Have You Heard The Good News? (Generalisimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead)

When you repeatedly announce the obvious it has a tendency to distract attention from the overriding message— not in the same way as crying wolf, but perhaps equally as consequential and with a tendency to sometimes diminish a serious and complex message. The news media-- particularly television news even more particularly local television news-- have adopted an almost universal pattern over the last ten years of repeating stories constantly—often within the same broadcast-- with only the most superficial of updates and typically little or no substantive change in the 'news' material being read. Where news programming on television used to be a unique slice of an otherwise diversified programming day’s content, the economic reality is that it's far cheaper to hire talking heads to re-read stories until something new to read and re-read comes along than it is to devote creative dollars toward actual program development. The 'news' program which begins at 4:30am to tell me 'traffic on the highways is great' [as it should be at 4:30am] and stays in 'read me the news mode' until 10:00am repeating the same headline stories, traffic and weather updates [yep, folks, it's still cloudy and cool and headed for a crisp 63 today-- just like when I said it twenty minutes ago] keeps at it until traffic cycles through the inevitable 'starting to see some back up and congestion' phase before clearing and returning to an 'all green and moving at the limit on the maps’ segment. Fourteen minutes of information can be spread across five and a half hours and separated only by ‘sponsored segments’ of paid for commercial endorsements made to look like a news reporter making an interview. Lather, rinse repeat—and of course repeat, repeat, repeat.

The same formula is being used with reality TV, getting real people to produce content essentially for free in hopes of winning the million-dollar prize or generating a career by gaining national exposure, or both (I replace the ‘perform’ with produce because performance implies some rehearsal or preparation and everyone knows reality TV is totally real, thoroughly unrehearsed, and never produced to a script). Reality TV is cheaper than hiring writers and actors paying residuals for content and creative talent-- the hours of commercials can be woven and re-woven between a much less expensive kind of ‘predictable script’ content and people will still tune in to watch these less-expensive alternatives. The consuming public, so it would seem, doesn't especially care about quality, variety, or even the occasional freshened-up re-write to an otherwise old story-- we'll tune in regardless and stay tuned in because we're creatures of habit and we're too lazy to change the channel, or because we’re too dumbed down to care that we've seen and heard all of this many times before. It’s not information, it’s mind candy and it soothes us. My local 10 o'clock news, an hour of 'programming' content, is usually good for about 14 minutes of actual 'new' anything-- the rest of the allotted time is spent teasing what's going to be revealed if we'd only just stick around through the commercials long enough to hear and see it when it happens. Why else would the weather guy come on at 10:28 with a 45-second weather report (it will rain or it won’t) that tells me to stick around for ‘more’ of the details coming up at 10:44pm—just in time to suck me along through the next long commercial break to catch the ball scores? And news, like the movie trailers today, all too often makes sure the tease is the best part, the real meat to the story, and usually informative enough that catching the rest of the piece is somehow unnecessary and a little disappointing when we see it because it merely repeats what we already knew, already heard earlier, and will continue hearing until the next news factoid comes along. For the evening news and for the coming releases, the intensity of the build up-- creating anticipation-- is usually more satisfying than the actual story or the soon-to-be-released movie. We’ve become a culture of headlines and cutlines and punch lines and sight gags with no real attention paid to the back story. Which came first, our short attention spans or the editing and sound bite delivery system that keeps feeding into them?

The San Francisco Bay Bridge closed this week after a 5000 lb. piece of steel and two suspension cables used for a recent repair failed and fell across several vehicles during the evening commute Tuesday evening. Miraculously, only a couple of minor injuries were suffered and everyone walked away alive. For the next 72 hours the headline news and the repeated updates have sounded strangely familiar: traffic is bad, folks. The commute is bad all over and it’s extending longer than it normally does. Freeways are busier than they normally would be at this hour and the open bridges are heavier than they typically are on days when the Bay Bridge isn’t closed.


Folks, I for one am stunned to learn these facts! In my wildest imagination I would have never guessed that the other bridges would be busier than normal and that the commute would extend longer as 300,000 cars a day are blocked from their typical route and seek alternatives to reach their destinations so as not to disrupt the flow of commerce. And today is Sunday, the fifth day after the bridge was closed and the fifth day the lead news story has been followed up with a similar story, almost identical each time it is read, announcing that the bridge ‘might reopen soon’ [perhaps within a couple of days!] once Cal Trans has determined the repair of the repair is safe. Every hour or two a press conference is held where crowds of television, radio, and the occasionally still-employed newspaper reporters gather around the spokesman for Cal Trans as he answers the same inane questions as before, with essentially the same words as before, and news stations interrupt regular programming of repetitious news to make proclamations that ‘the bridge is still closed, traffic remains snarled, and we might see it opened back up to the public within a couple of days’ if all goes well. Amazing! And so factual!

Eventually the bridge will reopen and traffic will revert to normal. The commute will still be virtually non-existent at 4:30am and will start to show signs of congestion as the public floods the roadways and highways trying to beat the rush, find parking, and make it through the queue at Starbucks in time to carry a low-fat Venti mocha with whip into the office and promptly clock in before 8:00am. No one will seriously ask and no one will tell us why the bridge that collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake remains dangerously at risk of collapse 20 full years after the quake and will take at least 5 more years before construction is complete. No one will seriously ask and no one will tell us why the original cost estimate for a completely rebuilt eastern span, about $500M, will now cost somewhere north of $3.6B assuming no other major changes or delays occur before the scheduled 2013 completion date.  That would mean reporting the obvious and that might cut into the time allotted for news organizations to tell us that traffic is bad, the weather is cool, and details are only moments away.

Where is Chevy Chase when you really need him?

