smays.com

Unresolved

I feel like I should do some sort of year end post but I honest to god don't know what to say. Or even what I think about the past year. The last couple of months are a little blurry and I'm too lazy to scroll my archives to see what happened before that.

I feel the need to make the coming year... different somehow. I have too few vices to give any up. It's likely I'm already being the best person I'm capable of.

I think I need more real-time communication with friends. More time in meatspace, less time in cyberspace.

I need to spend more time in "now" and less in the past and the future. In a couple of months I'll have gone zero to 60. That should be a "now" moment.

2007? Really nothing more than some neurons firing back and forth in my head. Imperfect memories at best. 2008? Same deal. Some brain chemistry fiction projected on the inside of my forehead.

To paraphrase the tag line from one of my favorite TV shows, Max Headroom... let's take the future in 20 minute chunks.

Illegal to rip songs from CD's to computer. Yeah, right.

"Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer." [Washington Post]

PROFANITY ALERT: Let me see if I have this right. I buy the CD. I copy the songs to my laptop or iPod so I can listen to them. I don't share them with anyone. And that's illegal. As they say on Keith and the Girl, "Fuuuuuuccckkkk you!" Steve Martin used to say, "Excuuuusseee me!"

Update: Turns out this story was wrong. Never mind.

NYT editorial: Looking at America

Depressing year-end editorial in the New York Times. I'd excerpt but you really need to read the whole thing.

Iowa Exodus

Kay Henderson shares an amusing advisory from the Des Moines International Airport:

"An estimated 2,000 rental cars will be returned those days (January 4 and 5) and approximately 50% more people will be departing from the Airport than on a typical day. Many national and international media personnel will be attempting to leave Central Iowa. It will take the cooperation of everyone to ensure this happens efficiently and that the nation gets a good picture of the capability of Central Iowans."

Twittering the Iowa Caucuses

A couple of weeks ago I wondered if we'd see any live blogging from the local precincts that make up the Iowa Caucuses. I figured someone must be trying to pull this together and found this post by Patrick Ruffini at Hugh Hewitt's Townhall.com:

"On Iowa Caucus night, I'd like to launch a little experiment in citizen journalism. Mobile technology allows anybody to communicate from anywhere, including from inside a caucus. Any caucus goer can become a citizen reporter, relaying key facts to the outside world instantaneously. I'd like to recruit an army of caucus insiders -- both Republicans and Democrats -- to report results instantly and share tidbits on what the campaigns are doing to sway last-minute undecideds."

Caucus bloggers can participate via Twitter, email or by texting.

Not sure how busy I'll be helping with RadioIowa.com, but I'll try to keep an eye on this experiment.

Related bonus link on the Iowa Caucuses "entrance poll."

How newspapers got into such a fix

A fascinating look at how U. S. newspapers got to where they are, by Paul Steiger who spent 26 of his 41 years in journalism at the Wall Street Journal. Thursday is his final day at WSJ.

"Next week I move over to a nonprofit called Pro Publica as president and editor-in-chief. When fully staffed, we will be a team of 24 journalists dedicated to reporting on abuses of power by anyone with power: government, business, unions, universities, school systems, doctors, hospitals, lawyers, courts, nonprofits, media. We'll publish through our Web site and also possibly through newspapers, magazines or TV programs, offering our material free if they provide wide distribution.

Pro Publica is the brainchild of San Francisco entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists Herbert and Marion Sandler, who along with some other donors are providing $10 million a year in funding.

The idea is that we, along with others of similar bent, can in some modest way make up for some of the loss in investigative-reporting resources that results from the collapse of metro newspapers' business model."

Wrestling fans are fake

Controversial Tell-All Book Reveals Wrestling Fans Are Fake

We're going to need a bigger table

Our friend George is here helping Barb migrate her data from her ancient Dell laptop to her new MacBook. He's also going to be available to help Barb's transition from Windows to OSX. Expertise gap aside, I've learned that husbands should not try to show wives how to do things on computers.

"Google is God"

That's the title of a post by Jeff Jarvis featuring some amazing stats on Google. I'd post them here he deserves the page view for pulling them together.

