"What Was That?"

Flirtatious: "How would you like that cooked?"

Real Mood? Bemused !

Prediction? The Briquet Market will see a dip this week?

Why am I  listening to Bizet? Read on. 

Sometimes you see things that just don't make sense. There is no congruity, no logicality, no simple explanation. Sometimes it's big obvious things. Sometimes it's little itty-bitty things, and every thing in between. Let me give you a few examples just to get going here.  I was driving by a very small urban bungalow one day to notice it had this huge facade, twice the dimensions of the actual facade. I thought maybe it was just some neighborhood joke or statement, but it never went away.  So I had to go ask.  Turns out the man who used to own the home moved there from a small town that had huge Victorian facades.  He couldn't bring the home with him,  so he brought the facade. For the record Craftsman bungalows and  Victorian don't match. It's still there if you're interested.

Some friends of mine and me were working on putting a freelance story together two years ago. We saw someone selling gourmet coffee out of what looked to me like a horse trailer.  Turns out it was a construction trailer but why quibble. It was still weird. But when we went to talk to the proprietor of this budding business, she out did us on the "that's weird" quotient.

 She says a few days after she opened, an old cowboy (maybe I should call him mature) rides up in chaps and spurs and hat and rope and all that other stuff,  and orders a "vente carmel mocha." 

At the time it had reminded me of a story I wanted to do on culture clashes in growth communities.  I was inspired by someone opening a new business on a fairly busy main road in a small town.  It was a health food store.  Nothing really strange about that except it chose as it's location a storefront right next to a "Saddle and Tack" store.  By the time I got someone to agree to give me enough time to do the story, the saddle guy went out of business. I would just  laugh to myself at the thought of the conversations that might go on in front of those two stores.  I know, and now you know, of at least one cowboy who might have frequented both establishments.

This is all a prelude to talking about something I've just seen along a major highway around here.  We're driving by these new, I'd say,five acre home sites.  The finished homes I would guess to be in the five to six thousand square foot range. To be fair I'm not an expert at these type of estimates. One home has a beautiful West facing site looking at the Rocky Moutains.  No expense has been spared on balconies and patios pretty much circling the home.  The main patio sits there with that Western view.  You can see very expensive stone flooring.  The stones rise up to form short decorative walls surrounding the patio.  I know they're short because I can peer over them to see the barbeque area. How do I know it's the barbeque area? Because I can see the barbeque.  I know it's a barbeque because I've seen one just like it before.

It has these two a half foot high aluminum legs holding it up.  The actual barbequing unit is shaped a little like a flying saucer, except it's black. I don't think black shows up in the night sky. So where's the propane tank, or the natural gas hookup? No where to be seen. That's because this barbeque requires one to open up it's hood, pull up the grate, and pour in a bag of charcoal briquets.  Like the rest of the patio,  these people spared no expense.  I saw a unit just like it at Lowe's for $39.95. Of course it's late in the season.  They were probably going for $50.00 in the Spring.

I'm sorry, but it just makes me wonder. Do they just like the taste of lighter fluid?  Is it a case of "we had to cut corners somewhere?" Is it the contractor's statement over some last minute change order? Has there been some major natural gas line break and they're hosting a neighborhood barbeque this afternoon? Did the owners get rich as briquet sales people,  and the real barbeque is on the less visible East side of the house?

I'm not sure I want any of those questions answered. It's too much fun to speculate.  But you got to admit.  It don't make no sense.

Oh, yeah! So why am I listening to Bizet. I've no idea.  It makes no sense at all.

Pictures Don't Lie, Do They?

Flirtatious: You ought to be in pictures.

Real Mood? Reflectively refreshed.

Prediction: Lance Armstrong will not win le Tour du France next year.  Now on yesterday's predictions. I took some risks I want you to know, and I'm not out of the woods yet. I did accurately predict Lance would win this year.  But did you see him almost fall down?  It could have happened. On the other prediction I'm still hanging. I've been eating apples with Australian stickers on them since April. That's why I thought I was safe predicting a good harvest in 2005. They've already had it.  But I couldn't find any numbers on that harvest any where. I'm still looking.  I did discover that Australia is one of the top producers of the Custard Apple. I'm going to want a non-Aussie recommendation before I bite into something that just doesn't sound like it should exist.  Remember these are the same people who eat vegemite.

What a different day. After breakfast we popped by the photo store and Best Buy and spent some more money we didn't have. It was all because I'm getting ambitious and semi-serious about this photography thing. And the more I thought about it in that reflection, the more I remember with fondness my photo journalist friends.

One of my favorite photographer stories to tell students took place back when Federico Pena was the Mayor of this City. He was going to be flying out of Stapleton to Washington D.C.   Andy Schaeffer (the PJ) and I were sent late, to get video of the Mayor, and at least 45 seconds of cover video of  his Continental 737  taxiing away from the gate.

We got there just in time to shoot him walking onto the jetway, and then Andy raced back to see if he could get an angle on the jet backing out. He could, but he really didn't like the lighting and the sequence he was getting..  He was visibly  frustrated. Frustrated enough that a woman watching him, and waiting for another flight, looked out the window and offered, "hey, why don't you shoot this plane over here? It looks just like the one the mayor got on?"

Up to that point I'd seen Andy enthusiastic and  excited about his work,  but never angry. This poor lady, who I think meant well, caught Mr. Schaeffer off guard and boy did he get in her face.

It's been too many years to give you his speech verbatim, but I'll never forget the context. You can trust this paraphrased rendition.

"That's just what you people think we do, isn't it?  You think we fake it. You think we don't care about being accurate and honest about what we're shooting. Well you're wrong. The plane your looking at is not the one the mayor is on.  And so if we're talking about the mayor's plane on TV tonight?  You'll see the mayor's plane or no plane at all. Is that clear?"  

The poor woman just shrunk into her seat and said nothing more.  I'd like to think that most photo journalists still have Andy's code of ethics. MOST is about all you can ever hope for.  You'll often hear seasoned journalists mumble, "this was a lot cleaner business 20, 30 years ago than it is now."

They've just lost some of their memory cells.  I can remember watching a TV reporter and "PJ" back in the 70's working on a piece on violent guard dogs in junk yards. They were having a heck of a time getting a German Shepherd to bark at them  through a fence. I don't know whose idea it was, but in search of good video the photographer set up his shot on his tripod, while the reporter climbed to the top of a fence and began throwing rocks at the dog to get the beast riled up.  I was working in radio at the time, and I had to work in TV for a few years before I got over that first impression.

The technology today must really make it tough for all photographers operating in a bind. With a Photo Shop program on hand the print guys have miraculous opportunities to turn fiction into fact.  Back in April of '97 a despondent Air Force Captain Craig Button crashed his A-10 fighter jet in the mountains.  When he went missing out of Arizona he had these huge live bombs on board. They found his plane and his body fairly quickly, but to this day no one knows what happened to those bombs. The National and Local media converged on the search command post and stayed for more than a month hoping the bombs would turn up.  To give we reporters and photographers some idea of the mission, they brought in a dummy 500 pound bomb to show us what they were looking for. 