We can do the innuendo, we can dance and sing
When it's said and done, we haven't told you a thing
We all know that crap is king, give us dirty laundry

Don Henley -- Dirty Laundry (1982)

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Use, Reuse, and Re-Purpose (Saving Some Things For Later)

My garage hasn't felt the four wheels of a vehicle on its floor in more than 10 years-- the last one to visit my cluttered sanctuary of tools and scraps and boxes of parts of things long ago stored for future reuse was a decrepit old '74 Volkswagen Thing my then teenaged son decided he was going to restore. The only things remaining of the Thing episode are a few oil stains and four authentic VW hubcaps stowed away on a dusty shelf somewhere. My garage stayed filled with miscellaneous Volkswagen flotsam and jetsam for about two years before my son’s restoration project fell short by a few thousand man hours of actual restoration and a few thousand dollars of serviceable parts. Predictably, it was ultimately added to the list of things that were never going to happen. He eventually sold it to a childhood friend of my brother's-- a friend with both the means and the motivation to make it look and run more like its original appearance—sort of a bizarre, canvass-topped 'military-turned-commercial light duty' extension of the quirky and more wildly successful VW Beetle. I had a '71 Super Beetle in college—a great car I’ve missed driving. Mine had a sunroof—among the first of its kind, with a manual hand crank that was, for the most part, rain tight. I was always amazed at how much 'stuff' could be transported with a single car load if you only took the time to Rubik's cube all the pieces into their proper geometric configurations inside [and occasionally outside] the Beetle's cab. Mine was bright orange and had that ladybug look going down the road— no ladybug spots but a glistening paint job I kept well-waxed. I bought it for $1,700 used in '76 and sold it for $2,300 in 1980 after dropping another 125K on the odometer. I was told when I bought it that if I'd religiously change the oil and adjust the valves every 3,000 miles it would run forever and I believe it. I sold it only because I had a truck for work and really needed the cash to pay for our wedding rings (mine engraved with the license plate number of that Beetle-- 054BIM). The man who bought the bug was a manager for the company I worked at then—the same company my father-in-law worked at for his entire civilian career [I made it there for 7 years—they were a little more conservative than me and I just couldn’t envision becoming a lifer—a tactical error on my part I only now appreciate]. The manager gave the bug to his daughter to drive to and from home and college. 25 years later my wife ended up treating him as a patient and happened to mention his name to me because he mentioned the name of the company (from which he retired as a VP). I explained who he was and what significance he represented to her left ring finger and she carried the story back to him of how our lives had intersected 25 years earlier and 100 miles away from our current home over a pink slip and a set of keys. She described how, upon hearing her story, he had grown silent, almost shedding tears, before sharing that the '71 Super Beetle had given them a long and fulfilled service before suffering a terrible highway crash late one evening. His daughter survived, but the Beetle—gone now except for these few memories. Even the engraved license plate number is gone—our original rings melted down and recast into new ones we later designed for ourselves. Hers now shows off a beautiful emerald cut center stone with baguettes; mine the several smaller brilliant cuts from her original engagement set.

That same garage served as an office for me when we first moved into the ‘too-small’ house with ‘good bones’ for expansion. The garage loft served as an attic storage area but with the simple addition of a couple of electric outlets and a phone line I was able to convert it into a 4 ½ foot tall office complete with desk, chair, fax machine, computer and printer—all of the functional necessities except sufficient height to stand up and stretch and just tall enough that a sudden startle could yield a rafter smack capable of delivering a mild concussion. Accessing the loft meant scaling like an orangutan from a back porch landing to the top of a storage compartment across a temporary safety rail built to assuage my ‘always-ready-to-fear-the-worst’ better half who remained convinced until we finished our addition and I relocated computer and fax and phone and files down into a ‘real’ office [meaning ‘ground floor’ I assume] that I would fall to my death while she was away running errands [if she was ever going to off me for the $183 in insurance money, I suspect that’s the way it would have looked to the cops]. Somewhere in this time frame I decided returning the loft to a useable storage area would be a lot easier if I simply rebuilt the back porch landing and added a new staircase up to the loft—a project well-received by all with a need to actually store anything up there. I’m guessing it won’t be quite as appreciated by some inspector who may someday decide my stair heights aren’t really up to code, but as with my Unabomber cabin-sized garden shed, I hope to be long gone before anyone of any authority asks questions like “How did this get here?” Keeping with the ‘that’s my story and I’m sticking to it” mantra, they’ve been there for as long as I can remember….

There’s a long history of re-purposing in my bloodlines—things as well as space. We needed a wine cellar. We didn’t need a hall closet. Problem solved. We needed a pantry. We didn’t need a laundry area in the garage. Problem solved. We needed a wedding set… well, you get the idea. My garage is a mess because I hang on to things that might be useful someday. I have a tendency to save things that most people would say are ‘junk’ because, for some reason, I see what they could become, rather than what they have been before. It’s the MacGyver gene and a fundamental difference between people—we don’t all get that gene in our DNA. Some of us can walk into a house and visualize what it could become if only a wall was moved, an opening opened, a room reconfigured, a flow redirected. Some folks [I’m not naming any names, Miss “Always-Ready-To-Fear-The-Worst”] need to see the mannequin to visualize things. It’s genetic. My father-in-law was that way—for years he went to Macy’s every holiday season and bought what was on the mannequin for my mother-in-law, regardless of whether it was in her colors or a style that particularly suited her, or was something she even might like. He knew she’d return it and select something else she preferred, he just didn’t know what that was or how to find out. He wasn’t a see the potential kind of person and visualizing beyond what was presented was, frankly, too risky for a decidedly risk-averse personality. I suspect that’s why we got along so well when his daughter introduced us—I was nothing like him and, therefore, no threat to alter his relationship with his little girl. I think at times he lived somewhat vicariously through me—I was the baby-booming risk-taker his depression-era values could never become. I was the assertive ‘just find a way’ personality that would have been a battlefield commission type if I’d ever found the battlefield. Where he was quiet and somewhat reserved in temperament, I was neither. It just wasn’t in our natures to be anything different. I miss talking to him and I miss seeing him smile at me when I would do or say something [usually around his wife and his daughter] that he knew he could never get away with doing.  He seldom let them see he was smiling encouragement at me, but he made darn sure I knew that he heartily approved.