Macworld virgin

In couple of weeks I will attend my first Macworld in San Francisco. 60,000 rabid Mac fans gather for a week of... well, I'm not quite sure but look forward to finding out.

Three Macworld veterans are letting me tag along and their enthusiasm is infectious. These guys are my age and they're as giddy as a GTO full of college sophomores on their way to spring break.

They know the ropes and have planned our trip like a Delta Force strike. This morning at our planning meeting, I was informed that we'd be getting in line at 4:30 a.m. for the keynote by Steve Jobs.

Macworld sounds like a bouillabaisse of Burning Man, 60's Be-In, and Jonestown (substitute microbrews for Kool Aid). Can't wait.

Learfield 2nd best place to work

Google has been ranked No.1 in Forbes business magazine's 2007 list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in America, following a poll 100,000 employees from 446 companies. Check out some of the perks for Google employees.

Study on "State of the Media"

From survey (of 2,000+ Americans) commissioned by Deloitte & Touche (as reported at WebProNews):

"Close to 40 percent (38%) of Americans are watching TV shows online, 36 percent use their cell phones for entertainment and 45 percent are creating Web sites, music, videos and blogs."

Boy, those numbers seem high to me. But then, most of the people I hang with are creating content of some sort so, maybe.

And this from Ken August, vice chairman and national sector leader for Deloitte & Touche's media and entertainment practice:

"I think for advertisers one of the conclusions is you don't make decisions to advertise either on television or the Internet when you want to hit all the demographics, but rather you need to have a multiplatform strategy. It shouldn't be an either or proposition."

And maybe a dash of radio?

Scott Adams: Why blogging is so popular

"I think the pleasure of completed work is what makes blogging so popular. You have to believe most bloggers have few if any actual readers. The writers are in it for other reasons. Blogging is like work, but without coworkers thwarting you at every turn. All you get is the pleasure of a completed task."

Once again, Mr. Adams is on the money.

Blogging as marketing tool

Good story in the NYT Small Business section on blogging as a marketing tool:

"...while blogs may be useful to many more small businesses, even blogging experts do not recommend it for the majority.

Guy Kawasaki, a serial entrepreneur, managing partner of Garage Technology Ventures and a prolific blogger, put it this way: “If you’re a clothing manufacturer or a restaurant, blogging is probably not as high on your list as making good food or good clothes.”

Blogging requires a large time commitment and some writing skills, which not every small business has on hand."

Job outlook for journalism grads

Mindy McAdams' Teaching Online Journalism:

"New U.S. graduates with a bachelor’s degree in journalism or mass communication had a median annual salary of $30,000, according to a survey of spring 2006 graduates. New graduates with a master’s degree in journalism or mass communication had a median annual salary of $38,000. Jobs held by all these graduates included those in public relations and advertising as well as online, print, TV and radio journalism.

Does this mean getting a master’s degree will increase your salary? Maybe in some fields, but not necessarily in journalism. I’d like to see this survey cut the grain a bit finer on the master’s degree data, because in my experience, a hiring editor at a news organization doesn’t give a hoot about your degree(s) or your GPA — a hiring editor cares only about your experience in the field.

This marks a distinct difference between journalism jobs and jobs in some other fields, where the extra one or two years in graduate school are assumed to make the candidate more fit to do the job. In our field, the only thing that makes you more fit is more work experience."

I haven't been involved in hiring for our newsrooms for long time, but I think experience would trump grad degree for us.

Lucky Money Toad

A lovely Christmas Eve at Susan's with her family and friends. Janny (an anglicized version of her Chinese name) gave several us Lucky Money Toads. From the Wikipedia entry:

"Chan Chu means "toad; frog", especially the "Lucky Money Toad" or "Three-legged Money Frog", a popular Chinese symbol for prosperity. It is often portrayed with red eyes and flared nostrils, sitting on a pile of traditional Chinese cash, with a coin in its mouth. According to Feng Shui lore, it is believed to drive away evil, protect wealth, and increase income."

I like that drive away evil part. Thank you, Janny.

Merry Christmas

Most bloggers check their stats from time to time. It's fun to see how many people are stopping by and and why. Here at smays.com we average around 290 Page Views a day. Miniscule. That probably translates into a couple of hundred unique visitors.