Well, after several days of searching, the military arranged for photographers to take chopper rides up to the crash site where the searching was continuing.  All the photographers  came back with shots of searchers climbing around on rocks.  They all had pictures, still and moving, of helicopters landing and taking off.. But as I was walking past an AP photographer banging away on his laptop I looked down and saw this 500 pound bomb sticking up out of the rock pile?

 Talk about your exclusive.

"How in the ____did get that shot?," I screamed.

The photographer just shrugged his shoulders and then a slow grin appeared.  He had just superimposed the dummy bomb on to one of his search photos, and man did it look real. He got me good, and you can feel good that he didn't push one little button on his laptop that would have sent his creativity all over the World.  Then he would have gotten us ALL  really good.

Bottom line here is that I promise to let you know, at least by the tail end of any entry, whether or not I've been photographically messsing with you. And for what it's worth? In all my years of working in TV, more than 95 percent of the photographers I worked with would have chewed that poor lady at Stapleton out.

Como Esta?

Flirtatious: Que Pasa hombre? Habla llama?

Real Mood: Beastly

Prediction: Lance Armstrong will win le Tour de France, and the 2005 Australian apple crop will be a good one.

Sometimes I'm serious, but not very often. I'll typically let you know ahead of time. My tongue has been in my cheek for most of my life.  

Sometimes I exaggerate, but not too much. If, for instance, I told you there was a llama in our backyard that thinks it's a cow you might wince. But it's mostly true. Lately it's been hanging out with the equine crowd as well. The poor GAL to my knowledge (her coat is so scruffy I can't tell for sure) has never known another beast of it's own species. Outside of a quick glimpse in a horse tank, she probably has no idea how homely she is. Anyone who read my Christmas letter two years ago MAY remember the girl. No I'm not the TV anchor who says, " as I'm sure you'll remember what we told you five months ago."  I don't expect you to remember her.  Peggy calls her Dolly Llama, and I prefer the name Como Se Llama. We asked for help coming up with a compromise name and got some pretty good ones. My friend Mike LeClaire suggests "Hey Stupid." We'll continue to take suggestions if you're inspired.  But hurry up because if you've been following this soap opera, that field you see will be a four lane road soon.  Who knows what will happen to Como Se.

I kind of feel like Dr. Doolittle this week. Ever since I started whining about the impact of development on wildlife, the beasties have been showing up in unheard of numbers. And while they haven't been talking to me,  they've been posing for the camera. We hadn't seen a single hummingbird  here for almost two years. The past two days I've cranked off over two hundred frames of the little devils.  I've just shared a few of the fauna snapshots I've collected with you. I even had a spider pose for me inside this web he wove that looked like a tornado.  I wonder if I wrote here that I'd like to see the antelope herd one more time, if they'd stop by.  That would be cool. I'd even be willing to brush up on my antelopian if they'd agree to one last visit.

Guess what now that we have air conditioning? I think you probably got this one.  The temperature dropped 15 degrees outside and it rained. And some of the cumulus prognosticators around here are thinking the monsoons aregoing to be pumping some wet in here for some time to come.  But we don't care. I predicted there would be no buyer's remorse, and that came true. We love this air conditioning thing. Let it shine, let it rain, let it snow, just keep letting that ac blow.

I'm going to wrap this up a little early tonight so you can spend some time with Dolly. Don't stop at the picture above. There are more.

Too Cool!

Flirtatious: Can I buy you a cool drink?

Real Mood? Really Cool!

Prediction: Today's purchase will not result in buyer's remorse.

I predicted on the last entry that today would be cooler, no matter what. I suppose you might think that to be a pretty safe prediction.  After all we had broken the All Time record for high temperature here two days ago. But for the past two days we only dropped two degrees from the high of 105. So technically you could call me on the prediction, because today was the same high temperature as it was yesterday,  even though both days were records for their respective dates.

And even if it had been one less degree higher today than yesterday, you could argue the relative kick-in temperature to qualify as cool, hence cooler.  I think you at least need to get under the 100 degree mark to qualify.

But like most slight of tongue tricksters I had more information than you possessed.  WE BOUGHT and HAD INSTALLED an air conditioner. WOW! Did you all know about this and not tell us.?

We've always toughed out the 10 or 15 days a year one really needs AC here. After today I have to tell you we were really stupid. This cool thing is really cool and it has really been good for our relationship. We used to fight over the thermostat setting in a range of about 10 degrees.  With this thing we're down to about 3 degrees.

I think it's going to pay for itself faster than predicted. For one thing I'll be taking fewer showers.

And there is the forget thing.  I tend to forget where I put things more in the heat than in the cool. I've already spent a fortune on cell phones and reading glasses and pocket combs and sunscreen and pens and pencils and lip salve.

With the AC and Peggy's help I've already recovered three containers of lip salve.  If I find all the things I've lost in the heat we might have to have a garage sale.

I don't have much else to say today. I hope you dow't think too lowly of me. Look, I didn't entice you to throw down some bets on the prediction.

Right now I just want to go enjoy the atmosphere and I promise not to gloat over how I tricked you.  It's all just too cool!

Noah's Hill

 

Flirtatious: "You animal, you!"

Real Mood: Really Nostalgic

Prediction: It's going to get cooler tommorrow, no matter what!

The latest rumor is that they'll start the construction on that road behind our house in October.  It was actually stated in print, but it's been in print on numerous occassions over the past three years and not been true.  Anyway to make sure I don't lose this current sense of nostalgia, I'll react as if its actually going to happen this time.

We've known people who've lived on farms and ranches,  lived next to golf courses, on the banks of rivers and lakes, in the middle of aspen groves, and ocean side.  They're all rightfully pleased, proud and no doubt invigorated by the peaceful ambiance of their palatial placement. ( I love alliteration.) But you know what? They all knew ahead of time what they were getting.  And they shelled out a good portion of their worth to get it.

We bought this place in a March, set at the bottom of a hill that blocks any view of the mountains.  All we could see were a hundred or so acres of dry grass and cactus. The sales people tried to make the lot seem exotic, but neither their hearts nor their price tags followed.  I'm pretty sure we paid less because we had no professional landscaping or parks behind us. They even tip toed around calling it open space. 

The builder was open with us.

" Some day they are going to build behind you.  I'd say you'll have five, maybe ten years at the most before that happens."

Well, like I said it's been 13 now.  It's been thirteen years of watching the hillside predict and define the seasons. It's been thirteen years of many things I'll just try to let flow out. 

One of my first memories was hearing some excitement of some sort in the backyard. I responded professionally to see the few neighbors we had scambling to the barbed wire fence behind us. Everyone seemed to have something orange in their hands.

The excitement was four horses ambling along the property line, and the orange things were carrots. We quickly joined the carrot line and fed the domestic beasts at the risk of falling short of our own prescribed carotene intake for the day.  A week later about a hundred head of cattle showed up.  Instead of carrots most of us fed the cows a percentage the new landscapingwe were putting in.  Filling out the domestic file, we've also had a few mules and one lonely llama as neighbors. Peggy calls the Llama Dahli and I call him Como Se.

