The Chris Moeller Archives

Dodgers take control

posted by CM @ 6:58 AM 0 comments

Democrats derail their own health care plan, nation sighs

One of the exciting things to watch on the national political scene this year is whether Americans are betrayed more by the Democratic-controlled Congress or the Democratic-controlled White House. The Congress took a resounding lead in the horse race today. The Senate Finance Committee killed the public health insurance option that President Obama was championing, providing insurance instead for the fact that the United States will remain the only industrialized country in the world in which access to health care is not treated as a human right. Let's not give the president a free pass on this one either, though. He hardly promoted the public option during his campaign (let's call Obama's promises "purposely vague"), and it's difficult to educate Americans on the merits of a public health coverage guarantee when hospital, insurance, and pharmaceutical corporations are spending millions a week in advertising attacking the concept and the only people in Washington selling a public option, let alone single-payer, are Vermont Socialists.

Let's be honest about why there is to be no public plan: Because that public option would effectively wipe out competing private-insurers. Individual or employer, who the hell would choose to sign up for the profiteering, the coverage restrictions, and the uncontrolled costs when they could choose instead from a well-funded government-mandated option of full health care benefits-- and with no prejudice against pre-existing health conditions besides?

The Obama strategy and plan was flawed from the start. Only a single-payer plan will fix our broken system, and the Obama team has never stood behind that idea. A President Kucinich might have been your man, but not Obama. Private medical insurance has taken us down the road to financial and social ruin because it hasn't really been insurance. Sixty-two percent of personal bankruptcies are being contributed to or caused by illness and medical expenses, and three-quarters of those individuals and families that have become medically-bankrupt had insurance, at least at the point in which they got sick. They were railroaded by co-payments, deductibles, and those pesky loopholes; and losing their jobs due to illness often met losing the insurance entirely.

Congress' idea of a public health care plan instead is to make it a crime not to purchase this disastrous private coverage. As a pair of medical observers pointed out, why not then require that we purchase other defective items? "A Ford Pinto in every garage? Lead-painted toys for every child?"

Always clever-minded Democrats evidently don't realize it, but they've also just politically-eviscerated their own president and effectively dismissed the potential they had to set the agenda in Washington for more than a generation, the way they did after they pushed through the Social Security Act of 1935. Said Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina about this health care debate: "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." The well-insured senator is correct. Democrats had the numbers and the moment to secure the political-support-for-life of 47 million uninsured Americans and they've just pissed it away. With all the squishy compromises to minority Republicans and the deal-cutting with rodent industry lobbyists, the only difference between Barack Obama's health care "reform" effort and Bill Clinton's 16 years ago was that Obama didn't put his wife in charge of it.

posted by CM @ 6:44 PM 1 comments

Steve Earle and the Ghost of Townes Van Zandt - The A Train Concert Series - by Aaron Moeller

My concert series has long been made possible by Chris' blog (and your generous donations) but never during my extensive travels have I been able to simply walk across the street to attend a concert. On Tuesday night, however, the great Steve Earle performed at the Hoyt Sherman Theatre in Des Moines, which is literally across the street from the blog's home offices. (In this economy, Chris was thrilled to avoid paying for another multi-state road trip.) With apologies to any local blog readers who may not have been included in the plans to attend the show, there is still the opportunity to upgrade to the CM Blog Platinum Club status. With just a few clicks of the mouse (and a credit card number), you can join our monthly mailing list. (Sorry again, Anonymous.)

Back in the mid-90's when Bruce Springsteen was in mid-career semi-retirement, I was convinced Steve Earle was doing Bruce Springsteen better than Bruce was. A great songwriter and an icon of roots rock music armed with dramatic and cinematic songs - not to mention, a thrilling live performer with a loud band - Steve Earle has never approached Springsteen's success, but he's made a unique name for himself and has since gone way past the Bossman in his outspoken political messages. Joe Pug, Earle's Tuesday night opening act, said he'd learned three things on this solo acoustic tour with Steve: one can walk the whole stage with just his guitar, don't shave your beard until the tour is over, and if you don't piss off some Republicans, you're doing something wrong.

This tour is in support of Earle's new album, Townes, a tribute to his late mentor, Townes Van Zandt, a fellow singer/songwriter from Texas. "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that," Earle once said of his hero. A half generation older than Earle, Van Zandt died in Nashville on New Year's Day, 1997, when the Moeller boys and their dad happened to be passing through Austin, Texas, Townes' frequent base of operations.

"Townes was a great hero, but a horrible role model," Earle has also said of Van Zandt. Van Zandt was born into a wealthy family but spent large parts of his life homeless, sleeping on friends' floors. A manic depressive who went through months of electro-shock therapy in the '60's, he was an alcoholic and heroin addict for most of his adult life. Earle, who was barely 20 years old when he started following Van Zandt around in the mid-70's, was similarly a heroin junkie for years and missed 2 years of performing and recording in the 90s when he wound up spending a few months in the gray-bar hotel. Known as the "Hardcore Troubadour", Earle's been married seven times. He's also a published short story author who's close to releasing a novel. He has written a play about female death row inmate Karla Fay Tucker and he even portrayed Walon, Bubble's rehab sponsor on HBO's The Wire, the greatest show ever on TV.