He passed away just before Christmas a few years ago and, at his request, I respectfully re-purposed an old bottle of Courvoisier from forever being a china hutch decoration in the Duncan Phyfe cabinet in his dining room into becoming the final tribute toast he wanted to savor with his remaining living friends. He knew I'd been eyeing that bottle for nearly thirty years of after dinner moments at his house.  He never offered and I never asked, but in the last few years before he died he made his wishes known.  Maybe he really could see the potential in things and I just wasn’t paying enough attention at first.

Long may you run
Long may you run
Although these changes have come.

Neil Young – Long May You Run (1976)

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Student Body Left (vs. Student Body Right)

This week's news had a blurb that announced Rush Limbaugh and a consortium of wealthy others are considering a bid to acquire the St. Louis Rams from the estate of Georgia Frontiere-- the rags-to-riches nightclub dancer who finally got it right with her 6th marriage and wed Carroll Rosenbloom, the wealthy uniform salesman who made khaki the official color of the Greatest Generation.  Limbaugh, the ultra-conservative radio talk show personality occasionally referred to as being 'just slightly right of Atilla the Hun' has repeatedly voiced his love of sports during his on-air rants about all things Democratic (really about all things NOT Republican with an upper-case R, but the distinction is subtle) but somehow the thought of a Rush Limbaugh-led Rams in the NFL is almost too weird to imagine.  Storied NFL franchise with a legacy of success owned by cigar-smoking former Oxycontin addict with a national bully pulpit and an attitude.  Ahh... the stuff NFL dreams are made of!  For many years Rush's syndicated show was a staple of drive time radio here in the Bay Area and, politics aside, he's got a brilliant mind, a focused delivery, and a laser sharp wit.  He's terrific at tearing apart the opposition's stance, eviscerating it with the verbal scabbard, and he can play the demagoguery game as well as anybody in the league-- especially since he's usually the only one talking (and folks, it's hard to lose a game where the other team isn't allowed on your field and can't put up their defense).  Whether you see him as the erudite spokesperson for a generation of conservative 'saviors of democracy' or the demonic preacher of intolerance and right-wing 'traditional values-spouting' bigots, he's a force to be reckoned with using a low-tech mass medium that just keeps on going in the face of twittering competition and continues to exert substantial clout throughout the world.  All of which made me stop and think about the 'emerging' communications giants and the tried-and-true mediums of the past.

I don't pay for Showtime in my cable package (though I apparently do pay for several hundred other channels I never look at-- mostly because I don't speak Mandarin or Farsi or Tagalog) but I love Dexter-- a guilty pleasure if ever there was such a thing (I have others-- like real cream and real butter-- we all do).  I watch the episodes online a couple of days after they are initially broadcast and the site where I view them has 'sponsored' advertising placements.  I can't remember what those ads were for because to me they appear as silent 'white noise' wrapped around the page.  I click the 'Start' icon and a graphic of a television set takes over the page and I watch, commercial-free, the 50 or so minutes of actual content without having to be interrupted every 6 minutes to remember that erectile dysfunction is real and affects both men AND their women, that a scary-looking plastic King wearing brass knuckles makes the best flame-broiled burgers, and that if I can afford to carpet 'this much' here, I can afford to carpet my whole house (note: there isn't a stitch of carpeting in my actual home).  I don't have to be reminded that Sally Field might possibly be the most annoying person ever cast as anything on television, in movies or in a commercial and that Boniva is a really dumb name for a drug (I'd vote for the ShamWow guy as most annoying but I don't think he's been in the movies yet).  Perhaps someday I'll get up from the easy chair in the family room and, Manchurian Candidate-like, drive downtown to grab me some Cialis and a Whopper (the jokes here just write themselves, don't they?) because the programming was embedded into my deep subconscious while I watched Dexter online but when and if that ever happens my brain won't make the connection between the cause and effect-- if I'm even conscious of my behavior I'll just laugh it off as a really strange Alzheimer moment (I'm not sure how my wife will react but I suspect it will scare her immensely-- we only have one claw foot tub, it's indoors, not big enough for the both of us to soak in, and (unlike those ridiculous ads) is connected to actual plumbing.  That and the fact that I don't really eat fast food). 

What I do watch on commercial television, other than baseball, is almost always watched using a DVR so I can fast-forward through the commercials.  It's one of the ways I can skip some of the inevitable repetition of advertisements beating me over the head.  But repetition across mediums and the tighter and tighter intertwining of these deliveries is making it hard for me to avoid an advertiser's message-- unless I wanted to go live in a cave somewhere-- but the newer mediums are making repetition less obvious.  It's near impossible to be on this Earth and NOT get subjected to the barrage of message manipulation consciously and subconsciously aimed at us every day on television and from radio but when was the last time you remember being bombarded with the 589th rendition of the same commercial online or via your mobile device?  If Lewis Carroll was right and "...what I tell you three times is true..." then what they tell me a thousand times surely must be gospel and certainly must be accepted as irrefutable and that makes radio and television even more important as new technologies emerge.  Repetition is the path advertisers have proven works for their clients and it's the path demagogues have seized upon to guide and structure our opinions.   How else do you explain a beyond the margin of error 4 point lead in the national polls for John Kerry and John Edwards in early October of 2004 and a 2.5% loss less than a month later.  Undecided voters didn't decide that election-- likely voters polled in October had their minds changed for them by November.  How?  Repetition of message (facts apparently, are irrelevant, Swift Boat Veterans-- repetition of message is what gets remembered and what makes the voter vote).  If carpet-bombing the blurbs into our brains becomes the strategy, one is left to ask how you infiltrate our minds in a world where the real 'mass' mediums are shifting away from a 'mass' experience and more toward an individual experience.  With fewer and fewer people sharing in the 'same time, same message' experiences of the mass mediums of the past, how do we saturate the mass audience when the mediums allow the receivers to control the timing and the pace of the messaging experience?  One way is to become ever more subtle in the ways we embed the messages into what appear to be ordinary communications.  Predictive algorithms-- by decoding probabilities from our most recent online past-- are becoming so refined that marketers can now individually target messages to assess what we most likely will choose to view next.  From there it's a short step to embed a desired message, insinuate it smoothly within the context of a viewer's predicted selection route, and propel it forward credibly as if it were a natural part of the online conversation between viewer and information.  Is that any less biased and demagogic than Limbaugh or Stephanie Miller or even Howard Stern on the comedic side of radio?