But it's the wild file that's made this a winning choice. The whole neighborhood went bonkers when the first herd of antelope showed up. They've never stayed long, but it really takes you places to see them close up. In Wyoming they've calculated there are far more antelope residing there, than there are homo sapiens.  Know Wyoming? Know our backyard.

We've watched packs of coyotes, one or two fox, and birds. I swore I saw a Bald Eagle. Peggy thinks I was short on carotene that day. We have spotted and logged more than a hundred different species of birds in our backyard.  We watched many, including Robins and Blue Birds build their nests and send their progeny banging into our picture window.

And then there are the groundlings. (Pardon me Will) One of my favorites is the 13 lined ground squirrel. He and or his off spring has shown up every Spring we've lived here.  Probably my favorite groundling story involves the look on Peggy's face after she discovers she's cut a five foot long snake into pieces with the lawn mower. Then there was the raccoon who decided to shimy up our aspen tree and spend the day napping in the shade of our bedroom window. He drew quite a crowd. 

I can't say I'm happy with all the rabbits that have shown up. Their numbers are an indication of the change. Their predators are being boxed out by fences and asphalt and concrete.  We haven't seen antelope in over a year now.

But I don't want to get maudlin. The road will come. We'll adjust. That's what homo sapiens do so well. Still there is that look on Peggy's face when she mutilated that snake. I'm going to hang on to that memory. 

KAHTHUNK

Flirtatious: Nice hard hat!

Real Mood? Cautiously relieved.

Prediction? At least ten 100 year storms will take place before the 100 years are up.

 

So I guess it serves me right for feigning angst about the idiosyncrocies of  housing development. We wake up this morning to something that onamatopeacally goes KAHTHUNK. First thought?

"Maybe it's one of the new trash companies that do their pickups on every day but our day? Go see!"

That was Peggy talking to me in case you were wondering. Had I said, "Go see!"  I don't even want to think about it.

So I make sure there arn't any holes in my underwear and spread the blinds just far enough to see the road in both directions. Nope!

"No trash trucks."

We've been known to simultaneously hear things, if you know what I mean. So I'm ready to go get some coffee when all of a sudden, " KATHUNK, KATHUNK, KATHUNK."  You can imagine one KATHUNK, but not three. So even before the orders are issued, I slip on some shorts and my moth altered tee shirt, and head out front.

"What's that orange thing out there," I hear Peggy shout.

The orange thing was a four pointed sign with a black striped outline. Inside the outline read, "ROAD WORK AHEAD."

Oh my, here it comes.  I run to the backyard deck and see the generator of the KATHUNK.  It's a pretty good sized front loader banging it's bucket on a short strip of concrete two doors down.

"Are you going to put that road in now just because I poked fun at a few county commissioners and developers? I mean look guys I made fun of all of us. This is not fair. Just let me warn you guys. One of  my neighbors is a patent attorney!"

Well, I had to go to class and when I returned the front loader had been doing some breeding. There were two dump trucks, a cement truck, another front loader, piles of rock and sand and one very official looking guy in a different colored hard hat. They have their own heraldry, you know?  I grabbed my trusty camera and decided to get to the bottom of this. I started shooting like crazy at about 800 speed. I aimed right at the job boss, and he responded like every other job boss I ever harrassed as a reporter.

"You don't want to take any pictures of this," he says.

So many people have cameras any more that most bosses are smart enough to not say, "you CAN'T take any pictures of this!"

 Sure you can as long as you're not trespassing. You would be amazed at what these new cameras on helicopters can focus on from up to a mile away.  Let me say, " just when you think its safe to scratch or pick your nose? Look up and think again."

Anyway, this guy is trying the cheery, friendly approach. He really did turn friendly when he found out I live here. He even sketchily tells me what they are doing. He shows a whole other facial expression when I later casually mention I'm a retired reporter.

As it turns out this project has very little to do with the road they're putting in our backyard. These guys are here to finish a drainage system that was supposed to have been finished thirteen years ago. It didn't get done when one developer sold to another developer. The new developer saw no rush to complete the system, or to inform any residents they were in no hurry. So last year 80 percent of the basements along a two block area became swimming pools following a rare deluge. That's why someone is back this year doing the fix. I say someone because the friendly job boss would only say he was a sub-contractor for the county. Too many developers have come and gone to lock in the blame I'm guessing.

 It's really not clear to me why the county is being so magnanimous. Maybe that patent attorney got to them.

Anyhoo, these KATHUNKS are pretty much a good thing. I say pretty much because these drainage systems are designed for 100 year storms. Since we had one last year, we're looking at the new century before we see another one.  I'm not going to be here a hundred years from now, and the house will likely be bulldozed by then to make way for a light rail line spur. But I suppose I should be happy they're doing something. 

But don't expect me to be happy when they break ground for  that road, and KATHUNK  is joined by RUMBLE BUMBLE, and CHOMP, CHOMP and TATATATATA and KABLUEY and BLAM and STOP THAT NOISE OUT THERE. THIS IS AMERICA.  You might have recognized Peggy's voice on that last one.

"Can't we all just have the same backyard?"

Flirtatious: "Neighhh!" "Neighhh to you too big boy!"

Real Mood? Rural

Prediction: At least one new home being marketed in the Low 100's will actually be going for 149,999.99. And I'm not even good at math.

The picture here is pretty much my backyard. I don't own anything you see, but it's still what you see if you are in the backyard I do own. Still with me? It's coming as no surprise to me they are building a road over what you see in the picture. The road is actually three years past it's due date. But it's still sad. I think you can feel the sadness in the horse's body language, can't you? It certainly has to be sad for the three or four ranchers who owned all this land 50 years ago.

I don't know if the acronym NIMBY (not in my backyard) is in any official dictionary yet, but it ought to be. I can't tell you how many NIMBY stories I've done. As a reporter I was seldom sympathetic with either side.

One typical scenario goes like this: A rancher up in years, and down in income, decides to subdivide his land. He is going to sell out to a developer. But he wants that developer to promise he won't build a house on a lot smaller than 50 acres. Sure, no problem. So some folks from town, wanting to get back nature,  move out to the ranch on their 50 acre spreads where they can pretend to raise cows and chickens and run around naked.

Well the next year that developer sells the whole project to another developer. Meantime the county commissioners are noticing there's a few tax dollars coming in from those 50 acre ranchettes. "Just think," they conjecture, " how much more money we'd have if those were 10 acre parcels?" 

The lines get drawn. The Commissioners don't even wait for a Planning  Commission report. They hold a quick hardly noticed public meeting and the door is opened for the smaller spaced spreads.

Well some snitch tells those who've already bought the 50 acre spreads. The fight is on. NIMBY! "We can't have 10 acre lots right next to our 50 acre lots. That will drag down our home values. We'll take this all the way to the Supreme Court."

