Yesterday I had gotten no further than the title of this post when I came upon Kevin Starr’s delightful post on wokism. “I thought I can sit back now, he’s covered an important topic”, being “woke” versus “awake”. Here in the land of the free there is very little awakism going on. That’s always been the case.
Over a decade ago I was a fan of the NPR radio show Car Talk and its hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi. Tommy sadly died of Alzheimer’s in 2012, and NPR reverted to reruns, and then relegated the show to podcasts only. It is still thriving even as the boys talk about cars of the 90s and before. The reason: Tommy and Ray were nice, honest, and funny. As Doug Berman, the show’s founder noted on Tommy’s death, they were “diamonds in the rough.” I lived in Billings at a time when Yellowstone Public Radio would host quarterly fund-raising drives, and I would contribute, but only tagging my money to Car Talk. Then and now I wanted nothing to do with NPR’s woke news and public affairs broadcasts, smug and humorless.
At the end of each episode (there are probably 2,000 of them) Ray would list the real people who were the staff for the show, and then veer off into a list of fictional employees, just plays on words. Among my favorites were the former chief brake tester, Carson DeLake, and head of repeat business, Lucinda Boltz. They also had fun with the Paine-Diaz family whose father was Royal, daughter Sasha, and dog Toto. At the end of one show late in their run, Ray introduced the Car Talk chief tailor, Hugh Jass. On hearing this Tommy started to giggle, and the giggle became a laugh, and by sign-off he was under the table laughing his ass off.
I’ve now learned that Hugh Jass originated with Bart Simpson, who would prank call Moe, the bartender, asking if he would page various patrons, Jass among them. It was not original with Car Talk, just as their law firm, Dewey, Cheatum and Howe, was not. Humor is where you find it, and hardly anything anytime is original, I guess.
I was chatting on the phone with a friend who lives near San Francisco, and he asked if I had seen the dance done by 49ers player celebrating a sack or touchdown. As I said, humor is where you find it, and black guys celebrating by mocking Donald Trump is classic.
Cool black athletes making fun of stiff-upper-lips whites is always hilarious. Below is the clip that is the origin of this victory dance.
Said Trump’s tailor, Hugh Jass, “The man’s got natural rhythm.”
Piece of Mindful 
That YMCA … oh my goodness too cringe for words.
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At wedding receptions white people go crazy for both YMCA and chicken dancing. I should know, being part of it.
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No offence Mark, but you really did need K. Starr to tell/remind you that woke does not =awake or better still, awaken?
And it’s a worldwide problem the little awakism, not only of the US.
Idiots are everywhere, unfortunately.
That’s the real plague, unlike Bullscam19. And there’s no vaccine available for that.
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Your stereotyping of white men’s dancing ability is borderline racist and I am deeply offended. Oh wait, I just remembered that white men are fair game…never mind.
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High school 1980s we would do break dancing, parody style. White mans style = thrashing around on the ground, which is fine by me. Effort is everything.
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Coronald found a better groove for that move… imho…
https://archive.org/details/covana
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Mocking……or do they finally feel free to show their support of him. The numerous videos on ticktock say support.
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Mark, it is good you bring up car talk. I was a religious devotee of car talk. I’m willing to bet Mark sent the answer to a puzzler on the back of a 20 dollar bill to the great Magliozzi brothers. Arguably the greatest long running radio show of all time.
One regret I have is while i was living in Boston, MA for 20 years I did not bring my car to the Magliozzi brothers garage. I would have loved to have met the brothers in their prime. Also, my mother’s half is Boston Italian – same as the Magliozzi brothers. I believe Mark said the brothers were “real”, I support this 100%. My grandfathers (Boston Italian) business was flowers and greenhouses, so I met many of his friends and relatives in the Boston area during the 1970s-1980s. Many had personalities like the brothers, jokesters to the core. Italians are well known for giving everyone a nickname and making a joke about nearly everything.
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As the story goes, Boston public radio hosted a show and invited local mechanics to show up and answer questions, and only Tom and Ray showed up, and there was a spark there, two genuine humans with humor coursing through them … this is where Berman found his “diamonds in the rough.” Berman also noted on Tommy’s death that he was a “countercultural” man, and I loved that about him. He publicly ridiculed my home state of Montana as they did away with speed limits on our highways. You had to be there, doing 60 or 70 and finding a Ford F150 three feet off your rear bumper with a driver pouring steam out his ears behind you. The cause of accidents, the stupid state learned, was not speed, but speed differential. They reverted to 70 mph. Tommy never let up on his ridicule. God rest his soul.
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