion in cash.  He is waiting for good opportunities to invest large sums, and can't find them at this time.  

There are huge negative trends economically right now, and some very positive trends in some markets, and these mixed signals will most likely continue well into the next year or two.  Future actions by the new administration will have some effect on the economy, and we'll have to see how the overall picture plays out.  But it's not going to be smooth sailing, or the unbounded upward trend that most Republicans are now expecting.  Finding true organic growth in the economy at a large level has been a problem since the Great Recession (aka the GFC) of 2008.  It's going to be a weird and tumultuous road ahead economically, and some actions by the Trump administration could make it worse for average Americans.  

There are no paid links in this post.

I've been doing most of my writing on a platform called Substack for the last year, which is designed specifically for writers.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

Kenny Roberts- My latest Sharpie drawing

This is my latest Sharpie Scribble Style drawing, motorcycle racer Kenny Roberts, known to many as "King Kenny."  This is another project given to me by Sean Ewing, a lifelong BMX and motorcycle enthusiast and rider, and a guy who I've done several really cool drawings for.  Sharpie markers on paper, 18" X 24",about 45 hours of work, #sharpiescribblestyle, November 2024.

Kenny Roberts rose up in California to become a great flat track motorcycle racer on the dirt tracks as a young man.  He moved on up to road racing, got sponsored by Yamaha, and was the first guy to touch his knee to the ground while leaning into turns.  In the late 1970's and early 1980's.  Kenny went on to become the first American World Champion at road racing, long dominated by the Europeans at the time.  Then he won the World Championship a second year in a row.  Check the videos below for footage and the story of Kenny Roberts.  

The Legend of King Kenny: America's First Grand Prix Champion

Kenny Roberts vs. Barry Sheene / 1979 British Grand Prix

Homotherium: A mummified, 32,000 year old saber tooth kitten has been found

The mummy of a three week old saber tooth kitten was found in 2020, frozen in the Siberian permafrost.  This find just hit the news yesterday.  In this video above, a real paleontologist gives us some background on Homotherium, which did live here in the U.S., among other places around the world.  But the mummified kitten was a Homotherium, not the more famous Smilodon, the saber tooth cat with the 9 inch canine teeth.  According to this video, Homotherium were part cat-like and part dog-like, and built for distance running.  Check out the video for more details on this extinct animal.  I believe this is the first mummified saber toothed cat ever found, which is amazing.  

Happy Halloween everyone!

The best voice of Halloween creepiness ever, Vincent Price explains why humans are some of the greatest monsters of all, then he does his cover of "The Monster Mash."  

It's 1:00 pm here in California, and I've already shot photos of an actual raven in an enchanted oak tree with twisted limbs, seen a werewolf, a guy in a ski mask (OK, maybe he was just a bank robber), and two Waldos.  Yep, I found Waldo twice this morning.  

Here's a Generation X group of Halloween songs and pieces, to get you in the mood to get creepy and let your freak flag fly tonight.  Or to sit by the door handing out $75 worth of candy to ungrateful brats in lame, store-bought costumes.  Whatever you have planned.  Happy Halloween everyone!

"The Monster Mash" - Bobby "Boris" Pickett- the original version

"Dead Man's Party" - Oingo Boingo

"Two Big Pumpkins" - Elvira

"Day-O" from Beetlejuice

Scooby-Doo theme song

"Science Fiction/ Double Feature"- The Dresden Dolls- from Rocky Horror Show

"Tainted Love" - Marilyn Manson

"Psycho" - Imelda May

"Cold Ethyl" - Alice Cooper

"Werewolves of London" - live- Warren Zevon

"Time Warp" - Rocky Horror Picture Show

"Zombie" - Miley Cyrus covering The Cranberries song

"Creep" - Creepy Circus version

Ghostbusters song - Ray Parker, Jr.

"Rocky Top" - Osborne Brothers- Paddle faster, I hear banjos!

