“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”

~ George Orwell

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Shalini Kantayya has brought as timely a film as one could imagine to the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Screening in the U.S. Documentary Competition, “Coded Bias” welcomes viewers to the worlds of algorithms and facial recognition, two of the most malleable facets of artificial intelligence.

It’s fairly old news, of course, that AI and the manner in which it is fed data effectively controls our lifestyle choices in this digital age, but seeing the process laid out and insightfully deconstructed down to its molecular level is startling, to say the least.

As researcher Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab discovers while dabbling in facial recognition, much of the involved software misidentifies faces of both those with darker skin and women of all stripes.

During her subsequent investigations into the rampant bias inherent to the algorithms in question, it quickly becomes apparent that AI and the white males it rode in on at the genesis of the technology are not neutral. Not that any of this comes as a surprise to those in-house administrators packing a Y chromosome.

The film follows Buolamwini as she interacts with an assortment of other female scientists at the forefront of shifting the bias in this obvious civil rights paradigm to a more balanced part of the scale. To that end, their intent is to form a “Justice League.”

What they are after is legislative protection that would monitor widespread injustices in the usage of facial scanning from law enforcement and surveillance to automated hiring practices with its inbred workplace biases and credit decisions within the loan industry.

When a large part of the data-driven learning process of AI is by infusion of mega amounts of pre-biased information blocks that are part and parcel to the technology itself, there is little wonder as to the shape of the resultant output. Or, as they say, “horse-feathers in, horse-feathers out.”

The manner in which opinions are dissected is equally interesting. As in the industry-wide implementation of “popular” in place of “good” (see Facebook’s “Like” button).

The fact that these obviously flawed technological constructs are at the heart of shape-shifting our very lives while completely free from public and governmental scrutiny appears problematic to say the least. When you add that the hands on the wheel belong to non-altruistic and voracious appetites, the “big brother” issues increase exponentially.

Once a representative segment of a population becomes “hip” to the surveillance quandary, however, action of a preventive nature often follows suit. Last spring, for instance, San Francisco banned the use of facial recognition software by the police and other agencies.

There are those on both sides of the privacy equation who believe it’s psychologically unhealthy when people know they’re being watched in every aspect of their public and private lives. The fact that this opinion only resonates as a civil rights issue on one side is the issue. Go figure!

In China, it’s a given. Everyone is watched all the time. It’s just totally transparent. There is no choice but to “buy in.” The creepiness inherent to our system, both legislative and corporate, has long been “top-down.”

There is also room for an expanded infusion of the old privacy-versus-national security debate, although that isn’t actually the question being illuminated by Kantayya’s brilliant film. How about, as a good start, through legislative protections, make facial recognition neutral. Remove the biases. Do not miss this film. “Coded Bias” should be mandatory viewing.

The post Sundance doc ‘Coded Bias’ exposes flaws in artificial intelligence appeared first on Park Record.

For his first documentary feature, filmmaker Matt Yoka had two-pronged criteria: that the film tell a Los Angeles story and that it be visual. Although living in New York City when the notion occurred, the draw of L.A., his hometown, played a muse that continually hovered over his aesthetic.

Speaking to The Park Record from an underground parking stall near Little Italy in downtown L.A., and on the cusp of his first Sundance Film Festival, Yoka unveiled the story of “Whirlybird.” Screening in the U.S. Documentary Competition, “Whirlybird” weaves the ever-evolving tale of the “Breaking News” idiom in 1990s L.A. and the inherent pressures it put on the married TV helicopter news team that lived at its center.

Serendipity entered the picture early for Yoka. Upon hearing the couple’s story and first approaching Marika Gerrard and Zoey Tur (known as Bob at the time) as the possible subjects of his film, Yoka was astounded by the archival footage available in their personal collection. This was the era of both the O.J. Simpson slow-speed chase and the Rodney King riots of 1992.

With adrenaline driving the narrative from both the air and the ground, the never-ending breaking news cycle and the competition to capture its most intriguing visual aspects for L.A.’s prime-time news make for a riveting storyline. Keeping up with the footage and adapting its effects upon the family and the city is at the heart of Yoka’s film.

The overhead archival camera shots of L.A. in both panorama and close up, coupled with head-shot interviews and candid family footage shot specifically for the film, provided him a palette sufficient to cinematically carve out both his criteria. He would indeed have an L.A. story with enough visual to drop jaws.

