Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, June 19, 2018

  • That’s WifeGeeding’s father. No, not the one on the tailgate, the man standing up wearing the hat. I don’t have the details, but all I know is that he and his son caught that alligator and then the family ate it for dinner. I bet that was a great father and son bonding moment.
  • When people tell me I’m a “country boy” because I’m from Mineral Wells, Texas, I have to explain to them there’s a difference between being a living in town and living in the country. I’m a simple town boy. Finding a gator and eating it for dinner doesn’t happen to us town folk.
  • I haven’t had a really good deep sleep in a while but I did the other night and had a most excellent dream about discovering and watching three new episodes of ‘The Americans’ which added on to the finale.
  • I bet a certain amount of my Wise County readers, and a handful elsewhere, felt a return to normalcy yesterday, for the most part, and the better.
  • Once a year a student from Baylor University calls my cell phone asking me to donate funds, and each year I politely tell them no and ask them to remove my name from whatever list they may have. I’ve never provided my phone number to anyone at Baylor for anything. Perhaps a Baylor alumnus like WifeGeeding has been pranking me all these years.
  • I saw a commercial for First Baptist Dallas’ upcoming “Freedom Sunday” ceremony which showed fireworks going off inside the sanctuary. Evangelical idiocracy is getting close to its peak when you have live fireworks inside a sanctuary. As you can see from the image below, first-time visitors also get a free copy of the Dr. Robert Jeffress’ latest book.
  • If you are a fan of Dr. Jeffress, you can go to www.InspirationCruises.com and book a ten-day trip with him to Israel for next year.
  • First Baptist Dallas ‘America is a Christian nation’ billboard removed
  • My God, this is horrible – Texas deputy sexually assaulted undocumented immigrant’s child, sheriff says “The details of the case are quite frankly heartbreaking, disturbing, disgusting and infuriating all at the same time.”
    • A Texas sheriff’s deputy was being held Monday on a charge of “super aggravated sexual assault” of a 4-year-old girl after authorities say her mother, an undocumented immigrant, was being blackmailed to stay silent about the abuse — or face deportation.
  • Norm Hitzges recently did a Q&A interview for the Dallas Morning News. I wasn’t aware he had the first full-time sports talk show in morning drive time in the country.
  • I got in a conversation with someone yesterday which made me track down a comment left on this blog six years ago. It’s funny the stuff that sticks with you.
  • I’d say most of these parents have no idea they are doing it – ‘Helicopter Parenting’ linked to behavioural problems
  • Trump says he’s directing Pentagon to create a new ‘Space Force’ – The name, ‘Space Force’, is rather prosaic and sounds like a bad cartoon. He should have used ‘Star Fleet’ just to tick off another segment of the population.
  • Elon Musk emailed all of Tesla about attempted ‘sabotage’ by an employee
  • I see commercials from TIME LIFE selling DVDs for old Johnny Carson shows. I think they’d make more money if they just ran old episodes on some channel in a time slot. If I was flipping channels and nothing was one, I’d tune in and take a trip down memory road. One channel did it for a while with old David Letterman ‘Late Night’ shows and it was fantastic.

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11 Responses to Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, June 19, 2018

  1. Paul from Bakersfield says:

    If you get Antenna TV (Tribune Media) you can see old Johnny Carson Shows every night at 10PM Central Time Zone. You can read about it here:
    https://variety.com/2015/tv/news/johnny-carson-tonight-show-full-episodes-antenna-tv-1201568250/

  2. Bizarro Big Tex says:

    I think Elmer Gantry would be very comfortable in some of today’s Mega-Churches. Not all, but many. Very unfortunate state of religion in 2018. The Show has become more important than the Word.

    On the new Space Force, I would suggest a more likely moniker would be The Borg. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

    • Triple Fake says:

      I’m surprised he didn’t name it “Masters of the Universe Service”, with the appropriate acronym MOTUS.
      He has the power!

      Triple Fake He-Man

  3. Bryan B says:

    Thanks for posting the Norm interview. The discussion of him moving from a solo show to having a co-host is great, but I would have loved it the interviewer got him to talk about how he transitioned over to The Ticket from KLIF. He kind of seemed like the old guy breaking into the clubhouse, but it always felt like he was well-received and that he found a niche. I know he had the occasional run-in with Gordo over some of his dark humor and he was the victim of a pretty ugly on-air prank by a listener some years ago.

    My first memory of Norm was from back when he used to do TV color commentary for Ranger games on HSE back in the late-80’s. Tom Paciorek was spare journeyman outfielder of the ’86 and ’87 teams. It was during a rain-delayed mid-season game and Paciorek made a diving catch on the warning track and came up with the front of his uniform covered in mud from head to toe. When the Rangers took the field in the next inning, the camera focused on Paciorek to show that he was wearing a perfectly clean uniform. Norm lost his mind and started yelling, “He put on a new uni! He put on a new uni!” followed by that familiar wheeze laugh. Don’t ask me why I remember that, but I remember it being a pretty entertaining moment in our living room.

    • Geeding says:

      My first memory of Norm is also from HSE, which I thought was a big deal back in the day. I couldn’t stand the guy but he won me over once I started to listen to THE TICKET. I agree with you, I’d like to know more about his move to The TICKET and if he felt it was in some way a demotion considering the goofiness of the boys. When it comes to guys who know how to take a joke, Norm’s my leader.

      • Bryan B says:

        I was trying to remember if the game was in Arlington. I think it likely was because, if memory serves me right, home games were on HSE and road games were on one of the local broadcast channels like 11 or 21.

  4. Susan says:

    Yes, there was a return to normalcy yesterday. He said he received a lot of well-wishes, but he has comments turned off because many of them “express the worst of humanity”. I agree with that. Wish I knew how to contact him to tell him I’m glad he’s back and getting better.

    Geeding, you really need to proofread. Really.

  5. RPM says:

    I first met Norm in the old Belo studios in downtown Dallas. I was a lowly long haired traffic reporter/intern and the WFAA-AM studio was next to our traffic studio(a/k/a broom closet). I would like to say Norm was very friendly and a mentor, but he wasn’t. To be fair, I was a nobody that he never knew existed except when I was in his way in the hall. He intimidated the hell out of me. Nearly everyone in that building did.

    Kevin McCarthy was quite the opposite. He was always “on”. All smiles and pleasantries.

    I’ll second what Paul said about Carson on Antenna TV. The 1 hour shows air during the week and the old 90 minute shows on the weekends. Man, some of those late 60’s – early 70’s fashion choices were bizarre.

    • Bryan B says:

      One of my coworkers use to manage a bar that hosted Guy’s Night Out a few times and he swears that Norm is easily the friendliest of all the Ticket hosts. He also said he was the only one that would tip the wait staff even though their food and drinks were comped.

      • RPM says:

        Don’t get me wrong, Bryan. I like Norm. I think he’s a walking treasure of a sports guy. He just wasn’t very sociable on the occasions I interacted with him.

  6. Bryan B says:

    I wasn’t doubting your experience with him at all. I would imagine that the Norm of the KLIF days was a little different than the Norm of today.

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