All posts by Headly Westerfield

About Headly Westerfield

Calling himself “A liberally progressive, sarcastically cynical, iconoclastic polymath,” Headly Westerfield has been a professional writer all his adult life.

Paul McCartney Deported From Japan ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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It was 36 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to — OOPS! On this day in 1980, Paul McCartney was kicked out of Japan for trying to smuggle almost half a pound of marijuana into the country.

Sir Paul, his wife Linda, and his band Wings were about to embark on what would have been a lucrative tour of Japan. McCartney had not been to Japan since The Beatles tour of 1966, where they were greeted by enthusiastic audiences.

However, this Wings tour would end before it began when Japanese customs officials at Narita airport discovered close to eight ounces of marijuana right on the very top of his suitcase. The cute Beatle was promptly marched off to jail, where he spent the next 9 days behind bars.

This was not McCartney’s first bust for dope. In fact, he had been nabbed more than once, receiving little more than a slap on the wrist. According to the Performing Songwriter web site:

Prior to his arrest in Tokyo, Macca had been busted three times. In 1972, he paid a $2,000 fine for smuggling hashish into Sweden. The same year, he was fined for pot possession in Scotland, and in 1973, he was fined again for growing cannabis on his Scottish highlands farm. The story goes that before the Japanese tour, Paul was made to sign an affidavit stating that he no longer smoked dope, as a condition for receiving his visa. When the pot was found, Japanese authorities felt that they’d “lost face” and had no choice but to arrest him.

While 8 ounces of pot is not an extreme amount, it would have been enough to garner a smuggling charge, which could have kept McCartney locked up for the next 7 years.

As McCartney explained in the Wingspan documentary:

According to the History web site:

The question that troubled the minds of observers at the time was, “What was Paul thinking?” Half a pound of marijuana was a prodigious amount for one man to carry around for personal use—particularly a man who had had reason to expect especially close examination of his person and his baggage by Japanese customs officials. After all, Paul had been denied a Japanese entry visa just five years earlier due to his numerous earlier drug arrests in Europe.

Twenty years after his 1980 arrest, Paul would opine that his psychological motivation may have been to find an excuse to disband Wings, which he in fact did immediately following his return to England. In another interview, however, Sir Paul offered an explanation that may be the more compelling for its simplicity: “We were about to fly to Japan and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get anything to smoke over there,” McCartney said in 2004. “This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet, so I thought I’d take it with me.”

His former writing partner, John Lennon, is said to have opined:

“If he really needs weed, surely there’s enough people who can carry it
for him. You’re a Beatle, boy, a Beatle. Your face is in every damn
corner of the planet. How could you have been so stupid?”

Smartening up, McCartney decided to toe the line while in jail. Ultimate Classic Rock picks up the story:

As Inmate No. 22, he decided to become a model prisoner. As he said
in the ‘Wingspan’ documentary, “I started to realize, “Right, I’m going
to get up when the light goes on, I’m going to be the first up, I’m
going to be the first with his room cleaned, I’m going to roll up my
bed, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.’”

After nine days in the pokey, Japan kicked McCartney out of the country.
He returned to Japan in 1990 and subsequently toured there several
times.

Also on this day in McCartney history: In 1991 Paul appeared on MTV’s Unplugged, a performance and CD which revitalized his career.

The Palin Family’s Greatest [Literal] Hits ► Throwback Thursday

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Remember this trio of tweets and posters to promote a book?

Sensing her ongoing total irrelevance, Alaskan grifter Sarah Palin latched onto the +Donald J. Trump gravy train-wreck this week. With predictable and HIGH-LARRY-US results, it didn’t go well.

As much fun as we on the Left are having — make no mistake: the return of the Palin Word Salad is comedy gold — we should never forget what a vile creature she really is, along with the family she rode in on.

Remember: It would be BLOOD LIBEL if you were
to even suggest that Sarah Palin was using gun sight
logos on this poster to suggest 2nd Amendment
solutions, especially after Gabby Giffords, one of
those in the sights, was shot in the parking lot of
an Arizona supermarket in an assassination attempt
that left 6 dead and 13 injured 5 years ago this month.