And today has been no different. You have a day off, probably have family in, and here you are. On Christmas Eve.

I know many of you, maybe even most of you. Or feel as though I do. So I'll take this opportunity to wish you peace and joy.

Ma, come quick! Kay's on (network) TV!

Learfield shoptalk: O. Kay Henderson --a longtime coworker at Learfield-- has been in the thick of the endless campaign going on in Iowa. So she's quoted and interviewed and shows up on the cable news channels and some of the big websites with some regularity.

Last night she got some airtime on ABC's World News Tonight. It's about a 3 minute package and a pretty big file (40 meg Quicktime). I'd put it on YouTube but the guys at ABC might object. Hope they're okay with this. I'll yank it if anyone hollers.

The man behind Stevie Wonder?

Sometime in the 70's I interviewed Lee Garrett on the Grapevine, a talk show we did at KBOA. If memory serves, Garrett --who was blind-- was in town visiting his momma (or some relative). I recall him being a funny guy. Following the interview, I walked him out to the parking lot (where his driver was waiting) and he said that he could drive himself, but only at night.

I sure would like to know the Kennett connection. Can anyone out there help me with that?

Update 1/2/088: Anthony Buckley --Lee Garrett's son-- found his way to this post and confirms that there is still family in Kennett and Lee visits a couple of times a year.

 

Lee was recently out on tour with Stevie Wonder and has also co-written an album that's been nominated for an upcoming Grammy ("Soul of a Man" Patrick Lamb performer and co-writer).

There are no clean getaways

Blood Simple (1984) was my first Coen Brothers film. The plot moved at a glacier pace and held me on the edge of my seat from the opening scene. The latest from the Coen's --No Country for Old Men-- has all the goodness of that earlier film.

And the best bad guy I've seen in a long time (Once I stopped thinking of the actor that plays Ray Ramano's older brother). This guy would send The Terminator scuttling back to the future.

I didn't recognize the actor but a check of IMDB reveals he played Felix in the Tom Cruise-Jamie Lee Foxx movie, Collateral. The Hispanic drug lord (?) that gave Foxx the thumb drive with hit list? Never mind, it was a small part.

We'll see him in a lot of movies but he'll always be the bad guy.

And McNulty is drinking again

"The fifth and final season of 'The Wire' (January 6) centers on the media's role in addressing - or failing to address - the fundamental political, economic and social realities depicted over the course of the series, while also resolving storylines of the numerous characters woven throughout the narrative arc of the show.

This season of 'The Wire' is based in large part on series creator David Simon's experiences in 13 years at The Baltimore Sun. Simon decries recent trends in the newspaper industry that have conspired to make high-end journalism vulnerable: out-of-town chain ownership, an economic climate in which the share price of media companies matters more to industry leaders than the product itself, and a newsroom culture in which prizes, personal ambition and the cult of the "impact" story has replaced consistent and detailed coverage of complex issues as the primary goal."

It pains me when really good shows like The Sopranos (early seasons), Deadwood, and The Wire come to an end. But not as much as seeing them drag on after everyone (but the network accountants) stopped giving a shit.

New blogging rules from the NCAA

"The NCAA this week announced a formal program limiting how often bloggers with media credentials can update their blog while attending championship college events.

The sports governing body set blogging limits for each sport. For example, those at football games can update their blogs three times per quarter and once at halftime. For basketball, bloggers can post five times per half, once at halftime and twice per overtime period.

The policy even sets rules for water polo (three per quarter, once at halftime), bowling (10 blog posts per session) and fencing (10 per session)."

It seems pretty clear that the NCAA wants to prohibit anything approaching real-time coverage of the event. Companies --like the one I work for-- pay millions for the exclusive broadcast rights to collegiate sporting events. A reporter (or a dozen reporters) up in the press box live blogging the game --in theory-- dilutes the value of the rights we purchased.

The phrase that caught my eye was "bloggers with media credentials." If I'm just a fan, can I blog at will? If your credentials are at stake, you probably wouldn't fight this. But if you're  a civilian, you could tell the NCAA to piss off. Does this mean the NCAA thinks only bloggers with some media connection can/will have a significant audience? [News.com via J-Walk Blog

Breakdown of "news" on CNN

The J-Walk Blog points us to this interesting chart illustrating what you get in the typical 30 minutes news cycle of CNN Headline News.