Leading with the personal story allowed the City of Angels to gain entrée on its own terms, both geographically and within the breaking-news landscape. Surprises befitting such juxtapositions are deftly choreographed rather than telegraphed by Yoka, a beginning filmmaker in pretty much full control of his powers and creative toolbox.

There are also cinematic and psychological parallels drawn between Los Angeles and an early “Burning Man” gathering as Tur flies out to the Black Rock Desert as a way of dealing with growing fires on the home front.

The children are brought in front of Yoka’s lens only once the film tells him they would be essential to the continuity of the storyline. And, to be sure, he was confronted by interesting sidebars at most every turn. Keep your eye on the future creative processes of Matt Yoka. He certainly came out of the gate swinging for the fences.

The post ‘Whirlybird’ shows a filmmaker swinging for the fences at Sundance appeared first on Park Record.

So there we were, hunkered down in the Stagecoach Bar in Wilson, Wyoming. It being midday, there wasn’t much of a crowd.

The band playing the night before had left their gear onstage in an adjoining room, including one of those classic Gibson Les Paul guitars leaning against a vintage tube-driven Fender super-reverb amplifier. It’s funny what sticks in memory.

We had come to Jackson Hole from L.A. to ski for a season or two, but while sitting at the bar, decided it really wasn’t in the cards. Snow had already fallen that late fall of 1970 and it seemed apparent that most of the seasonal digs within our budget range were taken. Park City had always been the net over which we performed, so we opted south.

How fortunate! As cool a spot as Jackson is, I can’t imagine it playing out as well as Park City. As if on the fast track, along came ski-in ski-out digs behind the Miner’s Hospital, entrée into the radio biz in Salt Lake, and a bevy of alternative-lifestyle writing gigs.

Speaking of which, this is my final column for The Park Record. And, in bidding adieu, it has occurred to me many times over how fortunate we were to end up in this town at that time. Not that it isn’t cool now, but boy, was it ever cool then!

I’m thankful for many things this holiday season. That I’m a bit of an odd duck and an acquired taste comes quickly to mind. Otherwise, how would I have ever fit into this zany mining camp turned ski town back then? Those were defining attributes for newcomers and, lo and behold, for those who stayed, it stuck to our ribs.

To wit: It’s a bit past four-in-the-morning and directly in front of me a science experiment is unfolding. In the closest thing to a Petri dish available on such short notice, a Scotch glass holds forth. Inside, bathing in a three-ounce pour of my current-favorite Islay single-malt, basks an ice cube of indeterminate girth.

Will I, an acquired taste, prose-wise, to be sure, be able to finish writing this final Core Sample prior to the pour of “Laphroaig Quarter Cask,” becoming one with the ice? Life is chemistry, as they say.

Looking back, I’m unable to place in time my final columns for The Newspaper, which would later merge with The Park Record, or The Park City Coalition, the first local independent rag targeting the emerging ski-town demographic. What isn’t in question, however, was the non-availability of most any single malts in Utah back then.

The columns in those days dealt almost totally with the local music culture, fed mostly by associations made during my then-concurrent gig as a radio DJ at KMOR in Salt Lake City. They appeared sporadically, which is a euphemism for whenever a concert or an album release or street scuttlebutt of sufficient weight got my attention.

This column, originally pitched by my dear longtime friend and then-Editor Nan Chalat Noaker, however, was headed for the opinion section.

And, in retrospect, although subtly opinionated they were, the approach was highly nuanced to the point that, if I were reviewing anything Haggard or Willie, I would have confidence that my more astute readership would instantly recognize it as an anti-Trump diatribe.

The inherent problem with that approach, of course, is that it is not mainstream. And mainstream is what readers and advertisers thrive upon. So, to those who stuck it out through the years of week-after-week wondering where the piece was headed, thank you.

Anyway, in the future, whenever an Islay single-malt Scotch whisky contacts my lips, I shall think of the wondrous associations that were mine during the timeframe I engaged with you in this space. Twenty years in the blink of an often-bloodshot eye. How time flies when you’re having fun.

For keeping me apprised of the real world, thanks to my family and to Nan and Teri Orr and to Scott Iwasaki and Jay Hamburger. And to the other muses I chose to exploit during my two-decade-long scorched-earth assaults on the mother tongue. I love you all madly. You know who you are!

