Okay, I’ll own up. I am 80 years old, however my body has not advised me to slow down nor have my brain’s neurons stopped firing at warp speed. The result is that I keep on truckin.’ Not literally, of course. Truckin’ is passé. It will never be an event on “Dancing with the Stars.”

Just when I thought I had done everything I could for radio, the San Diego Union -Tribune approached me, asking if I would do a Monday-Friday show on their new internet radio station, SignOnRadio.com.

I was fascinated, but am currently flooded with other time consuming projects and almost said, “No.” But…wait a minute….I was choking on the word , “no!”

The SignOnRadio.com folks and I spoke at length, feverishly turning this over and over in our collective minds. Okay, I’m going to level with you. We spoke for about five minutes, and I eagerly agreed to do a Wednesday show from1p-3p.

In my mind, being “on” once a week was nothing for a guy like me, with an adrenal gland for a heart, an abundance of raw talent, and a treasure trove of experience to draw upon.

Good thing I agreed to one day only. I am devoting three days a week to planning a two hour show.

Why did I agree to get back into the trenches? I wanted to see what internet radio was about, have some laughs, and above all, to see if I could join in.

A prestigious local publication, The San Diego Business Journal, ran a feature on SignOnRadio,com, with their writer, Connie Lewis, asking me if doing internet radio gave me the same rush as my pioneering days in radio.

I started to give her a humorous reply. “Connie, it’s the difference between throwing a bullet and firing a bullet.” Good quote, right? but, wait…there is a similarity.

I am getting the same rush that I did when I was playing the outrageous new rock and roll to a non-measurable audience at KCBQ, then watching all hell break loose when the new Japanese transistor radios got into the hands of the kids, drowning out the more staid big bands and ballads formats.

The culture shock was especially jarring to me, because I had been a part of pre-rock radio at KLAC in Hollywood, then going into the army, and coming back to the strange new world of rock and roll.

I had two choices: die under the trampling stampede of the rock crazed kids, or run ahead of them and lead.*

Understanding the transistor was easy. This little music box made heroes out of me and a few other stalwarts.

Internet radio is going to be more demanding. As I admitted last week I cannot write knowingly about it, because I don’t know anything about it, so this time I can’t run ahead and lead.

It’s a different era, with brilliant visionaries who can unmask me in a matter of milliseconds on the internet if I make a false move. In the old days, I had plenty of lead-time.

Ostensibly, doing an internet radio show is not much different than doing an old time radio show. .I simply go into a studio, sit in front of a mic and issue humorous profundities, the same as before, except now, I wind up proliferating out of PC’s worldwide.

However, I didn’t sign up with “SignOn” just to sit there in the cloistered precinct of a studio and do the same ol’ radio show. This will be much different. Instead of me being the prime energy source, I want to harness all of the pent up creative energy that is being diffused out there in internet radio land, and focus it laser- like with blinding force.

Bringing about social change will be a rush.. In the old technology, legislators were able to use media lag time to stall and duck righteous criticism till their critics grew tired and gave up, but no longer.

If you have a legitimate beef, Internet radio will enable you to take that giant megaphone into your own hands and roar your opinion into the half deaf ears of civic, state, and national leaders. It’s as if a loudspeaker has been hot wired into their brains.

The San Diego Union-Tribune ownership of SighOnRadio.com will be especially effective, because in this same buildings are some of the finest writers in the business How is that for creative resources?

The internet itself will soon be wireless, enabling feats of near magic performed, by regular citizens. Technology will improve cell phones until they are even more like video cams.

Imagine yourself calling an internet host and reporting the manageable beginnings of a fire in real time, showing it with vivid high def pictures and directing the Fire fighters to the site, all possible now, but just wait till the generation of technology sweeps in.…….

The raw technology is here now, but improved batteries and more web compatible phone screens will make today’s cell phones obsolete, like those early transistor radios.

I like to write in parables. What I am about to relate to you is do-able even with current technology, but a parable is a better teaching aid.

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in Idaho, when suddenly, a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust of cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses
and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, 'If I tell you
exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give
me a calf?'

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully
grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, why not?'

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects
it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the
Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on
his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the
area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports
it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has
been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database
through an ODBC connected Excel spread sheet with email on his Blackberry
and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech,
miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and
says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'

'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as
the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then, Bud says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what
your business is, will you give me back my calf?'

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why
not?'

'You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government', says Bud.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required.' answered the cowboy. 'You showed up here even
though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already
knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter
than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd
of sheep…………Now, give me back my dog.

My warmest thanks to Ken Kramer, the elegant NBC 7/39 TV interviewer who, last week, made me look even better in a re-run of his original Happy Hare feature a couple of weeks ago. Ken saw fit to embellish the original piece with even higher praise. One usually has to die before such good words are said about him.

*A History Lesson

When French King Louis 14th, or was it Randy Michaels, saw a torch bearing mob demonstrating wildly across the expanse of the Place de la Concorde, he shouted to his Ministers, ”Quick! Run out and see what they want, so I can run ahead and lead them.”