"House of the Rising Sun" - Puddles Pity Party covering The Animals' song

"I Put a Spell on You" - Chinchilla covers Screamin' Jay Hawkins

"Do You Think It's Alright/ Cousin Kevin" - Tommy - The Who

"99 to Life" - Social Distortion

"Used to Lover Her" - Guns N' Roses

"The Tale of Jenny & Screech" - Ren

Wayne's World ending

"Let's Do It"- Tank Girl version of Cole Porter song

"Tainted Love" - Broken Peach

Grandpa Munster and the Dragula

Elvira and Vincent Price on the Tonight Show- 1984

"The Raven" - Christopher Walken reads the Edgar Allen Poe poem

I do most of my writing on Substack now, a platform created specifically for writers.  Check out my work there:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

Brian Yeagle street/dirt segment from Anthem II

I stumbled across this segment on YouTube a couple days ago.  I'd never seen it before.  It's now one of my favorite BMX street/dirt sections ever.  That's mostly because it doesn't look like every other street video section.  Brian Yeagle from Anthem II, 12 years ago?  Something like that.  

I do most of my writing on Substack now, a platform designed for writers.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

Why Oxford University doesn't use I.Q. scores to qualify candidates

The Jesus College at Oxford University dates back to the era of Elizabeth I, and was opened in 1571.  It was opened as the first Protestant college to be a part of Oxford.  In this video, Oxford staffer Matt Williams explains why standardized IQ tests are not used to qualify potential candidates for Oxford University.

For a variety of reasons that I won't go into, I've come to basically despise the whole concept of IQ tests, IQ scores, and think that they are dramatically over-hyped in today's world.  There are all kinds of intelligence in the world of human beings, and what we call IQ tests only test a smart part of those skills.  There are many other kinds of traits and skill sets that matter in life, like determination, being a self-starter, creativity, being able to think and talk on your feet, perseverance during times of trials, and so forth.  Matt explains all of this very clearly in about five minutes in the video above.  

I do most of my writing these days on Substack, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

I have a Pinterest board that acts as a table of contents for my Substack, where you can read nearly every post title, then go to that post with one click.  Here's that page:

Steve Emig's Substack Table of Contents

Talking flatland with Fish Johnson

Longtime Seattle rider, Fish Johnson, in 2011.  

On occasion, I make it down to H.B. Tuesday, where Martin Aparijo, Sean Ewing, and the crew of old schoolers ride flatland in a beach parking, every Tuesday afternoon.  Last week I made it down to H.B., and hung out for the afternoon.  Honestly, going down there is the highlight of my month.  While Fate has pushed me away from the BMX world for a really long time, I'm still a huge fan of doing tricks on "little kid's bikes" (as people called them back in the 1980's).  Yes, I got fat and haven't ridden in many years, but I still love BMX freestyle, and I'll always be a fan of riding, and action sports in general.  

Last week I met a guy there named Fish, from up in the Seattle area.  He was ripping it up with a bunch of rolling tricks... backyards, frontyards, and sideyards, high speed hang 5's and a bunch more.  Watching Fish, I realized that I was an "apartment flatlander" back in the 80's.  I had no front, back, or side yards in my trick bag.  I had no yards at all.  My scuffing repertoire was limited to Shingle shuffles and funky chickens on occasion.  My main tricks were sliders, Switzerland squeakers, a bunch of tailwhip variations, back wheel peg spin variations (megaspins that weren't "mega"), high speed 180 bunnyhops to half Cabs, and a few other obscure tricks.  

Fish was familiar with my blogging, and we got talking, while Martin and a few others were riding.  It was great to just talk about Old School flatland riding for a while, with someone I'd heard of, but never actually met.  I brought up David Morris, a Seattle area guy, a really solid rider, who never got much coverage, but was the real Raleigh Factory Freestyle team, which I joined for a year in 1987.  Fish had a cool story about meeting and riding David's team BITD.  We also talked about the BMX business, and flatland over the many years since.

I told Fish how the whole rolling trick transition was when I clocked out of flatland, I just wasn't up for learning all those tricks, and street was getting more interesting to me.  Fish said that's when it really got fun for him.  His style and skill set rocked in the forward rolling era, and he's still riding hard today.  Anyhow, great to meet and talk a while, Fish.  Glad we got to hang out a while and share some stories.   

Blogger's note- 10/18/2024- I rewrote this post quickly today, because the original post sucked.  This started out as a couple of lines about meeting a cool Old School rider from Seattle, and then I rambled off topic, like usual.  Sometimes that works, but in this post it didn't.  So I cleaned it up today.   

I'm doing most of my writing on a platform called Substack now, check it out.