Plus, to the readers and editorial staff at The Park Record, thanks for the feedback through the years, including those who disagreed with my notions of propriety. To my fellow columnists, keep the faith! And to Andy Bernhard, thanks for your patience and continued luck to you in the print media biz.

That’s a wrap! Adios!

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

The post Jay Meehan: A mic drop after two decades of writing this column appeared first on Park Record.

The fervor surrounding my first pep rally for the annual Kellogg-Wallace high school football game up in that character-rich mid-century Idaho panhandle set the hook firmly in the jaw of my psyche. This would not be catch-and-release. These many decades later, I remain very much “hooked.”

Admittedly, there has been a recent interval wherein my rabidity has lessened. But all it took to get the juices once again flowing at their previous rate were mentions on The Park Record and KPCW websites of the Park City Miners’ current assault on the 4A playoff bracket and I found myself back at that bonfire in the Kellogg of my youth.

Fate would have it that I would leave KHS following the football season of my sophomore year. Kellogg was a highly successful basketball school, anyway, with more than a few state titles under its belt during my stay. They were a marvel at what they did. They were “showtime” well before my Lakers.

My next stop, Gonzaga Preparatory School, however, flaunted its Jesuit sensibility in Spokane, a few easily hitchhiked miles down the road. A love affair with all-things-Bullpups soon blossomed but not to the extent it replaced my Wildcat-fever. Even though I was to go on to a third high school in southern California, nothing would do that!

Following a seemingly yellow brick road out of Dodge, the clan slalomed its way through Portland, Reno, Yosemite, the Bay Area, and Malibu on their way to what I came to refer to as the quaint seaside village of Los Angeles. Lynwood, a bedroom community squished between South Gate and Compton drew the short straw.

The Lynwood Knights, although drawing a quite respectable and rowdy fan-base in all sports, never really threatened their league-mates football-wise, but I was used to that. Plus, the spirit was there. Being true to your school. Dissin’ the refs. Calling them like you see them. That’s all that mattered. Boola boola! Sis-boom-bah!

Following graduation, I grabbed a Greyhound north to the old stomping grounds for a summer of fighting wildfires in the Coeur d’Alene National Forest and carousing with the old gang at the old haunts of Kellogg.

Before I knew it, fall had rolled around with road trips to away games for the KHS gridiron bunch following suit. So it was off to Lewiston and Sandpoint and Bonner’s Ferry and Coeur d’Alene and Wallace among other stops along the Idaho panhandle high school pigskin trail.

Then came Utah, where road trips included Park City playoff games at Grantsville and Rice-Eccles and, having moved to Heber, Wasatch High School matchups at Roosevelt, Bear River, Lehi, Kamas, and, of course, Rice-Eccles.

Always the sideline-rover, I’ve had a lifelong aversion to sitting in bleachers. The point was, and is, to position your point-of-view perpendicular to the ball – a location constantly in flux. That meant sprinting up and down the sideline, the visitor’s side usually offering the best opportunity to arriving prior to the ball being snapped.

Game-faces, of course, were required. Say the Park City Miners were traveling to Heber to take on the Wasatch Wasps back in the day. With me being of the “Wasp” persuasion, I would have organized well in advance a tailgate meet-and-greet with my Miner fan base friends at Tink’s, a well-known Heber haunt of the time.

There, we would hoist a few cold ones, down a pickled egg or two, puff on a cheap cigar, sing along with Hank or Hag or Patsy or Janis on the jukebox, and talk school affiliation trash to each other under the glaring eyes of wall-mounted elk heads.

When it came to “home field advantage,” however, the camaraderie of Tinks did little to prepare the Park City fans for the methane-rich aroma of the working dairy farm sitting to the immediate rear of the visitor’s bleachers in those days.

But back to the here and now! There is a game afoot! At 11:00 a.m. Friday morning at Rice-Eccles Stadium, the #1-seed Park City Miners are taking on the #2 seed Sky View Bobcats in what should be one of the most competitive 4-A Championship games on record.

Both squads have been bowling over their opponents on the way to this classic matchup. If you can’t make it down, you can listen to KPCW’s live broadcast. Go Miners! Damn, I miss those bonfires!

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

The post Jay Meehan: State! appeared first on Park Record.

“Consciousness is a born hermit.”

~ George Santayana

In a galaxy far, far away, due to the fact that his third-year English teacher warned him that if he fell asleep during her class one more time he would be suspended indefinitely, he began an after-lunch ritual of removing two white ones from their thin metal-wrap cocoon and washing them down at the closest drinking fountain.