And keep in mind, Earle was enough of a mainstream country star in the '80's and early '90's that his shows still invite country fans who may not be completely aware of his outspoken politics. I spotted two NASCAR hats and no shortage of southern rock t-shirts, ala the Allman Brothers, etc. There's a pretty fine line between red and blue in all American music, regardless of where the musicians themselves come down.

I didn't know the first song Steve played on this night, but I knew the rest that followed. Having recorded a tribute album, it was cool having had an intimate relationship with even the songs from the new release. "Colorado Girl" is an age-old Townes tune of lost love (a familiar theme for the brooding Van Zandt).

"If I had a nickel I'd find a game/ If I won a dollar I'd make it rain/ If it rained an ocean I'd drink it dry, then lay me down/ Dissatisfied", Van Zandt wrote in Rex's Blues, perhaps his greatest composition, which segued into "Fort Worth Blues", the song Earle wrote on tour in Europe twelve years ago when he learned of his friend's passing back in the States: "They'd shut down all the honky tonks tonight/ They'd say a prayer too/ If they only knew". I'll always remember a Townes Van Zandt tribute episode of Austin City Limits shortly after his death and the image of singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith with tears running down her cheeks as Steve sang his eulogy. A double shot to buckle the knees at this show- two of the most mournful songs ever written.

"Pancho and Lefty" was by far the most popular song Van Zandt ever wrote. It was a country charts #1 hit when recorded as a duet in the '80's by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, though it's been said the royalties only served to keep Van Zandt knee-deep in gambling funds and illicit substances when he most needed to start sobering up.

"Tom Ames' Prayer" is one of the first songs Earle wrote when he got out of the big house. It's about a wayward youth who takes to robbing banks. He ultimately finds himself in a Butch-and-Sundance-in-Bolivia-style showdown and wondering if the thoughts he's having are his first chat with the Almighty or just a conversation with the voice in his head.

"Brand New Companion" is a Van Zandt nod to Lightin' Hopkins-style acoustic blues. Earle explained the concept behind writing a good blues song. "The first line presents the problem to overcome, the second line reiterates the problem, the third line fails miserably to resolve the problem... all set to a 12-bar progression, with a beat."


"Just when every ray of hope was gone
I should have known that you would come along
I can't believe I ever doubted you
My old friend, the blues..."


...are some great lines written by Steve Earle, who shares his late pal's penchant for sad, resigned lyrics.

"Taneytown" is a song about a black kid who gets caught on the wrong side of the tracks late at night and barely escapes with his life. It's a rocking song on Steve Earle's El Corazon album, but it was a gripping cautionary tale in this solo setting. Earle also wrote an extended prose version of the song for his short story collection, "Doghouse Roses".

"Someday" is one of Earle's Springsteen-ish songs of escaping small town drudgery and dreaming of a larger world. "Now She's Gone" is his similar take on a small town maiden who manages to find her escape but leaves broken hearts in her wake. "Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold" is late edition Townes Van Zandt and is filled with some of his most dazzling wordplay, a textbook example of efficient and concise songwriting.

"Goodbye" is a song of Earle's included on Emmylou Harris' greatest album, Wrecking Ball. Earle wrote the tune shortly after his rehab stint. He introduced it in terms of the Program, "it's the 9th Step... in the key of C":


"But I recall all of those nights down in Mexico
That's one place I'll never go in my life again
Was I off somewhere or just too high
But I can't remember if we said goodbye"


"Marie" is a Townes song and maybe the darkest song anybody's ever written. It's about a homeless man and his girlfriend, drifting, finding no work, starving, freezing, dreaming only of settling down somewhere in a burned out van. At one point, Marie suspects she's pregnant. "In my heart I know it's a little boy/ Hope he don't end up like me", sings the narrator. Then finally, as always, tragedy:


"Marie she didn't wake up this morning
She didn't even try
She just rolled over and went to Heaven
My little boy safe inside
I laid them in the sun where somebody'd find 'em
Caught a Chesapeak on the fly
Marie will know I'm headed south
So's to meet me by and by"


A shot of whiskey would have gone down good at that point.

Steve switched to a mandolin for his Irish-flavored "Dixieland". Then brought out his favored thoughts on politics, ones that stayed quite consistent with this blog. Admitting he's somewhere to the left of the Democratic party, he expressed hope for Obama, but said we need to keep his feet to the fire, particularly on getting troops out of Iraq, as promised. He also showed little faith in our endeavors in Afghanistan, a battlefield that "brought down Russia and the British Empire at their peak". If he didn't have hope, he said, however, he wouldn't sing the following song, "Jerusalem", which dreams that "all the children of Abraham will lay down their swords forever". Simple, but obvious.

Earle lives in Manhatten now, with his wife, singer Allison Moorer, and dedicated the song "City of Immigrants" (again on mandolin) to Mr. Kim, the Korean grocer on his corner, who speaks Korean and English and recently had to learn a third language (Spanish) to communicate with his employees. Earle lamented that we are the only country that tries to make it illegal to learn a foreign language. "An embarrassment, believe me, to the rest of the world", he said. I pointed out to my concert companions after the show as we walked outside, that Earle is definitely a New Yorker now - a Seinfeld episode was airing on a flat screen through the window of his tour bus.

Before singing "The Mountain", the title track to his 1999 bluegrass album, Earle pointed out there's no such thing as "clean" coal mining and that we have big decisions to make about energy. Nudging the hometown crowd a little, he also wondered if corn is the best way to make sugar. Earle apologized for not coming to Iowa more often. He missed a mid-90's Farm Aid in Ames when he was in prison. His manager also told him not to visit Iowa City in the summer since the town was empty without all the students. Earle corrected him that college students don't attend his shows, their teachers do.