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

RIP Frank Fritz of American Pickers

Frank Fritz, long time co-star of American Pickers, just passed away yesterday, September 30th, 2024.  I've been a fan of the show since I first saw it, shortly after it hit the air in 2010.  Frank had a stroke in 2022, leaving him in a wheelchair, and just passed away at age 60.  He's best known for about a decade of driving around the U.S. with Mike Wolfe, looking to pick antiques and collectibles, to resell.  They picked "rusty gold" treasures from garages, barns, long fading outbuildings, and anywhere else cool stuff has been stored for years.  

Since I live in the San Fernando Valley now, I picked the segment where Mike and Frank visited custom car legend the late George Barris, in his shop in North Hollywood, California.  They got to sit in the original Batmobile, from the 1960's TV show.  That's a big thing for young Boomers and old Gen Xers.  In that episode, Frank and Mike got a tour of the shop that put out decades of customized cars for TV, movies, and private clients.  They did pick up some collectibles, photos and similar things, from Barris, but this clip is just the first part of that show.  

My dad was a guy who was always "wheelin' and dealin'" all kinds of things as I grew up, items bought from gun shows, garage sales, and flea markets.  He taught me how to make a few bucks on the side when I was a kid.  Many years later, I got into buying and flipping stuff from storage unit auctions, and tried to turn that into a business at one point.  That never really got going full time, but I still enjoy looking for odd treasures in old junk, and may get back to it some day.  So American Pickers was right up my alley, and I really enjoyed Mike and Frank's adventures, and learned a lot from the show.  So it's sad to see "the bearded charmer," as Mike often called him, pass on from this life.  RIP Frank.  

Congratulations to Jeff Watson, Hugo Gonzales, and Jay Miron on getting inducted into the USABMX Hall of Fame

The Canadian Beast, Jay Miron, just got inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame this past weekend.  He ripped on flatland, he ripped on ramps, he ripped on street, and he did the first double backflip on a BMX bike in 1997 for Canadian TV.  Congratulations Jay on induction into to the USA BMX Hall of Fame.  I'd never seen this segment above before, and it would be amazing if it came out today, and it's absolutely mind blowing for 20 years ago, in 2004.  See kids, this is what's possible if you have brakes on your bike (and practice for over 20 years and have balls the size of Manitoba).  

This past weekend, BMX freestylers the late Jeff Watson and Hugo Gonzales got inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame in the "Early Freestyle" category, and Jay Miron in the "Modern Freestyle" category.  Congratulations to all of you!  You can watch their acceptance speeches on the link below.  Jeff Watson at 1:34:30, Hugo Gonzales at 2:04:47, and Jay Miron at 2:39:06.

USA BMX 2024 Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

Jeff Watson getting over vert in Pipeline Skatepark's pipe (1980/ 1981?)

Hugo Gonzalez Tribute Video

Hugo Gonzalez- AFA Master Finals- 1986- Cal State Dominguez Velodrome

Jay Miron- Velvet Taxi Remix 1995

Jay Miron- Double Backflip on Canadian TV in 1997

Again, Congratulations to 2024's freestyle inductees to the USA BMX Hall of Fame.  

I'm doing most of my writing on a platform called Substack these days, which is designed for writers.  Check out my latest work here:

Steve Emig's Substack

Congratulations to the FREESTYLIN' Magazine staff for their induction into the USABMX Hall of Fame

Here's the crazy thing, when you look up FREESTYLIN' magazine on YouTube, almost nothing comes up.  How is there no documentary about FREESTYLIN'?  Mark Eaton, what are you up to these days?  This video above is former EXPN website editor Brian Tunney shooting a video at 3162 Kashiwa Street in Torrance, California, in 2019, I believe.  That building was the longtime home of Wizard Publications, which put out BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, as well as two or three issues of Homeboy magazine.  The words, and especially the photos, that came out of this building in the 1980's, changed the lives of thousands of us BMXers and early freestylers in that era.  This is the best video I could find paying homage to FREESTYLIN'.  

 2024 USA BMX National BMX Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony 2024- September 21st, 2024

Bob "Oz" Osborn, founder and owner of Wizard Publications, begins the introduction for the FREESTYLIN' magazine staff introduction at 30:30 in that link above.  