Then, after continuing to nod-off and receiving further threats from the academic-in-question, he bumped-back the official ingestion period to the interval before-lunch that followed Chemistry, of all things. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.

In a fashion, that particular modification to his “meds” scheduling appeared to solve the drifting-off during class problem. The issue then became one of incessantly raising his hand and answering questions prior to they being asked. So, as logic dictated, he began reducing the dosage.

Another problem, however, manifested itself once he began toting his crashing-in-class preventatives in his wallet. The cocoon being a non-protective enclosure (a vial would have been nice), would, by forces of gravity and the collective body-weight vector at his posterior, turn what once was ten into a singular mash of indiscernible increments.

So, not unlike a cowpoke stuffing a “pinch” of chaw between his lip and gum, our mightily confused English student could never be quite certain that his intake had not crossed beyond the thresholds used to treat children with ADD or adults with narcolepsy.

What he had set out to prevent, of course, was indefinite suspension from school and time was running out. He had best get serious. So, each morning thereafter, one tablet of the synthetic mood-altering substance would wake up inside the cellophane outer wrap of the pack of smokes he carried in his front shirt pocket.

Like Schrödinger’s cat, any possible suspension due to the secondary infraction of showing up with a visible nicotine-delivery system might well depend on whether or not a decaying atom would answer a subpoena. But I digress.

Thus, with the scientific method being what it purported to be in those days, it wasn’t long before the teacher, the student, and the amphetamines-in-question had achieved in the time it took Max Plank to almost dribble-out-the-clock on Quantum Mechanics, a balance of sorts, a quantified equilibrium.

These days, his meds scheduling operation is somewhat more complicated. Each Sunday night, he refills his weekly medication organizer for the following week. The small snap-lock boxes associated with the specific days are each dutifully crammed full. It’s getting to a point not totally unlike sitting on a suitcase in order to close it.

The current daily requirements: nine little-white-ones, one quarter of a pill coming in at around 620-nanometers (nm) on the visible light spectrum (the word “orange” distresses him), two from around 610-nm, two white capsules with blue stripes, one thick white tablet, and one-half of a white oblong bugger shaped like but not quite as large as a rugby ball.

Did I mention the 10-drops of full-spectrum hemp oil that he nudges under his tongue each morning and night? He figures, if nothing else, it helps keep him in touch with the bohemian aspects of his misspent youth. He tried “edibles” but too many middle-of-the-night assaults on turkey-pot-pies began interfering with his reading.

With snoring in class no longer an issue but with many more pills in play, recalling which needed to be taken with food and which with a Speyside Single-Malt relied on memory, a process requiring both storage and recall, crops of which have been in short supply with our hero of late.

Side effects, of course, are an issue when one ingests fourteen and three-quarters medication pills plus the twenty drops of CBD (Cannabidiol) per day For instance, it has been reported that our test-subject has recently taken to keeping an ever-growing stack of poetry books as part of his bedside stash. Word has it that little good can come from such reading habits.

Friends have taken to commenting on his solitary lifestyle, his seeming avoidance of other people. “He’s a bit of a recluse,” they say. “When was the last time you saw him on a dance floor?” they ask. “Or out at one of the local watering holes?” “He sure is a quiet sort,” they add.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

The post Jay Meehan: Applied pharmacology appeared first on Park Record.

It occurred to us fairly early that our responses to surface gratifications opened doors to spaces we had never previously thought to enter. Being outside town and near a lake and a walnut grove, we called one such space “the ranch.”

In those days we were on a rather strict diet, with nourishment coming mainly from books and vinyl along with the occasional bowlful of oatmeal or brown rice. Arrogant and svelte is what we became. It’s surprising the singular archetypes that evolve from a camping stove and a turntable.

It had been decided that additional sustenance might be in order and I drew the short straw. Actually, the decision to take on the mission was mine but we went through the selection ritual nonetheless. That way, random chance had a seat at the table.

So, I packed a few things and after one of the female roomies took scissors to my locks, I stood in front of a mirror gingerly flaunting a razor. It wasn’t long before, as Philip Marlowe mused in the opening stanza of The Big Sleep, “I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and didn’t care who knew it.”