"If this song doesn't scare you to death, you're overmedicated," he said, before singing Townes' "Lungs", a near hopeless song of apocalyptic doom. Then he rescued the main set with "To Live is to Fly", one of Townes' most hopeful, though bittersweet songs.

There was a two song encore. First, "Guitar Town", the title track to Steve's first major-label album, a #1 country album in '86. After a good ten years of trying to get a record deal and learning at the knee of one of the masters, Steve Earle finally hit the big time. Then he performed "Copperhead Road", the title track to the album that declared Earle wasn't just a folk or country singer, but an ass-kickin' storyteller and one of the rockin'-est sons-of-bitches on the scene. We gave him a standing ovation and then retired across the street, as Des Moines music lovers passed our door en route to their cars. Steve Earle's bus headed down the road to another town where he'll continue to spread the word about his gone, but not forgotten, buddy and sage.

posted by Anonymous @ 10:31 PM 1 comments

Book reviews and other items

posted by CM @ 6:05 PM 1 comments

Let's bury the "anchor" tag with him

Let's mourn the passing of the man, Walter Cronkite, a seemingly-all-around good egg who often criticized power when criticism was required. But let's not make the mistake of mourning, at the same time, the loss of the Cronkite era of journalism or the Cronkite-style presentation of our political news and commentary.

Simply because a corporate media outlet has anointed a solitary man (or woman) to a position of artificial authority before the camera does not and should not relegate the rest of us to the role of subordinate citizens. This is a perverted idea and an undemocratic one. The golden age of political reporting is actually now thanks to the diversity of voices found at a million cul-de-sacs on the World Wide Web. What Cronkite accomplished or didn't accomplish during his tenure as America's "most-trusted" news anchor is completely beside the point. He was just one disproportionately powerful voice. It's little wonder that such a collective dissatisfaction and cynicism grew out of the hearts and minds of the American people during this era of journalistic dominance by the medium of television. "That's the way it is" proved to be a popular catch-phrase, but in the big picture of a thriving and ambitious democracy, Cronkite's nightly declarations of "truth" were worth all of about two cents.

posted by CM @ 8:26 PM 3 comments

Snapshots from the 80th Midsummer Classic

I'm crossing Baseball All-Star Game off my Bucket List. After Tuesday night's visit to St. Louis with my brother Aaron, I'm down to only the journey to Machu Picchu and getting Dennis DeYoung back together with Styx. I'd recommend attending an All-Star Game to anyone who loves baseball or the sight of giant American flags.

- Our seats were in the third level out by the left field foul pole, but I found them perfectly acceptable. In fact, we were seated very near a sports celebrity-- an amateur photographer for Deadspin.com. We didn't know it at the time, but I must have been sitting on his lap because he took this photo of President Obama throwing the ceremonial first pitch, and Aaron took this one with his cell phone.

- It's a good thing we splurged for the seats instead of the cheaper Standing Room Only tickets because the giveaway item was a commemorative All-Star Game seat cushion. They came with the seat, not the admission. I'm going to take mine to all my future jazz festivals. It will be great for my sciatica.

- The pregame "Red Carpet" ceremony outside the ballpark was great fun also. The All-Stars rolled down Market Street and Stan Musial Drive into Busch Stadium, seated with their families in the beds of red pickup trucks. You had to wake up that morning in Missouri to claim a good view of the players, but we successfully located some relatives of David Eckstein to stand behind. In addition to the players, the parade featured the All-Star managers, honorary coaches, Cardinals Hall-of-Famers, and the last pickup in the parade carrying the World Series Trophy. This was an extra special treat for visiting Cubs fans, who got to see what one looks like.

- All six of the Cardinals living Hall-of-Famers were in attendance-- Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, and Bruce Sutter. Also, two of the dead ones-- Frank Frisch and Johnny Mize.

- One of the golden moments of All-Star Week was the celebrity softball game, which was played on Monday. West Des Moines Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson was among those in uniform. (It just doesn't matter where I go, there she is.) The teen charmer did handsprings and a back flip while running the bases, filling in for Ozzie Smith, who was grounded from flipping because of age. Johnson was asked by Major League Baseball to suit up for the visiting "American League" softball team, with officials obviously unaware that Des Moines is actually a National League town in spirit. The "home" softball squad featured the dream infield (from third to first) of Jon Hamm ("Mad Men"), Ozzie, Billy Bob Thornton, and Bobby Knight.

- Speaking of celebrities, Sheryl Crow sang the National Anthem Tuesday night, and during the 7th inning stretch, Sara Evans performed "God Bless America." Major League Baseball was looking to amp up the patriotism just a little bit more, though, so fans watching in the ballpark also got to see Brad Paisley on "America the Beautiful," Avril Lavigne performing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and the Black Eyed Peas belting out "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

- You can keep your Home Run Derbies. In my estimation, they lack too much of the nuance of the game to be considered interesting. But I do enjoy watching the dozens of kids in uniform roaming the outfield during the Derby fielding all of the batted balls that fall short of the bleachers. They overrun them, lose them in the lights, take bad angles to the balls, and wind up catching about one in five. It's like watching fifty Chris Duncans.