Last weekend, September 21st, 2024, the legendary staff of FREESTYLIN' magazine was inducted into the USA BMX Hall of Fame, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the BMX freestyle "Industry" category.  The staff of FREESTYLIN' inducted includes the editor Andy Jenkins, assistant editor Mark "Lew" Lewman, managing editor/proofreader Don Tosach, art director Janice Jenkins, associate editor/photographer Spike Jonze, advertising salesperson Valerie Adlam, and receptionist/mild-mannered superhuman Dian Harlan.  They are all completely deserving of this honor, and it's great to see them all included in the official BMX Hall of Fame.  This group of people inspired thousands of us kids doing tricks on bikes around the U.S. and around the world, including me.  Wizard Publications owner Bob Osborn, and his daughter and photographer, Windy Osborn are already members of the BMX Hall of Fame.  

 FREESTYLIN' magazine was the bible of 1980's BMX freestyle.  It was, by far, the hippest, coolest, most stylish BMX magazine ever.  I was a dorky BMX freestyler in Boise Idaho, way up at 43 degrees of latitude, when the first issue of FREESTYLIN' magazine came out in the summer of 1984.  I didn't even see the first two issues of it until long after they came out.  The first issue of the mag that I got my hands on was issue #3.  It had SE Racing freestyler Todd Anderson one the cover, blasting a one footed tabletop over a convertible Volkswagen bug full of SE's BMX racing legends, including Scot Breithaupt, Perry Kramer, Toby Henderson, and several others.  From that issue on, I spent hours reading every single issue of FREESTYLIN' for the next several years. 

Like so many other riders out there at the time, when it was definitely not cool to do tricks on a "little kid's bike," FREESTYLIN' was the main thread showing us kids around the world what was happening in Southern California in BMX freestyle, and later all over the U.S. and the world.  In 1984-1985-1986 and beyond, we didn't have the internet, YouTube, or even very many BMX freestyle videos in those early years.  FREESTYLIN' was where we got the news, new tricks, style, attitude, and DIY ethic that was the rapidly changing and progressing sport of BMX freestyle.  As my blog readers know, BMX freestyle changed the entire course of my life, and FREESTYLIN' magazine was a huge inspiration in those years.  I had a complete collection of FREESTYLIN' issues, until I lost them in a move back east in 2008.  

Here are a few clips of some of the FREESTYLIN' magazine staff members since the 1980's.

Check out scans of FREESTYLIN' magazine issues online here

Lew interviews Dave Voelker in the beginning of this clip from 1988- 2-Hip Meet the Street #1- Santee, CA

Robert Osborn: Portrait of a Portrait Photographer

Windy Osborn- BMX Hall of Fame induction

Andy Jenkins- Mural at The Berrics

Mark "Lew" Lewman- Flatland run in 1988

Spike Jonze- Meet the Street- Palm Springs- 1990

Spike Jonze winning Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Her

At 49:43 in the HOF ceremony they used a short clip from a 2-Hip video I edited.  How cool is that?  

Harry Leary Tribute

BMX lost one of the all time top riders last week, Harry Leary.  One of the early legends of BMX racing, Harry Leary, passed away last Saturday, September 7, 2024.  It was announced on an Instagram post, and the only details I've seen are that he was 65 years old, and died of heat exhaustion in the Arizona desert.  

Although he raced for 50 years, part of his iconic status comes from inventing the Leary, one of the classic BMX jumping tricks of all time.  The Leary goes back to about 1975 or 1976, I believe, and got dubbed the lookback by freestylers, early on.  The still shot on the video above is Harry Leary, doing a Leary, on the July 1984 cover of BMX Action.  Easily, this is one of the greatest magazine covers ever.  This video above is a review of that magazine, and there is another great shot of Harry in the magazine, a full speed bonzai jump photo. Both the cover shot and the inside two page spread are shots by Jim Cassimus.

Months after I got into BMX in 1982, a couple of my friends got their bikes stolen at a local arcade.  Luckily they just figured out a week earlier that their bikes were covered on their parents' renter's insurance policy.  With a little bit of creative writing on the insurance claim, they both got big checks for the stolen bikes.  One of them bought a 1983 Diamondback Harry Leary Turbo.  That was the first top-of-the-line BMX bike I ever got to ride.  In a straight line, on the street.  He didn't let any of us jump it.  That bike felt so good to pedal, compared to the rat bike clunkers we all had at the time.  It gave us something to aim for.  Like thousands of other kids around the U.S. and the world, Harry Leary helped inspire our little crew in the trailer park outside of Boise to keep riding and progress as BMXers. 

Here are some of the highlights I found online for all of you out there who were also inspired by Harry Leary at some point in your riding life.  