A friend offered a lift to the border crossing at Ysidro, from where I jumped through familiar hoops and moseyed down to the bus station. I knew this song. I had sung it many times. The satchel and I both nodded off, me in the window seat and her in the overhead compartment above me.

Dawn broke somewhere outside Hermosillo but it would take a stop at an “aguadulce” stand on the outskirts of Ciudad Obregon to bring me around. What we coyly referred to as “sleeping pills” had knocked me out.

Back across the border, the right-wing pulled most all the relevant strings from atop the food chain. We had to be patient. Although the Emperor had no clothes, his resignation wouldn’t seriously loom until a couple of years into his next term. Sound familiar?

Did I mention that I arrived at my favorite hotel in Culiacan, Sinaloa with a red fraternity blazer, a windup motion picture camera, and a boatload of political angst? The first two items related to an Inspector Clouseau-ish covert-ops that simmered just over the bridge in “Tierra Blanca.”

The third would advance the highly improvisational and quixotic narrative set to unfold further down the street at the University of Sinaloa.

My Zapata mustache didn’t fool anybody. Even before I opened my mouth, they had me pegged as a gringo. No self-respecting Mexican would wear a bright red blazer after sun-up. Especially the honeymooners in the next balcony singing along to “Hello Goodbye.” “Magical Mystery Tour” had just come out and was all the rage.

With as straight a face as I could muster, I explained to the head of the English Department that I was a post-doctoral candidate from USC who was looking to conduct student interviews with, if possible, those majoring in English, Economics, and Agriculture.

So, for the next three days, guided by my new friend the English Prof, I hung out in classrooms associated with each discipline. On the morning of the third day, with my politics having become apparent to the administration, I was asked to refrain from questions that inferred their educations were a road map to personal wealth rather than a solution to nationwide poverty.

So the three doors that earlier in the week had opened to spaces I had never previously thought to enter, I became, as did my remaining classroom discussions, monitored by the University powers that be. No worries. With a wry grin, the seeds having previously been sown, I nudged the students into shaping the debate themselves.

Well, when one door closes, another opens, as they say. What came next, following my days as an “outside agitator,” was a scenic jaunt to the country where I was able to witness and participate in the distribution arm of Sinaloa’s largest agricultural cash crop.

This particular wing of the operation featured more Che Guevara-looking types in fatigues and shouldering assault rifles than your normal run-of-the-mill bib-overall set downshifting a John Deere.

Scuttlebutt has it that, during the ensuing years, the “farmers-in-question” have upgraded their equipment and, much to the chagrin of their neighbors, expanded their product lines. Enterprising entrepreneurs seem to have sprung up everywhere in them thar hills. We always figured Sinaloa for fertile soil.

The post Jay Meehan: A neighborly visit appeared first on Park Record.

Over this past weekend, my “mirror neurons” ran amok. They were “selling the dummy,” hitting high-draws into the wind, and completing circus-catches in the red-zone. When all was said and done, trauma teams and disaster clean-up crews were having their way with what was left of my right cranial hemisphere.

Which is to say, I spent most of my time with a TV gizmo following the Rugby World Cup, PGA Tour golf, and college football. Baseball, since the Dodgers recent post-season debacle, is currently standing in the corner wearing a dunce hat. What it will take for it to return to my good graces is anybody’s guess.

Binging on the Rugby World Cup may not be pegging my dopamine flow to the extent that finding myself midway through an involuntary Shaun White Double-McTwist 1260 once did, but it bloody sure ain’t bad. Slamming into a hip-high Schwinn parked perpendicular to the touchline at a Mucker match will do that.

By the way, no beer cups were injured during the recollection of that event. Pride, however, suffered a dislocation. Mates who witnessed the thrill-seeker routine didn’t cut much slack.

Communicating via group chat with Park City Rugby Football Club founders Corky Foster and “Alamo Dave” Mueller, not to mention a cadre of analytical “ringers” brought in from afar for the occasion, kept us World Cup junkies in the moment.

Sensing my inaccurate jargon, slang and/or parlance might call for a “yellow card,” I pretty much kept my own counsel. As with Howard Cosell, I never played the game.

Within the jungle of “pool-play” and “knock-out-rounds,” however, jaws have dropped. The invincible New Zealand “All Blacks,” generally the most-skilled and, in many ways, the Goliath of the sport, found themselves on the short end of their match with England. Bloody shocking, it was.