- Three cheers for Ichiro Suzuki. While in St. Louis, the Seattle Mariners outfielder reportedly visited and laid flowers at the grave of George Sisler. Sisler, the former St. Louis Browns firstbaseman, who died in 1973, held the all-time Major League record for hits in a season (257 in 1920) until being surpassed by Ichiro in 2004. Said Ichiro through an interpreter, "I wanted to do that for a grand upperclassman of the baseball world... There are not many chances to come to St. Louis. In 2004, it was the first time I crossed paths with him, and his family (including 81-year-old daughter Frances Sisler Drochelman) generously came all the way to Seattle." This was not only a grand gesture by Ichiro this week, but he coined a marvelous expression in passing-- "grand upperclassman of the baseball world." That's destined to replace the currently-popular phrase-- "old-timey, tobacco-spitting glove-monkey."

- The highlight of the game itself was hometown catcher Yadier Molina driving an RBI single into center field for the Nationals with two outs in the 2nd inning. You wouldn't have been able to tell it on television, but I'm the one that immediately started the "Ya-dee, Ya-dee" chant from up in section 368. I don't know how it does but that stuff just comes to me.

- A lot of Cardinals fans were underwhelmed by the pre-game tribute to the great Stan Musial, but I was fine with it. He seemed quite frail, but he had a nice exchange with President Obama and the other Hall-of-Famers. I'm sure I'll be pissed, though, after I watch the TiVoed telecast of FOX butchering the whole thing.

- I was totally cool too with President Obama wearing a White Sox jacket. I would absolutely be wearing my colors if I was in the same situation, especially at an All-Star Game.

- Obama's pitch to home plate was solid, if not spectacular, but then I heard once that he gets nervous in front of people. The Great Pujols made a nice play on it, reaching out over the plate to keep it from bouncing in the dirt, then denying later that he had to do too much reaching.

- The occasion of a nationally-televised first pitch by a sitting-president inspired an online listing of the worst first pitches ever thrown. I don't know what it is about that Mariah Carey toss in Japan, but that's one of the sexiest things I've ever seen.

- Having the president there certainly helped to make the All-Star Game a memorable experience. I was apprehensive about dealing with the added security, but we rushed through the gate in less than 20 minutes-- bag inspection and cavity search included. Aaron said he had it much worse a couple years ago when he attended Opening Day in Cincinnati. According to his account, he waited in line for an hour and a half only to find out that the president was George W. Bush.

posted by CM @ 9:19 PM 0 comments

Trombone Shorty - The A-Train Concert Series - by Aaron Moeller

I have seen the future of jazz and it is Trombone Shorty.

Project yourself into the future and imagine yourself as an older person remembering yourself back then (as a younger person) and having recalled those futuristic words from the past. What? Oh, nevermind. Jazz, in 2009, has little to zero mainstream visibility, but the guy who's destined to change all that was in Iowa City last weekend for their annual 4th of July Jazz Festival.

Your kindly blog host, Chris, and I are a couple years into a Travel-to-New-Orleans-every-April-for-their-Jazz-Fest tradition so we knew the man's name. This spring we attended two days of the N'awlins festival on afternoons when Shorty wasn't on the bill but I still spotted a half dozen fan t-shirts warning of his presence.

Real name Troy Andrews, Trombone Shorty has a six-man backing band, Orleans Avenue, and the oldest member tops out at 26. A bandleader since he was six, Shorty hit the stage singing and blowing his trombone as his proto-funk jazz band took over the penultimate slot on the Saturday night bill. A cover of "American Woman" was a nod to a tour of duty Shorty spent with Lenny Kravitz' band in '07. He also performed with U2 and Green Day a couple years ago at the Super Bowl in New Orleans, so the 23-year-old has already been on mega-star-caliber world stages.

And it was hot jazz - funky and strutting, with Shorty on his trombone but proving equally adept on a trumpet. Shorty wasn't afraid to goose the large percentage of gray beards in the crowd, many reading and relaxing. But they were jolted to attention and many deserted their lawn chairs on the expansive Old Capital lawn in rout to the stage. He played showman, gesturing to his bandmates, calling out for solos, acting the crazed conductor of a cosmic street band to his crew of Big Easy compatriots. He'd alternately square off with Mike Ballard, aka "Bass in Your Face", guitarist Pete Murano, and saxaphonist Trixie, standing toe-to-toe at the microphones, pushing his cohorts to higher levels of Funkicity.

A tribute to the recently passed Michael Jackson included a medley that moved seemlessly from "Rock With You" to "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" to "Bad", and included Shorty not only blowing soulful, melodic hooks, but moonwalking across the stage. He introduced a special guest as his personal hero - fellow trombonist, Robin Eubanks, brother of Kevin Eubanks (who is bandleader of the Tonight Show Band), and 20% of the Dave Holland Quintet, Sunday night's headliner. A trombone war ensued as the two blew fierce and fly into the same microphone, laying out as casualties everybody who dared stand within 20 feet of the stage.

"We are from New Orleans, Louisiana," Trombone Shorty declared before launching into the Crescent City's theme song, then Shorty and his two sax-playing, fellow saints came marching off the back of the stage, reappearing seconds later at stage left and strutting into the midst of the growing crowd, more and more people pushing toward the stage. Then they led a procession up the center sidewalk where everyone either snapped photos with their cell phone or fell in behind and joined the parade, surely an Iowa City Jazz Festival first. Five minutes, or maybe a half hour later, Shorty was back at his microphone, resurrecting Satchmo's ghost with his most gruff-voiced homage.