On Tuesday, as whispers of Palin’s potential Trump endorsement were starting to blow up the internet, two other stories were bubbling under news cycles’ Hit Parade.

The first was that her abstinence-avert daughter Bristol, taking precious time away from diapering her 2nd baby born out of wedlock, defended Mama Grizzly from an accurate attack from the Ted Cruz camp over her Trump endorsement.

Then came the not-as-surprising-as-you-might-think reports that Palin’s eldest son Track — left home alone — had been arrested the night before for [alleged] beating up his girlfriend and then threatening to shoot himself.

According to the police report:

She and her boyfriend of one year, Track Palin, left a different residence together and were arguing the whole way home. Once they got to his home they argued in the car, then in the driveway . They were screaming and he was calling her names. [Redacted] told Palin that she had called the cops even though she had not, in attempt to calm him down and to scare him away from “touching her”. Palin approached [Redacted] and struck her on the left side of her head near her eye with a closed fist. [Redacted] got on the ground in a fetal position because she didn’t know what else he would do. Palin then kicked [redacted] on the right knee. [Redacted]’s phone was sitting on the ground in front of her. Palin took her phone and threw it across the driveway. She retrieved the phone and went inside the house. Palin was already inside and holding onto a gun, yelling “do you think I’m a pussy?” and “do you think I won’t do it?” [Redacted] stated Palin “cocked the gun” and was holding the rifle out next to him with the his right hand near the trigger and his left hand near the barrel, with the barrel just away from his face pointed to the side. [Redacted] was concerned that he would shoot himself and ran outside and around the house. She didn’t see where Palin went, so she went inside and up the stairs, where she hid under a bed. Shortly after, she heard Palin walking around inside looking for her. Palin left after not locating her.

However, the news that Track [allegedly] beat up his girlfriend didn’t hit the TRENDING lists until after Sarah Palin’s loony toon speech in Trumpville, USA.

That news revived earlier stories about the Punch Drunk Palins. In 2014 the whole famn damily got into a donnybrook with some of their neighbours. Then, as now, the police were called. Combining several written reports, my editors at PoliticusUSA wrote in 2014:

Our friend Gryphen at The Immoral Minority has the details,

According to the grapevine Track had some altercation
with a person who may or may not have once dated one of the Palin girls.
That led to some pushing and shoving, which escalated somehow to the
family being asked to leave the premises.

However before that could happen a certain former abstinence
spokesperson unleashed a flurry of blows at some as of yet identified
individual before being pulled off by by another partygoer, after which
Todd apparently puffed up his chest and made some threatening remarks.
(The “C’ word may have been uttered at one point.)

In the end the cops were called, order was restored, and the Mama Grizzly made sure the whole thing got swept under the rug.

Blogger Amanda Coyne added some more color to the picture,

The owner of the house gets involved, and he probably wished he
hadn’t. At this point, he’s up against nearly the whole Palin tribe:
Palin women screaming. Palin men thumping their chests. Word is that
Bristol has a particularly strong right hook, which she employed
repeatedly, and it’s something to hear when Sarah screams, “Don’t you
know who I am!”

And it was particularly wonderful when someone in
the crowd screamed back, “This isn’t some damned Hillbilly reality
show!” No, it’s what happens when the former First Family of Alaska
comes knocking.

Wonkette confirmed with the PoPo that the brawl really happened.

My fascination with the Palin Family is nothing new. Read:

 More Proof the Palin Family
Are Liars and Grifters

As the news of Track’s latest arrest became too big to ignore, mother Sarah Palin went into hiding to formulate a response. She skipped Trump’s first event yesterday, with everyone wondering, “Where’s Sarah?” When she emerged she came up with this Laff Riot:

According to PoliticusUSA, there are 2 competing stories about why Track Palin served in the military in the first place, which, incidentally, was during George W. Bush’s incumbency:

Barack Obama didn’t send Track Palin to the Middle East. Depending on
whether or not one believes the Palin family version of the story Track
Palin was either forced by his parents to enlist after getting
arrested, or he volunteered to go. Either way, the responsibility for
Track Palin’s arrest belongs solely to the man himself.

