Ever since President Obama appeared on ABC’s The View, critics have been calling it a public relations faux pas. As KGMI’s official performing arts critic, I have to agree that this disastrous TV appearance is already having major pop culture repercussions. Not because of anything Obama said, but for Joy Behar tastelessly asking the president a question about “Snooki” from MTV’s Jersey Shore. The president answered appropriately saying he hadn’t heard of her, but the damage was done simply by forcing him to respond in the public forum. Jersey Shore and the rest of MTV’s reality program lineup were just about to suffer complete ratings death. But after hearing the word “Snooki” in nearly every ABC News recap of the interview, now we’ll have to hear about the so-called “reality star” in Associated Press reports for the next few months. Damn you, ladies of The View, for allowing your presidential fluff question to potentially extend the public’s attention span for MTV’s sorry excuse for programming.

Recently, a pair of wily coyotes have been spotted hanging around the Cascade Radio Group. Here’s a picture I snapped of one of them… Clearly, it can be seen thinking of some ingenious new scheme to catch the Roadrunner.

Lately, it seems like every time I read a story about the major religions of the world, I suffer a thought implosion. For example, a radical Muslim Web site recently made veiled threats against the creators of the cartoon South Park over an episode about the prophet Mohammed, causing Comedy Central to overreact by heavily censoring part 2 of the episode. They even went as far as to beep out every utterance of “Mohammed,” thus implying that the name of the prophet and the most common name for men on Earth is a dirty word. I know that neither the radicals nor Comedy Central are speaking for the whole religion, but I doubt that the Muslim prohibition on showing images of Mohammed was intended for this reason. And after blaming everyone from women to gays, the Pope has finally started selectively apologizing for the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal. Apparently, there’s something about becoming a priest that makes you more likely to molest children, otherwise the church would have nothing to apologize for. I’m not a religious person so maybe I’m missing something here, but how can these faith-based institutions do nothing but create fallacies and not conceptually collapse on themselves?

You’ve probably heard us report on the recent Supreme Court case that rejected an Everett high school student’s suit over her school’s refusal to let her play an instrumental version of Ave Maria at graduation in 2006. As KGMI’s official baccalaurean of the fine and performing arts, I have to say that although I rarely defend religion in any context, I think the school would find it hard to separate religion from classical music. Besides, I also believe that instrumental music is just music, and that any piece performed without lyrics is free of meaning until it enters the mind of the listener. For example, the most common setting of the Ave Maria, which means “Hail Mary” in Latin, was written by Charles Gounod, who set the religious words and melody to the prelude of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, a tune that previously had no religious connotation. I don’t think that’s the Ave Maria the student in this case was going to play, otherwise they could have just told the school it was Bach. The well-known setting of What Child Is This to the folk tune of Greensleeves is another example. So does this court ruling mean that schools should ban all classical and folk music that could be interpreted as religious, even if the performance is purely instrumental?

Earlier this month, I found myself in an unusual situation while helping cover the fire at Whatcom Middle School.
First of all, I have to admit it was hard to watch the old school burn. I went to Whatcom for all 3 years of that awkward transition known as middle school.
I even got to relive some of that awkwardness when I described on a KGMI Morning News Extra segment how I used to fit inside the lockers of WMS.
But earlier that morning, around 4 a.m., I was asked to deliver some much-needed coffee and gasoline to Tracy Ellis and the KGMI News van, who were both running on-empty at the scene of the fire. So I grabbed the official KGMI gas can and bought every kind of coffee drink I could get on my way.
As I approached the school, the pre-dawn air was filled with a smoky haze lit dimly by the orange flames and the lights of the fire trucks. Police cars were blocking the streets nearest the school, so I parked a couple blocks away and proceeded to look for the van with the coffee and the gas can in hand.
Then it suddenly dawned on me: I was bringing a can of FUEL toward the scene of a MAJOR FIRE!!!
Of course it didn’t take long for one of the officers to pull up beside me and say something like, “you know, you’d have to be pretty stupid to walk up to the scene of a fire carrying a gas can!” I couldn’t argue that point, but somehow I was able to summon enough wits to explain my situation.
And that’s the story of the time I, your humble writer, was suspected of literally adding fuel to the fire.

Well, due to an overwhelming lack of a better idea, my Scariest Person of 2009 is … Michael Jackson! This Jackson-o-lantern was based on Michael’s infamous mug shot. I know this guy’s not really scary, but he did sing Thriller, became ghostly pale, and now he’s made one of the top grossing music documentaries of all time, and he’s dead!!! Ahhhhh!!!! Still the greatest entertainer of all time, even from beyond the grave!

