Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms yearning to breathe free.
The Smothers Brothers – Dick and Tom – are hailed as freedom-of-speech heroes for their battles with CBS network executives who censored, and eventually cancelled, their trippy 1967-69 “Comedy Hour.” But few followers of music and TV history are aware that Johnny Cash also stood up to the company men who attempted to police his 1969-71 TV variety show.
Every family has its folk tales — those sometimes sweet, often cringe-inducing stories we’re forced to endure at every holiday gathering. Like the time my grandfather decided to forgo dental expenses by removing his own teeth with the help of Canadian Club whiskey and a pair of pliers. Or that day back in 1960 when my prankster dad deposited a piece of fake rubber vomit on my aunt’s expensive new sofa. Ah, but not all of my family’s folk tales are gauche, mind you. In fact, at many gatherings the most anticipated and charming story of all involves the evening of February 9, 1964, when little Dana discovered the Beatles at age four. How my mom loves to spin the tale of the birth of her rockaholic daughter’s lifelong obsession!
I was 13 years old, gawky, zitty, unpopular, and academically mediocre. Unlike many of the girls in my class, I didn’t have a boyfriend. Mary Richards was 30-ish, beautiful, accomplished, and smart. And unlike many of the female characters on TV at that time, she didn’t have a boyfriend. And that made me feel SO … Read more
I touched down in Prague in April 1991 to launch a PR campaign for Westinghouse Electric Corporation – 16 months after the collapse of communism. And that’s when my real PR education began. Forging relationships with skeptical journalists is hard enough, but imagine the difficulty of communicating to audiences stifled by 50 years of communist propaganda. I wanted to communicate facts, but first I had to gain trust. Sometimes I felt a bit like a propagandist myself!
The guys who run the local video store must hate me. The other day I brought back “The Usual Suspects,” its entrails crumpled, shredded and hanging from the cassette due to excessive play-pause-slow-motion-rewind-search action during scenes featuring the sexy, sultry and talented-as-all-getout Benicio Del Toro. It’s been said that I really know my way around a multi-function remote, but my fascination with his awesome Fred Fenster character really just drove me into freeze-frame frenzy. I hoped to placate said store owners by finally forking over $19.95 for my own copy that I could rough-house through my four-head VCR to my heart’s content.