The Federal Trade Commission just published rules governing the proper disclosure bloggers need to make when receiving fees, goods in-kind, and other perquisites in exchange for favorable reviews or comment within their blogs.  Agree or disagree that the consumer needs to be 'protected' by having these relationships called out for us, but shouldn't the same be true when the pimping extends beyond a commercial endorsement and is done to promote ideas and points of view?  Our government takes pains to make sure we understand that the 'mommy blogger' who endorses a certain stroller brand or a specific diaper type to her readership might have been influenced in her opinion by the freebies she received from the companies that wanted her to 'evaluate' their product-- but no one seems concerned about the insidiously huge dollars floating through the campaign and elections system to sway our vote hidden behind ridiculously generic names like the California Renewal Project (the folks that funded Proposition 8 to 'protect marriage' by making it illegal for gays), the Californians Against Unfair Deals (they opposed the amendments to the state's Indian Gaming Compacts and relied heavily on Las Vegas business interests and horse track betting operators), and the Coalition to Protect California's Budget and Economy (this is the Indian Nations who wanted the compact revisions-- which would allow them to vastly expand their casino operations).  Hard to tell from the names what they support and what they want us to support.

Television was already overtaking radio as the medium of the masses when I was a kid but both still had programming sponsored by a single company.  Jack Benny and Lucky Strike cigarettes will be forever linked.  Bob Hope and Pepsodent, Chrysler, and eventually Texaco married commercially.  RCA sponsored The Wonderful World of Disney and brought color programming (and color TVs) into the mainstream.  The money behind the message wasn't particularly complex back then.  There wasn't the need to bury the 'ask' somewhere in the copy-- the medium merely stated what they wanted the consumer to accept.  LSMFT.  You wouldn't smoke something that wasn't 'fine' would you?  Top 40 radio played [yep, you got it] the top 40 selling singles and it was no secret which songs you were supposed to go out and buy. 

Somewhere out there in the not-too-distant future is a defensive coordinator who is going to get a huge contract with an NFL team to become a head coach because he figured out that the way you beat the St. Louis Rams is by stacking the defense on the right side for every down.  You don't think a Rush Limbaugh-owned franchise would ever lean toward the left, do you?  Even if they wanted to, I can't imagine them being so obvious as to run student body left in full view of the cameras.

Radio is cleaning up the nation

They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don't give you any choice because they think that it's treason
So you had better do as you are told
You better listen to the radio

Elvis Costello -- Radio Radio (1978)

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Liar, Liar (Pants On Fire)

Last night's presidential address to the joint session of Congress concerning health care reform gave us the heckler Congressman from South Carolina but little else that might substantively move the needle toward resolution between the differing points of view on reforming our nation's health care. By most accounts the President made the speech because he had lost control of the debate surrounding this centerpiece legislation proposed to define his administration and because he needed, somehow, to recapture possession of the podium and re-establish himself as the thought leader on change. Clearly the messages shaping the debate have been usurped over the last few months by forces opposed to reform, forces favoring the status quo and opposed to change, and forces aligned against this specific president having this specific issue [one that touches every life in every voting demographic and thus has the power to sway both a mid-term mandate and a 2012 re-election bid] as a potential victory mantra entering the 2010 mid-term election season. Even within the President's own party dissent over the particulars of the legislation bubbled up publicly and created the perception of no one awake at the wheel driving the bus. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-SC, the man who shouted out "You lie!" when Obama emphatically stated his plan would not provide insurance for people living in this country illegally, may have stolen the spotlight momentarily [before coming to his senses and apologizing for the massive loss of judgment and childish breach of decorum] but it's been the insurance companies and other partisan lobbying groups that have been running radio and television commercials, staging loud and disruptive interruptions at local town hall-style meetings with constituents held by congressional representatives in home districts to discuss the plan, and brow-beating the public with their Palinesque sound-bite slogans about 'death panels' for seniors, severing of the current doctor-patient relationships, and public subsidies to provide health care for illegal aliens.