Danged if the Supreme Court fails to debate that question every year? They always say they got something more important to talk about. Can you believe that?

So the 10 acre ranchers are feeling a little smug. They now have their little "Pieces of Heaven"  where they can build some plastic pens and raise Yaks, or Llamas or Ostrich.  If you've got enough trees you can probably still run around naked. Well the smugosity doesn't last long.  Back to the County Courthouse.

"If we're making a ton of cash on 10 acre lots, what might one acre lots bring in."

NIMBY. The 10 acre gang goes nuts.

"We spent all our savings to come out here and get away from it all. We want to raise our children where they can appreciate nature and livestock and the value of running around naked. We're going to fight this!"

So the 1 acre contingent settles in. They're assured this is as small as the lots are going to get. These are people who've given up there "Postage Stamp" backyards so they can spend their life savings on a professional landscaper. It seems this landscaper is in pretty tight with the developers and the development's covenant committee. They're poor, but  they still got their green acres.

 Now here we see a little bit of a reversal of the principle. The kids living on the 1 acre poverty lots are coming home and complaining that the people in the 10 and 50 acre lots are running around naked.  NIMBY!

So a local county ordinance gets passed that says no Nudity. And While we're at it we don't like the smell of livestock. There must be no animals in this development. And everybody must have a plastic fence. Feeling pretty good and powerful are we 1 acre residents?

Well the county hires a new County Administrator who is just out of "Fight the Sprawl" school. He starts looking around for places where it would make sense to increase the population density to preserve open space.

"Let's See! That new development south of town seems to be where people are gravitating to. You know, where they have those 50 acre and 10 acre and 1 acre lots?  It makes sense to me that we go down there and let a developer build some apartments, condos, townhomes and rooms above drugstores.  The tax revenue we'd pull in from that would be incredible."

NIOBY! "Not in our backyard," the residents scream.  All of a sudden all the residents are in the same NIMBY club. They are getting media coverage, they have an attorney (typically a resident working pro-bono), but no leverage. And how can you fight the "Stop the Urban Sprawl" movement.  I've never seen NIMBY win in thelong run.

But you know I love Irony. Remember how it's now against the law to run around naked on your own property? Well once the development reaches urban proportions, businesses of all types are looking for market niches.  Businesses like Topless Clubs? NIMBY! "We'll not have our community corrupted by these Dens of Sin." 

But guess what? As long as they're not breaking the law, it's usually okay for them to come to town because it's unconstitutional to stop them. We knew the Supreme Court would jump in somewhere, didn't we?

So I guess we'll still see people running around naked, but now it's going to cost 10 dollars at the door with a 3 drink minimum. That's progress for you. 

 

 

 

Why Do You Ask?

Flirtatious: The descriptive adjective associated with  not releasing the arm of the wedding escort leading you to your seat.

Read Mood? Heat induced rattle off at the mouthicated.

"So whatcha been doin'?"

"Nuttin!"

That's just not true. I think we often respond to that query based on what we think the inquisitioner would consider SOMETHING. The truth is if he or she poses the question, he or she ought to be made to just sit there and listen to everything you've been doing since last you met.

"So whatcha been doin'?"

"Well since you asked. In between watching Tiger and Lance be excitingly predictable, Peggy and I met with for an early lunch with my cousins Joy and Marlene and their friend Elyse from Del Rio Texas which Elyse feels is out of range of the Hurricane slipping into the gulf. 

Marlene just flew in from Chicago last night and forgot her nebulizer and had an incident and ended up in the hospital until 2 o'clock in the morning. That's why they got a late start and showed up at a time that made it not an early lunch afterall. But since Peggy and I had a wedding we needed to get to,  we ordered early and then had to leave them looking out a window that overlooked the city except there was a lot of air pollution and the view wasn't that good.  But since they all, including Peggy spent a good portion of their lives in Chicago,  the view was probably okay for the standards they were used to. Maybe they weren't just being polite when they said, "What a great view." We had the wait person take a couple of pictures and then we raced off to the wedding.

My ex-student and friend Michelle Gutierrez got hitched to Macario Griego, her long time boy friend. Since I didn't really know anybody from either family except Amaya, Michelle's daughter, who was the flower girl, we didn't know which side of the aisle to sit on.  So we guessed, and we guessed wrong. But they all seemed like nice people who would not likely hold that against us.

It was a very nice upbeat ceremony with lots of "almost Mariachi style"guitar accompaniment. At the reception that followed we sat with most of the people involved with putting on the weekly campus TV newscast, the Met Report (Michelle was the News Director and Co-Anchor). At the table was Dan and his Girlfriend, Alex, Geoff, Tom, Carlos and a Cousin of Carlos who grew up here but went to school at Berkely and spent some years surfing in California.  You'll often find that surfers are not able to be specific about how many years they've been surfing.

I took a bunch of pictures with my new camera. If you go to a wedding that has a lot of media people around, a lot of pictures get taken. When Peggy and I got married our still photographer, who just saw us at the courthouse and decided to follow us around,  is a Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist. On one of the rolls of film he gave us we also ended up with a picture of  the Mayor and two City Council people. I said still photographer because one of the moving picture photographers from the station also showed up and followed us around.

Back to this event. I got to meet Macario, hug Michelle and do a high five with Amaya followed up by a short conversation and a very quick photo session.

Then we drove home but pulled through a Burger King and got an iced drink a piece along the way. We also got caught trying to get on the highway at that onramp that doesn't give you enough time to merge, but it was Saturday afternoon so we finally made it. 

The next time somebody says to you, "whatcha been doin'?"

Let 'em have it.

You're All Wet

Flirtatious: "What's that you got on your shirt?"

Real Mood? "Cool"

Prediction: Lance Armstrong will win "Le Tour de France," and as he rides along the Champs Elyse his shirt will be wet.

"By Golly" it worked.

In my neighborhood growing up we protected ourselves from disappointment by predicting circumstances were going to be just the opposite of how we wanted them to develop.

For instance, if we want the Rams to win we declare they don't have a chance against the Bears. Secretly we hope Norm Van Brocklin will hit Tom Fears in the end zone to win the game in the fourth quarter.  But we were able to save face by saying, "oh, we knew the Bears were just too tough" if it didn't happen.

Now if Tom Fears came through, we calmly declare we jinxed the Bears by predicting they'd win.

Sure it's dancing around reality. Sure it's a juvenile way of giving yourself status and power.  And Sure we outgrow it, right? I don't think so.

When you say, "I think it's going to be another Hot One!" what are you thinking?  Could it be, "Man I hope it cools off today."

Let's try some more. Statement after returning from vacation: " I know all that paperwork on my desk is still going to be sitting there with another inch piled on."  Secret thought?  "I  hope somebody saw that pile and at least filed those invoices for me."

Statement before showing up to see an action movie on Friday night: " I know its just going to be a lot of stupid car chases with no plot, no socially redeeming value." Secret thought? " I hope this one lives up to it's trailers. I really do think Scorcese can turn this one into a believable slice of life."