I do not wish to make fun of anyone who has PTSD. I’ve seen its
effects first hand. If Track has PTSD, I hope he is able to get
the help he needs. [On a tangential note: I hope somone is smart enough
to take away his guns.]

Having typed that, if Sarah Palin says Track has PTSD it needs to be checked with a higher authority because: 1). Palin’s relationship with the truth has been bitterly strained over the last decade, or so, and; 2). There is no one she wouldn’t betray — including using her son and a medical diagnosis — to score points with the “Right wingin’, bitter clingin’, proud clingers of our guns, our god, and our religions, and our Constitution.”

For further proof there’s no one she wouldn’t throw under the wheels of a campaign bus: Despite the fact that:

  • John McCain elevated Sarah Palin to national recognition when he tapped her to be his Veep, and;
  • +Donald J. Trump famously attacked John MCain as a loser who was captured and the compassionate billionaire doesn’t like people who were captured.

Sarah Palin betrayed previous BFF Ted Cruz, Conservatives, religious fundamentalists and Tea Party-types in order to Scream Stump for Trump.

I rest my case. Now watch this bucket of crazy, which MoJo introduces with the headline:

Here Is a Video of Sarah Palin Interviewing Donald Trump. It Is Bonkers under the funny URL
http://www.motherjones.com/contributor/2015/08/starts-chanting-kiss-kiss-kiss-kiss-kiss-kiss-kiss-kiss-stops-chanting:

The Danger of Speaking Truth to Power ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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Forty-eight years ago today the blacklist of Eartha Kitt began.

It was the day after her birthday in 1968 when Kitt was invited to a luncheon at the White House. While there she was asked by the First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, about the ongoing war in Vietnam. According to The Music History Calendar:

At a White House luncheon to discuss the rise in urban crime, Eartha Kitt gets into a notorious spat with First Lady Claudia Taylor “Lady Bird” Johnson, declaring, “Vietnam is the main reason we are having trouble with the youth of America. It is a war without explanation or reason.” Although accounts of the entire argument differ, Kitt is subsequently blackballed in America.

Blackballed? The government did everything in its power to destroy her professionally and personally. As the WikiWackyWoo tells us:

Her remarks reportedly caused Mrs. Johnson to burst into tears and led to a derailment in Kitt’s career.[15]
The public reaction to Kitt’s statements was extreme, both pro and con.
Publicly ostracized in the US, she devoted her energies to performances
in Europe and Asia. It is said that Kitt’s career in the US was ended
following her comments about the Vietnam War, after which she was
branded “a sadistic nymphomaniac” by the CIA.[8]

Kitt had been riding high as Batman’s Catwoman, but disappeared from all ‘Merkin media after the cat fight with Lady Bird. She didn’t emerge for a decade, until she appeared on Broadway in the musical Timbuktu! in 1978.

While Catwoman was my introduction to Kitt, she had a long and vital career up to that point. As a singer she had a number of hits, such as “C’est Si Bon” and the very sexy seasonal song “Santa Baby.”

Kitt was not just a celebrity guest at that White House luncheon. She had been invited because of her decade-long activism. As we learn from the WikiWackyWoo:

Kitt was active in numerous social causes in the 1950s and 1960s. In
1966, she established the Kittsville Youth Foundation, a chartered and
non-profit organization for underprivileged youth in the Watts area of Los Angeles.[22] She was also involved with a group of youth in the area of Anacostia
in Washington, D.C., who called themselves, “Rebels with a Cause.” Kitt
supported the group’s efforts to clean up streets and establish
recreation areas in an effort to keep them out of trouble by testifying
with them before the House General Subcommittee on Education of the Committee on Education and Labor.
In her testimony, in May 1967, Kitt stated that the Rebels’
“achievements and accomplishments should certainly make the adult
‘do-gooders’ realize that these young men and women have performed in 1
short year – with limited finances – that which was not achieved by the
same people who might object to turning over some of the duties of
planning, rehabilitation, and prevention of juvenile delinquents and
juvenile delinquency to those who understand it and are living it”. She
added that “the Rebels could act as a model for all urban areas
throughout the United States with similar problems”.[23] “Rebels with a Cause” subsequently received the needed funding.[24]

I fell in love with Eartha Kitt as Catwoman. As a teenager with raging hormones, I thought she was one of the sexiest women on tee vee. I didn’t learn about her singing and acting career until later and it was years after that when I learned of her activism and subsequent blacklisting. For all these reasons, Eartha Kitt is one of my personal heroes. However, as I always say, It’s all about the music:




Is Ted Nugent Racist? ► Throwback Thursday

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For this week’s Throwback Thursday I am — once again — reaching into my vast writing archives. In 2012 I was freelancing for Stones Detroit, a website out of…err…Detroit. This original article was commissioned by my editor.

