Michael & Me

Michael Moore was recently on "Larry King Live" (9/5) to talk about his new book, and his upcoming film. The book, titled "Mike's Election Guide," pokes fun at the 2008 presidential election. His film, called "Slacker Uprising," documents his quest to get out the youth vote. The film is available for free, via download at slackeruprising.com.

Moore published an alternative newspaper in Flint, Michigan called the Flint Voice in 1976, that reached wider circulation in 1983, under the new banner of the Michigan Voice. The newspaper ran stories exposing corruption, police abuse, chemical dumping and racial discrimination.

In 1980, the Flint police raided a local printing firm looking for information related to an article in the Flint Voice criticizing the city's mayor. By that summer, the ACLU defended the Voice, when their case reached the Supreme Court, eventually moving Congress to pass a law prohibiting such searches.

In addition to the newspaper, Moore hosted a Sunday morning radio show on Flint's WWCK 105 FM, called "Radio Free Flint." This is where I discovered the brash activist. I couldn't believe some of the "radical" ideas that came out of his mouth at the time, but after tuning in weekly, I became a convert. His plain-talk, common-sense view of local and national politics made a lot more sense to me than the drivel and gobbledy-gook that was aired everyday on every tv news program. Even if I didn't always agree. And unlike the popular commentators today, he never yelled and screamed at his guests or his callers, and he never called them names.


My feeling is that it's that approach that scares politicians so much that they feel compelled to bring his name up in the unlikeliest of places. At the 2008 Republican Convention, Joe Lieberman mentioned him. Four years ago, John McCain did the same. Why? He isn't a candidate, he isn't even a politician! Are these folks so afraid that the common citizen just might be listening to this man? You bet. Millions of people buy his books, see his movies, and find a resonance they can understand. That's political influence. They should be very afraid.

In 1980, I was working at a Pizza Hut restaurant in Flint, and a phone order came in. It sounded shaky to me. We used to get fake orders all the time, so I called the number back to verify. It was the Flint Police Department! I hung up, and threw the order away.

Twenty minutes later, up drives Michael Moore to the drive-through window. "I'm here to pick up a pizza for Moore," he said. Ooops. It was a real order. We had this guarantee that if the order wasn't ready when we said it would be, the customer would get the order for free. I had some explaining to do. I told Mr. Moore what happened, apologized for my goof, and quickly made his pizza. While it was baking, I took the opportunity to have a chat with him. This turned out to be the first of several rap sessions he and I had from that drive-through window. On those invariable Saturdays, we'd talk about current events, political happenings, whatever was in the recent issue of the Voice, and his speaking appearances at the University of Michigan-Flint.


Michael left Flint in 1986 to take a job at the magazine Mother Jones. When that didn't turn out so well, he headed back to Flint, got a film camera, and made his first documentary, "Roger & Me" in 1989. By that time, I was teaching in Dallas. Michael appeared on Larry King's radio show on January 16, 1990. Excited that someone I "knew" had made a film (about my hometown, no less!), I just had to call in.

You can listen to our conversation by clicking the button below! Michael remembered our window-side chats at the pizza joint. He remembers to this day "where he came from." Whatever our political views, we should all be so moved to get up and do something about them.

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

Within the past year, I've been lucky enough to finally see some of the rock legends I've never seen before. These legendary figures include John Fogerty (of CCR fame), Bruce Springsteen, and from this past Friday night, Tom Petty.
After all these years and all the concerts I've been to, it's hard to believe I hadn't seen them, but at the time when they were most popular, things like ticket costs and availability made attending their concerts prohibitive for me.
The gosh-awful freeway exit to the Woodlands Pavilion took 30 minutes to traverse, causing Lisa and I to miss part of another classic rocker's act, Steve Winwood. There are a series of ironies here. Firstly, Winwood fronted an old group called Traffic. Second, our tickets were for row PP. No lie. And I had to go, but my gal pal urged me to wait because we were almost there. Yeah, as Tom sang, "The waiting is the hardest part."
But none of that diminished the show. Winwood did a great "Dear Mr. Fantasy," even if his time on the stage was a bit short. Tom Petty brought his Heartbreakers, and he didn't disappoint the throng who came out to see him.
The setlist included most of your faves, but as Lisa pointed out, "Here Comes My Girl" was noticeably absent. Anyone would be hard-pressed, though, to not find something they liked in the lineup: You Wreck Me, Listen To Her Heart, I Won't Back Down, Even The Losers, Free Fallin', Breakdown, Learning To Fly, all leaving the crowd breathless. Absolutely great rock and roll, and I can now cross one more name off the list.

