No One is Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame

I was disappointed to find out that Mike Piazza was not elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Many voters may be reluctant to elect some one when they are eligible for the first time.  I am almost certain that Mike will get in within a few years.  Hopefully he will be wearing a New York Mets cap on his plaque.

I was satisfied the Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds were not elected.  It is almost obvious that they used performance enhancing drugs and should not be enshrined.

Remembering Elvis on His Birthday

Elvis Presley would have been 78 years old today had he lived.  Above is a photo of Lee with his 3 Stooges t-shirt standing with a wax figure of The King at Madam Tussaud's Museum a few years ago.  Over the years Lee has been the biggest Elvis fan in the family.  We saw Graceland in 2004 when we visited Memphis.  Most of the tourists there were not yet born when Elvis died in 1977

Random Thoughts of the Day

Right now I am listening to Cool Bobby B on SiriusXM 50s on 5.  He is playing a countdown of the top 50 Doo Wop hits as voted by his listeners.  I voted for I Only Have Eyes for You by the Flamingos as my favorite Doo Wop.  It is a shame that we can't hear this music on terrestrial music any more.  After coming to the recent oldies meet and greet Bobby is now Alan Berman's friend for life.

There will be a full week of work coming up.  Things will likely stay very slow as classes do not resume until January 22.

I took a look at the Jewish calendar and noted that all of the holidays are early this year.  I will have to ask my friends who are experts in Judaica why there is no "leap month" this year.  Since the Jewish calendar is based on lunar cycles, there must a a leap month every so often to "catch up" with the secular calendar.

My Radio Listening for Tonight

6:00 - Don McGee's Mixed Bag Show on WFUV - I am pleased that WFUV has continued the Mixed Bag Show after the untimely passing of Pete Fornatale.  Certainly nobody can replace Pete but I certainly enjoy Don's style and selection of music.  IMHO WFUV succeeds the tradition of WNEW-FM when it was an AOR station. The proper description of WFUV in radio format jargon is AAA (Adult Album Alternative)

8:00 - Cousin Brucie on SiriusXM 60s on 6.  I have been listening to the Cuz for over 50 years.  Maybe I'll hear Mary Shaw (Ms. Radio) phone in.

I hope I can squeeze in some time to watch part of the Knick game.

Mark Simone leaves WABC for WOR

Before you read the rest of the entry, I found out from a reliable source that Mark Simone is not married.  That is likely what you want to know.

Allan Sniffen reported today on the New York Radio Message Board that Mark Simone resigned from WABC radio and will be on WOR from 10 AM to 12 noon weekdays.  This obviously means that the Saturday Night show will be going off the air.  I will try to make my remarks as objective as possible.  I was an avid listener of Saturday Night Oldies for about the first 3 1/2 years of its run.  It was a good mix of oldies music, interviews of music personalities, and nostalgia talk.  After a while many of the features like the fake break (old commercials) became stale.  The show was rebranded as the Saturday Night Show with less music and more entertainment talk.  At this point many avid listeners including myself lost interest in the show and stopped listening.

There was an official message board associated with the show and an unofficial board on Yahoo which I feel generated some animosity among listeners who agreed or disagreed with features of the show.  To make a long story short Mark Simone was very nasty and abusive to me which led me to stop listening to that show. Cousin Brucie is a "radio mensch" on Saturday nights while Mr. Simone was very much a coward by assuming a false identity on the Yahoo board and bashing many people including myself.  There were some other issues that I will not discuss here.

The show served its purpose by putting oldies on terrestrial radio for 4 hours a week after WCBS-FM was hijacked in 2005.  I feel that it served its purpose, took its course, and should have been retired a few years ago.  It was quite sad that a difference of opinion among those who liked and disliked the show created some animosity.

I stand by the remarks that I have just made.

Random Thoughts at the Beginning of the Year

Today was my first day back at work at the  NJIT Library.  The place was virtually empty.  I thought there would be some international students doing some research, but there was hardly anybody there.

The CBS Sports Network made its debut today nationally.  In NYC it is now heard on WCBS-FM HD3, but since there are so few HD radios out there the station will not have much impact.  There is speculation that this station will go to 94.7 FM once that frequency is sold.  There are now 3 English and one Spanish language sports stations in NYC.

There have been some significant format changes in Boston.  101.7 FM is now playing electronic dance music.  The station at 96.9 FM just dropped it talk format and is playing contemporary music.  The posters on the radio message boards say that this is a temporary format.

Right now I listening some clips of FM radio in NYC from 1970-83 posted by Bob Goodman on Facebook.  I really wish that terrestrial music would sound like that today.

TV Marathons on New Years Day

There were 3 TV marathons on TV today"

• Three Stooges on Antenna TV
• Twilight Zone on Sy Fy Channel
• Honeymooners on WPIX-11

Years ago Karen recorded episodes on all of these series.  I really think that TV was better all those years ago.