1. Being Kinky

    Posted in: Videos on Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

    kinky friedman on being kinky

    This being a big election year, and with one party having trouble falling in love with a candidate, I thought it would be fun to look back at one of my favorite candidates for public office.  Kinky Friedman ran for Governor of Texas a few years ago in one of the most entertaining campaigns ever staged by someone who was serious about getting elected.  He had bumper stickers that read, “He Ain’t Kinky, He’s my Governor”  and “Kinky for Governor, How hard Can It Be?”  For the record he was campaigning against the incumbent Governor of Texas, Rick Perry.

    I’ve known Kinky since the mid seventies.  When we first met he was writing and performing country music with a satirical social message.  Satire and irreverent humor don’t usually translate into elected office.  Of course in those days he wasn’t running for anything, although he may have been running from a few things.   He had one band called the “Exxon Brothers”, but correspondence from Exxon’s legal department forced a name change and the group became “Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jew Boys.”  For the benefit of the concerned politically correct, members of the JDL were some of his biggest supporters.  They got the joke and the message.

    In 1986 he ran as a Republican for Justice of the Peace in Kerrville, Texas.  He lost that election, an outcome he would duplicate as an independent running for Governor in 2006.  In between his two runs for office, Kinky was still singing some but primarily he became a novelist, writing mystery novels staring himself as a country singer / private detective.  It was during this time in the late 80’s that I drove my red Cadillac down to Kerrville to do a story about Kinky for the TV Show, “USA Today on TV”.

    By the way, the red ’63 Cadillac, which still runs and was the car used in all my “Flying the Coupe” stories is now in my driveway and it’s For Sale.  It comes with a copy of all the “Flying the Coupe” stories if anyone is interested.

    This video in which Kinky sings some, reads a few lines from one of his novels, and shares a bit of the Kinkster’s philosophy will give you a glimpse of the colorful character that later tried to be Governor.  It may also explain why his campaign got a lot of coverage from the press, but not enough votes from the public.  I say his not winning was a big loss for Texas.  And who knows, had he won, this year Kinky might be the front-runner in the Republican primaries.

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

  2. Nuking Nevada

    Posted in: Videos on Friday, December 16th, 2011

    nukes over nevada

    Nuking Nevada.  If you’re worried about someone setting off a nuclear weapon in the United States, it’s a little too late.  We’ve already had hundreds of nuclear explosions within our own borders, the atomic fury unleashed by our own government.  A little patch of desert in Nevada has been the target of more than nine hundred of those explosions as we developed and tested ever bigger and more destructive weapons.

    For a while we even had a program called Operation Plowshare where we attempted to follow the Biblical admonition and beat our swords into plowshares by developing nukes for peace.  Clearly that program to build stuff by blowing up stuff didn’t work.

    I was reminded of my visits to the Nevada test site this week on my radio show, National Geographic Weekend when interviewing Lucy Craft who wrote the story about Japan’s Nuclear Refugees in this month’s National Geographic Magazine.  Some of the towns around the compromised Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant are still to this day empty ghost towns.

    On the show we discuss Japan and what’s happened after the Fukushima fallout and I also talk about my Nevada visits.  Afterwards, I remembered a visit I once made to the National Atomic Museum, a museum where we pay tribute to our unique ability to blowup stuff.

    This video has highlights of my atomic museum and Nevada Test Site visits.  It’s a blast

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

  3. Flying the Coupe to Psychic Town

    Posted in: Videos on Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

    Flying the Coupe to Psychic Town

    In the 80′s the Today Show let me drive my ’63 red Cadillac Coupe De Ville around the country for a series of stories called, “Flying the Coupe”.  A different kind of interview occurs when your interviewee is riding around in the front seat of a classic caddy convertible.  When the top’s down, people seemed to also let their guard down, giving me a glimpse of the real person.  The people featured in the Coupe series ran the gamet from the most serious to the most outrageous, from Georgia Senator Sam Nunn to gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson.

    In the very first, “Flying the Coupe,” story I drove around to visit a variety of psychics, crystal ball gazers, palm readers, and fortune tellers to ask for their insights into the political issues of the day.  The concept was inspired by the revelation that Nancy Reagan had been getting astrological advice on what would be the best dates for Pres. Reagan to hold important meetings.

    This is the video of that first story.

    Tags: , , , , , , , , ,