The Westmoreland County Commissioners used to give out stickers saying, "There's MORE in Westmoreland."
Maybe they meant more weird news stories. Weird, wacky, wonderful Westmoreland hit the national news again this week, after Joe Napsha broke the story in the Trib:
Greensburg police are investigating how a 48-year-old man posing as a woman and a cheerleader allegedly stole the identities of three women to obtain credit cards, took photos of high school cheerleaders and obtained numerous cheerleader uniforms and pom-poms.
Kelly Dawn Hullenbaugh's secret life came undone Friday night when police arrested him at his apartment after he allegedly was seen in the girls locker room at Greensburg Salem High School.
Yesterday, as I changed my wet socks and shoes for the tenth time, I decided that --- considering the climate around here --- someone in Western Pennsylvania should launch a radio station with a format that was all rain songs, all the time. Maybe I will.
"We're all wet ... this is W-E-T-T, McKeesport, playing continuous soggy favorites." If you think the "Froggy" stations have fun coming up with obnoxious "frog" DJ names, think of the DJ names you could have on an all-rain radio station: Gail Storm. Curt Flood. Maxine Waters. Foggy Bottom. Johnny Rivers. What a lineup!
Imagine the jingles: "This is the WETT spot on your dial." The all-night show would naturally be called "WETT Dreams."
Or maybe not, and my brain is just waterlogged.
Anyway, I know I had enough rain songs stuck in my head yesterday to float a boat. No matter what I did, I kept whistling the bridge to this snappy number:
Just walkin' in the rain
Gettin' soaking wet
Torturing my heart
By trying to forget
That, a quick Google search determined, was recorded by Johnnie "Cr-r-r-r-r-y!" Ray in 1956, and went as high as Number 3.
It could have been worse; I could have had "Rhapsody in the Rain" by Lou Christie --- or as he's usually billed around here, "Pittsburgh's Own Lou Christie," as if there's a fake Lou Christie from Buffalo running around --- stuck in my head. Yes, I know it was popular, and yes, I know he's from Moon Township, but that song is excreable.
Christie, of course, also had a hit with "Lightnin' Strikes" --- another rain song that, like "Rhapsody," has sexual connotations. I guess it's only natural that a guy who grows up in Western Pennsylvania would get turned on by rain. Good grief, we have enough of it.
Now that I think about it, and I shouldn't, how many Pittsburgh natives who move to sunnier climes end up sexually frustrated? ("Doc, you gotta help me. My wife and I can only make love when I turn the sprinklers on outside.")
Speaking of Pittsburgh rain songs, one of the best is "Pennies From Heaven" --- the hard, swingin' version by Jimmy Beaumont & The Skyliners (sorry, "Pittsburgh's Own Jimmy Beaumont & The Skyliners"). It would also be high on my rain day playlist.
How about "Hello, Walls" by Faron Young? ("Tell me, is that a teardrop in the corner of your pane? Now, don't you try and tell me it's just rain.")
Who can forget "Rhythm of the Rain" by the Cascades (went to Number 1 in 1963, if I remember correctly), or "Raindrops" by Dee Clark (Number 2 in 1962)? That's worthy if only for Clark's hiccuping vocal ("It feels like ra-ain-ain-drops falling from my eye-eyes, fa-alling from my uh-eyes").
"Drip, Drop" presents a quandary. Which do I like better? The Drifters' original version has a gritty, authentic sound, but Dion's version is oh-so-cool. And they were both hits. My favorite lyric: "Why don't you mind your own affairs and button your lip, lip, lip --- I know when my girl's gave me the slip, slip, slip."
"Rainy Night in Georgia" by Brook Benton is a good one, too, as is "Stormy Weather" --- either Ella's version, which almost makes your heart hurt, or the Spaniels' beautiful uptempo version, which has the opposite effect.
For Our Fair City, where days of heavy rain invariably flood the appropriately-named Water Street and River Road, "Five Feet High and Risin'" by the late Man in Black is a natural (Number 76 on the pop charts in 1959):
The hives are gone, I've lost my bees,
The chickens are sleepin' in the willow trees,
The cow's in water up past her knees,
It's three feet high and risin'
I'd better knock it off; it's getting pretty deep in here already.
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I'm not the only one obsessed with rain songs. Here's a whole list of 800 songs about rain, including the ones I named, and a bunch I've never heard of.
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Tip of the Tube City hard hat to "Josh Reads the Comics So You Don't Have To," which has another good entry on that much-despised cartoon cat and the dreadful movie he spawned.
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Professor Pittsblog tees off on the mercurial "Save Our City" advertising campaign recently launched by Pittsburgh Brewing Co. Asks "Pittsblog": "Save it from what?"
The campaign didn't do much for me, either.
