We spent the evening at this, a spoken-word event up on Melrose.
At an art gallery.
Yes, that sounds unbelievably pretentious, but it wasn't. It was five comedy writers reading -- literally, right from the page -- while a DJ punctuated the monologues with timely music. We went because Lauren Dombrowski was there -- a former "Mad TV" writer/producer, pride of Boston comedy, and cancer's toughest enemy. She was great, of course, telling a biopsy story that didn't let tears get in the way of laughter, and the others were great, too, talking about everything from disappointed fathers to tee-ball disasters to ultra-Jewish weddings to something extremely dirty in every sense of the word. It's a great room, too: intimate, friendly, and fake (it's called the Fake Gallery, and the art on the walls is appropriately goofy), on a stretch of Melrose that ain't the high rent district (it's east of the 101 near City College).
For ten bucks (drinks included, although donations to that end are a good thing), you can't go wrong. Great evening.
ShareThis week's All Access newsletter takes another shot at the HD thing, pumps up what's right about radio, and includes a Heart reference (as does the headline above!):
I got a press release early this week and it was all about HD Radio and all the great, innovative HD2 channels out there. The HD Radio Alliance, it said, is "continuing the outpour of creativity and ingenuity with the second generation of HD2 programming." Well, that sounded encouraging, because all I hear on HD2 channels -- when I can get them, which is not all the time -- are the same stuff, pretty much, that I hear elsewhere, only with no commercials and no jocks. So I read on, and here are some of the innovative formats listed in the press release: Oldies, Smooth Jazz, Classical Music, Country, 80's. Wow! You mean I can get a radio station that plays oldies, and all I have to do is pay a couple hundred dollars and put up with the more-than-occasional dropped signal? Sign me up!
Well, all right, in fairness, they did have some less common examples, like "Local Music" and "Punk Young Alternative" and "Chick Rock" (BarraCUUUdaaaa!), but, still, it's all jukeboxes. Does it really take an "outpouring of creativity and ingenuity" to say, well, let's take a subset of the formats we already do and call it a format? I think it'll take something more than what you get when you delete a couple of categories from Selector to attract buyers. But I'm biased, because I like talk radio and personality radio and I truly believe that what radio has to offer -- its strategic advantage -- is personality, not "an ever-evolving 5000+ song library" that isn't much different from the target audience's iPods.
So I'm carping again. But I'm also irritated by some of radio's critics. I keep reading the futurists pretty much throwing the last shovelful of dirt on radio, telling us how most of the things radio delivers are better delivered by new media. When they're talking about music, they may have a point. But I've read the contention that there's no reason for radio to, for example, do traffic anymore, because everyone uses the Web and traffic-enabled GPS. Same for news -- who needs radio news when you can get what you need on the Web? For that matter, who needs talk radio when you can go on political websites and participate in the message boards?
Not so fast, Johnny Jupiter. It seems that people are applying the arguments they use to explain the death throes of newspapers to the radio business, too, and that's a mistake. I thought about it while listening to a live talk radio show dealing with a breaking news story and it struck me that what I was listening to was what radio does best -- live, entertaining, immediate, and personality-driven. Sure, I could go get the news on the Web, find video, look at a message board, follow a Twitter feed, but those are different art forms. Talk radio is an art form. Even delivered in a different medium -- podcasts, streaming -- it's still, essentially, talk radio, and it requires a certain type of entertainer and a certain form of entertainment. A radio show would not be better as a TV show, and what makes a good talk radio host isn't necessarily what makes a good anything else. You don't need to see it, or even necessarily time-shift it. It is, as the cliche goes, what it is. Just because there's newer technology doesn't make the art form obsolete. ("Yes, Mr. Van Gogh, that's very nice, but wouldn't it be better if it was a Flash video and maybe changed colors when you clicked on it? And where's the community? It needs a social networking component")
As for ditching the news, traffic, and weather, yes, all of the above can be and are being delivered in new ways, but that doesn't mean that radio should abandon doing it. I already get, for example, traffic information on my GPS, on satellite, on my cell phone, on the web. But in actual, real-world use, I rely on radio reports as much as the Web and the GPS. There's an expectation that your radio station will tell you what it's like on the roads, and if you don't NEED that report as much because you get the information elsewhere, it's still not going to make you turn it off, and you might miss it if it were gone. You don't have an exclusive any more, but you shouldn't be abandoning it.
Radio news, on the other hand, can deliver live, immediate information as quickly as a website and in a form that's well-suited to the medium and to the listener's needs (you aren't going to read a news website while driving). And a really good news organization can produce newscasts that trump even video, getting stories and sound that nobody else has, making listeners come to the station for the real story that TV and the Internet don't have.
