I used to think the TV contained little people and the scenes they acted in were real. I also used to think the music played by radio stations came from the bands performing live in their studios. For the longest time, I could never figure out how The Beatles traveled so fast from one radio station’s studio location to the next. And when it came to Hey Jude, well, forget it. That song has a never ending chorus that just keeps repeating. Somewhere, The Beatles are still repeating, “Naaaa, naa, naa, na, nan, naa, naaa, hey Jude!” and wondering how will they ever get off of this merry-go-round.
But back to the TV thing. We watch TV and wonder. We wonder how they can make a story come alive the way they do. We wonder how much of the scene is real and how much is a useless façade. And we wonder what those fabulous on location scenes look like in real life. If you’re like me, you Continue Reading “Conquering Kirk’s Rock”
The Night the Grand Old Party Died
I was sitting in Amtrak’s Metropolitan Lounge at Union Station when it started. By the time I had already boarded the train, it was done.
On the evening of March 11, 2016, thousands of violent agitators marched their way towards downtown Chicago, intent on disrupting a scheduled campaign stop by Donald Trump, the leading candidate of a major American political party. Rumors swirled in advance of this event. It was believed various foreign funded Democrat operatives, along with the same Republican operatives that used this technique successfully in a 2014 Senatorial primary campaign, were working together to stop the Trump campaign appearance.
While it was never confirmed who organized the intimidating show of force, it worked. Large numbers of the Anti-Trump gang had maneuvered themselves into the University of Illinois’s Pavilion. Long before the speech was scheduled to begin, the troublemakers had Continue Reading “The Night the Grand Old Party Died”