KTRU Leaving the Airwaves

The University of Houston Board of Regents voted 4-3 last week to purchase the transmitter and license of Rice University's KTRU 91.7 FM, effectively ending the station's 43-year run as a college radio trailblazer. KTRU will now become KUHC, a 24-hour classical music station, which frees up KUHF, UH's other radio station, to be a 24-hour NPR affiliate. KTRU will live on as an online streaming station, but that's a far cry from broadcasting with a 50,000-watt transmitter.

I first discovered KTRU as an impressionable 12-year-old listening to the S&M Show on Friday night. In 1980, KTRU was the only station in Houston where you were likely to hear anything to the left of "Whip It" on a regular basis. The first time my own music was played on the radio was on KTRU. Having worked as a DJ at UT Austin's student-run KTSB/KVRX in its cable radio infancy, I can authoritatively state that many of us considered KTRU's programming a benchmark to measure ourselves against.

Rice University's leadership shamefully engineered this $9.5 million deal in secret and made sure it went down in the dead of August to avoid the firestorm they knew would ensue if word got out while students were in town. Even so, a hastily assembled group called "Save KTRU" has formed in response.

Although the sale of KTRU to UH is still subject to FCC approval, it's unlikely the feds or anyone else can or will do anything to stop it. According to today's Houston Press, KUHF/KUHC is scheduled to take over KTRU's programming on Monday.

To some, the hue and cry over Rice's off-loading of KTRU may just seem like a bunch of music snobs whining about a station that played weird noise that most people don't listen to. But as someone whose student radio experience helped foster my career path as much as any class, I know there's way more at stake here. Former KTRU DJ Ray Shea sums it up as well as anyone:

KTRU was the driving force that would eventually propel me through six years and two college degrees. My best lifelong friends are all people I met at KTRU. And together we learned about music, about business, about media and promotions and organization and scheduling and budgeting. We learned how to deal with people, how to compromise and reach consensus. Sometimes we didn't learn as well as we should have, but goddammit, we learned.

And somewhere in all that craziness, all those late nights drinking beer and listening to records and arguing about music, we accidentally participated in a movement. A movement that would permanently change the face of the music industry forever.

Rice is short-sightedly gutting a learning laboratory that helped generations of students channel their passion for music and radio into viable skills for business and life. At $9.5 million, they're selling out cheap.

Credits Roll for Dobie Theatre

It's the end of the line for the Dobie Theatre. The 4-screen cinema across the street from UT will close Sunday.

The Dobie was never a particularly great place to see a movie. Parking was a hassle, the screens were small and the auditorium seating configurations were weird. Despite all that, the Dobie's adventurous programming during its 80s/90s heyday made it an integral part of Austin's film scene. In many ways, longtime Dobie owner/manager Scott Dinger set the stage for the Alamo Drafthouse's ascendancy.

The first movie I ever saw at the Dobie was a midnight screening of Liquid Sky 23 years ago this month. I saw a lot of midnight movies at Dobie between 1987 and 1989 because it was an easy stumble from my dorm room. Alcohol definitely enlivened repeated viewings of low-budget, Troma-style gore vehicles like Blood Diner, Street Trash and Surf Nazis Must Die. Then there was the 3-D porn movie with the late John Holmes literally coming right at you.

I remember going to see Slacker there in 1990 when it was just a weird local indie film. The girl I went with thought the movie was pointless, but for me, Slacker epitomized why disregarding potential career opportunities to stay in Austin after graduation might not be such a bad idea.

The last movie I remember seeing at the Dobie was the Ramones doc End of the Century in 2005. After Landmark Theaters took over the Dobie in 1999, they gradually began shifting toward more typical art-house fare that could just as easily be seen at other cinemas around town. Landmark announced it was abandoning the Dobie earlier this year. The chain sought a new operator to take over, but like many formerly thriving UT-area businesses, the Dobie has become functionally obsolete.

When I came to UT, you could see movies at the Dobie, the Varsity and at several on-campus locations curated by the Texas Union Film Program. What a difference a quarter-century makes (adjusts dentures).

Remembering Ron Turk

I found out last week that my old friend Ron Turk has passed away. The initial shock of this unexpected shard of news gradually gave way to sadness, longing and – most of all – profound appreciation for Ron’s friendship over the years.

Ron and I met 25 years ago in sophomore biology class at Bellaire High School. Even back then, Ron was a great conversationalist, which may explain why my biology grade went from A to C as we got to know each other better. I'm pretty sure he was the only person in class who thought it was hilarious when I stood up from my desk one day and turned out the classroom lights because I mistakenly thought I heard the teacher ask me to.

