Be TRU to Your School, Like You Would to Your Girl (If You, Like, Had a Girl)

NOTE: Despite an almost unanimous lack of public interest in his return to the “blogosphere,” if that’s what it’s still called, Sr. Slampo has reluctantly agreed to take a temporary “hiatus” from his extended hiatus to clamber up on his wheelchair-accessible soapbox and bloviate on an issue that has pitted brother against sister and is rending the very fabric of the city: the proposed purchase of Rice University’s KTRU radio (or its frequency and transmitter, whatever) by the University of Houston. In addition to his overweening need to dictate public policy to his fellow citizens, Slampo says he hopes this exercise in what he quaintly calls “typewriting” will help expunge the chorus of the Bar-Kays’ 1967 smash hit Soulfinger from his head, where it has been in more or less continuous rotation since a chance hearing on 6-23-10. He promises an imminent return to radio silence. -- Hidalgo Hidalgo, editor emeritus and under-assistant West Coast promotion man, Slampo’s Place

We see that the University of Houston’s regents, without bothering to consult us, have voted to proceed with UH’s planned purchase of Rice University’s KTRU, thus angering tens if not dozens of 30ish and 40ish Houstonians who fondly remember Marilyn Mock’s (was that her name?) “S&M Show” on the student-run station’s heyday back in the ‘80s (or whenever). We’re busy and we know you are, too, so we’ll get right to it: This ill-advised bit of empire-building and mission creep by UH is bad. It’s bad for the city, it’s bad for both schools, and, most importantly, it’s bad for us –– that is, me, myself and moi.

Oh, we’re not exactly a regular listener –– we don’t much “listen” to anything on a regular basis, ’cept for the sound of the gently falling rain –– but 91.7 is locked into rotation on our car radio’s digital scan, after KUHF (we do listen to the NPR news shows, and the classical music for its generally calming effect, but never the tiresome Car Talk or that noisome Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me [unless Paula Poundstone gonna be on!], KPFT (where we rarely stop anymore, the wall-to-wall self-righteousness usually giving us a reflexive ear-gag), KTSU ( for the music, especially Myron), and before the couple of stations our 16 year old routinely tortures us with. We couldn’t name a show or a DJ –– OK, it appears that we once immortalized The Soul and Funk Hour in this space –– but we know we can always find something reliably interesting on KTRU, even if it’s that show in the morning (do they still have it?) where somebody reads the Chronicle for the blind (or lazy). We alight on KTRU in the hope that we will hear some obscure blues, jazz or country music or even some screamin’ punk medley to get our blood pressure up in the pre-hypertension zone, and only occasionally are we disappointed. (Yes, we know this is not to everybody’s taste, but that’s because not everybody has taste, ya dig?). So, as Ken Hoffman would put it, here’s five reasons this sale is a bad idea (although we may run out of reasons well in advance of No. 5):

1. We didn’t look this up in Wikipedia, yet, but isn’t the purpose of a college radio station (like that of a college newspaper, or college mahjong club), to teach, to give youngsters hands-on training, “real-world” type experience in running the boards or punching the right buttons or whatever labor is required at a radio station these days? Yes, we believe it is. At Rice, of course, the student deejays get the added benefit of being able to show off their deep and hard-won knowledge of, say, pre-1965 Jamaican proto-ska while routinely mangling the pronunciations of various song titles and artistes (but that’s cool, ’cause, as the Rice motto holds –– or perhaps it’s that of DeVry Business School –– Vita est pro eruditio, meaning, roughly, “It’s Good to Fuck Up Now Because Not Only Is It Humbling But That’s How You Learn.”) We do not detect much of the hand of the student, the amateur, in the production of UH's KUHF.

2. We don’t see this as doing much for Rice-UH relations (the state of which we have absolutely no knowledge of).* Perhaps the mayor, a Rice alum, will be weighing in shortly (but we hope not).

3. Why in the name of Allah and/or Sweet Jesus does UH need two frickin’ radio stations? Will that somehow elevate the school to that coveted Tier 1 status? Perhaps UH’s assembling of a veritable chain of stations –– a broadcast empire! –– will do it. Does HBU have a station, and is it for sale?

4. According to the Chronicle

KUHF CEO John Proffitt said the present station, at 88.7 FM, will switch to an all-news format and the new station, to be named KUHC (91.7), will offer classical music and arts coverage. Both stations will be affiliated with National Public Radio.

Based on the dreary local “news and talk” products pushed by KUHF and sister TV outlet Channel 8, we assume this means the addition of another snooze-inducing, irrelevant outlet to today’s challenging media local landscape, and .... more Car Talk! (sheesh).