If I haven't pushed your button yet, here it  comes. It hasn't rained for a month: "You know I washed the car today. Darn! That probably means it's going to rain."

If you're over sixteen and tell me you've never said that I think you're lying to me.  Secret thought? "I washed the car. What more do you want from me! Please God, let it rain!"

Well it's been close to a month since we've had rain around here. The car wash trick hasn't been working. So I'm nosing around the house looking for some other jinx gimic. I want to combine it with some get something done today task.

I've been counting the number of comfortable summer shirts my wife won't let me wear in public because they have some little food stain on the front of them. Does your significant other nag you about that stuff?  Well, the count was higher than I thought, about 20 of them.  So anyway I line them up and pour a ton of stain remover all over them and pop them in the wash. That's about mid day and when the machine finishes it's final spin it's starting to get a little warm again. "Boy wouldn't it be nice if we could cool things off with a little rain."

There wasn't a meteorologist in a five state region predicting any rain. So what could I do to jinx it.

There's probably not ten of you under 50 that can relate to this. There was a time, no kidding, when the only clothes dryer on the  Planet was the Sun. We had something called clothes lines. Our mothers or our sisters hung all the washed clothes on those lines and kept them there with clothes pins. Men were not allowed anywhere near the laundering of clothes in "those days." We just used the T shaped posts holding them up to do "pull ups."

So I don't have an official clothes line. But I remember it was really tough to get your clothes dry in the rainy season. It could be a couple of days before you could pull off a dry tee shirt. Well, it was worth a try.

I used our electronically controlled awning arm as my clothes line. The sun is beating down, and by all rights all my shirts should be dry in about 20 minutes. In about 5 minutes Peggy walks in the door. It's her last day at work, and she was let out the door early. It took her maybe another 3 minutes to notice the shirts hanging from the awning, and another two after that to throw a "tizzy fit."

"Yeah, but they smell so fresh when they dry outside."

"No they don't. And they come out brittle. And they are heavy when  they are wet and they are probably going to break the awning."

Secretly I want to say, "but don't you want it to rain?"

Well along comes compromise. I pull in the awning and run  a broom through the top of two deck chairs and re-hang the shirts there. Peggy can't see it but about two inches of the hems are now dragging on the dusty deck floor.

With the compromise in place I suggest we go run a few errands. And after the errands? "Can I take you to dinner in celebration of your last day of work."

"Okay. You gonna bring the shirts in?"

"Naw. They'll be alright."

On our errand run I see some pretty interesting clouds off to the West. But we've been seeing these clouds every afternoon for some time now. They typically spit out a little lightning and mumble a few rumbles. But they have no wetness. As we and other citizens are going about our business there is little hope, even thought, that anything is going to get wet. But what they don't know is that I have 20 damp, almost dry shirts,  hanging outside on the deck. The jinx is on.

Errands completed, we are sitting in the Cheesecake Factory. I'm having fish tacos, and Peggy some exotic chicken sandwich. The food is good, but the air conditioning is better. We are dreading a trip back into the dry heat. The Waitress stops by to announce she's leaving and some guy who just spilled a bottle of catsup all over himself would be taking over. Then she looks up out of the corner of her eye and blurts out, "It's raining! How will I ever get to my car."  Secret thought? "I can't wait to get out there and dance in it."

This is all well and good, but we are a good ten miles from home. There is no guarantee our neighborhood is cooled off by this  blessing from heaven. We drive home looking for any pooling of liquid and its spotty. Just blocks away from home the streets and lawns appear to have discouraged any sprinkling. But the real test is yet to come.  My shirts have been out on the line long enough to dry twice. Will they or won't they?  The garage seems a little cooler as we pull in.  The house temp is down as least ten degrees. I rush to the deck and reach out to touch a wonderfully, sopping wet, still stained on the front tee shirt. 

It worked. Tom Fears caught the pass. And I just tossed all the shirts back in the dryer.  Tommorrow I'm going to try washing the car again.

 

"I'm Not Sure Where I Heard It?

Flirtatious: Second Page Headline promising a killer story in section D.

Real Mood: Chastened

Prediction: Someday newspapers will be read aloud on their own websites!

"Did you hear about?"

A long time ago I used to use that expression to defend radio as the best source for getting news. I didn't necessarily mean it. It's just that radio was paying my salary at the time, so I formed the argument. And in those days most stations at least had news departments. Yes, they were "Ripping and Reading" wirecopy. That's the catch phrase for reading stories into a microphone from the wire services. A high percentage of those stories are just re-writes from the newspaper stories written the day before. Still, in those days, radio reporters once in a while left the station to find news of their own.

Let's step back and see if there is a point to be made here (In today's broad definition of journalism that doesn't appear to be a critical issue, but let's do it anyway). 

As news consumers we've always had choice. But in times past that choice seemed pretty clearly defined.

In elementary school we got our news by word of mouth playing kick or tetherball. In Junior High we got it from National Geographic (Don't scratch your head on that one. Ask a male who was in Junior High in the 50's.) I was SELLING newspapers all through Junior High, but I'm pretty sure I never read one. In High School it was the sports page of the local newspaper, and Sports Illustrated.

When I was in College, and debating competitively, I swore by the Christian Science Monitor. I was impassioned by impartiallity, and never once read the back page (for the uninitiated, the religion page). When I was in business I frequented the weekly business and news magazines and held to the generally accepted pomposity that U.S. News and World Report was the most objective (it was also the most boring.) The truth, as I see it, is that we were pretty much letting the news broadly define us all in  time, space and interest.  

 

Well I don't think it's going to work that way for a while. The best place to get your news these days is wherever and whatever shakes your coconut tree. Putting a relative value on the best place to get news is fruitless. There are just too many choices to keep track of, too many modes of getting it, too many inter-modal marriages to define it, not enough ways to track it back to it's source, not enough people getting all their news from a single source to form a power group. I'd hate to have to go out now and raise funds for a Political Action Committee. 

I got inspired to write this entry from one of my former students, Noelle Leavitt. Noelle may be the Thomasina Jefferson of our time. She has done everything journalistically, save that which hasn't been invented yet. She accosted me on campus recently to chastise me for not getting the word out on her new job. FANFARE PLEASE. DAH, DAH, DAH, DAH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, NOELLE is in charge of the "Podcast" for the Denver Post.  Certainly you've heard of the Podcast? The Podcast is where Noelle, in her basement, records a re-write of a summary of the daily news. That news is excerpted from the Denver Post website, (that's where you access it) which in many cases is something re-written from the paper. In other circumstances the stories come from Adam Schrager, a reporter who works for a local TV station (KUSA). KUSA has a relationship with the newspaper where Adam writes for the Post's website, and some Post reporters voice their stories on TV.  Bottom line?  When you hear Noelle, Renaissance journalist extraordinaire, don't try to figure out where she got her material. She doesn't know. Her boss doesn't know. God may not know. But Noelle is a Darned good Podcaster. And, here comes the bonus. You get to hear Noelle "read the hits" with original music underneath.  Marshall Mc Luhan  (the medium is the message) is laughing hard enough to initiate a tsunami.