They will line up against Wales, who dropped a somewhat-brutal but elegant semifinal match to South Africa, for third place at 3:00 a.m. MST Friday morning. Twenty-four hours later, it’s England taking on South Africa for all the marbles.

Actually, as far as my golf viewing over the weekend, it was basically condensed to watching Tiger Woods’ final round as he chased down Slammin’ Sammy Snead’s record of 82 PGA Tour wins. He did it and I gave it the ol’ fist-pump. Go figure.

Following his showing-up at the White House and allowing Trump to drape the Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck, Tiger, initially, woke up in my doghouse. I even reserved a dunce-hat corner for him, but somehow, I couldn’t stay away. Neurosis appears to be my default position. But you knew that.

An interesting bonus sidebar came out of having both the RWC and PGA in Japan at the same time. Someone, maybe at the network, recorded and posted online some private banter between Tiger and Rory. McIlroy filled Woods in on the current status of the World Cup and, dutifully, even answered a few follow-up international rugby questions.

Then there were my University of Southern California Trojans who, playing the University of Colorado at Boulder, found a way to first dig themselves into a deep hole before, by the skin of their teeth, emerging triumphant for their first road victory of the season.

The fact that they remain in control of the Pac-12 South, however, is rather misleading. Although they found a way to defeat Utah in LA, the Utes are fielding a much superior squad this year and, to win the South, the Trojans would more than likely have to win their four remaining conference games.

Having Oregon, also a much superior squad, on the schedule for this coming Saturday in LA, further illustrates Southern Cal’s problems. Miracles do happen, however, and the possibility of celebrating the Trojans as Pac-12 South champs is not totally outside the realm of possibility.

Of course, before this weekend’s no-doubt neurotransmitter-rich competitions are in the books, escape mechanisms for emerging from deep holes yet to be dug must be ironed out. There are wrinkles in time that the resident single-malts will no doubt have to deal with before all is said and done – or even inferred, for that matter.

If you promise not to mention it to my mate Donovan, I’ll let you in on a secret. My favorite rugby side is whoever happens to be playing the English Rugby Union National Team at any given moment. One would think I would appear more magnanimous in my commentary concerning such a gentlemanly sport. Nah!

By the way, what World Series?

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

The post Jay Meehan: Giving the Rugby World Cup a try appeared first on Park Record.

We were new and we were few. KPCW had been on the air only four months and the President of the Board of Trustees had spent much of the day searching for his News Director hat. He wore many, but this was Election Night and coverage, in his case, would entail a carton of smokes, gallons of black coffee, and cooperation from his staff.

His planned modus-operandi for the evening (which would no doubt stretch into early morning) was to gather a posse of live call-in reporters and send them out into the Summit and Wasatch county hinterlands to check the pulse of the electorate.

We, in turn, once the polls closed and the vote-counts began to come in, would dial up that cat-in-the-hat manning the station from “The Bunker.” Being located above the basketball courts in the Memorial Building next door to the Alamo, normally, life at KPCW was pretty much as good as it got.

The night in question, however, would be all about phoning in updates and, if one were to get put on the air, sounding somewhat sober and professional. For myself, I had little desire to remain sober while the Republicans once again regained the White House. So, I had that going for me. However, there was no way out.

With 1980 being the year of Reagan’s landslide victory over Jimmy Carter, Utah’s political heartbeat was its normal self — reactionary and rabid. If there were to be any surprises, however, Summit County would probably be the hotbed – meaning you might have to take off your gloves AND your shoes to calculate the votes for President Carter.

The bunker, a former bathed in concrete film-projection booth flush from its complete makeover into a radio studio, went for $1 per year with Park City Hall as the landlord.

With a radio station on the top floor, a gymnasium in the middle, and a bowling alley-slash-gun range on the bottom, the proud Main Street edifice played to more than one eccentric demographic.

Anyway, having just moved from a swayback farmhouse in Woodland to a log cabin with plank siding in Heber, I was anointed the reporter-at-large for Wasatch County. Having never reported on vote counts from outlying precincts before, I prepared for my assignment at the County offices with due dread.

Being an undisciplined sort, I stashed away a thermos of heavily caffeinated bus-stop coffee, a five-pack of cheap cigars, a recently acquired yet already dog-eared paperback of “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco, and a fistful of out of market No-Doz tablets. But, what I really needed was a fedora.

If only we would have gotten on the air five years earlier, we could have covered that famous Park City “special election” for mayor in which write-in candidate O.D. McGee “shook babies and kissed hands.” But, alas, that wasn’t to be.