Merging radio and the web

One of our affiliate relations reps shared this story with me a few days ago and I'm posting it so I can find it later. And I might have some of the particulars wrong but they don't change the point of the story.

Small market radio station manager gets a call from a program syndicator, trying to clear a three hour Christmas special. The station manager doesn't want to commit that much time but likes the program and suggests they put the program on the station's website, clear the syndicator's commercials on the radio station and promote the special (online) on the air.

Hmmm.

Now, every program provider will tell you how important it is that the spots air inside the programming. They might have even sold that aspect to the advertisers. But when all is said and done (note that I did not say, "At the end of the day"), it's really about getting the spots on the air.

Is there some obvious synergy here? Could web-savvy radio stations take this approach to enrich their online offering and pull more local listeners (and advertisers) to their websites?

And while there are only 24 hours in the on-air programming clock, there are no limits online. A station could have a sports "channel," an ag channel, a home fix-up channel and on and on.

Yes, I see the limitation. For now, it's those 30 second radios spots that have value to the advertiser. The radio station still has to program a radio station the people want to listen to.

And all my "what if's" and "how about's" are predicated on the idea that radio stations must be more than "radio" stations. They've got to find a way to survive online. We all do.

If I had a little AM Daytimer (insert joke here), I might fill my air time with excerpts from a wide variety of programming (as local as I could afford to make it) on my website(s).

As for networks and syndicators that rely on getting their programs (commercials) on all those radio stations... their fortunes are tied to the radio stations. To paraphrase the old saw about land, God isn't making any more 30's and 60's. But He/She has an endless supply of web pages.

A zombie movie with good acting

28 Days Later... was a pretty good zombie movie. But I found I Am Legend way more disturbing. Will Smith did not phone this one in. (I think he gives his all in just about every film I've seen him in).

I usually like a good post-apocalyptic yarn but this one... the people behind me kept shushing me because I was saying, "It's only a movie, it's only a movie" in my outside voice.

Take the worst thing that anyone can imagine (the extinction of mankind) and cast an actor who can make you believe it for even a few of the 100 minutes... (shudder).

Comment Assignment: Best (?) zombie movies.

For all my deer hunter friends

The thing I love most about this video is that it exists. That one of the hunter's buddies (I assume) had a camera and the good sense to keep rolling.

Update: Dr. T. Everett Mobley cautions this video might not be what it seems:

"I think that is a staged video with a trained deer. Note that when the deer quiets down, the guy cues him with a couple of gentle kicks. The deer never uses his antlers. The deer does not appear distressed. Deer hooves are usually quite sharp.  People have had their throats cut by a kicking deer. Maybe it's real and the guy killed his buddies with an axe afterwards, but I doubt it."

The Daily Show, Colbert Report return sans writers

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, will return to their television shows on January 7 but will have to improvise their monologues and interviews without the help of their writing staffs.

In a statement, the two hosts said they would prefer to return to work with their writers. “If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence,” they stated.

Two amusing posts from the J-Walk Blog

At least that's where I found them. Tancredo Is Out and White House Fire Damage List.

Holiday Greetings from Ripley and Lucy

Far and away the most asked question about the annual holiday card, "How did you get the dogs to sit still for the photo?" [Larger version]

The answer has always been a combination of patience and treats. This year, neither was enough to get Lucy to pose. When the camera came out, she freaked and ran. Barb never lost her cool but I really thought this would be the year she'd have to punt.

The image above perfectly captures the exhaustion of everyone involved. Not an award winner, but an honest and true image of the season. We're all a little exhausted.

Storefront churches

I confess I've always found the huge megachurhes sort of creepy. Not sure why. If they work for those that attend... they work.

Some of these monsters seat 5 or 10 thousand and they do a couple of services every Sunday morning.

I'm a little more inclined toward smaller venues like these. [via J-Walk]

500 channels and nothing on

I'm watching more TV these days. No, that's not accurate. I'm channel surfing more. I'm starting to get a Repetitive Stress Injury in my thumb, so I pulled up the DirecTV site where I could surf faster and with less pain. Still nothing I want to watch.

