A couple of noteworthy passings...

BOB LASSITER

Tampa talk radio legend Bob Lassiter passed away after a long illness. Impossible to agree with 100% of the time regardless of your political leanings...by design...Lassiter artfully employed bombast as one weapon in an arsenal that included humor, sarcasm, pathos and every once in a great while, when he felt like it, genuine warmth. Either brutally honest or just plain brutal (depending on which side of the day's argument you found yourself on), Lassiter was equal parts amused by and frustrated with the foibles that mankind inflicted upon itself. He was also one of the last practitioners of radio as "theatre of the mind". I could say he will be missed but anybody who owns a radio already does...whether they know it or not.

CBGB

I'm not a Starbucks hater. far from it, in fact. I rather enjoy the occassional $5 coffee! Hey, it's good...get over it. But the fact of the matter is there are plenty of Starbucks around. But there was only one CBGB, and now it's closed. That's right, the breeding ground of The Ramones, Blondie, Television, Sonic Youth and Talking Heads among others is no more. We can figure out a way to have a Starbucks for every 2.5 adult human beings in the United States but we can't figure out a way to keep a single, solitary, sweat-and-vomit soaked birthplace of great American music in business? Unbelievable.

This is exactly the kind of cultural blasphemy that would have delighted/pissed off Bob Lassiter.