And on this night, I didn’t want to participate. I knew I’d be out of my element and rather than welcome Ronald Reagan into my reality from an environment where denial would be impossible, I longed to wake up the next morning with my forehead on some bar. I wanted to stick my head in the sand, not proclaim his victory upon radio wave.

Most of my previous “live remotes” from my days in the Salt Lake City AM radio trade had originated from truck dealerships, western wear retailers, and honky-tonk saloons. Party atmospheres were a given. This one was different. As the evening wore on, I longed to be elsewhere.

The night soon yawned and so did I. By ten or so I initially thought I needed a drink, or a mood elevator, or both. And I’m not talking about what Andy Griffith referred to as a “big orange.”

But, alas, the Reagan landslide soured my mood to the point where my thirst for something exotic totally waned. The temptation to travel the ten blocks or so to where our dryer served as our liquor cabinet, lessened as each state’s dominoes fell further into the Red.

I finally did come to terms with my sophomoric reaction to a news assignment from KPCW by going out and getting bombed with my radio buddy Dan Wilcox once the watering holes reopened. It didn’t make my next eight years any more palatable, but it kept the sand out from under my eyelids.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

The post Jay Meehan: The election night radio blues appeared first on Park Record.

“In darkness, there is light”

~ Henerishi

Lost expectations can be a drag, of course. However, the upside of having my Dodgers, Trojans, and Rams perform so dismally in recent weeks has allowed me to feed my reading habit with much more fervor and focus.

For a good while, now, I’ve come to deal with depressing outcomes in the sporting world by boycotting my favorite media outlets. Oh sure, I’d love to see those highlights one more time of all 11 missed tackles improvised by my lads dancing like St. Vitus on the defensive side of the ball. In fact, put it on a loop!

And, please, if you’re able to dig them out of your greatest blooper compilations, how about throwing in an assortment of our longtime ace serving up gopherballs down the middle of the plate during crunch time. And, if that gets too boring, you can always throw in a random assortment of our quarterbacks trembling in the fetal position.

Where once I drifted off to bleary images of home-run trots and QBs hitting wideouts, of late it’s been the likes of Edward Abbey’s “Confessions of a Barbarian,” Jim Harrison’s “Selected & New Poems 1961—1981,” and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Complete Short Stories.”

The four of us, all vying for geographic entitlement upon limited space, share the bed each night – a situation that should last at least until “wait ‘til next year” arrives. Heavy “thuds” announce any accidental jettisons during the overnight darkness.

Lately, it seems, I choose to remain unconscious right on through the commotion – content, as a favor to my friends down in forensics to draw chalk outlines around the corpses of the hardbound volumes, as, the following morning, I slosh coffee about the crime scene.

Being a creature of habit, upon arising each day, the first thing that crosses my mind is our POTUS, Big Orange, and which assaults on decency he may have come up with during his early morning Brazilian full-body wax. The second thing is which of my teams remain in intensive care and which are currently scheduled for lobotomies.

This past weekend, along with a couple of quite-close friends, I was fortunate to find myself enveloped in the restorative glow of Sundance Resort. And, wouldn’t you know it, right out of the chute, with no warning at all, another lost expectation occurred. The true horror and unjustness of the situation unfolded without preamble.

As I perused the lunch menu at the wondrous Owl Bar, it became quickly evident that their world-renowned tortilla soup was nowhere to be found. Whether or not I actually began to tremble, we’ll let pass. An inquiry concerning the plausibility that the soup might be “out of season,” ensued. A reply in the affirmative followed suit.

With that newly acquired knowledge, I realized a nefarious plot, targeting whatever post-Dodger playoff stability remained, as nothing more than the work of rampant paranoia. Having previously witnessed Kershaw’s breaking pitches being obviously out of season only a week earlier, I accepted the response in the spirit it was offered.

Both in lieu of and in response to such a state of affairs, I ordered two Moscow mules. Actually, having also boycotted all things Russian since that rumor of Vladimir and Donald began to circulate, I switched the order to two Jalisco Mules. Tequila might not be just for lunch anymore, but it continues to walk the walk.

I quickly made a mental note to check on the current seasonal availability of Deer Valley’s awesome turkey chili. (There exists a sense here of the neurotic grasping to gain at least a finger-hold upon the hem of the psychotic). But, remembering that it’s always been there for me year-around, I deleted that unnecessary chore from an already overworked hard-drive.