Although I did find a couple catchy titles on the Playboy Channel and and the JUCY (juicy?) Channel. Somewhere there are men (or women) making scheduling decisions for these channels:

"Damn! Those guys at JUCY are going with Strap-On Sexcapades at eight o'clock!"
"Strap-On 3?"
"No, Strap-On 4!"
"Crap! Okay, let's go with School of Hard Knockers."

1,000 $100 advertisers

Buzz Machine: "Newspapers are losing their own core market because they didn’t understand the scale of the internet. They still thought mass when they should have realized that small is the new big. That is, online, newspapers still threw their lot in with the big advertisers who had been the only ones who could afford their mass products. They didn’t see the mass of potential spending in a new population of small, local advertisers who never could afford to advertise in newspapers but who now could afford to buy targeted, efficient, inexpensive ads online."

"Even the online sales teams at newspaper companies didn’t how now to sell small; they were — as I once put it in a meeting — putting all their effort into saving the old $100,000 advertiser and saw getting 1,000 $100 advertisers as a distraction. The new-media divisions had already become big and old."

Jeff Jarvis goes on to offer suggestions on how newspapers can generate new, local dollars online:

"Start a new company that makes small, local advertising its sole focus. That means they need to set up automated systems to accept and place highly targeted local ads and directories. That means they need to come up with new means of selling without on-the-street sales staffs: outbound phone sales, direct response, even local sales network (instead of citizen journalists, citizen sales people), making aggressive use of the promotional power of the newspaper while you still have it. That means they need to have lots of targeted local content without large editorial staffs."

Most sales organizations with which I am familiar are just not wired for this. The math just doesn't work. It will be interesting to see which traditional media companies are able to make their sales machine work in a New Online World.

Office-Cam returns

Thanks to Phil (The Man Behind the Curtain), I have the Office-Cam back online. Different angle and I might play with that to soften the Uriah Heep look.

And, yes, I proud that a) I know who Uriah Heep is and b) I spelled his name correctly, first try.

Doc: "The only real social works are personal ones"

So says Doc Searls. I've been waiting for someone smarter than I to put into words my "issues" with social networks (Facebook, My Space, etc). The focus of this post is the effort by companies to use social networks for marketing.

"...today's "social networks" look to me like yesterday's online services. Remember AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve and the rest? Facebook to me is just AOL done right. Or done over, better. But it's still a walled garden. It's still somebody's private space. Me, I'd rather take it outside, where the conversation is free and open to anybody."

"...the thing companies need to do most is stop being all "strategic" about how their people communicate. Stop running all speech through official orifices. Some businesses have highly regulated speech, to be sure. Pharmaceuticals come to mind. But most companies would benefit from having their employees talk about what they do. Yet there are still too many companies where employees can't say a damn thing without clearing it somehow. And in too many companies employees give up because the company's communications policy is modeled on a fort, complete with firewalls that would put the average dictatorship to shame. If a company wants to get social, they should let their employees talk. And trust them."

What he said. Truth be told, the company I work for has "highly regulated speech." And no shortage of good reasons for it, but I agree (with Doc) that we would be stronger if our employees could "talk about what they do." There's more to the post than the graphs I pulled. Read it if you're interested in social networks.

Mass media advertising moving toward "mass personalization"

One of our news directors forwarded a very interesting article by Graeme Newell, a "web marketing and revenue specialist" for 602 Communications. The article ("Hiding - The Latest Challenge in News Marketing") touches on how social networks (My Space,Facebook, etc) will change (are changing?) how mass media advertising works (or does not work).

Mr. Newell explains how difficult it will be for companies to advertise and market to those who choose to communicate with only those on their "friends" list. That's a gross oversimplification of one of the articles key points. Here' are a few of my take-aways:

"Spam" will grow to include any message that does not come from a trusted source.
As consumers get more and more overwhelmed by the amount of communication in their lives, smart technology will help them prioritize and eliminate all the time wasters in their daily routine. These systems will filter TV ads, email, text messages, web interaction, phone messages and all other forms of personal communication. The trend will be that if I don't know you, then I don't want to talk to you.