I just re-read all this and it almost sounds like a negative reaction. Not so! I love this. I know it will all sort itself out some day, and I hope to be on the planet when it happens. But in the meantime this is exciting. It's like throwing a barrell of quarters on the street during the New Orleans' Mardi Gras parade. Whose going to get what? What's it going to look like? What's it going to sound like? Will they ever sober up?

I'm almost sure it's going to look and sound like Noelle Leavitt (who is really very good at everything she does) and most of us are going to like it.

I was horrified recently to pick up a copy of the Christian Science Monitor and see it using HEADLINES. I hope nobody shows that to the editors of the "BACK PAGE."

Go To DenverPost.Com and look for PodCast. (I think it probably works better on high speed. Yes! I'm still on Dial Up. But I don't read U.S.News and World Report anymore?

Tire'd of Snow?

Flirtatious: Can I get a ride to Vegas mister?

Real Mood? Worshiping

Disclaimer: Rather than try and research the relative value of a dollar in the 50's and 60's, I pretty much told this story using today's value.

Prediction: Measureable Snow will fall in Barstow, California prior to December 27th, 2018.

The human is a pretty adaptable unit when you think about it. Both it's engineering and it's ingenuity allow it to survive and occasionally thrive in most earthly and some extra earthly environments. Thanks to greater minds than this one,  the conglomerate human has developed everything from the spoon to Sputnick (sometimes we need to be flexible in deference to alliteration). But I'd like to think that what really raises man to a higher plain than other biological organizms, is his capacity to fantasize. Don't send the kids from the room. Not those fantasies. Okay, let me give you an example to put you at ease.

I remember when air pollution really started getting bad in Los Angeles in the 1950's. I remember football practices during inverions where your lungs would just beg for mercy. (They were called SMOG alerts.)  So not only would your body be twisted into knots from push ups and tackling drills, your respiratory system would have cramps of its own. So here I am a so-called normal adolescent male, putting his head on the pillow at night?  And what crept into my brain? I fantasized this humungous exhaust fan in the San Gabriel Mountains that would just suck all that  pollution from the L.A. Basin out into the Mojave Desert.

I, of course, was being pretty self centered. I didn't really care about the people who were brain cell deficient enough to think it was okay to live in Bakersfield, Lancaster, Palmdale, Amboy Crater, and Needles.  It's true they'd found the means to adapt to one of nature's most inhospitable places, but why? There were,  and still are, all sorts of places in the Los Angeles area where they could be just as miserable. So my fantasy remained just that. The big exhaust fan remains nothing but a dream. But that's not always the case.

Here's one of the true parts of this story. In the late 60's, '67 or '68,  we set out on a ski trip from Seal Beach, California to Jackson, Wyoming. Most of us were teachers by  then, and it was the winter break. We were with our friends Nancy and Duane Laursen andtheir friend Biff. We were all packed into a rented camper. We were excited. It was the first time in more than a decade there was actually snow in the L.A. basin. What must it be like in Jackson?   Okay, now let's back up and use a little imagination for the set up to this tale.  

I'm going to give this guy a name even though I never knew it. How about Dirk (don't sue me Clive Cussler).  Dirk was big and strong and always good with his hands.  He could fix anything mechanical. He could work on any kind of vehicle made, and make it "hum."  His fantasies, let's say mixed with the normal fare, revolved around owning his own auto shop in San Bernadino. He's saving up all his money, he get's married, and just when his nest egg is big enough to buy that little starter garage?  Well, his wife leaves him and sucks the nest egg dry.

So broke, and down in the dumps, what does he do? He moves to the Mojave Desert. He gets a job in a little gas station in Barstow. There he works on cars that break down on their way to Las Vegas. It's drudgery. And seeing all these high rollers pull in with their condescending demands enhances his resentment. At first he just recoils in disgust, self hatred and despair. But he is saved by creeping thoughts, and then full blown plots of retribution. All he needed was control over something these "jerks" had to have.

So he looks around the desert and let's his fantasy build. He remembers a time in 1954 when snow actually piled up a quarter of an inch in Bakersfield. He's heard that snow even made it's way to Barstow. If  that ever happened again what would all those Cadillacs and Lincolns traveling from L.A. to Vegas need? Coffee?

So he hasn't figured it out yet, but he knows whatever it is he is going to have to stockpile it. He will be ready. Saving every penny he can from his Gas Station job, he finds the money (not much in those days) to buy an abandoned warehouse. It's Northeast of Barstow. It's near the last big grade before you coast into Nevada. Set up is over, and at this juncture this becomes a true story again.

Dirk has decided to dream big. He is not thinking coffee, and he is not thinking a quarter of an inch of snow. He is fantasizing so much snow in the middle of the desert  that these ______'s who come in demanding a gallon of gas , might be threatened with the possibility of not getting to Vegas.

So he starts stockpiling, working at the gas station, and hoping. For some people it just works out.  In 1968 his warehouse is full. A snowstorm between Christmas and New Year's day drops well over an inch of snow in San Bernadino.  And out in the Mojave, North and East of Barstow six inches of snow hits. Dirk's pulse rate is exploding.  This is it. He is so excited he quits the gas station job and heads for the warehouse. He turns on his little radio hoping to hear some specific weather news.

It's about a eighth of a mile off the highway, but accessible by a gravel road.  He scurries around the warehouse looking for some old cardboard. He grabs an old can of Rustoleum paint and scratches out his message. He wants to hear it on the radio, but he can't wait.

 He bundles up, picks up the sign and heads for the highway.  Using a rock that's probably a million years old he drives the stakes into the ground hoping his sign will be visible with the snow falling.  Then he turns, crosses his fingers, and slowly heads back to the warehouse. He takes a deep breath before stepping through  the squeaky portal. He pauses and listens, carefully, and then his fantasy ccomes true.

"The California State Patrol has just put the chain law in affect between Barstow and Las Vegas."

"Yee Haw!"

Now you know what Dirk had in that warehouse. This was a classic case of "supply, demand ,attitude."

"Come on mister I got to get to the Flamingo. What's it going to cost to buy same chains and put them on for me."

Dirk looks this high roller up and down and replies, "That'll be a thousand dollars for the chains, and another thousand for my labor. You can get them a little cheaper, but you've got about 100 customers ahead of you right now. For half that amount I could get you out of here by tommorrow, say about 6 p.m, no guarantee."

"Thief! Alright I'll pay the two thousand. I'll give you another five hundred if you can get me out of here in a half hour."

When we reached Dirk he'd already been up for 48 hours straight.  His eyes were blood shot, his hands and arms were just masses of a mixture of blood, mud and snow.  He was wearing a pair of coveralls with a whole bunch of pockets in them. Each of those pockets was overflowing with cash (no checks or credit cards).

But I said the law of supply, demand and attitude.  Luckily wewere, and looked poor. We were also humble and impressed with his story. And we only needed a couple of links to add to the chains we had.

"Alright, five bucks."

"Thanks Dirk!"