Is Ted Nugent A Racist?
Our Stones Detroit Writer Says, “Yes”
OPINION by Headly Westerfield — October 2012

 

The house I lived in on Gilchrist Street

When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5 houses away from David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently, have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his crazy, racist rant earlier this week.

Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard, really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’ kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants got crusted up.

Nice imagery.

Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news. More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?

Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive, there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the ’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism, pure and simple.

At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their neighbourhoods with Black folk.

The racial strife only became worse during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000 Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.

After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things would have been much different.

I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist. The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.

Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post. I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

Originally published at Stones Detroit.

Is Ted Nugent A Racist? Our Stones Detroit Writer Says, “Yes”

OPINION by Headly Westerfield
When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5
houses away David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When
the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood
kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch
hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the
Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently,
have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his
crazy, racist rant earlier this week.
Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a
long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a
self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that
day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more
washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris
build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard,
really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’
kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with
nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never
touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the
syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to
the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants
got crusted up.

Nice imagery. Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted
crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news.
More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama
becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in
jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good
indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to
clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t
even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s
made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul
brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown
today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some
post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most
dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what
lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?
Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of
Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic
epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on
through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman
Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal
Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you
train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive,
there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the
toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to
be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and
welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a
president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down
that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To
begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the
’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism,
pure and simple.
At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it
was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated
cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people
like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their
neighbourhoods with Black folk. The racial strife only became worse
during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in
the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the
time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000
Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the
loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.
After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and
Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere
they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the
vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain
neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White
folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White
Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the
Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things
would have been much different.
I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist.
The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly,
positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of
Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the
neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent
that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the
Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved
Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression
of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.
Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post.
I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

– See more at:
http://stonesdetroit.com/is-ted-nugent-a-racist-our-stones-detroit-writer-says-yes/#sthash.JbhxdXZB.Tx3mALHp.dpuf

Is Ted Nugent A Racist? Our Stones Detroit Writer Says, “Yes”

OPINION by Headly Westerfield
When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5
houses away David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When
the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood
kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch
hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the
Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently,
have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his
crazy, racist rant earlier this week.
Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a
long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a
self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that
day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more
washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris
build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard,
really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’
kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with
nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never
touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the
syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to
the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants
got crusted up.

Nice imagery. Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted
crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news.
More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama
becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in
jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good
indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to
clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t
even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s
made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul
brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown
today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some
post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most
dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what
lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?
Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of
Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic
epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on
through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman
Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal
Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you
train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive,
there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the
toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to
be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and
welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a
president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down
that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To
begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the
’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism,
pure and simple.
At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it
was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated
cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people
like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their
neighbourhoods with Black folk. The racial strife only became worse
during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in
the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the
time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000
Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the
loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.
After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and
Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere
they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the
vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain
neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White
folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White
Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the
Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things
would have been much different.
I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist.
The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly,
positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of
Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the
neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent
that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the
Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved
Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression
of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.
Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post.
I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

– See more at:
http://stonesdetroit.com/is-ted-nugent-a-racist-our-stones-detroit-writer-says-yes/#sthash.JbhxdXZB.Tx3mALHp.dpuf

A Terrorist Alert or a Simple Mistake?

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The traveling Not Now Silly Newsroom

Let me introduce you to my knapsack, which I often call the traveling Not Now Silly Newsroom. Yesterday the traveling Not Now Silly Newsroom almost made the news.

Everything I could ever possibly need to write a Not Now Silly story is contained within my knapsack, including pads of lined paper, notebooks, clipboard, extra pens, Post It Notes, spare batteries, small camera, and a big clamp to be used as a handle for my smart phone video camera.