Sad that we can't have an open and civil debate about important topics any longer in this country. The issues, real not imagined, are no longer shaped by our divergent opinions about how best they might be solved but rather by the exercise of ever-greater and more blatant deception and misdirection spewed across the airwaves and the broadband spectrum to incite fear and inflame emotions before any rational discussion might break out amongst us. Debate in this country has been reduced to the ideological equivalent of shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre just as the previews of coming attractions start to roll-- everyone panics, the crowd makes a mad dash for the exits, inevitably some folks are trampled and hurt, and no one actually gets to see the movie. The current vogue tactic is to simply swiftboat every issue with inflammatory rhetoric orchestrated to deflect a fair and open discussion based upon merits. And, like the pre-emptive strike logic of the nuclear 60's-- the theory that launching the first massive salvo should so cripple an enemy that retaliation, if any comes, will be minor and ineffective-- being first to swiftboat an issue places the adversary in the unenviable position of taking a defensive stand and crying out "Not true, not true!" By the time the denials are made, the crowd has rushed away en masse from the perceived threat, later it mills about to see if the whole place will go down in flames, and eventually finds itself ever more sensitive to those whispered rumors and half-truths that quickly turn a curious townsfolk into an angry lynch mob. A mob incited to action is an incendiary force of nature-- difficult to reason with-- and, once fanned by the hot breath of the demagogue becomes one not likely to listen for compelling evidence to the contrary no matter how truthful or valid the evidence might prove. Mr. Wilson’s disrespectful faux pas was quickly negated with a specific citation from the House bill but what people will remember is that he called the President a liar. Even if you allow validity for his concern that the House bill doesn't create specific, measurable enforcement and verification processes to preclude illegal aliens from lying to receive federal subsidies for health care-- a perfectly reasonable objection which should prompt open discussion by all parties to this process-- what the public witnessed was the equivalent of a pre-emptive nuclear strike lobbed across the aisle whereby the President and his supporters must now concentrate on defending their version of the truth at the expense of pressing forward any meaningful discussion that might assist in resolving the issue on behalf of the nation. Mr. Wilson has swiftboated Mr. Obama and the truth, in whatever proof you choose to drink it, is now a secondary issue to the perception of a lie.

Why are we so quick to swallow the hook on a mere sound bite of often faulty or deceptive information about our candidates, our legislation, or our national policies but we agonize over the smallest of facts when deciding between the various models we consider when buying a car? At times it seems we pay more attention to whether the chicken is 'free-range' or was raised in a coop, whether the latte is low-fat or whether the barista used non-fat milk, or whether we'd prefer the house dressing or the bleu cheese on the side. On some things we are incredibly diligent and we never fail to make them exactly the way we want them; on others, we just sort of go with the flow and let whatever the headline of the moment is or the opinion of the majority or the shout of the demagogue dictate how we feel or react to something. We're incredibly susceptible to manipulation, vulnerable intellectually to distortion, and we don't seem to be all that bothered by the fact that we can easily be spoon-fed how we're supposed to react to many issues. Being informed and using our abilities for critical thinking is taxing, is hard work, and we're all-too-often willing to forego the effort and simply accede to the whim of what's pre-digested and presented for us to consume. We're a marketer's dream!

I recently read and loved a quote by Edwin Schlossberg, an internationally acclaimed designer, author and artist. "The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." Is that really the case or do folks merely read and accept what's been written down for them without contemplation? And if they do, how do they know that what we write and what they read is anything close to the truth?

Jive talkin'

You're telling me lies, yeah

Jive talkin'

You wear a disguise

Jive talkin'

So misunderstood, yeah

Jive talkin'

You just ain't no good

The Bee Gees -- Jive Talking (1975)

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Beatdowns and Smackdowns (and Flaming Poo)

Every once in awhile some silly event, large or small, happens to me in my life and an overwhelming sense of righteousness comes over me where I feel the need to lay a figurative beatdown on someone or some thing-- and this week has produced several of those hair-trigger moments. As a young man I long ago conquered the [literal] physical need to deliver a beating after realizing my half wasn't ever going to be the successful half of any close encounter requiring fists as the offensive weapons of choice but, like most vices overcome by social pressure instead of a deep personal desire for change, the feeling and the psychological need to deliver a serious smackdown never seems to extinguish completely and I've resorted to left-right-left combinations of words ever since. This week's 'put up yer dukes!' moment popped up so fast and so innocuously that I startled myself at how I felt about it, how I reacted, and I started wondering if I'd somehow finally crossed over the 'old guy' tipping point and morphed to become that mean old nasty guy everybody knew as a kid who lived at the end of every block and who was always yelling at you to 'stay offa my lawn!" or 'turn that !@*#!@*#! [gawd awful] music down!' You know the guy, the Clint Eastwood in 'Gran Torino' kind of guy-- basically just an old geezer with a shotgun and an attitude and a lot of unexplained but pent up hurt and pain in his psyche [as scripted in by the screenplay guy and overacted by Clint] to make him seem intense and complicated. The guy who was just plain sour in demeanor and nobody ever really understood why he was so mean-- and nobody ever took the time to call him on it and find out-- so they just did stupid things that seemed to make him even more of a sourpuss (you know, lighting a bag full of steamy dog poo and leaving it on fire on the front porch while playing doorbell ditch really might go a long way toward lightening the tension and making a grumpy old man smile and suddenly become pleasant!). Truth is, nobody wants to be Clint [and nobody wants to admit that they actually sat through the entire 1 hour and 56 minute waste of celluloid that Gran Torino became -- unless they were strapped down to a Red Cross table during an apheresis donation with no way to unshackle the bonds]. Clint was a personality zero, Clint was a miserable old coot, and nobody wants to be a miserable old coot and end up like that. Note to Clint: if, as you stated in interviews, this is the last 'on screen' role you take, you're making a huge mistake going out like this! Dirty Harry, please don't end it like that!