Ron was both smart and wise. While I was immersed in the obnoxious words and deeds of generalized adolescent rebellion and blanket disdain for convention, Ron was able to see beyond all that. He sought out the good in people and didn't allow himself to be constrained by social boundaries.

Our friendship continued when we both landed in Austin to attend UT. We had a couple of auditorium-sized undergraduate classes together and I admired the way Ron would get to know the professors. I was always too shy to do that. A few years later, Ron had the ear of the UT System Board of Regents when he led an effort to get UT to divest its tobacco holdings. He understood the incremental nature of social change and knew studied pragmatism would take his causes much further than a thousand holier-than-thou rants.

Many times over the course of our college years, Ron listened patiently to my inebriated, self-depreciating discourse on being perennially lovelorn. Deep down, I bet Ron knew the culprits of my condition were emotional immaturity coupled with abject fear of rejection, but he never blew me off with a blunt summation like that. On the contrary, his counsel was always offered with a great deal of both wit and affection. When you were talking with Ron, you were talking. The things he said stuck with you.

Even though we'd only been in touch sporadically in the post-graduate years, I always thought in the back of my mind that Ron and I would reconnect over beers one day and pick back up right where we left off. Days after hearing the news, I still can't fully believe I won't see him again, but I will always treasure memories of the times we had together. He is truly a friend for the ages.

Tufts Attempts to Rescue the Sexiled

Don't even think about hanging a sock on the door at Tufts University. Following an uptick in complaints from sexiled roomies, the Medford, Mass. institution has banned sex in campus dorm rooms when a roommate is present.

Call me old-fashioned, but it seems awfully nannyish for a university to enact such a reactionary, far-reaching policy. If one of my dormmates was in flagrante, I either found someplace else to go or put a pillow over my head. A c-block would've been downright unbromanly, especially when my own bouts of alcohol-fueled stupidity were every bit as disruptive as whatever furtive groping took place on the other side of the room.

It is difficult for me to fathom the apparent trauma that writer (and Tufts alum) J. Bruce Daley inflicted upon his roommate by having sex in his presence.

"I will never forget the look on my roommate's face the next morning," Daley regretfully recounts. "I could see that he felt is privacy had been violated...He transferred schools after our freshman year and has spent the rest of his life living in Asia."

Asia? Dude, you could've just gone to the study lounge!

Of course, I never had to share a room with a steady couple that copulated like jackrabbits at all hours. I can see how that would become a problem requiring intervention from residential advisors, but if two ostensibly adult roommates can't work it out amongst themselves, why should dorm sex be handled differently than any other untenable living situation?

A Royal Blunder

Kate: I first noticed this billboard while driving on I-35 south, where it stood out because of the dazed expression on former UT football coach Royal's face. The poor guy, I thought, probably didn't expect to end up looking like that in this ad campaign. But not being a native Texan or a particularly huge football fan, I didn't notice the sign's most glaring error until I showed Greg the billboard. His exclamation "They misspelled his name!" almost caused me to swerve off the road - not because I was appalled by the copy editing error so much as the volume of the observation.

Greg: Well, what do you expect, Kate? This is Darrell freakin' Royal we're talking about. The Longhorn brain trust loves this man more than Jesus and the Beatles. They put his name ahead of our nation's war dead on the football stadium and he's not even dead yet. I thought the worst local copy editing error one could make was to spell Stevie Ray Vaughan's last name "Vaughn," but this is worse. The deer-in-the-headlights look on the man's face makes me feel sorry for him even though he undoubtedly scored a rather large check for his services and probably doesn't care that one of the world's largest media conglomerates can't spell his name right.

Kate: The thing that gets me about these billboards - that's right, there are at least two of them in Austin - is that Time Warner has been making a point in their recent campaign of stressing their local connection with the "we think like you" messages. Here's what I think - someone needs to do some basic fact-checking.

Greg: I never thought I'd find myself defending the honor of Coach Royal, but I hereby challenge Time Warner to a dual!

This post simultaneously appeared on Lone Star Kate.

UPDATE (12/2/2007): My pal Kent B. pointed out another typo on the Royal billboard. The "K" in "Darrell K Royal" is not a middle initial and therefore should not be followed by a period. The "K" is a tribute to Royal's mom, Katy, who died of cancer when he was still a baby. So not only did Time Warner misspell Royal's name, they insulted the memory of his mother.

Bank 'Em Horns!

When one sees a headline like "The Longhorn Economy" splayed across the front of the Sunday Statesman, it's natural to assume you're about to read a rah-rah puff piece about how great UT football games are for our local economy.