For the encore, Shorty told us he wanted to do something special for us, so Troy and the boys gathered in a huddle in the middle of the stage and planned their aural attack. When the pack broke, Shorty went to the drumkit, guitarist Murano grabbed a saxophone, saxmen Trixie and Dan Oestreicher picked up the bass and electric guitars respectively, drummer Joey Peeples picked up an idle sax, and percussionist Dwayne Williams and "Bass in Your Face" stood stage center with the trumpet and trombone. The sound that was then loosed on the Jazz Fest crowd was rough and jarring, but as electric as anything that came before it. Leaving behind the unusual coolness of a Midwest Independence Day, it was suddenly hotter, and the whole event seemed altered - latitude-wise - as we moved one last time, toward the Quarter, our feet a good six inches above Orleans Avenue. Simply one of the most thrilling and unique music experiences of my life.

posted by Anonymous @ 3:39 PM 0 comments

What I was reading during the countdown

I've been absent for a while. I don't think I've ever posted 10 consecutive days, and yet I know you've been missing our semi-daily discussions on events current and unrelated to serial television programs largely long-gone. This is what I've been reading online this month.


-- The most important article might be this one by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi. It's time to burst the Great Goldman Sachs Bubble Machine and its grip on our economy.

-- One of the most disappointing elements of the Obama Presidency (Can you call it "disappointing" when you predicted it?) is his continued "trust me" approach in trying to get you to forgive his frequent footdragging. The president is not really your friend unless he acts like your friend. Don't buy the rhetoric.

-- The Moellers have one of their tri-annual, gigantic, blowout reunions next summer in sunny California. I hope it's still there.

-- George W. Bush was such a shitty president, it's easy to forget what a rotten one Dick Nixon was. Sometimes abortion is necessary, he argued on one of the Oval Office tapes, like "when you have a black and a white."

-- The newest Los Angeles Laker, Ron Artest, found a marvelous way to honor the late, great King of Pop. He'll be wearing uniform #37 for the Lakers this winter. Don't get it? Duh. The "Thriller" album stayed at #1 on the Billboard charts for 37 weeks.

-- Representative Steve King, the first Iowan elected to Congress whose brain was sculpted from butter, cast the solitary vote last week against placing a plaque in the Capitol Visitors Center acknowledging that the Capitol building was constructed with slave labor.

-- The New York Yankees settled their lawsuit with a fan who sued the team and the city after being thrown out of Yankee Stadium for attempting to leave his seat and go to the restroom during the playing of "God Bless America." How dare this infidel try to use the bathroom during the 7th inning stretch. And the Yankees get bailed out again. The city coughed up $10,000 in cash in the settlement and will pay $12,000 in legal fees to the New York Civil Liberties Union, but the Yankees didn't have to pay anything for your fascist policy of compelled patriotism. I'm pretty sure that even at the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, the SS men were allowed to go to the toilet. The man who filed the suit told reporters Wednesday he planned to spend his $10,000 settlement on a Legends Suite ticket for a Yankees/Blue Jays game in August.


I'll be back with a report from the baseball All-Star Game later in the week.

posted by CM @ 1:03 PM 1 comments

Rancid butter

posted by CM @ 11:06 AM 0 comments

The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #1

#1- "WKRP in Cincinnati" CBS 1978-1982
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America's greatest prime-time TV show ever is about people working in radio. "WKRP in Cincinnati" only lasted four seasons on CBS due to creator Hugh Wilson's unreasonable complaints that the show not be bounced around the programming schedule like a ping-pong ball, but the four seasons that were produced amounted to a masterpiece. A durable TV series is lucky if it winds up boasting one character that graduates to the level of 'icon.' On "WKRP," I count four: Dr. Johnny Fever, the occasionally spaced-out disc jockey who was still spinning Carl Perkins records in a musical era defined by the Brothers Gibb; Herb Tarlek, the polyester-clad sales executive who never managed to pull in a bigger account than the worm sales outlet "Red Wiggler" (i.e. the 'Cadillac' of worms); the buxom and smart-as-she-was-beautiful receptionist Jennifer Marlowe, who was also the radio station's highest-paid employee; and the incomparable, bow-tied newsman Les Nessman, who put masking tape on the floor around his desk to illustrate to all "where walls will one day be," who wore a bandage on a different part of his person in each episode, and who missed the news report entirely when the Shah of Iran was overthrown, leading the news instead with a story about a pig that could do addition and subtraction. Oh yes, and of course he was also a five-time winner of the Buckeye NewsHawk Award and the (coveted) Silver Sow Award. The eight regular characters were fully-formed from the very beginning of the series. None ever left the series. None were phased out. None were added. It was a seamless blend from the very start. The characters were so distinctly drawn and became so internalized by the actors portraying them that three of the eight actors would pen episodes of the series, and three (not the same three) directed individual episodes. Each "WKRP" scene seemed to be written with the intent of capturing the essence of each character that appeared in that scene. It had it all-- big laughs, drama, edge, sentiment, controversy, and at least one touchstone moment (the infamous Thanksgiving turkey drop). It was prevented from finding a large audience while in production, but thanks to syndication, it became the most profitable series in the history of MTM Enterprises, a studio that produced many of the industry's most respected shows. It's been almost as equally underrated by critics, probably because it has such broad audience appeal, but I have another theory that it's because it has no connection at all to the Northeastern region of the United States. TV and film critics predominantly live and work in, and love New York City, and relate best to people who also live and work there. On television, even series that take place outside the Big Apple and the Northeast, and I'm thinking here of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Golden Girls," "Northern Exposure," and "Curb Your Enthusiasm," feature transplanted New Yorkers. None of the "WKRP" actors are even from New York, let alone the characters. They hail from the Midwest (Loni Anderson, Gary Sandy, Gordon Jump, and Richard Sanders), the West Coast (Howard Hesseman and Jan Smithers), and the South (Tim Reid, Frank Bonner, and creator Wilson). This was almost unprecedented on TV. For all of the belly-laughs, there was a sweetness and humanity to "WKRP" and a wistfulness for things lost or fading. We all learned a thing or two from the gang at the Mighty 'K-R-P-- the 5,000 watt radio station "with more music and Les Nessman"-- and not just the proficiencies and deficits of the domestic turkey. We also learned that finishing #1 is not the end-all and be-all of our existence here on Earth. And that's why "WKRP in Cincinnati" just did. Everybody now, a-one-and-a-two-and-a-three...