I was hiking with my dogs Saturday morning [as we always do] and we'd reached that farthest point out where we turn on the trail and rise to the top of our ridgeline and begin the three mile hike back toward pavement and eventual recovery from the foxtails and burrs of rattlesnake country. I was no more than 100 feet from the top of a rise in the trail where we break off and turn north when I saw the women on horseback, two of them, poking over the crest. My dogs have seen and been exposed to horses on the trail and they know to behave [horses, unlike cattle, never need herding]. I commanded my hearing dog to 'wait' [which he immediately did] and prepared to signal my deaf dog the same [funny thing about deaf dogs though, they have to look at you before you can give them a command they'll respond to]. Nasty Lady Number One, a 70-ish looking woman with a bandage over her cheek, spoke out nastily to "leash your dogs" as soon as she saw them-- even though both dogs followed my commands and paused within 20 feet of the horses and neither of them barked, nipped, or made any motion to impede the riders' progress on the trail. At first I didn't realize she was even speaking to me but as the dogs stood motionless waiting for me to reach the crest before they are allowed to turn on the trail toward the ridgeline she repeated her demand in the nastiest of voices and elevated her volume such that hikers on the next ridge would have been startled. I gave my dogs permission to turn on the trail and they instantly left the horses and raced for the ridge-- a game far more interesting for them than passing two large clodhoppers on the trail. Within seconds my hiking companions were at the top of the ridge waiting, as always, for me to arrive [it takes me longer to hike to the top since I only use two legs compared with their four]. Nasty Lady Number Two, also well-beyond her 60th birthday candle, blurted out in that really hostile, pissy voice only a mean-spirited person can make, that the 'rules' in the open space require 'all dogs to be under voice command and that she has never once seen a dog that was under complete voice command.' I pointed out to her that deaf dogs have to adjust to hand signals instead of shouts and that the rules also state all pet owners are responsible for cleaning up after their pets on the trail-- a rule I've never once seen adhered to by the many horseback riders that share the trails with dogs and mountain bikers in our open space. Pissy voice Number One pops off with 'well, these are livestock, not pets!' to which my 'if it sleeps in a barn at night and you have to bring it food, it's a pet' clearly fell on [pissy] deaf ears.

I turned and started my ascent to the top of the ridgeline, irritated at the women not because they were in the right or in the wrong but because there was simply no provocation for them to act haughty and terse and superior. My dogs barely noticed their horses, were far more interested in running up the hill, and were behaved and under control the entire time. They never barked once! There was just no reason for the two Blue Meanies to behave as they did and it made me want to smack their horses' buttocks for their pettiness [I resisted the temptation]. As I hiked back north toward Ginder Gap I watched their path below until they disappeared. I suspected I knew the route they would take and I also suspected our paths would cross again at the top of the gap. They did, and ours did, but this time I was kneeling down filling my Sierra cup with water for the panting dogs when I saw their horses crest the ridge. I calmly held the boys and allowed them to drink while Nasties One and Two silently rode past-- giving me the stank eye the entire time. I confess a momentary thought which included me tossing the bag full of poo my boys had deposited along the trail [and that I was, as always, dutifully packing out] into their saddle laps but that wouldn't have been as meaningfully symbolic as if I had gathered up a mound of their horse dung to make my point. Instead, we turned and hiked down the gap for home.

Thinking back on these women and their nasty tone still wells up in me the urge to smack them swiftly upside the head and say [a la Cher in Moonstruck] 'snap out of it! People just shouldn't be inclined to act so pissy and mean-spirited to each other without reason. But reflection makes me think about Clint and the Gran Torino and the Hmong neighbors, and the old man in the corner house that yells at you when your bike cuts the corner of the sidewalk momentarily onto his grass. There has to be a reason people act mean and bitter to each other and, even if they don't share it, there has to be some excuse for mean venom-spewing old folks! Mean Nasty Number One had a bandage on her cheek and, while I didn't think of it at the time, maybe she fell off her horse and it kicked her. Maybe someone else's dog startled her horse when it happened and now she's afraid of all dogs on the trail! Maybe Mean Nasty Number Two was merely sticking up for her friend and being supportive and maybe if I had met Mean Nasty Number Two under different circumstances she and her stank eye would have been pleasant and kind to me and my dogs. Maybe she actually does climb down off her high horse and pick up the turds her gelding leaves behind. Or maybe it's just that the older you get, the more you feel like you have the right to tell younger folks how they should be acting-- even when they act just fine without your help and even when the hurt you've experienced in your life doesn't have anything to do with the people you subsequently meet afterward.

I hope when I get old I never yell at kids whose bike tires cut over the edge of my grass. I hope I never have to yell at someone to turn their !@*#!@*#! [gawd awful] music down. I really hope I never run into those ladies on the trail again, but if I do, I hope I'll have had the good sense and foresight to have picked up a full bag of steamy horse dung off the trail and brought along a lighter. See what I mean? I still can't resist the temptation to ring somebody's bell....

Hit me with your best shot!

Why don't you hit me with your best shot!

Hit me with your best shot!

Fire away!

Pat Benatar -- Hit Me With Your Best Shot (1980)

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Mob Rule (and the Power of the Press)

I read the news online every morning and again periodically throughout the day for updates because I believe it's important for people to remain aware of what's going on throughout the world. An informed populace is critical to any democracy and our country is that, despite all its organizational and operational flaws. A free press keeps us engaged in the important issues so we might maintain our democracy and understand the complexities required to make sound judgments when voting for elected officials to lead us into the future. I read a lead story last month that Rod Blagojevich, the disgraced former Governor of Illinois, wasn't able to leave the United States to participate in a reality TV show being filmed in Costa Rica but his wife willingly subbed in for him, according to press reports. Said Blagojevich, “... it's a way for us to make a living as we rebuild our lives, keep our kids in the same school that they're in, stay in the same home that they've lived in for the past eight years and try to keep as much of a normal life for our children as possible....” The news helped me better understand the pitfalls one can become embroiled in when one tries to sell the appointment of a US Senate seat for personal gain. Last week Sarah Palin announced she would be resigning as Governor of Alaska and this news helped me understand why it's important to always finish what you start-- except when finishing will complicate your ability to generate national exposure for your anticipated run for the Presidency. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford recently admitted he has been lying to his staff while leaving the country to cavort with his Argentinean mistress but he further stated that, while she [the mistress] is the love of his life, he is 'trying to fall back in love' with his wife. This news helps me understand why it's important to maintain a current passport and, perhaps, separate bedrooms. I read a report that cited poll numbers to show that current New York Governor Paterson was less popular with the electorate than his predecessor, Client-9 Eliot Spitzer of "I paid $4,300 to a 22-year old hooker" fame. I apparently need to know this because somewhere there are voters who simply don't care about personal morals and somewhere there are hookers that charge $4,300.

