Out in Left Field with Pat Johnston

There Was A Time We Believed In Doing Big Things

On this date in 1961, President Kennedy made his historic speech at Rice University that we would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. We accomplished that goal by investing time, energy, and resources that proved beneficial not just for this country, but for mankind. Today, we don’t believe in doing big things. We’re more interested in cutting and slashing instead of investing in our nation, like the infrastructure. Bloomberg News: The accident turned attention back to the age of the nation’s transportation system. The 607,380 bridges in the U.S. are 42 years old on average, and 1-in-9 are rated “structurally deficient,” according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which advocates more spending on such structures. ******************************************************************************* The engineers group gave U.S. infrastructure a D+...

First Day Preview For May 26, 2013

It’s Memorial Day Weekend, and while many of you are enjoying a much-deserved long weekend, WSGW keeps working by providing you with up-to-date news, AccuWeather forecasts, sports, and talk shows. That’s why I hope you can tune-in tomorrow for another thrilling edition of First Day with Pat Johnston & Hilary Farrell from 6-9am on 790AM, 100.5FM, and online at wsgw.com. Hilary is off this weekend (lucky girl!), but our good friend and colleague, WSGW News Director Ann Williams,nis back in the newsroom this Sunday to bring you the latest news across the Great Lakes Bay Region, the state of Michigan, the nation, and the world. I’ll give you my award-winning sports reports, including results from tonight’s Red Wings-Blackhawks Game Five, Detroit Tigers-Twins contest, and I’ll be giving you my French Open Tennis picks!!! I know you can’t wait for...

Rock On! Wait, Bob Dylan is 72?!?!?!

That’s hard to believe. I came across this “Bob Dylan Map” on Slate, which shows you every place in the world Bob has mentioned in his songs through the years. It’s pretty cool. While trying to select a song to play today, I found this video featuring Bob and George Harrison rehearsing Bob’s “If Not For You” before The Concert For Bangladesh in 1971. It features two of my more favorite artists, and, to put it mildly, it rocks! Happy Birthday,...

Don’t You See? They’re Better Than Us

As the Michigan legislature travels down the road–again–of finding ways to humiliate people on welfare, there’s at least one state senator who perfectly illustrates the hypocrisy against those making laws they aren’t expected to follow: “There are Republicans who believe that people who are on state assistance should be drug tested, randomly and otherwise. If that’s the case, I think all of us, myself included, who receive public money as elected officials, appointees and otherwise, should have to submit to random drug testing,” (State Senator Bert) Johnson told WWJ’s Vickie Thomas. Johnson said that includes state appointees like Treasurer Andy Dillon, who reportedly spent five days in January at an addiction treatment center at Brighton Hospital after several years of heavy drinking.” You see, we must drug test welfare recipients because...

Lansing Continues Its Attack On Teachers

The Republican-led state legislature has found a new, and innovative way to make Michigan a laughingstock when it comes to education. Here’s the latest brilliant idea that just passed a House committee: The measure, House Bill 4625, amends state education law to require school districts to make student performance a primary factor in determining teacher salaries. Secondary school teachers would be eligible for raises for earning advanced degrees when those degrees are in curriculum subjects they teach, while elementary educators would be eligible for raises for earning advanced degrees in elementary education. Only teachers hired after the adoption of the bill would be affected. Under the present model, student performance is one of several factors used in determining salaries, along with a teacher’s education and experience. A standing-room only crowd –...

Pavel Datsyuk Isn’t Super Talented?

Alright, time for a brief sports break on the Out In Left Field blog. As the state of Michigan gears-up for tomorrow night’s huge Game 4 match-up between the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks, I caught this video about how CBC’s Glenn Healy doesn’t think Pavel Datsyuk has “all of the God Blessed hockey talent in the world.” Here’s the video, which isn’t the best quality but you can hear what Healy is saying: Is it safe to assume Healy had a couple of ginger ales before appearing on the set that day? Because I can’t think of any other logical reason why a guy who gets paid to…watch HOCKEY…believes Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk doesn’t have much talent! WTF!!!! And it’s because of guys like Healy why I’m hoping Detroit can pull-off the upset. The hockey media intelligentsia has it all mapped-out...

Indie Music Wednesday

This is something I started last year, but stopped doing for some reason. So, I’d like to make it a tradition again on the blog. Each Sunday on WSGW’s First Day with Pat Johnston & Hilary Farrell show, I have a segment called, “Pat’s Indie Pick of the Week,” in which I feature a song from the Independent/Alternative Rock genre. It’s music you won’t always hear on Top 40 stations, although indie songs have been known to occasionally infiltrate the mainstream. Passion Pit’s “Take A Walk” comes to mind as a recent Indie hit to also receive airplay on mainstream stations. And the line between Indie music and mainstream music continues to get more and more blurry as time goes by, especially since Indie songs are becoming more prominent on commercials. Serving as this week’s “Indie Music Wednesday” is a...

Life Was Better When Commoners Couldn’t Vote

So says Ken Braun on MLive as he complains why “good men” like his conservative buddy–and AT&T of Michigan President–Jim Murray can’t be elected to the U.S. Senate: But now he must persuade voters, not politicians and others who know his talent. The system is not built for millions of Michigan voters to appreciate his best features. Elective office is the only “profession” where the skills for winning the job – such as an ability to be popular with the masses, cash and a recognizable name – have no relation whatsoever to what makes one good at governing. Some win with both talents, but they’re happy exceptions. A representative form of government is the best system there is, but it needs people like Jim to make up for its failings. Just starting his career in politics in the early 1990s, Jim was fired by a long-since-forgotten...

Movies To Blame For Violence, Unless They Are “NRA-Approved

If you recall just a short five months ago, National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre blamed Hollywood movies for recent mass shootings in the United States. LaPierre highlighted movies such as Natural Born Killers to explain the Newtown or the Aurora shootings because the NRA is obviously stuck in some 1990′s time warp (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Ever ready to contradict itself, the NRA’s “flagship publication,” American Rifleman, has released its “Coolest Gun Movies” list. Here’s the “criteria” on what qualifies as a cool gun movie. Firearm enthusiasts are quick to point out the inaccuracies in Hollywood films featuring firearms. Can you blame us? Some of these movies, though, have affected our next gun purchase or made us think about situations for which we should be prepared. Many of these...

Tuesday 90′s Music Nostalgia Break–Bush

Bush’s “Swallowed” has been a song I’ve been running into a lot lately, and it’s going to serve as this week’s “90′s Music Nostalgia Break.” I recall mocking this song with my roommates back in the winter of 1997 whenever it appeared on MTV, which seemed like it happened at least twice an hour. But little did they know, I secretly loved this song. As a good friend of mine says, “It’s a ‘Pat Song.’” I tend to enjoy songs that have a morose, lazy, and slow style. “Swallowed” fit perfectly in the “Pat Song” category. From their 1996 album, Razorblade Suitcase, here’s Bush with “Swallowed.” Bush – Swallowed by...