posted by CM @ 9:00 PM 1 comments

The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #2

#2-"THE SOPRANOS" HBO 1999-2007
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A lot of nice things have been said about "The Sopranos" over the last decade. Shortly after it debuted, a New York Times critic called it "the greatest work of American popular culture of the last quarter century." The New Yorker called it "the richest achievement in the history of television." What does that leave one to say about it? Perhaps that it revolutionized dramatic storytelling on TV to such a degree that I could find only five dramatic shows that debuted before it to put on the Top 50 countdown. That's more than a half-century of dramatic American television series almost completely slighted. "The Sopranos" saga of family, organized crime, and psychiatry was such an explosion of ambition in the realm of complex storytelling, that-- and this next part is harsh-- Americans seemed to have lost their collective interest in all of the dramatic series that came before it-- "Perry Mason," "Dr. Kildare," "Marcus Welby M.D.," Gunsmoke," "Bonanza," "The Waltons," "Medical Center," "Hawaii 5-0," "Dallas," "Dynasty," and "E.R.," even "Hill Street Blues" and "St. Elsewhere," which both made it onto this countdown. Great as they may have been, they're slipping rapidly from the national consciousness now. We look at them differently after "The Sopranos." On the no-holds-barred premium cable network Home Box Office, "The Sopranos" rewrote the rules of dramatic fiction. Storylines deepened, yet often meandered, and sometimes completely faded. Salon's Rebecca Traister called it "an opera on the turnpike that was simultaneously lush and spare in its depiction of American life." It could be enjoyed for both its timeless, ecumenical themes and its tiny moments of individual absurdity. Tony Soprano's family and crew were a completely distinct subculture of people living in the United States, yet were universally American. Nearly as compelling, the cinematic "Deadwood," "The Wire," "Six Feet Under," "Big Love," "Mad Men" (penned by "Sopranos" scribe Matthew Weiner), "True Blood," and "Dexter" are all children of "The Sopranos" in that they are the singular artistic visions of television writers who enjoy unprecedented freedom to create outside the dictates of network executives. "The Sopranos" creator David Chase produced such an historic, revolutionary, and profitable series that for the first time in the medium's history, a handful of network people surrendered artistic control to the artists. The Tony Soprano character lamented early in the series that "It's good to be in on something from the ground floor, but lately I feel like I'm coming in at the end." Tony had nothing to worry about, though, from the perspective of his place in television. More and more, his series feels as if it was itself the ground floor. As the critic Traister pointed out, we will have better shows to watch in the future because of it. For that reason, it seems slightly pessimistic, even inconsistent, to declare it the best show in the history of TV. So how about #2?

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The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #3

#3- "THE HONEYMOONERS" CBS 1955-1956
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This one's the granddaddy. The "Classic 39" episodes of "The Honeymooners" were lifted from the variety treasure chest of Jackie Gleason's "Cavalcade of Stars," with the Great One starring as underdog New York City busdriver Ralph Kramden, he of the larger-than-life physique and larger-than-life ambitions for himself and bride Alice, played by Audrey Meadows, who gave as good as she got and might still be the most self-assured, empowered woman ever presented on the small screen. Art Carney portrayed Ralph's jack-in-the-box neighbor and first pal Ed Norton, pride of the city sewers, and Joyce Randolph was Norton's wife, Trixie. More than a half-century later, the program still commands a national prime-time audience in reruns every Sunday night on the WGN America cable channel, owing its longevity to its excellent performances, the palpable energy of the show having been presented with little rehearsal and without edit before a live studio audience, and to Gleason's titanic stage presence. New York City's television superstation WPIX aired reruns of the program nightly for more than 20 years. The "Classic 39" episodes were originally aired over the course of only one season, but the premise of the show, under Gleason's hand, was produced under different formats for close to 30 years--first as sketch, then, situation comedy, and later, as revival, sometimes with different supporting players, on film and on video, in both black-and-white and color, and even as a musical. The basic living room set throughout consisted only of a table and chairs, a bureau, a sink, an old-fashioned icebox, and a curtainless window. The show instead was all character, and Gleason's Kramden may just be the most quintessentially "American" figure in the medium's history, thanks to his bluster, short temper, and obsessive dreams of upward-mobility and that ever-elusive financial jackpot. In a bronze memorial presented earlier this decade, TV Land acclaimed the series' star as "Ralph Kramden: Bus Driver- Raccoon Lodge Treasurer- Dreamer."

