Tim ‘Gonzo’ Gordon

The story goes that Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders did NOT sing on “Indian Reservation,” their biggest chart success. Back in ‘93 when I was doing mid-days at Oldies 106.7 in Portland, I mentioned that ‘fact’ on the air. I was reading from The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, so I presumed it was right.

I’d mentioned the story several times before during the three years I spent at KISN-FM down the street. But this time I got a call from a gal who called herself the President of the Mark Lindsay Fan Club. She corrected me and asked if I wanted Mark to actually call and correct it. I said “Sure!”

Awhile later (days? weeks? I don’t recall), Mark in fact did call and we had the following conversation:

A few years later when I was working weekends at KISN-FM, I had a random meeting with Mark that still cracks me up. You gotta understand that as a kid in the mid-60s, my favorite bands were The Beatles, Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Rolling Stones, in that order. I’m sure I had posters of them all in my room. I thought Mark was cool for two reasons: In my mind he was as good a rock singer as John Lennon, and he had a cool ponytail. Plus the Raiders played some might fine rock and roll.

So there I was working weekends at KISN-FM when Roger Hart walked into the control room. The place was deserted. Roger – KISN sales guy and former manager of the Raiders – said, “Hey I’d like to introduce you to Mark Lindsay!”

I was a little awestruck. I shook his hand, said about three words and noticed that my song was about to end. I said “Hang on!” and pulled my cans (headphones) on, did a brief break, and punched up a commercial set. Roger and Mark had meanwhile exited the room during my break to let me do my on-air business.

This was in the days where nothing was digital; you had to start each cart/commercial individually. And the break was about five minutes long. I waited through the seemingly endless break, fired up the next song and rushed out to chat a bit more with Mark and Roger.

They were gone. Vanished. Poof. As if they hadn’t existed.

Total bummer. I didn’t even get an autograph. Guess they were in a hurry!

But I did get to meet one of my childhood idols. For about 5 seconds. And exchange about five words.

But hey, now we’re Facebook friends!

I’m not even sure if I’m Libertarian any more. Do they even exist?

I’m told Glenn Beck is Libertarian. Uh-huh. He’s a smarmy right-wing idealogue who pretends to have a few Libertarian ideas. But he’s not a real Libertarian.

When I went to view this ad, I was asked to identify my political stripes by filling in a box:

Why can’t BoldProgressives.org let me choose Libertarian? Don’t they think we even exist any more?

I was in Salt Lake the past week for the Outdoor Retailers Summer Market ‘09 show – a terrific show, btw – and was put up by my company at the Red Lion Hotel in downtown SLC. Not a bad place, but certainly showing its age. And since I’m the kind of guy who pays a lot of attention to customer service and the experience of the end user, I noticed a lot of little things that – had they been taken individually – might not have made much of an impact on my stay.

But all tolled, they added up to significant downgrades in my personal rating. I even went on a six-minute rant of sorts as I was checking out, ticking off the various things at the hotel that were not to my liking.

 

 Standard Podcast [6:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Now am I suggesting that it’s a bad hotel or that you shouldn’t stay there? Of course not…it’s actually a pretty decent hotel. But they are just not paying attention to detail in many areas. And in customer experience (and in my experience), it’s the details that make the overall experience much grander.

I finally have given up the daily newspaper. In this case, the Oregonian, published daily in Portland. I’ve read it off and on since I was a kid when my parent subscribed to it when we lived up on Santiam Pass in the Oregon Cascades.

And giving it up wasn’t an easy decision. Nor is it final. So I guess I’m just ‘testing’ at this point. But today – July 5th – I woke up to no paper on the porch.

I have nothing against the paper itself. It’s a good paper and gives me lots of useful and entertaining features. I find the Opinion Pages one of the best; I think it was Robert Heinlein who once commented that you can always find the more intelligent thinking and the worst, most bigoted and idiotic thinking by just turning to the editorial/letters section of the paper. It’s true. I find it the most entertaining section, outside of the comics. And heck, the comics are actually going downhill.

So why am I giving it up? Two reasons, mainly. The price keeps going up and I can find virtually everything I read in the paper online. Six years ago when I started living on my own again (with my boys half-time) I subscribed to the Sunday only version. It was something like $7 or $8 for two months. Whatever the price, it was a pretty good deal.

When they raised the rates I called and told them to discontinue delivery, but they cleverly threw a new deal my way: how about you take the Sunday and daily paper for the same rate? I think it was $8 for two months. OK, done.

Then that bumped up to $8 per month, doubling in cost. But still a good deal. That went on with an incremental rise a couple of times a year. Enough to notice, but not enough to make me quit.

But late last year I noticed the bill had gone to $10 a month. The Sunday/daily combination ‘teaser’ rate was long gone, and they’d stopped playing around. You want the freakin’ paper? Pay for it, dude!

The last straw came about a month ago when I received their latest rate increase notice. After the 5th of July rates would hike again, from $13 a month to $17. Basically, it’s up to $221 for the year.

Now, I still enjoy the paper. But with budgets squeezed and the 24-hour availability of news, sports, weather, comics, and yes the opinion page online – it made sense that the paper would have to go.