Harry Leary smokes the 56-60 cruiser class at the 2015 USABMX Grands.

Harry Leary wins two cruiser mains at the Grands in 1994

BMX Weekly Podcast #1 with Harry Leary- 2023- Interview by Dale Holmes- 57 minutes

The Diamondback Harry Leary Turbo- When it comes to the iconic signature BMX bikes of the late 1970's and early 1980's, there are four that really stand out.  The Diamondback Harry Leary Turbo, the PK Ripper (Perry Kramer), and for freestyle, the Haro Master (Bob Haro), and the Redline RL-20 (R.L.Osborn).  There were others, but those four were above the others in popularity and becoming the great bikes in the many years since.  

Harry Leary and Eddy King dominate the big, wide, downhill track in Whistler, British Columbia in 1985, 19 years before the first Red Bull Joyride MTB event there.  Leary wins AA Pro.  

Harry Leary Wikipedia page

Epic long songs: the land yachts of Rock n' Roll

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, "Jungleland," live in Tempe, Arizona in 1980.  This is my personal favorite of Bruce Springsteen's several epic, long songs.  This song contains one of my all time favorite lines anywhere, "...and then the poets down here don't write anything at all, they just stand back and let it all be."  

I've written somewhere over 2,800 blog posts in the last 16 years, and have told hundreds of little stories about my days in BMX freestyle in the 1980's and 1990's.  I've written about many other things as well.  These days, I'm doing most of my writing on my Substack site.  Since this blog hit 1,000 posts, I've throttled back on the new posts.  It still gets a bunch of views from various links.  But I just do posts here that seem really interesting to me at the time.  This is an idea that popped into my head a couple days ago, while listening to some classic rock songs.  

My first car was a 1971 Pontiac Bonneville.  It was a gigantic four door sedan powered by an Oldsmobile 455 V-8, and it was about 18 1/2 feet long.  A land yacht.  That car was big, powerful, horrible on gas, and a blast to get loose in, on snowy roads in the winter.  It could hold 10 or 12 drunk high school kids, and my taxi driving career really began in Boise, Idaho, in 1983, when I would be the designated driver, and drive a bunch of teens home from parties.  These, big, long, hard rock songs remind me of my land yacht Pontiac.  Big and comfortable and a memorable part of a certain era.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of great Rock n' Roll songs that have been sung, recorded, and often covered by others later on.  But there's this subset of Rock songs that are really long, let's say, over 5 minutes, and epic rock as well.  Here are a bunch of my favorite long, epic rock songs.  

Queen- "Bohemian Rhapsody"

Meatloaf (song by Jim Steinman)- "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights"

Bruce Springsteen- "Rosalita"

Boston- "Foreplay/Longtime"

The Guess Who- "American Woman"

Meatloaf (song by Jim Steinman)- "Bat out of Hell"

Bruce Springsteen- "Thunder Road"

Joe Walsh with Daryl Hall and Daryl's House band- "Life's Been Good"

The Who- "Tommy Overture/It's a Boy"

Rush- Tom Sawyer

The Guess Who- "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature"

Bruce Springsteen- "Born to Run"

Meatloaf (song by Jim Steinman)- "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth"

Rush- "Spirit of Radio"

Don McClean- "American Pie"

Elton John- "Tiny Dancer"

Billy Joel- "Piano Man"

Elton John- "Madman Across the Water"

Billy Joel- "Scenes in an Italian Restaurant"

Elton John- "Funeral for a Friend/Loves Lies Bleeding"

Janis Joplin- "Cry Baby"

Heart- "Crazy on You"

Pat Benatar- "Hell is for Children"

Tina Turner- "Proud Mary"

Tedeschi- Trucks Band (Susan Trucks on vocals)- "Anyhow"

Kerry Getz- "This Summer Afternoon"

The Indigo Girls- "All Along the Watchtower"

Stevie Nicks- "Edge of Seventeen"

Joss Stone/Melissa Etheridge- Janis Joplin tribute-"Cry Baby/Take a Piece of My Heart"

Aretha Franklin- "Amazing Grace"

Led Zeppelin- "Stairway to Heaven"

The Rolling Stones- "Sympathy for the Devil"

Pink Floyd- "Comfortably Numb"

Iron Butterfly- "In A Gadda Da Vida"

The Doors- "The End"

Led Zeppelin- "Kashmir"