Technology will seek to eliminate "interruption" advertising
There is an adage on the internet that if you obstruct the flow of information in any way, the community will not fight you, but simply go around you. You will quickly find yourself irrelevant. As technology gets better and better, tools will continue to arise that simply eliminate unwanted interruptions like mass advertising and promotion. Holding people hostage and forcing them to watch a non-targeted ad is not going to be tolerated in the future. The audience will demand that the ads they let in be customized to their individual tastes and desires.

Mass media advertising will move towards a system of "mass personalization."
People want products in their lives that share their priorities, interests and values. As mass markets continue to splinter into ever more fragmented and specialized groups, consumers will expect advertisers to follow their lead. Technology will allow truly personalized ad communication with millions of people - all of it customized to the emotional and intellectual needs of the buyer.

Now that everyone (online) can --theoretically-- reach everyone else, we realize we really only care about hearing from our friends (or select acquaintances). Social networks --augmented by technologies like text messaging-- make it possible to do so.

If I ignore most of my email and rarely turn on a radio or TV (without the Tivo filter)... how will advertisers and marketers reach me?

I'm sorry I can't link tot he full article. I can't find it online but will keep searching.

Where the heart is

It's A Wonderful Life

Don't send a lame Holiday eCard. Try JibJab Sendables! Alternate version.

T is for Trespass

If you're a Sue Grafton fan and have not read her latest Kinsey Millhone mystery, you're in for a treat. T is for Tresspass (#20 in the series) is about "identity theft; elder abuse; betrayal of trust; the breakdown in the institutions charged with caring for the weak and the dependent."

This was a real page-turner. Perfect for a snowy weekend.

WiFi detecting T shirt

I fear it's a bit late for this holiday season, but this WiFi detecting T shirt would make a great gift for that geek on your list. Not only finds WiFi signals, but displays the strength.

Runs about $30 and you can remove the electronics for washing, although that wouldn't be much of a problem for the people on my list.

Spotted this at Keith Povall's Sturdy Soapbox.

I wouldn't put a blogger out on a night like this.

I'm amazed at how many really good bloggers I know (personally). Like Dave Morris, who shares some pix from a snowy night in St. Louis.

Covering the Iowa Caucuses

The Iowa Caucuses (Jan 3) is a big deal in the national political scheme of things. One of Learfield's news networks --Radio Iowa-- will cover it, just as we've done since the network began in 1987.

We'll provide two 4-minute reports each hour throughout the evening. These audio reports will be fed by satellite to affiliated radio stations throughout the state (and streamed live on our website). The radio stations will air some or all of these reports along with whatever other programming they are doing that night. This is the way networks like ours have operated since... well, since forever.

The editorial edge of state networks is our ability to focus on the "state" angle of the stories we cover. The Iowa Caucuses will be the big national story of the day (evening). Every news organization in the country will be covering the story, wall-to-wall.

So where's our niche? What do we provide that a listener can't get more of, faster somewhere else? Is our "target audience" people who can't be in front of their TV or computer that evening? We have to proceed on the assumption there will be people listening to their local radio stations that night and hearing our reports a couple of times an hour.

I'm not sure where I'm headed with this ramble. I'm just trying to understand how --and to what degree-- things are changing for news organizations like ours.

And whither the bloggers? Will they be live blogging the caucuses? Is that allowed? Not sure what that would add, since the news organizations (or the Associated Press) will have --I assume-- someone covering each of the caucus locations.

My friend (and Radio Iowa News Director) Kay Henderson has been living and breathing Iowa politics for the last year or so. She probably has the answers to most of these questions. Or at least some interesting insight. I suspect she's too busy to enlighten us, but watch the comments, just in case. She checks in here.

I think I've lost the thread of this ramble... I just know that I'm glad I'm no longer responsible for coming up with long and short term strategy for our networks.

We'll know how many radio stations are "clearing" our reports on Caucus night. We will NOT know how many people are listening to those reports. That's a question for the Magic Eight Ball. If I could ask one more, it would be how will all of this change four years from now?

Camo Lounger

I spotted this lovely camo covered recliner at the local Orschlen store this morning. Aside from the inherent aesthetic value, I wonder if it is practical as well.