Still, it’ll be interesting to lose the morning ritual. Opening the paper while I’m cooking breakfast and getting the kids up for school (okay it’s summer vacation). I’ll have more time to read something else. Maybe a magazine, maybe a book. Maybe I’ll finally get that laptop I keep threatening to get and do something creative like writing while I’m eating breakfast.  We’ll see.

If 40 is the new 30, that means 50 is the new 40.

Which means, if you continue the new math, that 60 is the new 50. But if you extrapolate percentages, do the math manually and throw in a little Body English, I think 70 is also the new 50. And if that’s the case, 80 must be the new 60. And 50 must be the new 30. So that means 30 is the new 10-year old.

So if I’m 50 and I’m dating a 35 year old she’s either 50 like me, or 12 which means I’m probably going to jail.

Can somebody please explain to me how this works?

Salem, Oregon will soon have a new community radio station. Last night was the first public gathering of would-be volunteers, announcers and supporters. The station is still at least 14 months from flipping the switch, but energy was good and it bodes well.

I’ve been out of commercial radio for just over 7 years and would love to get back behind the microphone of an actual radio station. Yeah, I podcast every week at CommunicationSteroids which is a blast, but when you’re on the air you are able to receive immediate feedback from listeners.

Brief backstory to the station, which was shared at the meeting last night: A few years ago some local community radio supporters heard there was going to be a frequency opening up in the Willamette Valley. The FCC gives you a 5-day window to accept the applications, which takes a few months to prepare. Plus the group that applies has to be a non-profit group that’s been in existence for at least two years.

After doing some footwork, the organizers Karen and Steve (and others but I didn’t get all of their names) hooked up with the Salem Folklore Society who were willing to support the effort.

So when the 5-day window was announced, the application was filed and the waiting began. Finally it was announced that Salem would get the frequency.

Steve told the story of how the call letters came about. He said that he’d regularly go online to see what call letters were available and, as he put it, ‘most sucked, or were weird combinations’ but one night he saw that KMUZ was available. A Spanish-language station in Gresham, Oregon had just given up the call letter. So he added that to the application (or whatever the process was – he didn’t elaborate) and it became a Real Thing.

Still a long ways to go. Lots of money has to be raised, grant requests have to be written, and volunteers need to be organized – but it’s all very exciting.

Sounds like the station will be doing a logo contest, manning a booth at the Oregon State Fair and getting out into the community in a variety of ways to start to drum up interest.

At last night’s meeting they were soliciting tax-deductible donations of $40 or more, which would allow you to become a ‘charter’ member and supporter. Yes, that’s me!

Check out the website for more info:

KMUZ.ORG

I run two (well at least) blogs using WordPress. Both are using version 2.7.1. Yet the ‘back office’ where I plug in new posts has a different look and function. Check this out:

One blog, TimGonzoGordon.com, has a posting version that looks like this:

Another blog at Tradeshowguyblog.com has a different look:

Can anyone tell me why it would do this? Makes no sense to me. I’ve upgrade both sites to the newest version of WordPress. This is one of the daffy things about WordPress that confounds me.

BTW, I just started a new blog at ProFreewayGolf.com and it looks the same as the back office at Tradeshowguy. Go figure.

Not only are those differences very noticeable, but when I insert a link there are differences. One allows me to have the link open in a new window or not, the other (the first) does NOT give that option.

Yes, it is strange.

I joined GoodReads a couple of weeks back thanks to an invitation to an acquaintance in the tradeshow industry. It’s yet another ’social networking’ site but built exclusively around the books you have read or are reading.
And of course if you read a lot like I do that means you have dozens if not hundreds of books you can put in your list. I haven’t added more than than about three dozen, but give me time.
Just this morning I added three new ones that I’ve started reading in the past week. Yup, three. During the day or evening I’ll pause for a chapter or two in Problogger from Darren Rowse and then a chapter or two from Michael Port’s latest “Think Big manifesto.” Both have great interest to me; I’m always interested in learning something new about the craft and art of blogging, especially if there’s a chance to make a living from it (I’m not now!). And Michael Port is a smart, engaging guy who’s writing is inspirational to us small business-types.
Check out GoodReads.com and sign up if it feels right.

If you don’t know who Rudy Fernandez is, this probably won’t make much sense to you. If you do, it still probably won’t make much sense. After all, it’s a dream. Actually, two dreams!

Rudy is a rookie guard with the Portland Trailblazers. Just finished his rookie season, and as of this writing the team is in a playoff series with the Houston Rockets. As a rookie, he had a pretty good season with a team that far exceeded expectations with 54 wins. Rudy set a new rookie record for most 3-pointers made by hitting 159 during the season – hitting 6 in the last game to set the record. He’s a dynamic player, fits in well with the Blazers and is great fun to watch.

Last week on Sunday morning, I got to sleep in. I usually do on weekends (a bit, anyway), and often have my digital recorder close by in case I have notes to take or dreams to recount.

Turns out I had back-to-back dreams where Rudy showed up. Yeah, I have no idea why. So I took my two somewhat sleepy-headed dream descriptions and edited them together.

I am rooting for Rudy and the Blazers to get even and take the series from the Rockets, fer hevvin’s sake. Would be nice to see. The odds probably don’t favor them, but one can hope, right? And root!

 

 Rudy Fernandez Dreams [3:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yeah, I’m not a huge Colbert fan, but hey when he puts Paul McCartney on his show I’ll take a look.

Won’t you?