I haven't kept in touch with Dirk so we'll have to go back to hearsay and fantasy to wrap this up. Hearsay is that Dirk no longer lives in Barstow. Rumor is he moved back West, only further West to Laguna or Malibu.

My fantasy is that Dirk now has a Saab dealership in Malibu. He's also got a warehouse up near Ventura where he is working on a giant fan that can be turned on to suck all the air pollution out into the ocean on Air Pollution Alert Days. For a price.  It could happen?

True Story? There was not enough snow in Jackson, Wyoming to open the ski hill that year.

The Cistern Caper

Flirtatious: The act of wearing a Mini Skirt.

Real Mood: Kindly Cruel

My stepdaughter Rhonda and her husband Mark are here for the weekend.  They live in Livermore, California, on the edge of Silicon Valley. They live around Livermore Labs, which is sort of the civilian version of Nevada's AREA 19.

  "If I told ya what went on there I'd have to kill ya."

Have you ever noticed the phonetics of  the pronoun in that experession? It's always "ya" or "yuh," never just YOU. I'm wondering if its something they picked up from the Martians.

Anyway, Mark and Rhonda also live right next to one of the World's largest wind farms. Hate me, but I like it when life isn't pure. I like it when complexity turns a tyrant of any philosophy into a person of modest musing.  Wind farms are supposed be one of "Earth Mother's" solutions to environmentally saving the planet.

According to Mark (attribution students, always attribution, remember attribution, atttribution will save your ___) that wind farm is whacking about 5,000 or 20,000 birds a year in half before their "time."

A lesser known quality of the land where Mark and Rhonda reside is it's capacity for growing award winning grapes. Napa Valley gets all the glory, but many of those Napa wines, THEY say (lazy man's deep throat attribution), taste an awful lot like the Merlot and Shiraz harvest of Livermore.

As I'm want to do, I'm inching my way to the point. I'm not there yet. Up to this juncture I just want to establish that Mark and Rhonda live in a place where the rural and urban issues of the day blend.  While they live (hyperbole coming up) in a 2 million dollar two room condo, they still have plenty of open land around them. They see semis full of semi-conductors, and tractors in the same day. They see Lycra formed torsos on their Trek bikes speeding past hay wagons on side roads.  They are both well traveled,  before and after getting together. So I was not expecting any "ooh's" and "aah's" as I drove them out on the prairie. But none of us, at any time or age, has seen it all. In fact I took them out on the plains, because Mark (likely joking) told Rhonda he'd never seen a tornado.  He didn't just want to see a tornado, he'd like to see one hit a farm house. (could he have just seen that special someone just did on "The Wizard of Oz?")

We're getting closer now.  So we're out on the Plains, watching the cloud formations, babbling my amateurish weather monologue and Mark says, "Look! A windmill."

On further observation he adds, "looks like it's just pumping water into that cistern." Cistern is, I've discovered, the Livermoreese word for Horse Tank!  We're just about to the point.

Mark's windmill observence quickly reminded me of one of those TV reporting experiences that really need to be shared with the planet.  (we're into the point now.)

More than a decade ago now the station I worked for was looking for a way to increase viewership enroute to increasing it's revenue flow. So, as stations are always wanting to do, they went on a World Wide talent search.  They found their salvation in Canada. Now this is not an evaluation, rather a suspected and really openly stated perception.  The female (hired by a female by the way) was clearly recruited for, and known more for her physical attributes than her journalistic prowess. Let's say it, because in it's own way the station said it, "she had great legs."  We all knew that because this Anchor was taken from out behind the Anchor desk and presented to us standing erect in skirts that only came to mid thigh.

I can tell you, and mean it, that it's not fair to draw any conclusions from this. For one thing this Anchor defies the "Dumb Blonde" stereotype. She's a brunette. And I try to stay away from petty cheap shots at other people's journalistic skills when they can just fire right back. But I can't resist a great laugh.

We are in the newsroom, about a hundred of us, wondering how we're  going to cover this breaking crime story. We know somebody has been killed, we know a body has been discovered, we've heard over police scanners that it was in a particular county (a rural county), and here it comes, "Next to a Windmill."

 Bring in Inspector Clouseau. We must get to the bottom of this. Come on who needs Peter Sellers or Steve Martin when we have _______ from Canada. "Legs" pipes up with her powerful voice, "Well let's just go to the windmill? How many can there be? "

Some of us politely giggled on the spot, some of us looked for some biological reason to leave the room so we could guffaw uncontrollably, some us (me) got on the phone. I apologize to anyone who might have been waiting for an update on the crime, but my motivation was less than pure. I WAS trying to get information from my sources. But my goal was not to find the location of the body. My goal was to find out just how many windmills there were in that rural county. I was successful.  I didn't tell her, but I did share with many of my colleagues at the local watering hole that night, and I'll now tell you,  there were a whole slew of them.  

"Gotta tell YA, Mark, there are thousands of those cisterns out there."

 

Instinct

Flirtatious: Or do you just have something in your eye?

Real Mood? Impressed

Prediction? George W. will leave office without getting an award from the Sierra Club.

I haven't done this in a while. It's time to give it a shot.

Got too close to baby I guess.

Chased me,  screamed at me,

From Mom, expect no less.

Toddlers frolic on the grass

Stranger? Then scatter! 

Did, save one small lass.

Kid looked me in the eye.

Her's said, " I'm busy here.

Just walk on by."

I did.

Mom squawked,"chase me!"

Knew her game

Keep safe her progeny.

"Get home right now!,"

She furiously nagged.

"Want to get snagged?"

"Stop that chatter,

Eat what's there,

What's on the platter."

" Fell down again?

I know it's tough,

You'll soar again."

A mom you know?

In this case a hawk, a rabbit, a kildeer, a prarie dog, a robbin and a crow.

Ode to Moms seen along a creek nearby. 

Surfing the Red Sea

Okay terrorists, go ahead and wipe the smile off my face. There is nothing to laugh about when bombs go off, and innocent people die. There’s nothing funny, but some things are odd.

What’s odd to me is how we continue to respond to barbarous acts meant to have us shaking in our boots. What do we do? We shake in our boots. Oh we pay lip service to courage. The President, the Governor, the Mayor, the Cleric say, “let’s all go on with our normal lives, but be vigilant.”

Say that 10 times real fast and vigilance turns into, “let’s stockpile the basement with supplies and hide in the closet.” I will more often than not defend the media’s side of a controversial issue. But here I depart.

 I walk in the house with the TV on and ABC’s Charles Gibson is teasing the next block of the news. On a day like this you don’t need to be working media to know what that tease said or what moving pictures you're seeing. The looped video ( bean counter answer to keep from sending more than one photographer to the scene) will show a body on a gurney, a grieving family member, a cop trying to maintain a perimeter, some flashing ambulance lights, a chopper over head if you can get one,  and some twisted metal.

Charles says,

“Next on the evening news we’ll ask the question, could what happened in London happen here?”

Duh!