Now for some news that really is scary… I recently cut my hair! Yes, I know I’ll lose my talent as a radio producer until my ponytail grows back, but it was for a good cause. I donated my hair to Locks of Love, a non-profit that makes real human-hair wigs for children suffering from medically-caused hair loss. If you’re also looking to chop off your ponytail, it’s easy to donate. Go to www.locksoflove.org for more information.

Well, Fall is in the air, Halloween approaches and its time to pick 2009’s Scariest Person of the Year! The chosen person will have the distinct dishonor of getting his/her grimace carved into a jack-o-lantern by yours truly.
So should it be Glenn Beck? He sure managed to get the good people of Mount Vernon all riled up when he recently came to visit.
Or is Kanye West the spookiest public figure in the news? Kim Komando was calling him “the most hated man on the Internet” due to the chatter over his recent conduct at the MTV music awards.
Or do you have a better idea?

Everybody on the Internet seems to be required to comment on Kanye West’s latest blunder at the MTV Music Awards. Well, as an official baccalaurean of the fine and performing arts, my reaction may surprise some of you. First of all, I think people should take it easy on the guy. When Kanye took the microphone away from Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech, I’m sure he thought it would be just another example of the arrogant behavior typical of the modern rap music culture. Let’s face it, rap battles and “dissing” the competition have become so commonplace in today’s popular music, that I think Kanye was genuinely surprised when his actions actually hurt another artist’s dignity. Thankfully, Beyonce Knowles displayed true class toward the end of the ceremony by sharing the stage and allowing Taylor to “have her moment.” But the reaction from the crowd, some sections noticeably jeering whenever Kanye was nominated, reflected what may possibly be the beginning of the end of rap music’s reign over pop music. Maybe now MTV will consider playing something else on one of its pay-for-play stations.

The mayor of Bellingham recently created some buzz by offering the key to the city to Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, an apparent response to the mayor of Mount Vernon’s offer of the key to their city to Fox host Glenn Beck. Our good mayor explained this act of real-life satire on an episode of The Morning Show on KGMI. I must admit, the whole incident brought back memories of an embarrassing time in this young writer’s career. Since I haven’t posted anything for a while, I’ll share with you the following story:
During Election Day of 2008, I was trying to cover the results all while broadcasting updates live on my cell phone. It was my first time localizing a major national event, and I was sweating bullets. I had just finished a live update from Whatcom County’s Republican headquarters where the scene was rather somber, when our News Director Tracy Ellis asked me to run to the Lakeway Inn Convention Center where the Democrats were gathered.
The scene there was near pandemonium, as the national election results increasingly titillated that Barack Obama would be the winner. After attempting to describe the scene in another cell phone broadcast, Tracy asks me off-the-air to get an interview about the results from State Rep. Kelli Linville. So I hung up, and looked around the crowded room. I had no idea what Rep. Linville looks like! I didn’t even know where to begin looking or who to ask, and just when the gravity of the situation finished sinking into my brain, I spotted a familiar face out of the crowd. Before I could even think, the man says to me, “you’re Mike from KGMI.” So I asked, “I’m sorry, what was your name?” And he says, “Dan Pike!”
It was the mayor! My face instantly turned pink. I had failed to recognize the mayor of Bellingham, and worst of all, he actually recognized me! He kindly led me to where Rep. Linville was standing, and I tried to cover my indecorum by saying “thank you Mayor Pike,” but the embarrassment was already incurable.
To this day, I am still humbled by that story. For a reporter, I have a terrible memory. And for a politician, Dan Pike must have an exceptional memory! He’s a friend of the station, he’s always willing to grant an interview, and so I say Mayor Pike should be allowed to give the key to the city to anyone he deems fit.

After much delay and self-generated media hype, the FCC is officially putting the ax to analog television signals in the U.S. starting today, June 12^th, making your old TV with the rabbit ears officially useless. Our analog AM and FM radio signals are next up on the chopping block. The Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) Transition hopes to make your radio receiver obsolete as well, although the FCC currently says it “will not establish a deadline for radio stations to convert to digital broadcasting.”
The reason for the transition is because they say non-directional high-powered signals like traditional TV and radio are wasteful of the electromagnetic spectrum, and could instead be used for low-power transmissions such as cell-phones and wireless internet. But according to the Fermi paradox, the transition away from analog communication could cost us a chance of making contact with other intelligent life. High-powered wasteful radio signals like KGMI’s can be heard across the universe, so that means all the horrible-sounding broadcasts I made as an intern are still out there somewhere! But even if an advanced alien civilization does exist light years away, if our species is any indication they would have already gone through their own digital transition. So we may never hear them, and now they will probably never hear us.