You won’t have the Culture Maven to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last column.
OK, that’s not exactly the deal. I’ll explain further in a sec. But, hey, if you can’t dis Tricky Dick at a time like this, when can you?
Truth is this is the last Culture Maven column that will appear here in LEO on a regular basis. So, if you want to cut out my mug up at the top of the page, blow it up, frame it and hang it on your den wall, now’s the time to do it.
Nothing is forever. Except change. Now it appears time for a less-than-lethal dose of that.
And, like Mr. President Nixon, I’ll be back. OK, it’s the present governor of California who uttered those words. Hey, if I had only known sooner, I could have run for governor here in Kentucky. Everybody else is. Except Charlie Owen and Lila the Love Dog. Never will the phrase “dark and bloody ground” ring so true.
Actually, I ain’t goin’ nowhere.
Starting next month, there will be a new weekly featurette, kind of the Culture Maven’s fractured look back at interesting historical moments of questionable significance. More accurately, it’ll be a somewhat skewed gander at fractured incidents of historitude. Stay tuned. It’ll be fun.
Since I missed the filing deadline for governor, I can take a look at that race, maybe, actually interview the participants. And observe their shenanigans without violating equal-time provisions. There’s other stuff around this burg that deserves feature examination also. So, time and editor permitting, I might do that.
Of course, there’s the weekly sports Rumor & Innuendo feature written by Seedy K, my dark and not so anonymous alter ego.
Caveat: Here comes a bit of gratuitous self-promotion. Several times a week I’ll be posting my tomfoolery at my newly revamped, updated and, if I say so myself, plenty nifty Web site. It remains just a click away at culturemaven.com. Come by and visit, the door’s always open. Heck, you can even post comments. Tell your friends.
Change. It don’t come easy.
That’s what the song says. Truth.
Pontificating on a regular basis in an award-winning alternative weekly is a way nifty gig. I’ve been blessed. The editors and publishers here under the current and previous regimes have been eminently indulgent.
I’ve never been censored. With a mouth like mine, that says something about the patience of those folks in charge and their firm belief in the First Amendment.
My former editor-in-chief, our current congressman, even gave me the cover and allowed me to ramble on with my case that Elvis Presley was the most important person of the 20th century. That’s the kind of representation we’ve been needing in D.C.
I was jilted by Mel Brooks. Still made a column out of it.
I was jilted by the bearded one up in Santa Claus, Ind. Still eked a column out of it. Two, actually.
Along the way I’ve chatted up Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore and Darlene Love, rock ’n’ roll heavyweights all. Gatewood Galbraith gave me a phoner last election when he was running for, let’s see, I think that time it was attorney general. So I got that going for me.
There’s a part of me that’s sad. This is a comfy spot.
Yet one door closes, another one opens and all that. Meaning there’s also a part that feels refreshed, challenged to tackle new projects. Which, frankly, I’ve already started doing. Coming soon … well, stay alert, all will be revealed in due course.
So this must be the spot where I choke up, genuflect before my agents and lawyers, thank my editors, thank the folks who put this rag together, thank my parents, thank the Film Babe for capturing me, a desperado, from my rut of singledom, thank the spiritual guidance that led me away from a profligate lifestyle, thank a couple of guys for the ramifications of their all-night conversation in Akron, Ohio, in 1935.
And thank you, my readers, who, even when you give me unending grief while standing in line at the coffee shop, make me feel that I might have had something to say that was reasonably worthwhile.
Salut.
Gotta go now. How can you miss me if I don’t go away?