So after the break all TV news outlets fall in line. We see video from the local train station, the local bus station, even the local TV station. Every TV news outlet, networks and locals,  will do that same story. Then every one will follow that up with a conversation with a terrorism expert. He (almost never a she) is an anal retentive condescending ex-general who has learned his meal ticket  in retirement is to scare the hell out of us. Next the news desks will have turned up somebody locally who knows somebody who knows somebody who was within five miles of the bomb. He’s heard it was just horrible. ( the news desk is working on getting an actual live witness for later in the show or the next show.)  Every single story that had been planned for the newscast, many of which could have helped us go on with our normal lives, is dropped.

Most stories have what journalists call a shelf life. They just die from lack of newsroom interest, more than viewer interest. The viewers were tired of them long ago. But there seems to be no shelf life for terrorism stories.

Fellow traveler Bill Clarke and I were talking several months after 9/11 (not very many stories have the date as their signature) about what the crashes did to the airline industry. I was supposed to be the go to guy on airports and airlines at the time. Bill was wondering how long it would take those airlines to recover. Based on past experiences, i.e. Locherbie, I thought it would take from 6 months to a year for air travel to get back to normal.

"Really, do you think that soon, Paul?"

 

"Oh, yeah, Bill. People's memories are short and let's face it they need to get to places."

 

I want to say it publicly Bill. You were right to present the jaundiced eye. What the hell did I know?

 

I won't say the airlines haven't created many of their own problems.  Greed on the part of management and unions, embarrassing golden retirement parachutes, cut throat pricing competition and frequent flier abuse are some of the reasons the industry is teetering on the edge of financial disaster. But another reason is there is no shelf life for terrorism stories. I know and you know someone who will fly, but not to certain places. As terrorism expands the certain place list expands.

I don't want to make this too long or I'll become part of the problem, and not the solution. So here's the solution. Let's retaliate, not with bombs but with disdain and ennui. Instead of hiding in the broom closet we should all get our passports in order, get some visas and plan vacations for Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq,  Syria and the Sudan. Let's have ourATV's and ski boats shipped over and organize a Persian Gulf sailing competition. Let's open some "Burger Kings" in the Middle East that offer lamb burgers.

Of course we care, of course we grieve, of course it's not funny. But until we convince these idiots they're wasting their time and ours with being mean, they'll keep being mean.

And that cuts into my laughing time.

Say That Again?

Flirtatious: A wink, A twitch, A stumble over a step falling on your back looking up at the object of your affection.

Real Mood? Magnanimous

The Picture? Never assume you are alone.

I've got a lot of things swimming around in my head, and here comes some of them. Asked to come up with some new references for my job, I set out on the wonderful journey of getting in touch with some old friends.  Along the way I had a nice chat with Dan Hopkins, the Governor's Press Secretary. Dan is one of the savviest Public Relations people on the planet. We had a nice chat about the status of everything relevent to this time in history, pausing  a lot to laugh..

Among many attributes, Dan has this great sense of humor. I mean a GREAT sense of humor.  He doesn't memorize jokes and use them with an  agenda.  No he just looks at the things around him, sees the humor in them, and laughs.

We share that perspective that just about everything is in some way funny.  Suppose your overlings are in no mood for levity? We've both  have been around long enough to make sure there are no open microphones or cameras on. Then we laugh.

Remember Nixon's Faux Pax when he didn't know the microphone was on? Soupy Sales had a nice one. Anybody who has been around a while in radio or TV owns a tape or two of their own screw ups. They typically consist of unintentional malaprops and double entendres. But for those of you who are not card carrying members of the broadcast media, I'd like to pause and reveal what we may have saved you from.

Reporter Dave Minshall and Photographer Bill Hitchcock (I think) were rushed to the mountains for some dramatic criminal event. They are rushing around looking for a spokesperson and find the sheriff.  In their haste to get a soundbite on the air, they forgot something.  They forgot to retrieve the active microphone from inside the sheriff's shirt. The unknowing and/or unthinking sheriff headed off to the restroom. You probably saw the movie version in a Chevy Chase film. But the obvious taped "sound" was just the tip of the urinal, so to speak. The local gendarme, thinking he was in a safe place, talked rather openly about the crime. He then pretty much exhausted the Anglo Saxon dictionary expressing his feelings about the media. Sheriff, whoever you are, you owe the media big time. None of that made air.

Here's an even better one. There is this hall of fame ex shortstop who has since gone into coaching and hot dog eating. Well the super hero of yore is asked to put on a baseball seminar for woman at the stadium.  He shows up and is quickly fitted out with a wireless stadium microphone so all these baseball widows can hear him.   Lucky for this round little man that photographer Gary Barkley also talks him into wearing one of our wireless microphones. Here's the scenario.

They've been testing the stadium sound system, and bringing up individual microphones one at a time. Just seconds before they get to the ex shortstop's "mic", he looks up at about 1,000 women and says, "Look at all that ___________up there."  A few seconds later and he would have shared what should have been his private thoughts with the stadium.  They were in fact shared with Gary Barkley, who got it all on tape. Nice guy that he is, Gary runs to the stubby little guy to whisper in his ear, "I got that on tape."  And he cautioned this middle aged man still trying to fit into pinstripes, that his utterances from that point on would also be on tape, and very likely heard by the 1000 women in front of him. It was a medical phenomenon. The man's face changed color about four times, winding up purple.

None of  what he said, even in bleep form,  got on the air.  I think that guy owes Gary the equivalent of a signing bonus. But it's my understanding the short, round, hall of fame, middle aged, ex-shortstop never even offered up a thanks.  I hope Gary still has the tape sitting in a time capsule somewhere.

Who is the short stop? What word filled up the blank? You won't get that out of me. But as soon as we do a 4 gig digital sweep of the room, Gary, Dan Hopkins and I are going to have a great laugh.

Back in the Saddle

I just got bombarded and saturated with news, and new toys, and the end of one course, and planning for the beginning of another compressed session, and so I'm sorry, hate me, but I just took a break. I'm rejuvenated. I'm smart enough not to promise you great stuff from here on out. But I will tell you up front I'm now loaded with new material and perspective.  I'll try not to screw it up.  So now I'm going to see if I can get Peggy to find new energy to go watch some fireworks somewhere.  I'll finish this tommorrow. Night, night. 

Yeah, I took the dove picture. He must have sensed my amateur status.  He just stood there seeming to say, "How are my feathers? Is the light right?  Do you want me to walk or coo somethng? Get somebody from wardrobe here right now."

What's the world coming to? I get an invitation from a freelance producer friend that one of the network morning shows is looking for a college volunteer to drink three beers in an hour. I don't encourage any kind of drinking, certainly not binge. But this is for a good cause telling a story about ankle bracelets.

So I put out a call to all the names on my recent and just about to graduate from college list, inviting them to bid on this opportunity. That was 15 minutes ago and I haven't had a single taker.

College Seniors, Free Beer, No Takers, What's up?  Ah, it's happy hour, bad timing.  Let's give it another 15.

 Robert Dominquez's site: http://www.HiatusNYC.com