I can think of one thing that would have "saved the city" about $3 million, plus countless legal bills --- if Pittsburgh Brewing had paid its water and sewerage bills on time, instead of dragging the case through the courts for three years.
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"Wedding World," which has two stores in the Mon-Yough area --- Pleasant Hills and Monroeville --- has just gone toes-up, according to the Associated Press.
The company filed for bankruptcy and closed it doors days after reporters for Johnstown TV station WJAC ("We're Just Auto Crashes") uncovered hundreds of complaints against the chain. Channel 6 also claims that its investigation helped prompt a lawsuit filed this week by state Attorney General Jerry Pappert.
This leaves dozens of women unable to claim the dresses they've paid for, so if you see any brides this weekend wearing their old high school prom gowns, you'll know why.
It's raining.
It will be raining tomorrow, too.
The rain will fall vertically, from the sky to the ground, in that direction, and will be followed by wet basements, puddles on the sidewalks, drowned worms, and soggy socks.
That's all you need to know about the forecast, but it hasn't stopped the TV weather fear-mongers from working themselves into a fine, white froth.
This is not to make light of people who are keeping a "weather eye" (ha! ha!) on the Mon and the Yough. I'm hoping that the water doesn't reach the Palisades or do any damage to the Marina, and I'm hoping that no one living in Our Fair City or the suburbs gets hurt, or loses any of their belongings.
I have a longer rant on this topic, but you'll have to wait until it shows up at Pittsburgh Radio & TV Online.
But in short, it's fairly obvious that Pittsburgh's local TV weather yakkers have nothing to report on when it's not snowing. As a consequence, they over-hype every single weather event of even marginal importance.
I sometimes worry about what will happen when we really are due for severe weather: Will people believe them?
Want some real, clear-headed weather information, that you pay for? Visit the National Weather Service's local forecast page.
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If you're mad enough at the local weathercasters, I suppose you could do what James C. Johnson of Youngstown did, although I don't recommend it: He climbed the WYTV-TV tower and unplugged the station's Doppler weather radar, according to The Vindicator.
In this case, Johnson wasn't aggravated by the forecasts; he was angry that the mayor wouldn't talk to him about his campaign to get former U.S. Rep. Jim "Cap'n Hairdo" Traficant pardoned.
Once atop the tower, he unfurled a banner reading, "Pardon Traficant."
Johnson apparently planned to stay up there for quite a while. The Vindy reports that when arrested, he had a flashlight, electrical tape, compact discs, a CD player with headphones, and cigarettes.
But there's no mention of any ... um ... facilities. Maybe he figured he was going to let the chips fall where they may, as it were.
Good thing the cops got him, because it could have gotten messy in the Channel 33 parking lot.
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(Warning: Tiresome political screed follows. Skip to the end for some geek humor.)
From the Tube City Almanac National Affairs Desk comes coverage of this speech by the Vice President of Bizarro World:
Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack. ...
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city. ...
Hours before Cheney spoke, the Congressional Budget Office said this year's federal deficit will hit a record $422 billion. Cheney, in praising Bush's tax cuts, noted that the CBO said this year's projected deficit will be smaller than analysts had expected.
Vanguard class boats carry the UK's Trident thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles ... Whereas most previous naval deployments of Microsoft Windows worldwide have been overhyped, and have dealt largely with non mission-critical, non-lethal installations, AMS really is committing the Royal Navy to Windows-based command, control and combat management systems.
Requiescat in pace to Westmoreland County Commissioner Terry Marolt, who died Sunday after a lingering illness at the age of 58. I always found Marolt to be a great interview --- cantankerous, plain-spoken, and always willing to thrust and parry with a writer. Perhaps that's because he had been a journalist himself for many years, at the weekly Laurel Group newspapers, and later at the Latrobe Bulletin and the Tribune-Review. Marolt was rarely one to brush off a reporter with "no comment," and his candor sometimes got him in trouble.
Marolt was also an oldies buff, having conducted a long-running program on WCNS (1480) in Latrobe until his health made continuing impossible.
A big man in more ways than one (he occasionally referred to himself as "Boss Hogg"), Marolt had recently dropped dozens of pounds off of his once-rotund frame as a concession to the kidney and heart ailments that were dogging him.
Pohla Smith and Rebekah Scott have a great obit in the Post-Gazette, while Pat Cloonan has the story in The Daily News. (The always-reliable Cloonan is the only one to mention the political implications, near the bottom of his story: the judges of Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court will meet to choose Marolt's successor, Cloonan writes.)
The Trib's obit is notable for its comments from publisher Richard Scaife, who rarely talks to the media (even his own paper). It says something about Marolt's appeal and personality that he was equally comfortable with internationally-famous millionaires and local officials in the Mon Valley.