Manfred Mann's Earth Band- "Blinded by the Light"

Kansas- "Carry On Wayward Son"

Sweet- "Love is Like Oxygen"

Pink Floyd- "Another Brick in the Wall"

AC/DC- "Whole Lotta Rosie"

Joe Cocker- "With a Little Help From my Friends"

The Eagles- "Hotel California"

Steppenwolf- "Magic Carpet Ride"

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers- "Mystic Eyes"

The Allman Brothers- "Jessica" 

Lynyrd Skynyrd- "Freebird"

The Grateful Dead- "Truckin'"

Lynyrd Skynyrd- "Sweet Home Alabama"

Marshall Tucker Band- "Can't You See" 

Jethro Tull- "Aqualung"

Foghat- "Slow Ride"

Yes- "Roundabout"

Grand Funk Railroad- "I'm Your Captain"

Chicago- "25 or 6 to 4"

Blue Oyster Cult- "Don't Fear The Reaper"

Jethro Tull- "Thick as a Brick"

Bob Marley & The Wailers- "No Woman, No Cry"

Harry Chapin- "Taxi"

The Eagles- "Lyin' Eyes"

The Grateful Dead- "Scarlet Begonias"

The Doors- "Riders on the Storm"

Gordon Lightfoot- "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

Traffic- "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys"

Harry Chapin- "Sniper"

Deep Purple- "Smoke on the Water" 

Procol Harum- "A Whiter Shade of Pale"

Moody Blues- "Knights in White Satin"

Jimmy Page & Robert Plant- "The Rain Song"

B.B. King- "The Thrill is Gone"

Jimi Hendrix- "Voodoo Chile"

Eric Clapton- "Layla"

George Thorogood- "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" 

ZZ Top- "Le Grange"

Tedeschi Trucks Band- "Whipping Post" 

Tedeschi Trucks Band- featuring Susan Tedeschi- "I Pity The Fool"

Rush- "Red Barchetta"

Michael Jackson- "Thriller"

Prince and The Revolution- "Purple Rain"

The B-52's- "Rock Lobster"

Oingo Boingo- "Just Another Day"

Guns N' Roses- "November Rain"

Metallica- "Enter Sandman"

Slash featuring Fergie- "Sweet Child of Mine" 

Metallica- "One"

Guns N' Roses- "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"

Jane's Addiction- "Jane Says"

Metallica- "Nothing Else Matters"

Kid Rock- "Bawitaba"

Brian Setzer Orchestra- "Stray Cat Strut"

Kid Rock- "Cowboy"

Red Hot Chili Peppers- "Californication"

Kid Rock/Lynryd Skynyrd- "All Summer Long/Sweet Home Alabama"

Green Day- "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

Ren X Chinchilla- "Chalk Outlines"

Ren- "Hi Ren"

Special bonus for making it to the bottom of the list:

Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Joe Cocker in concert- 1983

Just for the record, I listened to every song in its entirety while working on this blog post, except for "In A Godda Da Vida."  I had limited online time at the library, so I skipped over that 20 minute epic.  When I started out on this idea, I thought there were about 10 or 15 classic, long songs from the 1970's and early 1980's.  Then I got into this blog post, and just kept finding more epic, long songs.  I didn't link every song, there are quite a few more, but I got most of the classic rock bands known for long songs, and then brought it right up to the present day.  91 epic songs and performances over 5 minutes each.  Enjoy.  

I do most of my writing on Substack these days, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out:

Steve Emig's Substack

Heat Wave...

I've been living homeless in the San Fernando Valley.  Yes, this is the place Moon Unit Zappa made fun of way back in 1982.  They don't talk like that anymore, by the way.  Fer shur.  The Valley is just north of the Los Angeles basin, on the other side of those little mountains where the Hollywood sign is.  The SoCal weather, overall, is way better than any place else I've lived.  But it's pretty damn hot this week.  The interwebs said it was 112 degrees (F) here yesterday.  We've got a few more days of this.  

So I'm doing my best to stay out of the heat and stay hydrated this week.   Doing a little blogging and a bunch of writing and reading, mostly.   

McKinsey & Company- The biggest collection of douchebags in the world?