When I left Starbucks yesterday afternoon, I inadvertently left my knapsack behind. Amazingly I didn’t realize I had left it there until this morning, when I went to get something out of it. As they say in Quebec, “There she was, gone!”

It only took a minute to realize I’d left it back at Starbucks. Even though I was about to jump into the shower, I jumped into my clothes instead. Then I jumped into the car and rushed right over to get my knapsack — never exceeding the speed limit, even in the 15MPH school zone.

When I arrived, the first person I encountered was the manager, Issac.

“Did somebody turn in my knapsack yesterday?”

“Oh, that was yours?” Then he preceeded to tell me the following:

It seems as though my knapsack was noticed by a European couple only minutes after I left. Because people in Europe are far more sensitive to potential terrorist packages left lying around, they wanted to call it in as a suspicious package, but Starbucks staff wasn’t quite so sure. They were pretty certain they knew who it belonged to. However, the two Israelis, also on the patio, concurred that it cannot be ignored, especially as a new Mideastern restaurant was being renovated in the space right next door.

If you see something, say something.

That’s when police were called.

Apparently the bomb squad wasn’t brought in because, if they had been, my knapsack would have been blown to bits as a precaution, just to be on the safe side. Instead, the officers glanced inside my knapsack, determined that it was something its owner would definitely return for, and turned it over to Starbucks for safe-keeping.

Now I’ll go take my shower and see if I can wash off the embarrassment that I wasted everybody’s time.

David Bowie Dead at 69 ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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Woke up this morning to the news that David Bowie has died at the age of 69. This coming just days after his birthday, the same day he released his latest album, Blackstar.

Bowie was a singer, musician, and actor, appearing in films and on Broadway.

The family released a statement:

“David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer. While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief.”