That's important: you have to do the information well enough to make people want to get it from you first. You now have competition, a lot of it. But just because someone's sending traffic information and news headlines to your cell phone doesn't mean you can't compete. Just do it better. And many of you are already doing that. (Let's hope that the folks who control the purse strings understand the need to compete, too)
But wait, there's more: radio is not in the same boat as newspapers because it is a tremendously efficient medium. It already reaches everybody. It has a massive installed base, is already in the cars that Internet streamers hope to someday reach, and it's free, more or less. Newspapers are, by way of contrast, horribly inefficient: they require huge resources to print and distribute, and by nature they're late with the news, while the Internet can deliver the same material instantaneously and with enhancements. No wonder newspapers are suffering. But radio shouldn't be in that boat, because we do things others aren't doing yet (and may never do as well), and the technology still works.
What I'm saying here is that the industry's wasting its time looking to create excitement from jukebox formats when it should be selling what it does best, talk, information, and personality, the stuff you can't get elsewhere or is better than what you CAN get elsewhere, or both. That, not "80's Polka Classics," will sell radio.
Okay, now, let's help you do that unique, personality-driven art form of talk radio with this week's edition of All Access News-Talk-Sports' "Talk Topics" show prep column, including items about where you can eat dinner while packing heat, why you want to check that sewer connection before moving into a house, why cheap beer is in vogue, the story of the married couple and the Lotto jackpot, the girl with a twin in her stomach, a drunk substitute teacher, crazy ants, deadly amoeba, a one year old defendant, the swearing cabbie, a great Girl Scout cookie salesperson, why you shouldn't be eating pig frog legs, the feces fraternity (and the feces fraternity fire), manscaping the Glen "Big Baby" Davis way, why everyone's on meds, and the unfortunate proliferation of the faux hawk, plus much ado about the election and the economy and hundreds of other potential topics. You also get "10 Questions With..." the artist known both as WWBA and WHBO/Tampa PD and host Dro Silva and WJFK/Washington "The Hideout" co-host El Jefe, and the rest of All Access with breaking news and columns and ratings and jobs and all that, all free.
Oh, yeah, one more thing: Many of you came through in a big way for the Entertainment Industry Foundation's Revlon Run/Walk for Women's Cancer 2008, supporting myself and my wife Fran in the walk on Saturday. How'd it go? Great. Wonderful experience, and we raised a nice amount for a great cause. And we carried your support and best wishes every step of the way. On behalf of Fran, myself, and the people whose lives will be helped and even saved through the research and programs supported by the walk and by you... thank you, thank you, thank you.
ShareIt's getting warmer here. You could tell as early as the wee hours of the morning, when I stepped outside and felt that little bit of humidity and a warmth that we usually don't get at 4 am. And today was indeed warm, but it'll get warmer -- we can safely call it hot -- in the next few days. Summer's here a little early.
With the warmth -- it was hot enough that for the first time this year, I had to change my running course and use the shady side of the street as long as possible -- came the slog. I hate this feeling. It's like my body's been invaded by aliens made of solid lead. Every step's a little slower, every thought comes a little less easily, everything's in slow motion. I've been strangely tired all day. I gave the gym a shot, but the weights seemed heavier, more awkward. I'm not feeling at my best today.
And to show you where my head happens to be right now, I just paused for a second to look at something else on the web and an hour later, I realized, hey, maybe I ought to go back and finish up that blog post. What was I saying? Does it matter?
Letter tomorrow. Maybe I'll get it in gear by then.
ShareI watched some of the Pistons-Magic game at a bar near home, munching on a burger and observing Dwight Howard missing free throws. He missed several, and meanwhile Rip Hamilton was not missing any, and at the end of the game, despite the Magic hanging in there, Detroit finished them off. And, yes, I sat there thinking that if the Magic -- Howard, mostly -- had just hit their free throws, they might have lived to see another game.
That made me feel old, because that's who thinks about the importance of free throws: old guys. We remember when Rick Barry and Louie Dampier and Calvin Murphy became famous for hitting free throw after free throw, while these kids today...
And then I looked some players up. The notorious bad free throw shooter of yore was Wilt Chamberlain, while today, it's Shaq. Wilt shot 51%, Shaq is at 52%. But that doesn't mean much, so I checked on some teams. Last year's champs, the Spurs, shot 75% from the line, while their opponents shot 74%. The 1969-70 Knicks, the epitome of team play, the archetype of the Good Old Days of the NBA? 73% from the line. The '66-'67 Sixers, long considered one of the greatest one-season teams ever? 68%, with Wilt (44%) bringing the average way down (surprisingly, the next worst free throw shooter on that team, among guys who played over a thousand minutes, was Billy Cunningham at 68%). The '83 Sixers, another all-time team? 74%, with opponents shooting 72%.
