Con Job

All in all, this was shaping up be a thoroughly crappy day.  

It began after a very long Tuesday evening, including my first full spinning class (which did not kill me or, from what can tell, make me any stronger) and then a two-plus-hour church meeting where we approved a budget with a deficit of $6,663.  Damn, Satan, couldn't you have rounded up three more budget lines and just put in an offer to buy the whole thing?

That led into a fairly early out-the-door this morning. Court was okay, but I'd put off drafting the order until the last minute (thanks to exhaustion, see above, plus the damn computer AND printer both needing to be updated before I could get anything done), and, thus, missed a needed line in it that required redoing it.  Next, I went 0-for-2 in county clerk filings, mainly because their queueing system is ridiculous. Nothing good in the mail, the kid had a crisis which took a run round a bunch of banks, and the post office still refuses to reimburse me for screwing up my book shipment last week.

But then, in the midst of all that, this happened:

We thank you for submitting your proposal, “The Decline and Loss of the New York Mets Radio Network,” to our Conference, The 50th Anniversary of the New York Mets.

We are delighted to advise you that your proposal has been accepted for presentation at the Conference. We look forward to receiving your completed paper no later than April 2, 2012.  Please be advised that completed papers are limited to approximately 10-12 pages, double-spaced (excluding notes) and to 20 minutes presentation time. We would appreciate if you would send your paper in duplicate through the mail along with a copy of your academic curriculum vitae or resume.

I've never done anything like this before. (Well, except try cases and argue motions in court. And lecture at CLE's. Oh, and preach- which, horrors, I have to do again in front of a camera this coming Sunday afternoon. Other than that, nothing close.)  But I have someone to interview, and some online periodicals to check, and will probably be spending a good deal of March in libraries.

The con itself, btw, is the last weekend of April at Long Island's Hofstra University. It's been dedicated to the memory of our recently deceased fellow blogger (and Hofstra faculty member) Dana Brand.



Yeah, him.

Now we're halfway, and in the middle of the fifth inning at Shea, Ray's score: Immensely Proud 4, Scared Shitless 3, on the New York Mets Radio Network.

No more pieces of cake:(

One of my sources for the conference piece writes a weekly summary of northeast US radio news.

This was this week's sad leadoff:

Of all the big names who graced the airwaves at WBZ (1030 Boston) over the decades, few wore as many hats as gracefully as Dave Maynard, who died Friday in Florida at age 82.

After beginning his career at two smaller stations, Medford’s WHIL (1430, later WXKS and now WKOX) in 1952 and then Boston’s WORL (950), Maynard came to WBZ in 1958 as part of the legendary “Live Five,” the station’s crew of top-40 DJs. But while most of those jocks moved on in the sixties, Maynard became a WBZ fixture, shifting from evenings to late mornings, then to afternoons in 1976.

By then, Maynard had become much more than just a radio host, taking over the reins of WBZ-TV’s “Community Auditions,” introducing the “Phantom Gourmet” to WBZ radio’s weekend lineup, making appearances on WBZ-TV’s “Evening Magazine” and, for a few years, serving as the one and only voicetracked host on the otherwise-neglected WBZ-FM (106.7). It was rather surprising, then, when new management at the station moved Maynard to the overnight shift in 1979 – but instead of working out the remainder of his contract and moving on, the versatile host flourished as a late-night talker, putting him in the right place at the right time a year later when WBZ’s venerable morning host Carl deSuze retired after nearly four decades on the job.

That is where I got to know the voice, usually after the radio played all night from me, or my Hubbish roommates, listening to Larry Glick the night before and leaving it on.  We also got WSBK, an early cable "superstation," and from that saw the commercials featuring Larry and Dave in various forms of distress, always ending with the Commander's punch line of "Piece of cake, Dave!"

I'd found a Youtube of one of those when I last shared some of these memories last year, but it's been taken down:(  Alas, so had Maynard in the Morning.  Rest well, man.