-By Warner Todd Huston
It has been more than 60 years since the plane carrying rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and Jiles Perry “The Big Bopper” Richardson crashed into an Iowa cornfield on Feb. 3, 1959. It was memorialized as “The day the music died,” but the story has been a life-long event that haunted the world of the Big Bopper’s son, a boy who never met his famous father. But that total estrangement ended 50 years after the crash when that meeting finally took place in a strange but beautiful way.
The boy who was born two months after his famous father died in a tragic plane crash on the “Day The Music Died,” saw his father’s face for the first time, fifty years after the fatal day that stole the elder from our world.
How is this, you ask? This all may seem like one of those riddles or some exercise in logic but, no, I assure you it’s quite a true story. And the truth of the matter makes for a fascinating, if unlikely, story.
Jay Perry Richardson was born the same year his father died in a plane accident that was mourned around the world. In fact, Jay was still peacefully floating in his mother’s womb when that fatal day in 1959 came to take the life of his vital and well-known father. Young Jay never laughed with his father, never touched his dad’s face, never learned to ride a bike by his dad’s side and were it not for the heavily thumbed and faded photographs his family all so cherished, young Jay wouldn’t even know what his father looked like.
Unless… unless he looked in the mirror. Yes, that face he wore, he has been told, is the spitting image of his father’s. The thought likely always warmed Jay’s heart.
He may not have known his father in person, but Jay was always fascinated by his father’s legacy and felt close to him despite the distance between them. Jay spent those fifty years of his life studying his father, talking to the many admirers who knew him, writing of him, and traveling the country to keep his father’s memory alive. Even emulating what he knew of the man whose hand he never held, a man with whom he was never able to toss around a football, a man who missed being able to beam with pride at the many successes of a boy he would never know.
Continue reading “50 Years After ‘The Day The Music Died,’ This Boy Finally Met His Long, Lost Father”
In the aftermath of the terrible bombing of children in Manchester, England, the pop singer who they came to see has offered to pay for the funerals of the victims, a report says.
Young journalist Alexis Bloomer has a message for her fellow millennials and it’s one many won’t want to hear. Alexis wants her fellow 20 somethings to “pull their pants up” and start actually contributing to society instead of lazing around and posting social media updates as if that was activism.
Before we get to the film, many younger viewers will be wholly unfamiliar with the source material. The original “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” TV show, staring Robert Vaughn, David McCallum, and Leo G. Carroll, debuted during the 1964 TV season and almost disappeared in a single season were it not for a spectacular PR effort. Not only was that first season in boring black and white, but it barely made a dent in the ratings meaning the show wasn’t even close to a hit during its first run episodes. But due to some brilliant rear guard public relations, during the show’s Summer reruns U.N.C.L.E. grew into a huge hit becoming one of the world’s first appointment television shows with a world-wide fan base that for a short time rivaled that of The Beatles. 
The show that pretty much programmed every spy show since its debut featured a suave, super cool American spy with the unforgettable name of Napoleon Solo (played by veteran actor Robert Vaughn). The imperturbable Solo used his brains as much as he used his brawn to solve his spy assignments. In fact, his brawn was often not much to write home about as he was knocked to the ground and tied up by the bad guys as often as he bested them in fisticuffs. 
His partner, Russian super spy Illya Nickovitch Kuryakin (David McCallum, a bit of a newcomer to American audiences) was an interesting, enigmatic, sarcastic man of action who offered as much sex appeal for the ladies as he revealed embarrassment over that very appeal. Many NBC executives initially thought that the character, with his mop of blond hair and youth appeal, was a bad idea. They thought that this Russian hippy should have been gotten rid of. Some even worried that viewers would think he was gay and we can’t have gays on TV in 1964! In fact, the Illya character was initially only cast as a semi-regular character but once fans saw the chemistry between Napoleon and his pal Illya, they couldn’t get enough and Illya’s role was bumped up to co-star. Illya’s past was a bit cryptic and he was certainly never called a Soviet. The closest viewers got to learning about Illya’s personal past was when we learned that he went to the University of Georgia… not the one in the southern state but the Russian one!
Acting as the guiding hand over this pair of super agents was their boss, Alexander Waverly, leader of U.N.C.L.E. Waverly was played by veteran actor Leo G. Carroll who brought a grandfatherly, legitimizing presence to the series.
A fellow going by the moniker “Stereo Williams,” one who claims to be an entertainment writer from New York, is all weepy because he thinks white kids who are fans of rap music “don’t give a shit about blacks.” But a look at the lyrics of nearly any rap song pretty much proves that the blacks that make the stuff are really the ones who don’t give a shit about blacks.
They’ve ignored the violent region for a decade, they’ve never spoken out about the Islamist radical terrorists who have killed thousands, but now that over 250 girls have been kidnapped by the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, suddenly a handful of Hollywooders have deigned to notice… and weeks late at that.
In a new interview, pop artist Kanye West revealed just what made him write “I Am God” for his latest album, Yeezus. It was, 
As President Obama is heard scolding Republicans on a near daily basis for forcing a sequester that is shutting down government and halting funding for things like White House tours, he and First Wife Michelle geared up Tuesday for a star-studded, soul music concert in the White House that featured such stars as Justin Timberlake, Queen Latifah, and the Reverend Al Green.
A formal complaint has been filed with a New York lobbying board to investigate whether Yoko Ono, Robert De Niro and nearly 200 other celebrities have violated state laws with their Artists Against Fracking activist group.
There is a new face on the pro-gun circuit. Mr. Colion Noir, a young African American who is conservative and pro-gun, is the National Rifle Association’s newest spokesman but apparently this has proven too much for rap and entertainment mogul Russell Simmons.
At a 2012 campaign fundraiser, President Barack Obama sang a line of Al Green’s hit “Let’s Stay Together” as the singer watched from the audience. Green, however, turned down an invite to attend and perform at the President’s second inauguration.
Rapper Lupe Fiasco lived down to his name at a recent corporate-sponsored inauguration party in Washington D.C. when he was thrown off the stage by the hosts for going on a tirade against President Obama, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, audience members said.
When the South Korean Pop song Gangnam Style first became the thing here in the only country in the world that counts, I was bemused by the tune and its frenetic horse-galloping dance moves. I thought it was funny and fun. But now I find out that the Korean artist, Psy, has told American to fuck off (excuse HIS language) now he is persona non gratta. I’ve gone back and eliminated all Psy posts I’ve made before and will never support this creep’s work again.
After forty some years of prominently featuring the Southern Cross flag of the old Confederacy as part of its schtick, suddenly the southern rock band Lynyrd Skynrd is