Thomas Jefferson's notion that a democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine is true in California if you're talking about gay marriage but not true if you're talking about raising revenues and addressing our state's collapsing economy and $26.3B deficit. Cutting spending here is simply a non-starter and to raise taxes requires a virtually unattainable two-thirds majority by the legislature-- and that only happens when the tax increases are imposed upon people with enormous financial means by the other 97% of the state's populace. Our elected officials are now 13 days past their mandated delivery date for publishing an approved state budget and once again it appears there's no consequence for failure (you and I would have long ago been fired by our employers had we so arrogantly blown off a deliverable of this magnitude but for the 'per diem-laden electomaniacs' there are no ramifications whatsoever). Where it's patently obvious to virtually any Californian with an IQ above 13 that the state needs to raise taxes AND cut programs, even necessary and important ones, no legislator has the political will to do either. Why is it that we accept such performance failures and the blatent disregard for action so quietly and allow our highly-paid, deeply lobbied, well-perquisited leadership to simply fail at leading us? It can only be explained one way: It's Michael Jackson's fault. He distracted us just when we needed to pay attention.

The self-proclaimed King of Pop died June 25th and today, 19 days after the coroner confirmed his passing, we're hearing news reports that his zombie body might finally be on the move (unconfirmed reports of moonwalking movement have been leaking out for almost two weeks now but, thus far, video evidence to support such a claim has been unconvincing). In a "Thriller" meets "Weekend At Bernie's" mash-up, helicopter camera crews today are following a black hearse around the freeways of Los Angeles in a scene all-to-reminiscent of the slow-speed freeway chase of a certain white Ford Bronco fifteen years ago-- and every local news station, magazine tabloid show, and national network morning show paid attention to this incredible breaking news story today (in truth, these same shows somehow now lead with Michael Jackson instead of Barack Obama, every day so clearly it must be that Michael Jackson is, somehow, running our country). 'All Jackson all the time' hasn't yet made it to the network tagline but I understand we're close to an approval. After this morning's coffin sighting, attractive young news reporters with perfectly appropriate journalistic English and decidedly ethnic sounding names are using GPS navigational systems in their ActionNews Chevy Suburbans and have been receiving up-to-the-minute airborne directionals from LiveCopter pilots as they trail the hearse hoping to make the scrum, get the first glimpse, upload the first feeds, and whisk in with a microphone to ask the perfect lead-in and capture the first comments from celebrity zombie Jackson, still deceased, when he eventually emerges from the vehicle to accept the reins of power. Normally well-managed by handlers and public relations teams, copies of Jackson's remarks are strangely absent from news producers' in-boxes causing production teams difficulty preparing teases, crawls and boards for the expected broadcasts announcing the leadership change. Clearly somebody doesn't have their eye on the ball and clearly a change in campaign leadership must be near.

In other news, the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor to sit on our Supreme Court and pass judgments on the most important issues of our time for the rest of her life began this morning with the outcome little in doubt-- 15 senators made opening morning speeches suitable for editing into re-election commercials before a word was heard from the nominee. She will be approved overwhelmingly when the Senate votes-- not because she's a woman, a Latina, or an Obama appointee but because she is simply qualified for the job and she has no competition. That's real power. Everything else the news will report about her is irrelevant. Somewhere out there is a freak contingent that would seek to have Sotomayor's appointment to the court derailed because of some bizarre fabrication-- they'll claim she has been seen at ritualistic sacrifices held by devil-worshipping Tupperware representatives or that she once sang "My Way or the Highway" at a karaoke bar-- but they will fail and crawl back under their respective rocks. That same crowd will be the ones saying Princess Diana was murdered by the Royal Family [or by Mohammed Al Fayed or MI6 or Charles' man Michael Fawcett]. They'll be the folks that are certain Elvis is alive and living in Salt Lake City as a personal trainer under an assumed name , that the CIA arranged 9-11, that Frank Sinatra was the shooter on the grassy knoll, that the Apollo landing was filmed in a studio back lot, and that we're holding aliens in a freezer in Roswell. That contingent is always out there. In hiding. Holding meetings. We know what you're after.

Dear American Television, Radio, and Newspaper Press Corps: I accept that you have the power to convince the California electorate to do anything [remember Prop. 8?] and that you are the only thing standing between our informed electorate and the abyss, but please don't decide that we need to see a zombie Michael Jackson elected Governor of California or something equally absurd. We all need to get back to the business of living in a reasonably well-informed democracy-- where we can daily read and watch unbelievable stories that include the truly ridiculous behaviors of our elected leaders-- like the stories where they actually balance the budget, care for the needs and the wishes of the electorate, turn down gifts from corporate and industry lobbyists, go home to their own spouses at night, and don't spend all their daily per diem in a bar leaking important stories like the whereabouts of Michael Jackson's coffin to the press.

