Brad Nelson Here...
This one's too easy. As I sit watching the Grammy's and am glued to the screen, mesmerized with Lady GaGa's hip-grinding "I Was Born This Way," I couldn't help but think how far we've come in terms of what's now thought of as "acceptable" by TV sensors.
Lady G's lyrics, crying out her anthem to accept her (or "Him") or us as they are while androgynous dancers twirled in an hypnotic 2011 version of a whirling dervish about her, sent a message to at least this baby boomer that we've come a long way baby indeed.
I wondered at that very point what the long-forgotten silent majority might be thinking, or possibly Tea Party members, as GaGa and her "protruding bulbous" as the Church Lady might have aptly described her, ground her hips oh so closely against her sexily clad dancers.
When the spectacle came to a ecstatic climax, the censors didn't totally sway as close-ups (that have taken on a whole new meaning in HD), confirmed pasties covering Ga's almost certain to be erect nipples under her sheer chiffon costume.
I cheered for this modicum of decorum she must have agreed to or else would not have been able to perform at all I presume. Thank you, Lady G. Seeing your nipplelus erectus at that point I'm sure would have seemed anti-climactic, would it not?
We've come a long way, baby, indeed. So far so that right after her act we saw an ad for the ever-present and necessary iPad, promoted by a tune throughout by none other than one Lou Reed. Sweet Lou, one of the original gender bending musicians who along with his Velvet Underground (now I know what that means), serenaded us in the early '70s with cross-dressing songs like Sweet Jane and Take a Walk on the Wild Side.
How ironic that my beloved Mr. Reed should sell out to now main stream corporate giant Apple, isn't it? Had it not been for Lou Reed, Lady G's act never sees the light of day or Grammy night. Ultimate proof that the music biz today is 110% all about the money and not the music.
Neil Young, where are you when we need you? Let's just hope Bobbie Dylan doesn't do the same as I await his "featured" performance, along with no other than the Devil himself, Mick, "making his very first Grammy appearance ever."
Janice, Jimmy, Jim, we need you back.
A blog by Pascal Marco author of IDENTITY: LOST from Oceanview Publishing.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
"Hey, Dad. You would have really loved Facebook."
My late father-in-law, John Cronin, was a man very much ahead of his time. Born in 1921, I started dating his daughter when he was 48. I thought he was old, of course. After all, he was a father of nine children and he looked (and was) tired all the time. A high school teacher, he taught sociology. I thought he was the coolest guy his age I'd ever met.
We'd sit for hours, usually in the twilight hours as I waited in the living room for my date to come down from her room, ready I hoped to leave for the movies. While I sat with him, Dad (though I called him Mister Cronin then) and I would talk about school, my schooling in particular, and what I planned to major in college. "Mass media," I'd say, and he'd then tell me about Marshall McLuhan and the global village.
"Wouldn't it be neat (his favorite word) one day if you could access computers somehow from all over the world and read information shared on those computers?" he asked me once. Then we went on to discuss a wired-world where freely sharing between anyone "connected" to this phantom network could do research on term papers, or research of any kind.
We didn't know it then but Dad was actually describing the Internet and the World Wide Web. These conversations happened regularly for about four years, until the day I asked his his permission to marry his daughter. His reply? "It's about time."
Dad would have loved Facebook. He died in 2004, so he was able to see the birth and growth of the information highway. But remarkably his enthusiasm for it wasn't as high as I assumed it may have been. I assumed it was just because he just didn't have time for it, spending almost all his waking hours devoted to charity work, helping those less fortunate than him.
But I'm convinced he would have loved social networking, since that's what he was, a sociologist. He would have observed it with much interest, and we would have devoted many hours to discussing its use and how it affected people interacting with each other.
He loved expressing his opinion and loved sticking up for the underdog, against the bully, championing the rights of the common man. When I told him one day that our junior college was going to start a student paper to act as an open voice for the student body he loved the idea. I told him of my desire to write a column that would comment on the daily goings on, observing the wrongs and rights of the tumultuous times.
We thought the op-ed feature we be the most fun if we patterned it after a couple of Dad's writing heroes--Mike Royko and Studs Terkel. We played around with pen names as we felt that the anonymity we wanted the author (me) to have was critical to my ability to write and express freely what was going on at the time on college campuses all over the country.
But this column would take on the voice of the commuter college student, living, working, and studying in the City of Chicago. That voice became Brad Nelson.
So in honor of my father-in-law and his love of the Internet and the world wide web, where here more than ever the medium is the message, Brad Nelson has been resurrected. Thanks, Dad. I'm sure you're in heaven online, typing away on your PC because I know you're not a Mac guy.