But how about bad teams? This year's awful Seattle team shot 77% from the line, and its opponents shot 74%. The 9-73 Sixers of '72-'73 shot 75% from the line, with opponents also at 75%. No matter who I picked -- expansion teams, good teams, fifties, sixties, today, any era -- they shot over 70% from the line. The first exception I found, selecting randomly, was the 1948-49 Rochester Royals at 69%, and they finished 45-15, won the Western Division regular season, and lost in the second round of the playoffs to the iconic Minneapolis Lakers of George Mikan.
In other words, teams pretty much shoot free throws at the same clip as always. We just notice the bad ones more. And we notice the misses in big games even more than that. Free throws are important, but we look at today's NBA players with the same eye that Mr. Wilson used to observe Dennis the Menace. Get off our lawn, and practice your free throws!
ShareI still want to keep the pictures from Saturday's walk close to the top here, so here's a bonus ultra-blurry picture of mechanics at Felix Chevrolet watching us go by:
Check out the pictures below. I promise I'll start writing about something else soon.
ShareI didn't want to put much here because I want yesterday's pictures to remain up top for a while longer. So go check 'em out.
Here's a bonus shot of people apparently genuflecting towards ABC7's tent and truck:
ShareThe Entertainment Industry Foundation Revlon Run/Walk 2008 for Women this morning at USC and the Coliseum? Glad you asked....
We arrived at the Coliseum early, but this year, so did everyone else, meaning it took roughly a half-hour from exiting the freeway to finding a parking space. It was before 7 am and there were already mobs at the booths and in front of the stage, where they were doing aerobics. We walked around for a while, Fran got her survivor's cap...
...and we stood around in a relatively open area for a while:
Someone sang the national anthem:
OMG, it's Tom Selleck! Selleck was a co-host this year, along with Carrie-Ann Inaba of "Dancing With the Stars," a last-minute substitution for Kate Walsh. The middle-aged women who made up the lion's share of the walkers were far more excited about Magnum than I:
The mob assembles on Figueroa, ready to walk. There were teams from a lot of companies, and it seemed, surprisingly, that the turnout was larger this year than last:
They meant "Capitan" as in "El Capitan," right? They didn't mean "Captain" as in "Crunch" and just misspell it, did they?:
Tom Selleck and Carrie-Ann Inaba were signing autographs at the start line as the mob waded past. Between the autograph hounds and the people like me pausing to snap a photo or twenty, this made the start less than speedy:
The firemen were there to send us off:
Above 39th Street, the flag, suspended from the fire cranes. They did this last year, too. I like it:
The only way to go:
This is the kind of place most of the walkers would never encounter. Most of the walkers don't shop at places with bars on the windows:
Walking up Hill Street, a barren and slightly scary industrial stretch. Cops were stationed at each intersection and seemed to be there to discourage anyone from straying from the route. Los Angeles looks like a real city from there:
A cool old ivy-covered building on Hill. I love buildings like this. I would never have seen this one had it not been for the walk:
Of course, I took a picture of myself, my camera at the end of my outstretched arm. My ego trumps any good deeds I might be in the process of doing:
They named what after who?!?:
Greg Oden's home for a year:
Across the street... it's Felix! (Fran could not restrain herself from singing the Felix theme):
Not just Felix, but GIANT Felix!:
Figueroa Street the way you want it to be but it never is, totally devoid of traffic:
The dome atop the Shrine Auditorium, former home of the Emmys, former home of the Oscars, former home of the Grammys, former home of the People's Choice Awards, former home of USC basketball:
The front of the Shrine, from the side. This is where those interminable Red Carpet shows came from:
Next to the Shrine, a statue of a guy in a fez. Actually, it's called "Editorial Without Words" and symbolizes the Shriners' aid to children. Or their love of fezzes:
Relief:
In the stretch, the goal in sight (the Coliseum, not the portapotties):
And we're coming to the final turn, the tunnel entrance just ahead:
What is it like to walk through the tunnel? If the video came out okay, you'll see -- and hear-- the whole thing right here tomorrow.... (UPDATE: No, it didn't come out okay. F'ing Canon camera. F.)
And, oh yeah, it's not too late to donate. Click here.
ShareA last-minute flurry of pledges has brought some more money in for the Revlon Run/Walk on Saturday morning, and it was amazing to see the donations come in, one after the other. I'm very pleased and appreciative. This is a great cause, and I'm happy to help contribute. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
What? You haven't given? There's still time. Click here and donate.
I'm a little disappointed in the lack of celebrity firepower this year; last year had Sheryl Crow, Mickael Chiklis, Pat Benatar, Jessica Alba, Eva Mendes, Fran Drescher -- not bad, This year? Kate Walsh, Tom Selleck, and the Go-Gos. Meh. (Tom Selleck?!?) But that's carping. The real stars are the survivors and their friends and families who are coming out to the Coliseum and USC and walking to raise money to fight women's cancers. And to me, my wife Fran is the biggest star, a survivor and one kick-ass hero.
I'll bring the camera again this year and take pictures along the way. And, again, to all who donated, thank you, thank you, thank you.
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