Something happened on the day he died,
Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside,
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried,
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar)
​
~~~~~David Bowie, Blackstar, 2016

Bowie went through several ch-ch-changes during his 4 decade-plus career — from Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke; from Glam to Disco to Electronica.

As Not Now Silly always says, It’s all about the music.










Accidentally On Purpose ► Throwback Thursday

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I’m not going back all that far for today’s Throwback Thursday, just to the end of October. The 21st, to be exact, which is the day I had the accident in the Buick. 

Sometimes when looking back on an event, one can see all the incremental steps that led to it. However, that’s only in retrospect. That’s the Butterfly Effect for you. Nothing really happens in isolation.

Little could I have realized on the 21st of October that the accident would change everything for me. There was no way I could know how that falling domino would impact the one next to it, and the one next to that. Slowly, but surely, each domino fell against the next until I was faced with the inexorable decision to move the Not Now Silly Newsroom to Toronto, Canada, something I would have never contemplated on the night of the accident.

Have a Happy Throwback Thursday and DON’T FORGET to contribute to my Go Fund Me account for getting back home.

Where We’re At & Where We’re Going ► Unpacking the Writer

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Pops and I soon after I moved to Florida 10 years ago.

I opened this joint (originally called “Headly Westerfield’s Aunty Em Ericann Blog”) in April of 2012 to publish Johnny Dollar Has Proven Himself To Be A Very Dangerous Person. Then I had to decide what else to do with it. It has metamorphosed into what you see here today, the Not Now Silly Newsroom.

When I fired up this place, I had no real plan; I still don’t. I merely followed my interests, writing about whatever rang my bell at the time. I took the position that my interests, as interesting as they are, would be of interest to other interesting people. And, I also assumed, that my droll, tongue-in-cheek writing style would be endlessly entertaining, not to mention interesting.

Not following a road map has led me to some very interesting places.

F’rinstance: I never thought I’d be writing about Coconut Grove, which is 35 miles from where I live. I was still disguised in my Street Performance Art Installation as Aunty Em Ericann, when I discovered the Charles Avenue Historical Marker, the E.W.F. Stirrup House, and the shuttered Coconut Grove Playhouse. I distinctly remember getting home that day and telling friends I had found a story at the corner of Charles Avenue and Main Highway. I just wasn’t sure what it was yet.

That first encounter with Coconut Grove gave me an almost endless supply of stories about that community and its rich history. It’s the oldest neighbourhood in Miami and, at one time, had the highest percentage of Black home ownership than anywhere else in the country. Today the 33133 Zip Code is considered one of the most exclusive in the nation, while gentrification of The Grove continues to bulldoze the rich Bahamian history the original village was founded upon.

But it wasn’t just Coconut Grove history I got sucked into writing about. I also wrote about Trolleygate and Soilgate, long before the Miami media discovered those stories. I wrote about [allegedly] corrupt politicians and the Distrct 2 election campaign. I’ve written about the continued encroachment of Marler Avenue, which became the third chapter of my popular Where The Sidewalk Ends, Racism Begins series. I’ve written about bad neighbours and rapacious developers, who just so happen to be the same person. I’ve written about parking problems and valets run amok. And, of course, I’ve written about my campaign to save the E.W.F. Stirrup House for something other than a B&B for rich White folks.

It took me quite a while to realize why Coconut Grove was one of the few places in Florida where I felt truly comfortable. To begin with, the Grove isn’t suburban, which is really what the rest of South Florida feels like. Hugging the east coast, it’s just one long, sprawling suburban landscape; gas stations and strip malls separated by gated communities, and indoor malls, all connected with ribbons of highways, each radiating the midday summer heat.

Coconut Grove is different. It still has faint echoes of the original Bahamian culture that built the neighbourhood. Later those original settlers were joined by artists wanting to capture the tropics in paintings, and one can still feel that vibe throbbing under the surface. The Bahamians and Bohemians got along together famously and, by the ’60, were joined by folksingers such as Fred Neil, John Sebastian, David Crosby, and Joni Mitchell. On a quiet day you can still hear their songs in the off-shore breezes.

There’s a deep Hippie vibe in parts of the Grove, the parts where I felt the most comfortable.


Montage by author

The overarching rubric for all of my Coconut Grove stories was Unpacking Coconut Grove. Right now I’m feeling nostalgic because I am Packing Coconut Grove; trying to tie up all the loose reportorial ends as I prepare to leave South Florida.

I’ve taken care of Pops for the last decade and I’m simply burned out. It’s time for me to return to Toronto, the city I call home, to recharge my batteries.

Ironically, I’m returning to Kensington Market, which has a similar Hippie feel as Coconut Grove. I lived in Kensington Market many years ago, but was able to experience it again anew when I visited Toronto in September. I spent most of my time in the Market and felt comfortable and at home. Soon I will be able to call it home.

Help me get to Kensington Market