I just finished reading the book, When McKinsey Comes to Town, by journalists Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe.  The book was straight out mind blowing.  McKinsey & Co. is a management consultant company that's nearly 100 years old, and has advised many of the best known, major corporations, and many government agencies in the U.S., and around the world.  After reading this book, I'd like to try and explain who McKinsey is, but John Oliver and the LastWeek Tonight crew does it so fucking well in this video above.  Just watch the video. 

"To those convinced that a secretive cabal controls the world, the usual suspects are the Illuminati, Lizard People, or 'globalists.'  They are wrong, naturally.  There is no secret society shaping every major decision and determining the direction of human history.  There is, however, McKinsey & Company."

- a former McKinsey consultant, quoted in the book, When McKinsey Comes to Town. (p.278).  

For me, learning about McKinsey & Co., in the last several weeks, started with wondering why McDonald's corporate officers seem to be making so many odd decisions in recent years.  As someone who eats at McDonald's a lot, I began to wonder why McDonald's seems to have forgotten that they actually run restaurants.  

I started checking out some of the YouTube videos about the fast food industry and McDonald's, like this one, and this one. With the pandemic and high inflation afterwards, the last few years have been incredibly tough for fast food restaurants in general.  McDonald's issues though, go back a decade or more.  The McDonald's corporate officers, according to multiple reports, have been increasingly squeezing more money out of the local franchisees for several years now.  This became such an issue, that McDonald's franchisees actually started a union, to collectively voice their issues to the corporate officers.  As time passed in recent years, the local owners, the franchisees, have seen decreasing profits in many places, due to corporate decisions in many cases.  And then, the pandemic hit, with the business shutdowns, followed by high inflation and rising prices for food items.  As a business owner, that's a lot to deal with.  

After a while, I came across this article, with McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski, from 2021.  In it, and the embedded video, he talks about McDonald's focusing more attention on their rewards program, and delivery orders using Postmates, Uber Eats, and similar delivery platforms.  He also talks about McDonald's testing out restaurants that had no inside seating at all, just drive-thru, phone order takeouts, and delivery orders.  

It looks like that for three years or more, McDonald's has been looking into the cost savings of having fast food restaurants, with no actual "restaurant."  I have a hunch, that if you polled 1,000 Americans, and asked them, "What is McDonald's?" their answers would say that it's a fast food restaurant where families go to eat for a reasonable price, or something similar to that.  Tens of millions of current American adults played, as little kids, in the Play Places that no longer exist at McDonald's.  

Somehow I don't think the idea of McDonald's being just a drive-thru/delivery business would fly with most current customers.  Not for the long term, anyhow.  Maybe that's just me.  It also seems like it would be difficult to get the owners of the 12,775 McDonald's franchisees in the U.S. to shut down the indoor part of the restaurant, when it usually costs $1 million to $2 million to buy a McDonald's franchise.  In any case, it appears there's a lot more drama ahead for most, if not all, fast food companies, for the corporate staff and franchisees alike.  

In any case, that article with the McDonald's CEO is on the McKinsey & Co. website.  So I asked myself, "Who's McKinsey?"  That's when I found the LastWeek Tonight video above, and a bunch of other interesting posts about this consulting firm.  Last week, looking for an interesting book in the local library, I stumbled upon When McKinsey Comes to Town.  Since that three year old article is on the McKinsey website, it's obvious that McKinsey was consulting Mickey D's in 2021, and likely still is.  After reading that book, I now understand how McDonald corporate could have forgotten that they actually run restaurants, not just phone app delivery sites.  

Several weeks ago, I was wondering why my local McDonald's no longer have dedicated clerks manning the register and taking orders full time.  That led to this crazy trip through learning about the current the tribulations of the fast food industry, and then to this secretive management consulting firm that literally seems like a parody of the terms "management consulting."  Man, it's a weird world we live in, and McKinsey has had consulting gigs with a lot of it in 100 years.  

Before Oprah, and all the rest, there was Phil Donahue

The renowned talk show host, Phil Donahue, died this past weekend at the age of 88.  This is Entertainment Tonight's tribute to the guy who invented the afternoon, audience participation talk show.  If it wasn't for Phil Donahue's show, Oprah, Sally Jessie, Maury, Jerry Springer and all the others may have never had the shows we know them best for.  