Although each, in the vernacular of Hawaiian Pidgin, “break ya jaw, brah,” they really shouldn’t be compared. They are separate wonders holding individual distinctions.

A calmness, of sorts, began to return. Until, that is, I spotted my amygdala and hippocampus sharing an adjacent table. In unison, they winked at me. Obviously, they were in cahoots.

As past memories of fear and anxiety began dragging me once again into the abyss of darkness, a door burst open. Rather than a dame with a gun, as in most noire narratives, however, the inspiring and delightful pleasures of Sundance Resort with its blue sky, tall conifers, and rushing water re-emerged to reclaim me. I’m back! Just, wait ‘till next year!

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

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Morning has broken on yet another anniversary of that rather auspicious poetry reading at Six Gallery on Fillmore in San Francisco back in ’55 when Allen Ginsberg first read his groundbreaking poem “HOWL” in public.

Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Lamantia, and Philip Whalen also read that evening with Kenneth Rexroth serving as M.C. and Jack Kerouac passing the hat for chump change to keep the gallon jugs of California wine flowing. It has become a holy day of observance around these parts.

It also triggers an annual refueling of that part of my brain that puts me in touch with those finer slices of hip Homo sapiens to which I, culturally, identify – the “Beats.” Of course, any residual “high” that ensues quickly becomes tempered by the reality of living in the time of Trump and his quite malleable and scared shirtless cohorts.

Actually, the very first thing that occupied my thoughts as I tumbled out of the rack this morning had more to do with the Trump’s rape and pillage of sacred lands on the Colorado Plateau than with the traditional media’s concept of berets and bongo drums.

Having recently shape-shifted my digs from the spacious Navajo-like setting of Heber Valley’s northeastern foothills to the Hopi-like, Pueblo-friendly confines of urban Heber, visions of past trekking upon redrock and the chronology of favorite hiking boots continually dance in my head.

An arthritic condition of the lower back that dampens my longings to put one-foot-in-front-of-the-other along the slots and ridges of Mesozoic geology is only one reason I find these musings rather ironic. Another is that the self-righteous followers of this imbecile keep retreading similar reasoning as the logic behind allowing ATVs and UTVs, et al onto protected lands.

Their favorite spot in nature lies (insert your favorite number here) miles from the nearest paved road, they argue, and the trails that lead there are challenging enough that you need to use a modified 4×4, dirt bike, UTV, or ATV to navigate them. My response is always the same: “Have you ever tried hiking boots?”

Whenever the concept of developing additional roads or paving trails in National Parks or Monuments raises its head, I’m reminded of Edward Abbey’s essay “A Walk in the Park,” wherein he recounts a conversation with his nine-year-old daughter Suzy as they drove home from the Needles District of Canyonlands.

“Look here Suzy, should we let them build that bridge? Should we let them build that paved highway to the Confluence overlook?”

“No,” she said.

“But why not? What are you, some kind of elitist? How do you expect people to get in there if they don’t have a good road?”

“They can walk.”

‘Twas the actions of ol’ Ed rather than his words that carried the most weight with young Suzy as her environmental ethos evolved during those years, however. After attending a public meeting on further development in CNP, Ed and her would go on to hike the Confluence Trail to the overlook of where the Green and Colorado become one.

I can speak to this hike as one with an infirmity who grimaced and whined both ways of the 11-mile journey due to a problematic knee. Would I rather have driven on a new paved road? Although the thought probably did occur, I’m sure the pavement itself would have made me more nauseous.

The destruction of geologic marvels in order to reduce the experience to automotive friendliness would be sacrilegious. Remember, it’s all about the journey. And if there is pain involved, let me assure you that, in the aftermath at least, it is a blessing.

It’s those damn grabens along the trail that increase its coefficient of difficulty, anyway. Those long depressions between geologic faults are to blame, and, whenever possible, should be horsewhipped with a fistful of cheat grass. That ought to teach them!

Anyway, my tribe is far from “elitist.” It’s just that we don’t buy into a concept as narcissistic as “God created man in His own image,” so he gets to do whatever he damn well pleases with the planet. We figure all species, whether flora or fauna, should have the right to exist irrespective of corporate profit.

And, if like Wallace Stegner said of Abbey, we become “burrs under the saddle blanket of complacency,” so be it.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

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