Friends will be received Wednesday and Thursday at J. Paul McCracken Funeral Chapel in Ligonier. The funeral will be held Friday at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Ligonier.
Donations may be made to the Terry Marolt Education Fund, in care of National City Bank, RR 6, Box 98, Latrobe, PA 15650, which will provide scholarships for students from Laurel Valley and Ligonier Valley school districts.
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Voters in Erie tell The Washington Post that they're sick of hearing about terrorism and Iraq:
"The economy is so bad. If we are such a great country, why don't we stay and help us? ... Take care of us for a change," pleaded Cathy Filipowski, 35, a dental assistant. These swing voters understand the importance of the war on terrorism and the gravity of the bloody crisis in Iraq. But they also see every day the abandoned buildings, for-sale signs on the houses and cracked, uneven sidewalks along 12th Street and elsewhere in this predominantly Catholic working-class community. They see a crowded emergency room at St. Vincent hospital, and the three recently shuttered public health clinics in the poorest parts of town. They see a municipality increasingly strapped for cash, but they take comfort that their city, the third largest in Pennsylvania, is merely in trouble and not in crisis, as is Pittsburgh, 120 miles to the south.
(Can) any reasonable person really disagree with Kerry's call for a "more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side"? The fact is, the money hustlers and Beltway power brokers know in their gut that Bush is in way over his head and Cheney is a loose cannon --- and that together they have alienated U.S. allies and enflamed the Islamic world while making only marginal gains against Al Qaeda. ...
Bush's convention acceptance speech was a clear ideological endorsement of the neoconservative vision that America can and should dominate the world with military force.
An investigation continues into how a pornographic image found its way into a slide-and-video presentation shown to teachers, administrators and a small group of students during a Hempfield Area in-service day last week.
A late entry today: It's Labor Day, after all, which is when we celebrate our laborers by giving them a day off.
Well, most of them. As long as they don't work for a retail business. Or in a service job. Or for a public safety agency. Or, in many cases, for a newspaper, radio or TV station. And since most of the jobs being created over the past 10 years have been in retail and service industries, I'd wager that a lot more people are working this Labor Day than have at any time since World War II.
Now, if they're real lucky, the boss might pay them time-and-a-half for working on a legal holiday. Otherwise, for those folks stuck working today: Sorry, you're up the creek, but hey! Happy Labor Day!
--- History of Labor Day, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Labor.
--- Biography of the "father of Labor Day," Peter J. McGuire, courtesy of the AFL-CIO.
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Had a good time Friday and Saturday at the National Radio Club convention in Rochester, N.Y., though I came back with a powerful case of hay fever as a result of tromping around fields looking at radio towers in the bright sun. That laid me out in bed for most of Sunday with a sinus headache. Still, it was worth if for the chance to meet a lot of talented people who I knew only from email, or from reading their articles in various trade publications.
One other thing: After driving the New York Thruway for two days between the Pennsylvania state line and Rochester, I promise not to complain about the Pennsylvania Turnpike for a while. The Thruway --- at least the western New York portion --- is poorly maintained and inadequately signed, though it is slightly cheaper than the Pennsylvania Turnpike (about 3.1 cents per mile versus 4 cents per mile). The big, sleek Mercury usually rides like a Pullman car over the roughest of roads, but the crummy pavement on the Thruway was a challenge even for its waterbed-like suspension.
And, as an extra added attraction, the New York State Thruway Authority is still paying bored and surly attendants to sit in the booths and hand out the toll tickets --- something which, in Pennsylvania, has long been handled by machines. Nice work if you can get it --- and you can get it if you try. (The pay isn't great; about $9.66 per hour, although I was making about that working for local newspapers in 1997, and I'm fairly certain that Thruway employees don't have to do "cop checks" at night.)
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Obviously, when I wrote about our former President on Friday, I didn't realize that he'd be going under the knife today. I don't wish him ill at all, and I'm glad his heart condition was discovered before he became seriously ill. I've had several friends who had heart bypasses, and while the surgery is much more commonplace than it used to be, it's still a difficult procedure, and I wish him a speedy recovery. I hope that he'll be up and chasing skirts ... er, I mean, his dog Seamus ... in no time.
As a person, I'm sure he's a very nice guy, but I found Clinton to be a frustrating and disappointing President --- a description which I suppose could be applied to the current President, in my (never) humble opinion. In fact, I am starting to warm up to U.S. Senator Yawn Kerry, D-Monotonous, in part because he isn't exciting. His message seems to be: Straighten up, be nice to other people, don't take more than your fair share, and respect your neighbors. He's not running for President, he's running for Dad.
After three and a half years of a adolescent President whose message seems to be, "Do what you can get away with," and eight years before that of a teen-aged President whose message was, "Do whatever makes you feel good," it sure would be nice to have an adult as President, now, wouldn't it?
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