Since We've Been Gone . . .

A sunset and the silhouettes of palm trees. The photo was taken from the Transportation and Ticket Center, looking toward the Polynesian Resort at Walt Disney World. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

OK, so we haven't posted anything in awhile.  Yours Truly just spent a week on Florida's west coast looking at palm trees, beaches, canals, and maybe a couple of alligators.  But now it's time to get back to work, so let's get on with it.

The Week In Trump

The President's remaining Cabinet picks have been confirmed, though it took Vice President Mike Pence's deciding vote as President of the Senate to get Betsy DeVos into her Secretary of Education position.  Michael Flynn might not be national security adviser much longer because he allegedly contacted Russian officials about sanctions before Trump took office.  The controversial travel ban affecting seven Muslim-dominated countries that ended up ensnaring a lot of non-terrorists is having trouble getting past the courts.  So the President, still insisting that the ninety-day ban is still necessary for national security, is saying he'll soon have a modified executive order covering that.  And speaking of security, couldn't the President's staff have come up with a more secure location than an open-air Florida restaurant when North Korea launched a test missile?  With the Japanese prime minister looking on?

Grammys Say "Hello" Again to Adele

Adele, music's queen of heartbreak, dominated the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles again Sunday with major trophies for 25 as Album of the Year, and for Hello as Record and Song of the Year.  She even survived messing up a tribute to George Michael and made his song Fastlove her own.  (And there's your Grammy Moment.)  Beyonce, whose groundbreaking album Lemonade was expected to do much better than it did, could only muster an Urban Contemporary award.   It didn't help that her performance, which was apparently about motherhood (she's pregnant with twins), reeked of pretentiousness.

The Inevitable Grammy Tribute to Prince, with Bruno Mars doing a nice imitation of the Purple One, and Morris Day and The Time brought out of mothballs to perform Jungle Love, wasn't as awkward as it could have been.  As for host James Corden of CBS' "Late Late Show"?  All we can say is:  Come back, LL Cool J.  All is forgiven.

The Recording Academy, the ones who pass out the Grammys, have never been the hippest people in the room.  How else to explain why another black artist, such as Beyonce, was passed over for a white artist for Album of the Year?  Also, the Academy really needs to do something about the length of their show, which this year ran as long as a typical Oscars telecast clocking in at nearly four hours. Maybe more awards and fewer "Grammy moments"?

Caught In a Dynasty

The New England Patriots made plenty of history at Super Bowl 51 in Houston.  They completed the biggest comeback ever (which coincided with the biggest meltdown ever for the Atlanta Falcons), overcoming a 25-point deficit in the second half, then scoring the winning touchdown in the first overtime ever for a 34-28 victory.  Patriots coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady won their fifth Super Bowl together, giving the proverbial middle finger to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for the Deflategate nonsense that resulted in Brady's four-game suspension.

Lady Gaga was the halftime entertainment, giving an athletic and spirited performance that also managed to squeeze in as many subtle Donald Trump digs as the NFL (and Fox) would allow.  But the high-priced commercials weren't that great.  See you in Minneapolis.

Ray Christensen (1924-2017)

Ray Christensen had a long career on Twin Cities radio, but was best known as the voice of University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football and men's basketball.  Beginning on campus station KUOM in 1951 and ending on WCCO-AM in 2001, Christensen called 510 football games and over 1300 basketball games.  When he landed at WCCO in 1963 after a few years at WLOL-AM, he did a little bit of everything besides calling sports, including news broadcasts and hosting a classical music program.  He was one of the most recognizable voices on the Big 8-3-0, a station that had no shortage of talent.  Christensen died on Feburary 5 at the age of 92.

And finally, a word about the Tampa Bay TV news stations.  We sampled the network affiliates, mostly WFLA (NBC) News Channel 8 and News 10 WTSP (CBS).  We thought News Channel 8 had a better handle on local coverage and a more photogenic news team than News 10 did, being that this is Florida.  News 10 and KARE in the Twin Cities share the same parent company (Tegna), so their newscasts kind of looked alike.  Instead of backyards and goofballs doing the weather, both Tampa stations aggressively promoted their Doppler radars as "Max Defender 8' (or something like that) and their news choppers, which the Minnesota stations stopped promoting years ago.  It's necessary for an area that gets its share of severe weather and the occasional hurricane, but all the money the stations spent on the radars goes to waste on sunny days. 

OK, that's enough.  We're all caught up.