Here's a picture of me (a rare glimpse indeed) taken earlier this year in front of that memorial, a monument to the man, at the Eighth Avenue entrance of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City.

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The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #4

#4- "CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM" HBO 2000-PRESENT
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"Curb Your Enthusiasm" has the same comedic outline as Larry David's previous series "Seinfeld"-- Our hero walks into an awkward and embarrassing situation, and with a little bad behavior, makes things worse as the two or three stories in each episode begin to double-back on one another. It's must-cringe-TV. A television viewer could not be blamed for not liking Larry David. After all, he probably wouldn't like you. It's not that Larry's immoral. He is at times (example: avoiding his friend's party by showing up the evening after and pretending that he had the date wrong), but at other times, Larry's problem is that he's excessively moral. For instance, if a delicatessen names a fish sandwich after you, it makes a bit of sense that you should like fish sandwiches. But naming a sandwich after you was such a nice gesture on the part of the restauranteur, that it's kind of in bad form to ask to switch with someone else because you don't like fish sandwiches. This is the crux of the series. Larry is playing himself, a former stand-up comic made extremely wealthy as co-creator of the hugely-popular "Seinfeld" (#15 on the countdown), but money can't buy patience for social niceties and perceived hypocrisies, and he's very upfront about this lack of patience. Larry's is a "liberated" id. He says what he's thinking, seemingly, at all times, which is hazardous, naturally, but not exactly his problem. More accurately, I think, his problem is that he continues to say exactly what he's thinking, yet is still confounded when other people react badly. These are the little lessons of everyday life, people. That's why this series comes in at #4.

A sample about samples.

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The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #5

#5- "MOONLIGHTING" ABC 1985-1989
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There's no other show remotely like this one on the Top 50 countdown. Above all, this is because it's a romantic comedy, which are as commonplace on the small screen today as live appearances by Buddy Epsen. (In movie theaters, they're easily found, but painful to endure.) When series creator Glenn Caron showed the pilot script of "Moonlighting" to actress Cybill Shepherd, she told him she understood it. It was "a Hawks-ian comedy," she said. Having spent quite a bit of time around film historian Peter Bogdonovich, she was alluding to the show's rapid dialogue and other "screwball" elements reminiscent of many of the films of Howard Hawks. Caron had to go home and look up the reference. "Moonlighting" was sexy and stylish, wildly self-conscious (characters would frequently allude to the fact that they were on television), and it was loaded with plenty of popular source music from Motown and Philly Soul to popular chart-toppers of the day (the '80s). The witty repartee between the two principles, Shepherd and breakout star Bruce Willis, was layered with double-entendres, and in the case of Willis' character, a few singles. One episode might be a dramatic storyline featuring guest performers late of New York's famous Actors' Studio, the same one might degenerate into "Three Stooges"-style slapstick. One episode featured a black-and-white flashback introduced by Orson Welles (in his final screen appearance), and still another entirely off-the-wall episode was a comedic adaptation of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew," presented in full Elizabethan costume and with the dialogue delivered in iambic pentameter. The dialogue in general was often delivered so fast that "Moonlighting" scripts were said to be sometimes double or more the length of other one-hour programs. The series was so innovative that, for the first time in the 50-year history of the Director's Guild, a show was nominated by that body as both Best Drama and Best Comedy. Did I mention it was about private detectives? That fact was often only vaguely important.

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The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #6

#6- "TAXI" ABC-NBC 1978-1983
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"Taxi" episodes were like perfect little 23-minute Samuel Beckett plays-- with laughs to boot. There were no extravagant sets or exterior scenes. Indeed, an overwhelming number of scenes take place on just two sets-- the garage of "the Sunshine Cab Company" and "Mario's", the come-as-you-are beer and pasta joint with checkerboard tablecloths next door. The Sunshine cabdrivers labor on the nightshift under the iron rule of diminuative dispatcher Louie DePalma, a caged-in, vindictive and amoral creature, a man another character suggested "would give you the scales off his back." He's a real little shit. His oppressed underlings are not so much drivers as they are aspiring actors and boxers, single parents, students, immigrants, or flame-outs. There is but one pragmatic lifer in the bunch who suffers from lack of ambition, but gives the best counsel in town. The stagnation of the characters' lives is symbolized right out in front by an opening title sequence that features a cab being driven continually forward on the Queensborough Bridge without ever reaching the end of the expanse, even hampered at one point by an edit that backtracks the action (because photographers hadn't shot enough footage). "Taxi" is one of television's most atmospheric programs thanks to its melancholy jazz score by pianist Bob James. It won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy three of its five years on the air, and made iconic characters of Danny DeVito's "Louie," Andy Kaufman's multi-personalitied foreigner "Latka Gravas," and Christopher Lloyd's drug-addled "Reverend Jim Ignatowski," who really had no business driving a cab. It was the first of several television series in which Tony Danza appeared as a character named "Tony."