Metal Hearts

Last night the "Metal Masters Tour" came to Houston, and Lisa, Justin, Kevin and I took our expensive seats in the 4th freaking row! We got to see, up close and personal, all the facial expressions, all the gestures, and all the rock theatrics of classic metal gods Judas Priest, Heaven and Hell, and Motorhead.

As I watched my heroes onstage, I couldn't help but pinch myself -- Tony Iommi, Ronnie James Dio, Rob Halford, Glenn Tipton -- they're RIGHT THERE! When they'd come over to our part of the stage, they'd just look and smile, or point, or nod. Folks, you just don't get that when you're sittin' waaaaaaay back next to the hot dog stand.

Just ask Kevin about wanting to vomit when the pounding bass drums of Heaven and Hell vibrated every part of his body. Justin joked, "I thought it was going to collapse my lung!"

All of us jumped and pumped our arms to all the metal anthems you could want in a single evening. There was the trademark epic and namesake, "Heaven and Hell," "Sign of the Southern Cross" (from H&H), "Breaking the Law," and "The Hellion/Electric Eye" (from Priest). Justin says Heaven and Hell's performance of "Falling Off The Edge of the World" was the best, and Kevin got his wish to hear both "Metal Gods" and "The Green Manolishi" from Judas Priest. Lisa said she preferred the sound of Motorhead to the "mash" of the two other bands. To each her own, I guess. Me? I kinda liked watching my peeps get off on the kick-ass rock 'n roll I've been worshipping for all these decades. The family that rocks together, gets tinnitus together. Or, something like that.

Fontspace: The Final Frontier

If you're looking for cool fonts to dress up your documents, make cool stationery, or just to add zip to your Myspace page, Fontspace is for you! They have almost 9000 free fonts for you to download, organized by category. I typed in the search keyword "Beatles" on their site, and found the fab four fonts, as pictured here. Whatever your thing is, they have a font for you. Check it out.

Beatles Nugget

Goldmine magazine is a bi-weekly publication for music collectors that runs an annual Beatles-themed issue. They've collected the last ten years of these special issues onto a CD-ROM , in PDF format, called "Goldmine Presents Meet the Fab Four. " I just received mine in the mail, and I'm happy to report that it's well worth buying. The nicest thing about it is that all those articles (featuring interviews with McCartney, Starr, and so many Beatles "insiders") are completely searchable. And, if you're like me, you'll appreciate the saved space, without all those magazines stacked around the house!

Emo Fudd

We were celebrating Kevin's 12th birthday at Fuddrucker's yesterday, and I was describing the various photos of the Beatles hanging on the restaurant's walls. One of them is from September 1962, and George Harrison was sporting a black eye. Ringo had recently joined the group, and legend has it that George was popped by an angry fan, who preferred original drummer Pete Best. (Except, the legend is really a myth -- but that's another story.)

Note the early haircuts in the photos. Paul has the famous "Beatle Haircut" going pretty well, but contrast that with the cut of new kid on the block, Ringo. (Click the photos above to get an enlarged view.) One of their German friends, Jurgen Vollmer, had his hair styled that way, a little long for the times, and combed to the front. John and Paul asked another German friend, Astrid Kirchherr, to cut theirs that way, too. These German friends were known as "Exis," from existentialism, who dressed in black, were intellectual, artistic, and avant garde.

In our discussion, the young ones dutifully put up with yet another lesson from me about the Beatles. The insightful Justin, in his wise years of 17, commented, "That's what the Emo's do, now." Very interesting observation, I thought. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Today's kids who call themselves "Emo" dress and look very much like the Bohemian youths did way back in the early 1960s. OK, Emos, go find a copy of the film "Backbeat", a dramatization about the Beatles' early days in Hamburg, for your own little deja vu.