As it turns out, Eric Dexheimer's series about the engorged budget of UT's athletics department is required reading for anyone who cares about higher education in Texas. Set against the backdrop of rising tuition and student services fees, dwindling need-based financial aid opportunities and student loans that take forever to pay off, it's hard not to be sickened by how much money is being thrown around by the Burnt Orange Brass ($107.6 million this year).

Although UT's athletic program does make money, the school's role as pacesetter among programs forces the vast majority of college sports programs that don't make money to mortgage their futures in the name of remaining competitive. For example, four out of every 10 dollars of Texas Tech's current debt service now goes to pay off new and refurbished sports facilities.

Meanwhile, our tax code rewards well-heeled alumni with hefty deductions for donations to athletic programs. Believe it or not, 80 percent of the donations made to university athletic foundations to secure luxury box rentals and prime season tickets can be written off.

Aside from funneling donations away from academics, allowing deductions on luxury box rentals encourages wasteful, extravagant spending of Other People's Money under the phony guise of "doing business." The whole system stands as yet another indictment of our depraved sense of priorities in this country.

All this for a football team that can't even beat Kansas State!

Mudders Beat DUI Rap by Trespassing

If you’re a College Republican in Texas who wants to get boozed up and go muddin’ in your daddy’s SUV, be sure to do it on private property.

That’s what Texas State students Dustin Bednorz and William Fischer did on the morning of March 17 near the banks of the Blanco River in San Marcos. Even though these two reckless scions ran over three campers and responding police smelled alcohol on both drivers' breaths, they apparently could not charge them with drunk driving because everyone involved was trespassing on private property. All the local constabulary could do was shrug their shoulders and say, “This was a tragic accident.”

Of course, it’s always a tragic accident when nice white college kids mess up.

10 Stupid Things I Did While Living in Jester Center

1. Drank a half-gallon jug’s worth of screwdrivers, kicked the metal casing off a drinking fountain and urinated in an elevator while returning to my 12th floor room, where I passed out kneeling against my bed in a puddle of vomit.

2. Invited my hall mates to watch me create flash fires with non-dairy creamer in the stairwell, which led to me being a prime suspect when AFD had to roll several fire trucks to Jester because a different idiot set fire to a towel in said stairwell (fortunately I was out of town that weekend).

3. Didn’t lock the door to my dorm room after returning home from a Butthole Surfers show, which resulted in a very drunk unidentified male coming into our room at 3am and climbing into bed with my roommate, where he promptly pissed himself.

4. Smeared the remnants of my 19th birthday cake all over the elevator lobby in a fit of drunken pique.

5. Ate French fries at lunch and dinner every day for two years.

6. Went out of my way to convince my born-again resident advisor that I worshipped Satan shortly after a UT student on spring break was found murdered outside Matamoros by a drug-trafficking cult of Santeria enthusiasts.

7. Smashed a tennis racquet against my suitemates’ bathroom door after they propped a cup of water against my door and knocked, which sent water spilling into my room.

8. Hosted a pretend radio show on KTRD, “Turd 98 FM,” on an alarmingly regular basis until UT’s student radio station gave me a real show.

9. Incurred a constant stream of noise complaints by playing loud music and singing along at the top of my lungs.

10. Tried dipping Copenhagen at my roommate’s insistence, went zooming for about 30 seconds, vomited without honor.

Back to School

Kate had a fencing tournament at UT’s Recreational Sports Center on Saturday. I hadn’t been to the Rec Center since 1990 when I was writing a story about its impending grand opening for UT’s alumni magazine. Between graduate school, playing the punk rock and slapping meat on bread, I didn’t have much time for recreating back then.

I’d never been to a fencing tournament, either. Once Kate gave me a brief overview of the scoring system, though, I could enjoy the matches on a rudimentary level. She won two of the three matches I saw and was pleased with her overall performance. So was I, and I’m not just saying that because she knows how to wield a foil.

I ventured over to the Jester Center Wendy’s in between Kate’s matches to grab a bite and watched some of the nail-biting UT-Nebraska game. It was fun to watch a game on campus again, and even if we would've lost, I still would've been happy to not be standing around in the snow in Lincoln.

I lived in Jester Center from 1987 through 1989. With a capacity of almost 3,000 residents, Jester is the largest dorm in North America. I never had much love for its brutal, Soviet-style ambience.

Walking through the doors, I still recognize the scent of college from two decades ago. If I had to describe it, I would say it’s a cross between dorm food and cleaning fluid. I’d know that smell anywhere.