by contributing to my Go Fund Me:

The Hit Parade ► A Musical Appreciation

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The first issue of The Billboard Advertiser

It was 80 years ago today that Billboard Magazine launched The Hit Parade, a countdown of the most popular recordings in the country based on sales and radio play. While the chart has changed over the years — and has been balkanized into just about every genre of music known — the main list is now known as The Hot 100.

We know Billboard today as a music magazine, but when it was launched in 1894 it was a circus magazine. At the time the circus was the biggest form of entertainment in the country. Atlas Obscura tells all in Number One With A Bullet: The Rise of the Billboard Hot 100:

According to a history written by his grandson, Roger S. Littleford, Jr., the founder of Billboard,
William H. “Bill” Donaldson, built the magazine to serve an entirely
different need. Donaldson worked for the family business, a Newport,
Kentucky-based lithography shop that churned out advertisements and
posters for the circuses, fairs, and other traveling shows that
criss-crossed the country. Donaldson realized that most of his
clients—the managers and owners who ordered the posters, and,
especially, the billstickers tasked with staying one step ahead of the
shows and pasting the posters to every available surface—lacked
permanent addresses, and thus were unable to communicate with each
other.

In 1894, Donaldson started to spend his nights and weekends putting together Billboard Advertising,
a trade publication dedicated to gathering all the news that might be
relevant to his more itinerant peers. The first issue, published that
November, had eight pages of relevant tidbits, laid out in columns like
“Bill Room Gossip” and “The Indefatigable And Tireless Industry of the
Bill Poster.” Now the “advertisers, poster printers, bill posters,
advertising agents, and secretaries of fairs,” as the issue categorized them, could pick up a magazine at a newsstand anywhere in the country and know what to expect on the opposite coast.


This is the first #1 tune on the first Billboard Hit Parade in 1936

Over the years as the entertainment industry expanded, so did Billboard’s coverage of it; from sheet music, to plays, to movies, to musicals, to radio, to recorded music, to downloads. It was all a natural progression to follow what was popular in ‘Merkin entertainment and technology. The WikiWackyWoo picks up the story:

On January 4, 1936, Billboard magazine published its first music hit parade.
The first Music Popularity Chart was calculated in July 1940. A variety
of song charts followed, which were eventually consolidated into the
Hot 100 by mid-1958. The Hot 100 currently combines single sales, radio airplay, digital downloads, and streaming activity (including data from YouTube and other video sites). All of the Billboard
charts use this basic formula. What separates the charts is which
stations and stores are used; each musical genre has a core audience or
retail group. Each genre’s department at Billboard is headed up by a chart manager, who makes these determinations.

For many years, a song had to be commercially available as a single to be considered for any of the Billboard charts. At the time, instead of using Nielsen SoundScan or Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems (BDS), Billboard obtained its data from manual reports filled out by radio stations and stores. According to the 50th Anniversary issue of Billboard,
prior to the official implementation of SoundScan tracking in November
1991, many radio stations and retail stores removed songs from their
manual reports after the associated record labels stopped promoting a
particular single. Thus songs fell quickly after peaking and had shorter
chart lives. In 1990, the country singles chart was the first chart to use SoundScan and BDS. They were followed by the Hot 100 and the R&B chart in 1991. Today, all of the Billboard charts use this technology.


IRONY ALERT: When I worked at Island Records Canada, I promoted this tune

There was a time in my life when I lived — literally — and died — figuratively — by the Billboard charts. When I worked for Island Records Canada as a Promotion Rep, I spent hours with each new issue of Billboard, trying to discern trends the same way astrologists look for signs in their charts.

Trying to get Bob Marley played on FM radio in Canada was a nearly impossible feat at the time. This was when Rastaman Vibration was just released. It was such an uphill struggle because few people even knew who Bob Marley was and Reggae still confused a lot of people. I told people it was just like Rock and Roll, except the beat didn’t go KUH-thunk, KUH-thunk. It went Thunk-kuh, Thunk-kuh.

We badgered one radio station in Canada after another to add Marley to their playlists, with almost no luck whatsoever. Only the odd campus radio station were sold on Marley’s power as an artist.

CHUM-FM was the station we worked on the hardest because it was the biggest station in the country. Consequently it was a leader among Canadian radio stations. CHUM’s music committee consisted of Benji Karsh and Brian Masters. They hated Marley. Week after week, we’d pitch them Bob Marley. Each week we’d send them photostatic copies of charts from around the world, showing which radio stations were smart enough to jump on the Bob Marley bandwagon. Every week they just laughed. Finally one week they said, “We won’t play this until it charts in Billboard.”

Guess what?

A few weeks later Rastaman Vibrations finally appeared on the Billboard chart. We were able to go back to CHUM-FM and make them eat those words. From that day on Bob Marley was heard on CHUM-FM. Later I was amused to hear them pretend to have discovered Bob Marley, even though they had to be dragged kicking and screaming all the way.

Kicking 2015 to the Curb ► The Ultimate Throwback Thursday

