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ALOHA: INTRODUCTION The concept for this book coalesced in my brain Wednesday night while driving home from Star Market, Kaneohe. Went there to fetch some marked-down deli sandwiches and two cups of freshly brewed Lion’s Vanilla-Macadamia Nut Coffee. The trip from Star Market to my house takes about six minutes, depending on how lazy the lights are at Kamehameha Highway and Kealahala Street. The only time I listen to radio in this century is in the car. I am part of America’s ”Vehicular Audience.” During my short trips I search for something, anything, interesting on a local talk station or Public Radio. For sure ESPN Radio, if KKEA-AM airs it live. I keep Elvis Presley’s first “gospel” records in the car. Only records for which he won Grammy's. Back when he sang every note ever written. Usually I’m listening to “Mansion Over the Hilltop” or “If We Never Meet Again” within three minutes of turning on the radio. Elvis chills me out. He’s prevented countless crashes into something important and/or immovable. Errors of omission or commission come at a “trained programmer’s” ears fast as Gatling gunshots. Hawaii, like Vegas, is mostly glitz, little market size. Our local stations are mostly bush league. Sounds about like you expect in the #64 market in the USA. The Big Apple now tallies 15,332,000 people. Boss Angeles houses about two-thirds of New York City’s huddled masses: 10,790,000 smog-sucking citizens. Honolulu metro is in the high 700,000. (Source: Arbitron) think I have all that "size is everything" stuff, well, when it comes to radio, in perspective. Main thing is not to compare Hawaii stations with where I worked. At least not out loud. Much business can be taken care of with a Program Department of 72 people Including about 20 union engineers back then.) Then again, this iMac can store more songs than the KHJ Music Library, for sure. Things came into focus one night in La Jolla, where I lived while working at KGB-AM-FM-San Diego, which I feel was every bit as good as KHJ-Los Angeles, if not better.
Mi casa was one block up from the freezing faux Pacific, near where Tom Wolfe embedded himself to write “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Trip.” My friend, the actor Reni Santoni (everything from “The Pawnbroker” to “Seinfeld”), spent the weekend in mid-1973. We packed down fresh abalone sandwiches and smoked some primo Kauai Electric. In the hour when darkness morphs into dawn we reached the point where you stare at one another in a shmaze, on the cusp of crashing. Somewhere back there the last topic was Show Business. Reni surfaced long enough to utter a truth I’ve never forgotten: “Radio, man, is one notch above juggling.” THE BASICS My super mentor, Col. Thomas A. Parker, taught me that, Nothing Ever Changes. Now, some believe that, “The only constant is change.” Others conclude that, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” Intellectual bumper stickery, I say. Consider what is now popularly called an” overarching view.” Colonel believed that most things were predictable, once one perceived the Cycle. Parker 101. On short notice Tom Moffatt and were invited to dine with Colonel in his suite at the Hawaiian Village Hotel. (We worked for Henry J. Kaiser at KHVH Radio in 1957. See “The Great Elvis Hoax,” under Previous Articles.) Moffatt and I waited, starving, until box lunches of dry fried chicken, macaroni salad and limp carrots arrived—from the location where Elvis was shooting that day. Yes, with Colonel there was a free lunch. For him, the price, or lack of it, made it delicious. Other meals were more last minute invitations. Perhaps breakfast on the hotel’s lanai on the beach at Waikiki. The Colonel asks: “Y’all see that woman over there, all by herself, sipping pineapple juice?” “Yessir!” we shot back. (An in-group Memphis Mafia call and response thing we were allowed to use.) “Yessir!” That was about as much as one got to say when Colonel was inspired. I never saw him any other way until the Last Time, in his Vegas house. “Well keep on a-lookin’ at her ‘cause soon she’s gonna be feeding them birds.” Moffatt and Jacobs (to themselves:) “What fucking birds?” Colonel tokes on his fat cigar, possibly Cuban, doubtless a gift from an authentic General, studio exec, superstar or Ambassador. Ra-ta-boom! On cue, mynah birds flutter about the lady’s table. Unafraid, they strut about her feet, making their annoying clatter. After a bit they alight in the direction of Diamond Head. Close to exploding from the raw curiousity pumping through our brains, Moffatt, or I, blurt, “How, uh, did you know that was gonna happen, Colonel?” Puff, puff, puff. Long silence. Painfully dramatic. Finally: “Well, you see boys, I been watchin’ the lady at breakfast since she checked in here. And she’s been doin’ the exact same thing every morning. No different today.” I thought, “What flies around, comes around.”
From the moment I met Colonel I never planned any thing for radio, or most other gigs, without asking myself, “What would Colonel do?” The man was about Basics. Nowadays that word is tossed about like last night’s Olympic bobsledders careening down the ice. But thanks to Thomas A. Parker I’ve been (another cliché) Old School for the past 48 years. Didn’t work out so shabbily for me. Yessir! OK, so I’m a recovering motor mouth, I tend to digress. But since what you’re reading was advertised as a list of future possibilities for radio here’s the list. It’s a pupu (appetizer) of what will follow in more detail during the next ten weeks, from President’s Day to Diez de Mayo.
JACOBS’ LADDER (to be continued next Monday at www.RonJacobsOnline.com) |
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sitting
there I went through two cities, three jobs, four houses, eight
Cadillac Coupe Deville’s, six cats, one Olde English Sheepdog (named
“Rigby”), two wives, four coaches and what seemed like 600
quarterbacks. My pro football fanaticism was still under control in
1976 when I met up with the original “All-World” tight end"
christened so by Howard Cossell during his first Monday Night
Football game: Russ Francis #81 of the New England Patriots. Until
then my loyalty had been with the Los Angeles Rams. Their tight ends
were people like Billy Truax #87 and Bob Klein #80…familiar figures
leaping and huffing inside my Bushnell Safari Master wide-angle
binoculars 