You come from a week of deer hunting and the last thing you want to hear the old lady bitching at you. So you sneak in --in full cammy, of course-- and plop down in this baby and disappear.

"Kids, have you seen your father? I thought I heard him come in. Hmm. Guess not."

The Extra Special Series Finale

Ricky Gervais, creator of the original The Office (BBC), is wrapping up his current HBO series, Extras, tomorrow night. After just 12 really good episodes, he's going to leave us wanting more. More.

Holiday greeting from the troops

Our Troops Send Holiday Wishes For Peace, Goodwill, And Body Armor

"Hello, pussy"

That's how Lou Gossett addresses David Caruso's character before choking him into submission in An Officer and A Gentleman (1982). Later in the movie, Caruso has to be rescued from the bottom of the pool in a training exercise. Caruso is an acquired taste but I always found him one of the baddest dudes on the little screen. It hurt me to see him get humiliated.

But this post was going to be about Debra Winger, who made a bunch of bad movies but was really good in two: AOAAG and Urban Cowboy. And she was sort of okay in Black Widow.

I know squat about Hollywood but have to believe she had bad management. Her deep-throated sexiness and more-than-adequate acting chops should have taken her farther.

And for your comment hounds, how about the best drill instructors (or non-coms) in military movies? R. Lee Ermey  from Full Metal Jacket? Adolph Caesar from A Soldiar's Story? Tom Berenger from Platoon?

1968 with Tom Brokaw

I was a sophomore in college in 1968. I think that much of who I am and what I believe today had it's roots in that amazing year. I was reminded of that as I watched Tom Brokaw's excellent documentary on the History Channel.

Short of some serious technological breakthrough, you will never experience 1968 (if you did not). This documentary is about as close as you'll come.

Cold and dark

The ice storm that hit mid-Missouri last night knocked out our power about 10 o'clock this Sunday morning and it didn't come back on until after 6:00 p.m. We spent the day camped in front of the fire place.

Any information about the extent of the power outage or when juice (and access to the net) might be restored was going to have to come from one of our area radio stations. I'm sure that if I could stand to listen to the Rams broadcast (local AM) or an opera (NPR) long enough, I'd hear something about our situation.

But Google has conditioned me to expect (and demand) instant access to the information I need. Yes, I understand that the radio station has to serve the needs and interests of all of their listeners. Some want music (maybe), some want sports, some want news and weather. So everyone has to wait patiently and trust the radio programmers to dole out info and entertainment, like UN aid workers tossing bags of rice to screaming refugees.

So there we sat in our chilly, dark living room, unable to tap into the Great and Powerful Internet. My only source for information --had I the patience to wait for it-- was the local radio station. And it's not fair to second-guess the local radio guys. I don't know what was happening at the station. But they were reporting 17,000 people in and around Jefferson City without power. I think I might have gone wall-to-wall with updates.

So, does this situation make me value my local radio station any more than I did before the lights went out? Or has on-demand access to... everything, raised my expectations to a new level that will be difficult or impossible for terrestrial radio to every reach again?

Ice storm

Our trees took a pounding from this weekend's ice storm. Couple of big cedars snapped off about 20 feet up. Lot of trees have lost (will lose) some big limbs. Mother Nature can be a bitch. These pix tell the story. And these by friend Chuck tell it even better.

Evergreen films

I love movies. I no longer enjoy the shitty experience provided by most movie theaters, but I like movies and post frequently on the subject. But have you ever noticed there are some movies that you can watch over and over and over. And they aren't always great movies. There's just something about them that makes it possible to see them again and again.

I was reminded of this today as we watched About a Boy. I've lost track of how many times we've watched that movie. I started making a mental list of films that fall into this strange category: You've Got Mail, Knotting Hill, Die Hard, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Lethal Weapon, Bridgett Jones' Diary. (Yes, I'm a little concerned by the Hugh Grant thing.)

And while the list is obviously different for everyone, I suspect everyone has such a list of movies. What quality must a film posses to make it endlessly watchable? Feel free to post your list of "evergreen films" in the comments.

Bird Man of Sanibel Island

Henry has turned his telephoto lens on the birds of Sanibel. I assume he was knocked off a 30 foot ladder just seconds after this shot was taken.