We'd sit for hours, usually in the twilight hours as I waited in the living room for my date to come down from her room, ready I hoped to leave for the movies. While I sat with him, Dad (though I called him Mister Cronin then) and I would talk about school, my schooling in particular, and what I planned to major in college. "Mass media," I'd say, and he'd then tell me about Marshall McLuhan and the global village.
"Wouldn't it be neat (his favorite word) one day if you could access computers somehow from all over the world and read information shared on those computers?" he asked me once. Then we went on to discuss a wired-world where freely sharing between anyone "connected" to this phantom network could do research on term papers, or research of any kind.
We didn't know it then but Dad was actually describing the Internet and the World Wide Web. These conversations happened regularly for about four years, until the day I asked his his permission to marry his daughter. His reply? "It's about time."
Dad would have loved Facebook. He died in 2004, so he was able to see the birth and growth of the information highway. But remarkably his enthusiasm for it wasn't as high as I assumed it may have been. I assumed it was just because he just didn't have time for it, spending almost all his waking hours devoted to charity work, helping those less fortunate than him.
But I'm convinced he would have loved social networking, since that's what he was, a sociologist. He would have observed it with much interest, and we would have devoted many hours to discussing its use and how it affected people interacting with each other.
He loved expressing his opinion and loved sticking up for the underdog, against the bully, championing the rights of the common man. When I told him one day that our junior college was going to start a student paper to act as an open voice for the student body he loved the idea. I told him of my desire to write a column that would comment on the daily goings on, observing the wrongs and rights of the tumultuous times.
We thought the op-ed feature we be the most fun if we patterned it after a couple of Dad's writing heroes--Mike Royko and Studs Terkel. We played around with pen names as we felt that the anonymity we wanted the author (me) to have was critical to my ability to write and express freely what was going on at the time on college campuses all over the country.
But this column would take on the voice of the commuter college student, living, working, and studying in the City of Chicago. That voice became Brad Nelson.
So in honor of my father-in-law and his love of the Internet and the world wide web, where here more than ever the medium is the message, Brad Nelson has been resurrected. Thanks, Dad. I'm sure you're in heaven online, typing away on your PC because I know you're not a Mac guy.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Who is "Brad Nelson?"
Back in the early 70s, I wrote under the pen name of Brad Nelson. I chose to do so because at the time I was a student at a community college in Chicago and wanted to remain anonymous as I wrote scathing anti-administrative and politically incorrect op-ed pieces for a struggling student publication called the Southwest Journalism Review, SWJR, for short.
I still have some of those articles I wrote and am fond to this day of the work I did.
My column was entitled, "Brad Nelson Here..." and today I proudly revive Brad Nelson's persona in this blog.
Brad will tackle a variety of subjects. I hope you'll enjoy what he has to say.
I still have some of those articles I wrote and am fond to this day of the work I did.
My column was entitled, "Brad Nelson Here..." and today I proudly revive Brad Nelson's persona in this blog.
Brad will tackle a variety of subjects. I hope you'll enjoy what he has to say.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Me and Snow
I'm an apologist. I want you to know that right from the start. I apologize for moving from the Snow Belt.
It's been almost seventeen years since I was last in a snowstorm, or snow for that matter--that is if you don't count the latest snowfall on record in Arizona I drove in the following year on my birthday--April 20, 1995. But that's another story.
The date I was last in snow was February 14, 1994. It would be called by the media, "The Valentine Day Snow Storm," the second one on that very same day in four years. In the first, it took me nearly seven hours to drive from Lincolnwood, Illinois (roughly Devon and Lincoln Avenues) to Munster, Indiana.
That was usually a one hour drive, forty-two miles door-to-door, to Munster, a community hugging the border between the Prairie and Hoosier states. That day was almost unimaginable. The snow was relentless, driving speeds literally crawling to as slow as 1-2 miles per hour at times. I would have gone mad had it not been for the shock jock radio duo of Steve Dahl and Garry Meier. I was in the car for their entire drive time shift and then some. They lightened the load off my mind, saved me from losing my sanity.
Then four years to the day later I end up in an even worse storm, driving up from sales calls I had made that day down in Indianapolis. As I headed northeast up the I-65 corridor the snow came harder and faster and faster and harder until I got to the West Lafayette exit and found out that the Indiana State smokies had closed the Interstate north. I was directed off the road and headed to find a hotel room and found the last one at the local Holiday Inn.
That was it, I told myself. Maybe my wife's idea of moving to Arizona was a good one after all. Our trip there two years earlier, scoping out the place, dreaming (more her than me) about the possibility of living there someday, was now looking like a rather grand idea.
As I look back and reminisce I feel for all those people on the roads today in Chicago, my former home town. Those stuck on Lake Shore Drive for four, five, or six hours, trying to get home to their families, or just home. I'm sorry you had to endure all that. Really sorry. The Blizzard of 2011 will certainly leave its mark on your psyche.
