Tuesday, December 1, 2009

12/1/2009

To my son, Edward,

Well, here we are on this the occasion of your 10th birthday!

I just want to let you know how much I llike being your Dad. I am so lucky to have a wonderful boy like you.

Part of your wonderfulness is that you are intelligent, sensitive, sweet and artistic. These are beautiful qualities and although at times they may appear to be liabilities I want you to know that these are some of the things that make you so very special. Trust me on this. Daddy knows.

You are already a 4th grader but I’ll bet you think time is passing slowly, at least that’s the way I felt about it when I was your age. You’re really growing up fast and soon you will be man and you’ll be talking about beer and girls. I’ll be there for you then but, just for the record, I want you to know I really llike you just the way you are right now, a ten-year old kid with a room full of Pokemon & nerf guns.

I have, and will continue to celebrate you at every age from the moment you arrived in the delivery room at St. Joseph’s where you surprised both me and your mother with that quiet, calm, knowing poise. It was so unusual, and it was so you.

And now we come to my birthday wish for you- Aside from that smokin’ hot Macintosh computer (that’s better than mine), my wish is that you celebrate yourself at every age, at every stage in your life, for you are the best son a father could ever ask for and this universe is damn lucky to have Edward J. Crummey IV!

Here’s to you, Edward.

Many Happy returns of the Day!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Some Crummey Thoughts

I am a radio talk show host based in Los Angeles.

The trick for me, these days is to keep it fresh when I go to work. I've done this job so many times that this has become the real challenge. Another thing I notice while working is the pop culture shift. I work with two guys who were born in 1982! I mean, how much do I really care that Khloe Kardashian's just gotten married to some guy who shoots hoops for the Lakers?

Actually, I accept that as part of "the challenge" and so its kinda fun posing- knowing that 20, 30, or even 40 years ago all this stuff was vitally important to people like us & we couldn't imagine it any other way.

For some reason lately I happened 2b thinking about the Stray Cats and that song "Sexy & Seventeen" which I remember playing @ WAPP in NYC back in the days when I was a D.J. I checked out the video on YouTube and I thought it was so funny-

"Cuz she's sexy & seventeen,
My little rock & roll queen...
Acts a little bit obscene…"

Back in the 80's it seemed so right on- now it feels like I'm Roman Polanski lusting after some high school kid!

And speaking of, "seventeen"... I was out on Catalina island one weekend last summer with my family. We were walking by that circular movie theatre & cultural center that William Wrigley built a number of years ago.

As we got closer, I heard the sounds of a band tuning up. As soon as I heard the bass line I knew they were about to play "I Saw Her Standing There."

So I hurried up a bit and came up on a thatched-roof/outside-bar type place. It was only mid-afternoon but it was already a boozy scene and out back they were dancing as the band played.

There was this 50ish chick with a drink in her hand, and I remember the look on her face and the way she moved, there were younger couples, too, there were professional drunks, day trippers, locals, and even my kid was into it.

"Well, we danced through the night
And we held each other tight
And before too long I fell in love with her…”

Maybe its because I shared it with my son, and maybe its because of the way the music swept away the years between those of us who were there, but it still gives me tingles when I think about it.

You know, it would have been an interesting experiment if someone that afternoon had sprayed a servicable type of aerosol dye into the air. Would this theoretical coloring of the ether reveal the shape of some kind of vibrating energy field radiating outward from the dance floor and up into the sky?

I would like to think so, thereby confirming a living aura that’s always there, albeit too subtle for us to detect on ordinary days, but a constant halo nonetheless. It would ride on an Einstein plane of quantum stealth, inexorably tying us to the righteous spirit that underpins our existence, the universal joy of being, and the emotions tapped by a 40 yr-old Beatles song.

I know it's way obvious I'm going a little deep, and I admit I'm assigning an awful lot of mojo to one sunny day on the island of Catalina, various distilled spirits & a bunch of slightly older dudes bustin’ out "I Saw Her Standing There," but as I said, at this point in time, it does make me wonder.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Why is Health Insurance so Expensive?

First, people who oppose the president’s direction on health care are not necessarily “for the status quo.” Secondly, the notion that this is about gov’t getting involved is bogus because State & Federal gov’ts have been increasingly involved for 50 yrs. I believe that it is a major factor in “the problem” and yet all we seem to talk about is MORE of it.

Here is 1 example of many I could list: Rethink the way we think about health services in general.

For example- Why are we willing to pay 2k for a flatscreen but not for a colonoscopy?

Most people would say- there’s insurance for that which I get through my job. This is largely viewed as a “benefit”, or some kind of employer subsidized freebie so we are less likely to examine what this coverage really costs. That makes it more likely we’d like everything covered down to $10.00 co-pays at the Dr’s office.

Imagine if you were buying auto insurance and you wanted to be covered for an oil change, gas fill ups etc- What do you think premiums for that would run you? What if everybody thought the same way? What do you think that would do to the price of “health care” for your car?
I think that we should get the employer out from between you & your health insurance provider, but that’s not the direction in which we’re headed. All we seem to talk about is more gov’t mandates on business & and its all sold in the name of compassion.
As I said, that’s just 1 example of how gov’t’s involvement distorts the system and I don’t hear too many politicians on the Right or Left talk about it because they quite rightly assume that most people have been conditioned to think they shouldn’t have to pay in the first place and of course that’s the obvious irony here because that’s exactly what people are complaining about!

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Sat 8/8/09

Autopsy: Cocaine contributed to Billy Mays' death" Hmmm.... now that I think about it we should drug test the Sham Wow guy asap

Friday, August 7, 2009

frid 8-7-09

Media- "More Americans on Food Stamps than ever before" True, but misleading... as a percentage of the population its no worse than 1980.