Lunatic fringe
In the twilight's last gleaming
This is open season
But you won't get too far

Red Rider -- Lunatic Fringe (1981)

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Grumpy Old Men (Large Mammals With Small Brains)

The older I get the more tolerant and patient I think I'm becoming. Whether this is, in fact, true is a matter for others to decide-- but I have the sense that I'm more capable with these traits today than I was as a younger man and that I am evolving into a more tolerant being. Things that used to bother me a lot don't seem to matter as much anymore and things that would have provoked a strong reaction a decade ago [or two or three] often go entirely unnoticed. I'm typically not prone to demonstrative reactions-- the kind that could instigate road rage or bar fights or Maverick vs. Iceman confrontations but I'm no shrinking violet either. I occasionally feel the need to rear up on my figurative haunches, let out a few bellows, and periodically growl out the signals that might warn of an impending attack. People still do those pet peeve behaviors-- the ones that make me internally ballistic and any one of which could trigger a flare-up of the old 'younger' me-- but more often than not I growl quietly to myself these days rather than out loud. I have not yet evolved into the mellow old 'just roll with it' guy that sits on the front porch rocking chair and never gets bothered by much of anything but I can see that I'm not that far away. I've already mastered the art of doing three minutes of Andy Rooney-style sarcasm. I can appear distinctly annoyed at the most trivial of matters while never raising my voice a single octave and I can use only the occasional inflection of a syllable to display my utter disgust with someone or something. This, I feel, is a skill well worth having and one I have practiced extensively for sport. Sometimes you have to drop a gazelle just to remember you still can.

I don't often allow my displeasured temper to go apoplectic and I seldom get truly mad about anything anymore but I don't mind telegraphing in that 'only-an-old-guy-can-do-it-like-that' way when I am irritated. Going off is just not worth it and, besides, being subtle is more fun. When people do or say something stupid or frustrating I'll comment or be expressive in my generally mild and caustic way and it's been years since I've let out a real lion's roar. Moments after I do, you'd be hard pressed to believe I was ever annoyed about anything at all. I forget easily and move on. But it wasn't always that way. I used to have an elephant's memory and I used to be able to carry a flame over things that irritated me. I used to be good at remembering why something or someone was incredibly stupid or wrong or insensitive or mean-spirited and I could smolder a grudge with the best of them [once I didn't speak to my own Mother for eleven months because of a cruel remark she made in ignorance-- she eventually figured it out and apologized from the heart and I've never loved her more for it]. Hold a grudge? Not anymore. I'm just not as good at remembering the details as I once was and that makes letting go a lot easier than before. The couple of grudges I still hold are long since buried and forgotten about and I've moved on. I used to wait for what I felt was my deserved apology and I was, at the time, prepared to continue on as if nothing had ever happened but now I simply don't even think about them and expect they'll die quietly with me when I go. The older I get, the less bandwidth I have available for storing useless thoughts and feelings about things from the past that might have once bothered me. The older I get, the more I realize how little I'll remember a day or two out about something that bothers me today-- and that makes not setting those memories up in what little mental storage capacity I do have all the easier. Each time I skip making a permanent memory of something irritating it brings me closer to the front porch and becoming that 'roll with it' guy.

As I drove downtown yesterday I came to a four-way stop and there were cars pulling in at every corner. The other three bozos driving [two of which, in truth, were actually Madame Bozos] were each talking on their cell phones-- illegal in this state and possibly the most widely ignored law since coming to a complete stop at a stop sign became the quickest way to get rear-ended. Yes, they failed to yield to the driver on their right. I cussed each of these distracted and dangerous yahoos under my breath and promptly forgot about them. Once I was downtown, I avoided hitting the two jaywalkers bolting in front of me to cross over and look at shoes or blouses or some other bright, shiny object. Over coffee I watched in sheer amazement as some yo-yo in a Chevy Suburban tried to make an illegal mid-street U-turn into an angled downtown parking stall in front of our local Peet's-- cutting off at least three cars approaching from the other direction who were legally entitled to secure parking on their side of the street. It's annoying when it happens-- it's ballistically annoying when the little turd proceeds to make the illegal U into a 12-point turn holding up traffic in both directions because his gigantic SUV has the wheelbase of a small school bus with no turning radius for our narrow downtown streets. Jeez, jerk, if you're going to break the law and irritate and inconvenience so many people, at least be able to navigate the turn like you've actually driven a car before. And no... I do NOT have change for a dollar so you can feed the meter! The tatted-up coffee kids get all my change since they work for minimum wage and have to take all of your 'I asked for a half-cap, low-fat, low-foam, dash only of cocoa powder' crap before you get all pissy and 'forget' to tip them before blocking everyone else's access to the cream and sugar. I really can't wait to follow you later on driving 40MPH on the freeway because you have to read that really important message coming in on your Blackberry [Note to self: write these down or you'll never remember them].

Apparently no one under the age of 40 watches 60 Minutes on Sunday nights anymore-- the average age of a viewer on the CBS investigative reporting magazine show is 61 years old so fewer and fewer people will ever appreciate what I mean by 'Andy Rooney sarcasm'. That really irritates me because he's worthy of being appreciated for a well-honed, well-crafted skill that has been developed and refined over decades. If I remember to, I'll write down how much it irritates me so someday someone will know I was annoyed about it once. Otherwise when they visit me on the porch and I say something sarcastic, they just won't get it and I'll eventually end up sounding grumpy as I try to explain it to them. Somehow the beauty of well-honed, well-crafted sarcasm is lost if you have to go back and explain it. The same is true for grudges and apologies-- if you have to explain why they exist or why they are needed, the moment surely has passed and it's time to simply put them out of your mind. People say that sarcasm is merely belittling someone or something and that it is used by shallow minds to cause pain but I disagree. Sarcasm isn't made to cause pain; rather, sarcasm serves to allow feeling and sensation to exist where only numbness and a lack of awareness existed before and I think it is the extraordinary mind that can evoke sensation where it has been previously misplaced or bludgeoned. When I stop being sarcastic you'll know I've achieved that tolerant, patient place where only numbness and a lack of awareness await and I hope you'll know what to do with me then....

Old man look at my life,

I'm a lot like you were.

Old man look at my life,

I'm a lot like you were.

Neil Young -- Old Man (1972)

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