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The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #7

#7- "30 ROCK" NBC 2006-PRESENT
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Is it too early in the run of this madcap series to start calling its ensemble cast the best ever? There's elegant Alec Baldwin engaged in ice-box cool self-parody as the network honcho overseeing a fictional variety series; Broadway songbird Jane Krakowski in fine comedic form as an aging diva; Jack McBrayer as Kenneth, a wholesome NBC "super-page" of sorts, who's probably home right now blogging his favorite TV shows; and unstable but loveable Tracy Morgan as unstable but loveable Tracy Jordan, who might "hug people too hard and get lost at malls, but (he's) not an idiot." They're all bringing their individual talents to bear in the series that may be the most descendent of the many "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" clones, except that here, everybody's playing Ted. This includes the nucleus of the series herself, Tina Fey, who created it, and holds the center of a sitcom in place as well as any of the greats, the Moores and the Newharts, even as she proves herself more willing then these standard-bearers to leap off the diving board of zaniness along with her co-stars. Her character hasn't been above dressing up as Princess Leia to get out of jury duty or running off with someone else's baby to help pacify what Baldwin's character calls her "Big Ben-sized biological clock," but she remains our grounded protagonist, battling corporate cutthroats and egomaniacal employees, all with, as Baldwin's character says, "the boldness of a much younger woman." A top 10 show after just three seasons? I want to go to there.


The fantabulous Tina Fey in action.

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The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #8

#8- "M*A*S*H" CBS 1972-1983
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The non-fiction Korean War lasted four years. This series about an American army mobile hospital in the middle of the conflict lasted 11. During the show's epic run, 251 episodes aired, cast members came and went, and two or three times, at the end of heavy artillery shelling near the hospital, this exact banter took place. Hawkeye: "Do you hear that?" Answer: "No." Hawkeye: "That's what I mean." This is the show that brought multiple plotlines to episodic television, and it's still rare for a show to employ them alternately as dramatic and comedic in the same episode, as "M*A*S*H" frequently did. Uncommon for its time, it was shot entirely on film and frequently outdoors as well. The traditional laugh track was used, but occasionally removed to heighten the impact of certain plotlines. The series had a definitive anti-war point of view, and was certainly adapted from film (by the legendary Larry Gelbart) as a comment on the Vietnam War, which lingered on during the 1970s in an increasingly bloody and illegal fashion. It became increasingly popular as it aged, and as its characters matured, and the final episode was seen by more people than any other single television episode ever. In syndication, it lives on as arguably the most watched program, and one of the most admired, and why am I still writing about it when you know just as much about it as I do. The end.

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The Top 50 TV Shows of All-time: #9

#9- "DEADWOOD" HBO 2004-2006
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Nobody's really making new towns anymore. Human civilization has spanned out across the globe, and although many people are still nomadic, they pretty much choose to move individually or in small families from one established town to another. So it's instructive to watch a brilliant writer's conception of how a community actually comes into existence, how chaos is displaced by structure, and eventually, bureaucracy. The David Milch-created series was originally set to take place earlier in time in Rome, but Deadwood, South Dakota, circa 1876, was as good a place as any for a show of these themes because the discovery of gold in the nearby Black Hills and the huge migration that resulted immediately after caused the community to begin development at such a furious pace. "Deadwood" is not really a Western in the sense that we've come to know the genre. After about five episodes, you hardly ever see anybody riding a horse. It's a show instead about Main Street. It's a show about who holds the power in a community, how it's wielded through violence or the threat of violence, and how it's corrupted. It's about language, and how our social hierarchy is governed by it. And because it's about the exploitation of capitalism, yet also about how the necessity of order in a lawless culture is instituted by its most entrepreneurial entities, it is simultaneously the most socialistic and existentially-conservative TV show in history.

It's also about one of television's most dangerous thugs, as portrayed by Ian McShane. "Al Swearengen" connived to build and protect a fortune, slit throats as if his human victims were hogs, and was prone to delivering Shakespearean soliloquies while receiving blowjobs. Here, McShane talks with Charlie Rose about the show and his character.

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The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #10

#10- "NORTHERN EXPOSURE" CBS 1990-1995
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Hard to believe, considering the fever of the current political debate, but there was a scripted gay wedding on television already 15 years ago. Ron and Erick, proprietors of the Sourdough Inn in remote Cicely, Alaska tied the knot before family and friends in a ceremony presided over by the town disc jockey, who had been ordained as a minister by answering an ad in the back of Rolling Stone. There was no public controversy to speak of over these "Northern Exposure" nuptials. No protests. No Newsweek covers. No accompanying CBS news magazine specials promoting the controversy. The event was done so simply and so matter-of-factly that it often appears to have still gone unnoticed as one of the many gay "firsts" in television history. It must have made sense to "Northern Exposure" viewers at the time to see an "opposite marriage," as Miss America calls it. Cicely had been founded by a lesbian couple, after all, and Ron and Erick's union had a firmer foundation beneath it than the one between the misanthropic Adam, a compulsive liar, and his long-time girlfriend Eve, "the Mozart of hypochondriacs," who had been married on the show the previous season. Other TV series count Emmys, "Northern Exposure" counted Peabodys. (Remarkably, the show earned one in both 1992 and 1993.) The writing and the characters were so enlightened, so innately intelligent, and above all, so civil, that it would have been hard for the demagogues to raise up a good posse against the program. Characters agreed, or they agreed to disagree. The rare insult was volleyed back with a smile. Transgressions were routinely forgiven. "Northern Exposure" was never a top 10 show in the ratings, but it came close a couple times, and it left an indelible mark. A similar mix of comedy and drama, with its whimsy, mysticism, and its ambitious literacy, has never been duplicated. In reruns and on DVD, the show remains as unspoiled today as its rustic Alaskan setting.

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