Somewhere in a box, probably in my sister's attic back east, there's a picture of me when I was 19-years-old.  I was about as close to thin as I ever got, and I was wearing my Boise High School letterman's jacket, red with white sleeves, and a big red "B" on it.  Believe it or not, my fat ass got a letter in cross-country during my senior year of high school (Go Braves!).  In the photo, my hand is raised up, left hand, I believe, and there's a small monkey on my hand.  I had a splint on one finger that I had smashed or something.  It wasn't broken, but the doctors at the ER put a splint on it, to keep it from moving for a few days.  The monkey kept picking at the white tape and splint, trying to figure out what it was for.  The photo was taken in San Francisco, in either the fall of 1985, or spring of 1986, I think it was in the spring.  My mom and I  were standing in line to see a taping of the Phil Donahue Show.  Or Donahue, as it was called then.  That episode had something to do with grandparent's rights, when their kids were abusive to their grandkids, something like that.  The show did a few days of taping in San Francisco for some reason.  The monkey was owned by a guy working the line, letting people take photos with the monkey for tips.  There were a few hundred of us lined up for an hour or more, so I imagine he made a decent amount of money.  My mom snapped the photo.

As I recall, once we were all seated, Phil Donahue came out before the show, and let the audience ask him questions.  My mom was really excited, and he came over, pointed the mic towards her, and let her speak.  My mom, Kathy, told Phil Donahue that she had been a fan of his show since he was a local talk show host in Dayton, Ohio.  In fact, she explained, she once was in the studio audience of the local show when she was pregnant with her son, who's now 19-years-old.  She pointed to me.  She told Phil Donahue that she'd been a fan all those years, and was delighted to be able to come to another taping.  

Now even for a TV host who has interviewed hundreds of celebrities, and pointed a mic at thousands of audience members, that's a pretty unique story.  Phil Donahue was incredibly gracious and professional, and said he was glad she came to a show taping all those years later.  It's been a long time, obviously, but I think that all happened before the show taped.  

He went backstage after the questions, and came back out to tape the show.  During the latter half of the show, my mom got to make a comment about the topic of the day, which, of course made her happy.  Because of that, we were both on camera for a few seconds during the actual show.  She might have mentioned seeing him before in Dayton in the show, but I think it was before hand.  My memory is hazy on that part.  In any case, we watched the show being taped, and it was pretty cool.  

After the show, the audience was told that Phil was available to get a photo with, back in those days before cell phones and selfies as we know them today.  My mom, of course, wanted a photo.  We left the auditorium, and there was a big line of well over 100 people to get a photo.  So we stood in another line for probably 20 minutes or so, and eventually made it up to say "Hi" to Phil, and to take a photo.  As my mom walked up, he smiled and said, "You're the lady from Ohio, right?"  Wow.  That one floored me.  The audience probably had 400 to 500 people in it, and he had talked to quite a few of them, both during the question period, and while taping the show itself.  

As you can imagine, my mom was ecstatic that he remembered her, and she talked to him for a minute, and I shot a photo of them.  We headed out, and back home to San Jose, where my mom promptly called everyone she could think of and told them she saw Phil Donahue, and that he remembered her after the show.  

I'd heard the story about my mom going to see a Phil Donahue Show taping live, while she was pregnant with me, several times before that day.  I remember her watching his show going way back in my childhood.  Today I looked it up, and found that the local Dayton Phil Donahue Show started in 1967.  I was born in 1966.  But he did an earlier afternoon show called Conversation Piece, at the same station, WHIO-TV, from 1963 to 1967.  We did live in both Dayton and Cincinnati (close by) when I was little.  We moved out of Dayton when I was five.  But my parents lived up by Akron, in the opposite part of Ohio, when I was born.  My guess is that my mom went with a couple of other women to the taping back in 1966.  I never heard the whole story of the trip.  My mom died earlier this year, so I can't get the details from her.  

As a kid in Ohio until I was 14, I watched a lot of Phil Donahue Shows as a kid.  My mom, and most other moms we knew, watched it nearly every afternoon.  The show was on a lot, whether us kids wanted to watch it or not.  My dominant memory is my mom folding laundry while watching it, on many different occasions.  

From all of his shows I watched on TV, and the one taping that I went to when I was 19, I have to say Phil Donahue was a class act, on TV and off.  He and his team figured out in the 1960's that you can do a really interesting TV show, day after day, with a live studio audience and a good topic to talk about.  He invented the afternoon talk show genre' and taped thousands of interesting shows.  RIP Phil Donahue.

I couldn't find the photo of me with the monkey anywhere online, or on social media.  If I find it, I'll put it up here, or link to it.