Weigh With Words

I was reading a book by another of my heroes, the great scientist Carl Sagan. Sagan said that his teachers were not particularly great, except for his parents. My parents were great teachers, too, but what Sagan was really complaining about was a lack of inspiration from his teachers. That's a shame, because I can name a few teachers who greatly inspired me.

Dr. Judith J. Kollmann was my English 102 professor at the University of Michigan-Flint. Like all great teachers, she was demanding. More than that, she had a conversational approach to her teaching that I really appreciated. As kids say these days, she was "keepin' it real." I try my best to do the same in my own classroom.

One of the dreadful things she required of her class was to keep a daily journal. "Ugh!", I thought. I mean, I'm studying to be a high-falootin' mathematician! Why do I need to consume my time with a journal, for crying out loud? She told us we had to turn it in every few weeks, and that she'd grade it.

Whenever I could squeeze in time between my "real studies," I'd write something in my journal. I started very slowly, to say the least. What would I write about (daily!), and who would even care? More to the point, was that crazy Kollmann even gonna read the darned thing? I had my doubts about that, you see. There were a bunch of students, and how could she possibly have time?

Sure enough, she read everything I ever wrote in that journal. She made pithy comments in the margins, too. Better still, and much to my surprise, she actually liked my ramblings. "Excellent journal," she wrote, attaching a score of 9 out 10, in the very first grading. Hmmm. I didn't know what to say. My Chatty-Cathy journal entries were like, ya know, good? Who knew?

She gave me advice too, when I blathered on about personal goings-on. She asked questions about me. She responded to some of my comments with answers of her own, and gave insight into her own viewpoints. A real personal touch. And gosh, she actually...cared!

She was very encouraging, too, to this wacky kid.

One day, in that fall of 1981, she came into class, her arms full with our journals. She had read them all. She pulled one off the top of the pile, and told us all that she liked this one particular journal entry. She liked it so much that she read it to the class, right then and there. Try to stick with it, as I re-tell what she read:

Oct 25, 1981

You're not going to believe this story. It's my alibi for missing the English class on Friday, October 23. Now, I never go anywhere except to work and school. Well, this particular Thursday, I went to the planetarium to see the new Laserdrive show. I was gone about 2 hours. When I was returning home, the only passage to my house was road blocked by the police. So, thinking logically, I went around trying to get in another way. (I didn’t know it was completely blocked off.) This failed. So, I spoke to an officer, hoping to find out how I was going to get home. He told me that it would be a while. So after he explained that a madman was now in an apartment building holding a girl hostage with a shotgun (absolutely true!), I drove around, and checked back to see if I could go home. I did this every few minutes. I didn’t get home until 12:30 am. Well, when I got home, I began working on my English paper as I had planned to do at about 10:00 pm. (Honest to God, I did my paper!) I didn’t get to bed until nearly 4:00 am. Well, what happened was that I overslept Friday morning, and I missed my English class. Sorry! Hard to believe? It’s all true.

Yup, I still have that journal.

When Dr. Kollmann read it, I just kept my head low. I was proud, though, when my classmates laughed in the appropriate places. The manner in which Dr.Kollmann read it sure helped, too. She didn't mention any names, and I didn't tell anyone that it was my journal she read, either, but her actions sure were a big boost of confidence for me. She didn't know it, but her attitude, her methods, and her approach influenced and inspired me more than I can say.

I try to remember that when I'm standing in front of a room full of impressionable kids. Today, I actually require my students to keep a journal of sorts. We call it the "Calculus Manual." Kids tell me every year how helpful it is to them when they move on to college.

I e-mailed Dr. Kollmann a few years ago, and finally thanked her for being such a great teacher. She remembered me, and my journal story. I shouldn't have been surprised -- she really is that good. If Carl Sagan had been as lucky as I to sit in her class, I'm certain he'd have a different opinion of at least one of his teachers.

Dr, Kollmann is retired, now, and she was named Professor Emerita at the university.

Lucky me.