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Manure Maneuver
Governor-elect Bill Haslam hopped out of a car and started walking down Gay Street just after passing us at the Christmas parade in downtown Knoxville last night. The grand marshals were Ashley and Sherry Johnston from “The Biggest Loser.” Members of the Knoxville City Council didn’t mind riding on a float with some real airheads. They were surrounded by balloon sculptures.
My wife heard someone say they were most impressed by the actual ring from Tennessee Mountain Wrestling. I enjoyed a rockabilly band doing Christmas songs. I looked but saw nothing to identify them. Do you know who they are?
Carter High School has a very large band and sounds great. Christian Academy of Knoxville has a much smaller band by comparison and also sounds great. As they passed us, only Grainger High School played a non-secular Christmas song. The band from West High School had to dodge a pile left by a horse with a faulty diaper. The crowd watched intently to see what would happen. Cars and floats veered right to keep it between their wheels. Several entries later, a dance team was the first to step in it.
Pilot Project
Downtown Knoxville has gotten noticeably better in the eight years I have been performing with Einstein Simplified. Unlike some of my friends from church, I get downtown often. Bill Haslam became mayor of Knoxville the year after I moved to East Tennessee. He has received much of the credit for the revitalization of downtown. World’s Fair Park, Gay Street and Market Square are completely different now than when I first saw them.
Because my house is outside the city limits, I never voted for Haslam until this year. I’m not alone. He was elected governor of Tennessee by a landslide yesterday. As mayor, he has shown himself to be a moderate and won praise from Democrats when he appointed his former opponent, Madeline Rogero, to a post in his administration. Haslam’s upcoming move to Nashville means there will be changes in Knoxville. I hope it also means great things for Tennessee.
Game Time
Thankfully, Election Day means an end to the political robocalls I’ve been getting from “Voter Alert,” “Vital Message” and worst of all, “Private Caller.” Some of them are so poorly done, I can’t tell who they support. This usually happens when the recorded voice starts talking to my outgoing voice-mail message and I only hear the last half of their spiel.
The most closely watched elections in East Tennessee today are likely to be the gubernatorial race (Knoxville’s mayor is running), the mudslung 4th Congressional district race, and the State Senate race for Tim Burchett’s old seat. The least-controversial thing might just be the Hunting Rights Amendment. This is Tennessee, after all.
Opponents argue the amendment is unnecessary. Proponents are looking to pre-empt efforts to ban hunting in the future. Although I don’t know how to hunt, I support the right for anyone to feed their family. In a pinch, I would be more likely to pick up a fishing pole than a rifle. Fishing would also be protected by the amendment.
Maybe my friends on both sides of the issue can explain some unusual gift items I saw at the store the other day. Figurines in the “Deer Gets Hunter” collection show the tables being turned. The humans get shot by Bambi and family for a change. Do hunters find this funny? Or is it a subversive attempt by animal-rights activists to get their point across with humor?
Snipe Hunt
“Bandit” signs are all over the place during election season. The signs in West Hills looked different to me than similar signs a few blocks away. In that neighborhood, a corner snipe had been added to emphasize that Randy Walker was running against Stacey Campfield.
Campfield is a local politician who has received lots of media attention during his time as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives. He is now campaigning for State Senate, using bandit signs that look like Coca-Cola’s logo.
If the signs in West Hills are any indication, the race could be tight. The sniped Walker sign is next door to a house supporting Campfield and Bill Haslam. Another house around the corner has signs for both Walker and Haslam on the same lawn.
Six Eight Ten
Michele Silva will be unhappy with me. Although she and I had our picture taken with her camera for her Facebook page, I didn’t get a shot of her with my camera. She was one of the many local media people serving hot dogs and chips at the annual “Downtown United for United Way” fundraiser on Friday. As usual, Michele teased me about the time I spent talking with the other female news anchors. I missed getting a picture of Michele but I did photograph 14 other news, sports and weather ‘casters and Mayor Bill Haslam.
From WATE: Matt Hinkin, Tearsa Smith, Lori Tucker, Bo Williams, Jim Wogan (keep looking)
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From WVLT: Lauren Davis, Daryl Hobby, Shirley Nash-Pitts, Rick Russo, Mike Simon
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From WBIR: John Becker, Abby Ham, Steve Phillips, Robin Wilhoit
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B.O. Plenty
Cameras are not permitted on tours of The White House. Cell phones were allowed but had to be turned off while inside. Almost everyone I saw used their phone to snap a picture once we were outside the building, myself included. The White House tour was the first event of a three-day field trip to Washington by the FBI Knoxville Citizens Academy Alumni Association.
The walls of the entrance way were covered with photographs of the First Family. As we proceeded through the Visitor Entrance Building, we saw large frames containing about six pictures each. Each frame had a theme, such as presidents and their pets; presidents and their kids; and presidents and foreign leaders. Every frame contained a photo from the current administration, making me wonder how they ever filled all that space prior to 2009.
We think we saw the president as we looked out the windows of the Green Room. A group of men were walking across the lawn, one with his suit jacket off and slung over his shoulder. The people we were with said the Secret Service wouldn’t remove their jackets but the boss could.
The guard in the Red Room was talkative and helpful. I had asked why Rutherford B. Hayes took the oath of office in that room. He replied that Hayes won the electoral vote but not the popular vote. His predecessor, Ulysses S. Grant, feared a public uprising at the inauguration ceremony. A couple of days before the scheduled inauguration, Hayes came to the White House for dinner with Grant. They quietly slipped away to the Red Room with the Chief Justice, who administered the oath to Hayes. If things went awry at the Capitol, Hayes would have already been sworn in.
Rip the Knob Off
As a radio geek, stunt formats and frequency swaps naturally appeal to me. For the past two weeks, I have been enjoying the stunt format on 100.3 FM. It’s a mishmash of sound bites that are supposed to drive listeners away and get them to stop listening before new management takes over next week. Some of them succeed at being annoying, such as the sound of vuvuzelas, but most of the crazy clips are more entertaining than the programming they replaced.
I have been enthralled by audio of Cas Walker describing his plan to hire security guards who will “jump on” any thieves at his grocery stores and swear that it was the thieves who jumped on them. The best sound clip is from a fairly lengthy TV news report on the preparations for the 1982 World’s Fair.
My family and I have also enjoyed the themes from “Reading Rainbow” and “The Banana Splits” mixed in with some swanky elevator music and Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours.” I couldn’t tune away from a three-song sweep of “Dominique” into “It’s Tricky” into “Laughter in the Rain.”
Several of the segments sound like they were lifted straight off of YouTube. We laughed at an English-as-a-second-language lesson teaching idioms such as “I’m broke.” A group that sounded like a wedding band doing a cover of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.” They also played the audio from an old cartoon that explained when a Chiquita Banana is ready to eat.
Although I loved the tune-out format, I think the station’s outgoing management missed a huge opportunity. They could have achieved the same effect of no listeners while making a boatload of money selling the time to local candidates for their negative campaign ads.
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