I'm sorry for that and I apologize for not being there with you, toughing it out like any good Chicagoan does and knows how to do.
Stay warm my friends.
Brad Nelson
********
IDENTITY: LOST by Pascal Marco
Release date: June 14, 2011
Oceanview Publishing
It's been almost seventeen years since I was last in a snowstorm, or snow for that matter--that is if you don't count the latest snowfall on record in Arizona I drove in the following year on my birthday--April 20, 1995. But that's another story.
The date I was last in snow was February 14, 1994. It would be called by the media, "The Valentine Day Snow Storm," the second one on that very same day in four years. In the first, it took me nearly seven hours to drive from Lincolnwood, Illinois (roughly Devon and Lincoln Avenues) to Munster, Indiana.
That was usually a one hour drive, forty-two miles door-to-door, to Munster, a community hugging the border between the Prairie and Hoosier states. That day was almost unimaginable. The snow was relentless, driving speeds literally crawling to as slow as 1-2 miles per hour at times. I would have gone mad had it not been for the shock jock radio duo of Steve Dahl and Garry Meier. I was in the car for their entire drive time shift and then some. They lightened the load off my mind, saved me from losing my sanity.
Then four years to the day later I end up in an even worse storm, driving up from sales calls I had made that day down in Indianapolis. As I headed northeast up the I-65 corridor the snow came harder and faster and faster and harder until I got to the West Lafayette exit and found out that the Indiana State smokies had closed the Interstate north. I was directed off the road and headed to find a hotel room and found the last one at the local Holiday Inn.
That was it, I told myself. Maybe my wife's idea of moving to Arizona was a good one after all. Our trip there two years earlier, scoping out the place, dreaming (more her than me) about the possibility of living there someday, was now looking like a rather grand idea.
As I look back and reminisce I feel for all those people on the roads today in Chicago, my former home town. Those stuck on Lake Shore Drive for four, five, or six hours, trying to get home to their families, or just home. I'm sorry you had to endure all that. Really sorry. The Blizzard of 2011 will certainly leave its mark on your psyche.
I'm sorry for that and I apologize for not being there with you, toughing it out like any good Chicagoan does and knows how to do.
Stay warm my friends.
Brad Nelson
********
IDENTITY: LOST by Pascal Marco
Release date: June 14, 2011
Oceanview Publishing
That's What Friends Are For
It's one of the great surprises of my life to have friends express happiness for your good fortune. We all are blessed with these types of friends. People who truly feel happy that your life is going well, maybe even when their's isn't.
Friendship is a mysterious thing. At least it has been for me. I admit, I make friends easy. My friends (once they become friends) tell me how easy it is for me to talk to people and become friends with them. I am always amazed when I hear this because I don't think I'm always the easiest person to like and be friends with. Just ask my wife.
So, there must be something I don't see in myself that others see in me. Is it loyalty? (Maybe.) A good sense of humor? (I've been told many times how "funny" I am but think about Joe Pesci in Goodfellas when I hear this.) My generosity? (Probably low on the totem pole, unfortunately.) Some weird cosmic intangible? (Perhaps.)
Most likely, though, I think it's some combination of everything above, plus one other thing--love.
I love my friends. I love them in so many ways, like a million little pieces of sunshine, all wound together in a big fuzzy ball of yarn. (Well, that's a bit corny but it's what I felt right when I wrote this.) But one thing I do know for sure is that they give me strength. They give me the power to continue to believe in myself. I know with all of their support I can''t (no-I won't) let them down. Not now; not ever. Amen.
Brad Nelson
********
IDENTITY: LOST by Pascal Marco
Release date: June 14, 2011
Oceanview Publishing
Friendship is a mysterious thing. At least it has been for me. I admit, I make friends easy. My friends (once they become friends) tell me how easy it is for me to talk to people and become friends with them. I am always amazed when I hear this because I don't think I'm always the easiest person to like and be friends with. Just ask my wife.
So, there must be something I don't see in myself that others see in me. Is it loyalty? (Maybe.) A good sense of humor? (I've been told many times how "funny" I am but think about Joe Pesci in Goodfellas when I hear this.) My generosity? (Probably low on the totem pole, unfortunately.) Some weird cosmic intangible? (Perhaps.)
Most likely, though, I think it's some combination of everything above, plus one other thing--love.
I love my friends. I love them in so many ways, like a million little pieces of sunshine, all wound together in a big fuzzy ball of yarn. (Well, that's a bit corny but it's what I felt right when I wrote this.) But one thing I do know for sure is that they give me strength. They give me the power to continue to believe in myself. I know with all of their support I can''t (no-I won't) let them down. Not now; not ever. Amen.
Brad Nelson
********
IDENTITY: LOST by Pascal Marco
Release date: June 14, 2011
Oceanview Publishing
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