5. We’re all out of reasons, but the previous four amount to an unassailable case that should force both institutions to see the error of their way and JUST LEAVE THINGS THE HELL ALONE (which, even here in Houston, is often times the best policy).

*With apologies to Brian Wilson and whoever else of the Beach Boys is still alive.
**Although by inclination we are more of UH person, we have no horse in this race at all. In the interest of disclosure: We were once asked to leave the grounds of Rice by a campus cop or security guard while visiting there back in ’76 or ’77, which left us sore, but later we took a couple of continuing education courses there (one of which, taught by an instructor from St. Thomas, either the high school or college, was pretty good). We did teach as an adjunct prof for a couple of years in the late’90s at UH, our last semester there being highlighted by our single-handed apprehension of four –– count ’em ––plagiarists out of the 15 or so students total. The thefts were so blatant and pathetic that we almost felt like teaching the guilty a lesson in how to be a successful sneak, instead of giving them gentlemen’s ‘C’ that the ol’ boy who ran the department suggested. Whenever Rice is pitted against UH in an athletic contest, our neutral policy dictates that we cheer for whoever’s ahead.

"Survival of the Richest," Latest Breaking

With the trial of former Coastal Corp. chairman Oscar Wyatt getting under way in New York, we figured it was only a matter of time---days, if not hours---before someone in the local media suited up to inform us of the impact the proceedings are having on Lynn Wyatt, Oscar’s wife of many, many decades and either the reigning or former heavyweight champ-een (although still looking somewhat ill-nourished) of the haute social scene hereabouts.

Sure enough, Shelby Hodge, our very own Robin Leach at the Houston Chronicle, did not disappoint. The news, so to speak, on La Wyatt is kinda bad---for the second consecutive year, she’s foregone her annual summering at a villa in the south of France, previously a 30-year tradition, to stick close to the beleaguered Big O---but it’s also kinda good, according to a long, long line of Wyatt associates and “chums” trotted out and lavishly quoted attesting to Ms. Wyatt’s chin-up attitude as the government hounds seek to run her 83-year-old husband to ground. Hodge sums it up thusly:

The approaching legal storm has failed to dampen her gusto for the extraordinary lifestyle that she has enjoyed throughout her 44-year marriage to Oscar. And the absence of a personal villa did not mean months of seclusion in sweltering Houston.

Yes, no sense in lying around here fanning yourself in the stinkin’ heat when you can jet …

back and forth across the Atlantic, attending designer Valentino's 45th-anniversary celebration in Rome, house-guesting with billionaire Lily Safra on the French Riviera and visiting Lord Jacob Rothschild's archaeological digs at his vacation home in Corfu, Greece.

Wyatt also took time in recent months for the premiere of the London revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat as a guest of Andrew Lloyd Webber and a Renée Fleming concert in Monte Carlo combined with a visit to the palace for personal time with Prince Albert and Princess Caroline. (She was a friend of the late Princess Grace and Prince Rainier.)

Perhaps the highlight came in July when Elton John threw a grand black-tie birthday party for the ageless fashion diva. He hosted 16 guests from around the world at his estate in Windsor, England.

Nowhere in the story, of course, is there any connection drawn or even hinted at between the maintenance of at least a small part of that extraordinary lifestyle and the millions in surcharges, or kickbacks if you will, or bribes if you still will, that Mr. Wyatt is accused of paying to Saddam Hussein’s government to buy Iraqi oil under the U.N’s oil-for-food program.

But it’s possible that such a connection is a chimera, a fevered product of small, overly moralistic minds. After all, at this late date it’s very clear that Oscar Wyatt, and possibly even Lynn, was right in warning against our invasion of Iraq (although not, perhaps, in warning the Iraqis [allegedly]). And we’re certainly willing to entertain, if not immediately embrace, Wyatt’s assertion that he’s being unfairly singled out by the vindictive Bush clan (and here’s an interesting piece pushing that line by former Georgia congressman Bob Barr). We have no standing, and few if any facts, to judge Oscar Wyatt, a bull-headed son of Grimes County who generously donated his own time and money and forbearance in dealing with nettlesome foreigners to meet America’s unceasing demand for imported oil.

Yet we must forestall the temptation to extend any of our limited store of sympathy to Oscar and his resolutely jet-setting wife after learning of last week’s death of a 21-year-old Marine from Houston, blown apart by an IED while on his second tour of duty in Iraq---according to the Chronicle, the 89th person with ties to Houston to die there since Bush launched his war. We had heard a story about this young man: It seems the mother of a boy just a little younger than the Marine ran into one of his relatives early last week, and the two women talked of how the young men were faring, with the relative relating how good the military experience had been for the young Marine, how it had helped straighten him out and turn him from a slightly wayward path. At the time the two spoke, the young man was already dead.