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As we all look forward to a New Year, some highlights before all the sand runs out of this one:

THE JOHNNY DOLLAR WARS

Maybe I was just asking for trouble, but I began 2015 by . . .

While I thought these crazy cyber-bullies were finally vanquished, just recently “Angie Simmoril” — who hides behind a wall of complete anonymity — popped up again to promise big doings on the Aurelius Project for the beginning of 2016. While I had almost forgotten The Flying Monkey Squad existed, this is simply more proof that an obsessed crazy person never really goes away — unless they die, which is really what I thought had happened with Grayhammy.

Watch this space.

COCONUT GROVE PLAYHOUSE & PARKING LOTS

I wrote so many stories about Coconut Grove this year, but most of them were about the Coconut Grove Playhouse and its surrounding parking lots. That meant I spent a lot of time in parking lots this year, and the year before, while I did research in the field, as it were:

When I agreed to drive a car at this year’s King Mango Strut, little
did I know it would be the one with Ken Russell doing yo-yo tricks

MIAMI DISTRICT 2 POLITICS

My campaign to SAVE THE E.W.F. STIRRUP HOUSE not only led to all those stories on the Coconut Grove Playhouse — which is catercorner to it — but also got me deeper then ever into District 2 politics. That led to a series of stories about [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff, which naturally led to that time When Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff Lied To My Face.

When the term-limited Sarnoff put up his wife Teresa to run in his place for District 2 Commissioner, I started following the election closely. My first foray in covering the candidates didn’t go so well. Jammed For Time tells the story of getting thrown out of the Grace Solaris campaign kickoff. That didn’t auger well for the rest of the Commissioner race. As far as I knew the rest of the field would treat me similarly. Luckily, none of them did. All were gracious about answering questions and posing for pictures. That provided a number of stories, the best of which are:

Interview With District 2’s Ken Russell

During the race several of the candidates agreed to talk to me, allowed me to accompany them on door knocks, let me sit in on private meetings and phone calls, and gave me some very interesting inside skinny on the donation process. All of this was done on an OFF THE RECORD basis, to be embargoed until after the election. I’m still processing my notes and recordings to see what kind of story I can get out of it.
To be continued.

PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

As much of a political junkie as I am, I’ve been mainlining what’s been going on in the presidential race. While I’ve not written specifically about Donald J. Trump, I have created a number of memes currently whizzing around the innertubes. Collect ’em all. Trade ’em with your friends.

However, I have covered the joke that is some of the rest of the current GOP field, and some previous races:

PASTORAL LETTERS

Late last year I reconnected with my childhood friend Kenneth John Wilson. Ken, who is an evangelical pastor in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has written a very important book on LGBT acceptance in the church. I started following his extraordinary story and began a series of Pastoral Letters to him. Occasionally he replies, but I am writing then more to understand my mind than his.

I’ve started another Pastoral Letter, but it will be a while before I get all my thoughts in order.

FALSETTO VOICE:

I began my research into Coconut Grove years ago at the E.W.F. Stirrup House. While there’s not been that much to write about on that issue over the last year — because almost nothing has changed — that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten all about Gino Falsetto, the rapacious developer who got his grimy hands on the historic structure:

I’m also prepping a new story on the E.W.F. Stirrup House.  It’s almost half written. Stay tuned. Watch this space. Coming to a browser near you.

This year I also bonded with Fox’s Campaign Carl Cameron

THE FOX “NEWS” CHANNEL

My fascination/revulsion with the Fox “News” Channel continues, which is how I picked up Johnny Dollar as an enemy in the first place. No matter. For the last year I’ve written a Friday Fox Follies for PoliticusUSA website, continued to run Fox Follies and Fallacies, over at the facebookery. However . . .

. . . sums up my attitude whenever I encounter a Fox “News” spouting parrot.

ROAD TRIPS:

This year I took 2 marathon road trips, both more than 3,000 miles from door to door. These are just some of the posts these road trips generated:

TWO NEW SERIES:

Before the road trips I stopped aggregating the Headlines Du Jour. It took several hours 3 days a week and it was a trap, without any achival value. When I got back from the road trips I began two brand new series. Launching Throwback Thursday with The Westerfield Journals was one and Monday Musical Appreciation the other. I’m quite proud of both of these series. In both these series I am highlight some of the lesser-known history-makers.

NAME DROPPING

One of the things I’ve been accused of over the years is name-dropping. I plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the internet. What’s the penalty? Izzit just a fine or jail time?

No matter. Exhibit A and B as evidence against me this year:

Those are just some of the highlights from the last year. No one knows what 2016 will hold for the Not Now Silly Newsroom, but I’ll be writing it from Toronto. More specifically, Kensington Market. It felt so good in September, I’m going to do it all over again. To that end, I’ve launched a Go Fund Me to help defray my moving expenses. It’s amazing how much stuff I’ve accumulated in the last decade. Help me get back to Toronto: