July 2003 Archives

The question caught me by surprise. I was hoping not to have to deal with the topic, but that's not possible these days, so I should have expected it when the guy cutting my hair asked me:

"So, whaddya think about Kobe?"

Ummm...

Nothing?

Nothing.

I can usually be counted on to have an opinion about everything, but this one's different, because of one major point: there's nothing on which to base an opinion yet. We don't know what happened, everything's a rumor, and... well, what the hell does anyone WANT me to say? That he's guilty as sin? Innocent? She's a victim? A golddigger? What?

I don't know anything. Neither do you.

I was embarrassed to hear one local sports radio station continually assuring Kobe "we got your back" in countless promos. What if he's guilty? Same for the women's groups rallying to the victim's side- what if she's lying? How embarrassed will they all be if they backed the wrong horse?

So, what do you say when someone asks you what you think about it? The smart way to handle it is to say, look, I don't know, there's not enough evidence in public yet, let's wait and see, it really doesn't matter what any of us thinks yet. That's what I SHOULD have said. I guess some of it was incorporated in there, but I heard myself babbling about stuff like, well, if there are bruises and tears, then blah blah Illinois law blah no means no but what if blah blah blah.

I've been in talk radio too long.

Someday, I'll be smart enough to shut up. In the meantime, don't be like me.

I'm a guy, therefore I am inordinately excited by anything electronic. Today's new gadget: a new notebook computer. We replaced our aged Pentium II/333 Sony ultralight with a zippy new P4m deal, also light and very fast and wireless and stuff.

Needless to say, this is occupying all of my brain cells at the moment, so I'm not going to be as coherent (!) as usual. And that's why I'll spare you the blather and move on to Thursday.

Cats baffle me. I'm aware that I'm far from the first person to be flummoxed by a cat, but this is all new to me. Ella the World's Most Famous Cat has a new move that I'm trying to figure out. Help is invited.

Here's the move: I'm writing on the computer when I feel something tapping me on the elbow. Tap tap tap tap tap, like a child tugging on your sleeve to get your attention.

I look down. Hi, Ella.

I reach to pet her.

She walks away, stops at the door, looks back for a moment, and walks out.

What does she want?

She doesn't want to be petted. She doesn't want food- there's plenty out for her. She doesn't want to play fetch- she brings me the ball when she does. She just looks up at me, then disinterestedly walks away.

As I've said in earlier columns, I wish I could talk cat. But I do not have any idea what she wants.

Cats are like that.

Any guesses?

It may be an inappropriate time to mention this, but, er, well, I never laughed at Bob Hope.

I don't dispute his place in show business history, and I don't claim that he wasn't funny. All I'm saying is that I- me, not the world, not you, just me- didn't think Bob Hope was funny. Not intentionally funny, that is- there was something funny in a cringeworthy way when 80-something Bob would drool over Brooke Shields. And maybe he had moments- the Oscars, or once in a while in one of the Road pictures. But, generally, I don't get it...

...which is how it should be. It's part of the time-honored tradition of one generation hating the next generation's humor, music, clothing, slang. Bob Hope was from my dad's generation, or even his dad (my dad has never been much for Bob Hope, actually). I'm not SUPPOSED to think he's funny, any more than my dad would laugh at "Mr. Show" or "The Office." Each generation has its culture. If you're 16 and your parents tell you they like 50 Cent, you switch to someone else. It's natural.

So I never got Bob Hope. In my childhood mind, he was no different from Wayne and Shuster, who would make me lunge for the channel changer when they'd show up on "Ed Sullivan." They talked, the audience laughed, it sounded like a foreign language to me. Audiences raised on Adam Sandler and "Jackass" probably feel the same way about Richard Pryor and George Carlin. And when each of them go, there'll be a lot of sadness in the media and among their fans, and another generation looking on, baffled by the reaction.

I never laughed at Bob Hope. I'm sorry that he's gone, and I'm sure he was a fine man and his service to the Armed Forces is laudable. But I never laughed at Bob Hope. May he rest in peace.

Sunday's L.A. Times included an op-ed piece on the recall of California Gov. Davis by Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, and you could have pretty much predicted what he'd say ("Recall bad! BAD recall!"). The column did, however, bring into sharp relief the kind of thinking on which a lot of politicians- most liberals and a significant segment of the conservatives, too- base their life philosophies. Here's a sample from Panetta's column:

As Fred Allen once said, "California is a great place to live if you're an orange." For the rest of us, it is a state that has become virtually ungovernable. How did this happen? Will we face future recalls and initiatives as people take governance into their own hands? Or can trust be restored in the democratically elected leaders and processes that should guide our future?

And later, this:

... (T)he initiative and recall processes are not the real problem. They are merely symptoms of a much larger problem: the breakdown in trust that is essential to governing in a democracy.

Which is a fancy way of saying this: the people can't be trusted to know what's best for them. The government knows best. The people should "trust" the government and leave things in the professionals' hands. Let Big Bro... er, Father take care of you.

For anyone who believes in the primacy of government over the will of the people, this kind of paternalism makes sense. How can the great unwashed understand all of the complexities of the budget, the compromises necessary to get your opponent to vote for your bill, the need to placate the unions with large contracts and no-show jobs? It's all too important to leave to the people. All they should do is vote and then shut up and get out of the way.

As long as they vote for us.

It shows in Panetta's loaded phrases: "runaway initiatives and recalls," "partisan weapon," and this choice sentence that encapsulates what the Democrats in Sacramento think of the will of the people:

The current recall effort is in many ways the culmination of direct democracy run amok.

And there ya go. Letting people vote directly on issues is "direct democracy run amok." Allowing the public to do more than just complain when an elected official mismanages the state, wastes money, and then raises taxes to pay for his mistakes is "direct democracy run amok." Giving the people- not the political parties, not the lobbyists, not Leon Freaking Panetta, but the taxpayers, the citizens of this state- the right to not just write letters and op-eds to the L.A. Times but to actually effectuate real change is "direct democracy run amok."

And that's exactly why we're "running amok." If politicians and pundits won't listen when we've had enough, it's our only option.

We're not having kids, not by choice, necessarily, and, sometimes, we both get a little melancholy about it. Then, it all goes away in an instant.

That's because we see other people's kids in public.

At dinner this evening- in a bar, no less- a guy walks in with two sons, maybe 2 and 3 years old. He has no control over them- they scream, turn over chairs at other people's tables, climb in and out of the window (street level), and even throw the metal menu stands. And the guy's wife shows up with a third son- I'm guessing he's 5 or so, in an unnecessarily ironic Angels cap- and he's as bad as the others. I won't bore you with details, other than to bore you with the mother scolding the 5 year old for announcing that, wherever the family went for their outing, he was not having fun and wanted to go home.

I couldn't blame him.

Now, when I was a kid, we behaved like little angels, and always did what our parents told us to do, because we feared corporal punishment. (Actually, my dad and mon never once hit me, and I like to think it's because I didn't do anything to deserve a smack, not that I can remember) And, besides, screaming in public got kinda old after the first hundred times.

Don't ask me how to handle a screaming kid. I guess I should be sympathetic to the parents- you try to be a good parent, but your Deadly Spawn run around like Uday and Qusay turning over tables. Whaddyagonnado? Dunno, but the interference with my Chicken Pesto sandwich was getting to me, and I had the urge to pull the kids aside and teach them something new. "Hey, kids, wanna learn a new word? You know the word 'mother,' right? Well this one STARTS with 'mother'... remember only to use it when you're supposed to be on your best behavior- mommy and daddy will give you a special treat if you do..." But I shouldn't have to do that. When I was about 6, the kids on the playground knew ALL those words, leading to the apogee of children's comedy, the version of "The Name Game" in which you performed said lyrics using the starting name "Chuck." All together now, "Chuck, chuck, bo buck, banana nana bo buck, fee fi fo..." That was enough to send us into milk-streaming-from-nostrils laughter. That and "Rich." Kids today don't know from "The Name Game"- they go from Barney to 50 Cent at warp speed.

So I miss BEING a kid, but when push comes to shove, I guess I don't regret not HAVING them. It's better for society that way. Bad enough that kids are into gangsta rap at 13- it'd be worse if my kids were out there teaching their 6 year old schoolmates "Chuck, chuck, bo buck..." You wouldn't want that.

A press release showed up in my e-mail today. It read like this:

GUY WHO FIRED PERRY PROMOTED TO BIG JOB

A guy who fired Perry Michael Simon from a radio job several years ago has been given a new title, probably accompanied by more money. He will report to another guy who fired Perry Michael Simon; this guy has an even bigger and more lucrative job.

At least, that's what it looked like to me.

I've gotten fairly good at keeping myself sane when stuff like this happens, but, man, it happens, it happens a LOT. Let's check the record:

-First guy who fired me: Retired, living well by the sea. -Second guy who fired me: Got more responsibilities and more money. -Guy who secretly plotted to get me fired by second guy, and whose memo to that effect accidentally landed on my desk: Promoted. -Guy whose desire to get my job facilitated my firing: High-salary position of importance at large company. -Guy who helped third guy get rid of me: New job, lucrative position. -Third guy who fired me: See above.

So it appears to be a good career move to fire me.

I don't have a lot of enemies. Somehow, I've managed to maintain a good relationship with most of the people in the radio industry, including at least one of the above and, weirdly enough, several situations where I'm friendly with both sides of a bitter rivalry. And I shouldn't- CAN'T- let this get to me. Frankly, it doesn't matter what these people are up to. It has no bearing on my life. Plus, I'm doing well. I work out of my house and live by the ocean. That's good, and I appreciate it. Plus, I have a wonderful marriage to the Best. Wife. Ever. and all the love and support I need, and I work for great guys and companies of which I'm proud. In short, I should let this stuff go.

And I will. But first, I had to vent. Okay, I'm fine now. Let's move on.

No, really, I'm okay. Doesn't bother me.

Already forgotten. Done.

Finished.

OK.

DAMN, how can people like that get...

(exhale)

Where were we?

I peeked.

Yeah, I did. So did you. You said you didn't want to look, but when push came to shove, you did. We all did.

I'm talking about the Junior Husseins, of course, and I'm guessing everyone did what I did when the pictures were finally available:

1. See the link on CNN or Fox' websites.

2. Think, no, not gonna go there. Don't need to.

3. Start to read another headline.

4. Think, well, I can look realquicklike and click away if it's too gruesome.

5. Click the link.

And so I did, and what I saw was one of the deceased just kinda laying there in profile, looking passed out, and the other... well, I couldn't really figure the other one out. It was reddish-to-black and badly lit, and I couldn't tell WHAT I was looking at- was he upside down? Sideways? Where's the mouth, the nose, the eyes? Or was this a Glamour Shot of a pile of 15% Fat ground beef (on sale at Ralphs, $2.99/pound with your Ralphs Club card)?

I was...

...disappointed.

Is that wrong?

Maybe it's more a case of expectations. I expected something more graphic, like heads on a stick or bloody piles of Hussein arranged artfully on a canvas. I guess you could tell it was them, and that's all that mattered- the idea was to prove to the Iraqis that the wicked witch was dead, and the pictures show that, more or less. But I was looking for something... I don't know. Something more colorful, maybe. Something that looked like what Tony Soprano did to Ralphie, or maybe like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as they fell in a blaze of gunfire in "Bonnie and Clyde." Something more entertaining.

"Something more entertaining." How sick is that?

Pretty sick. But pretty common. I'm betting that most people outside Iraq expected something more spectacular. But the Pentagon's no HBO, and Donald Rumsfeld no Sam Peckinpaugh (or Herschell Gordon Lewis, for that matter). And that's a shame for gore fans. "28 Days Later" costs nine bucks to see. This was free. You get what you pay for.

In Defense of Indecency

There was a hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday morning. It was another one of those media consolidation panels that served as a forum to bash the big bad media companies for their transgressions, real or imagined, and it went the way these things usually go, except for the part about horse semen.

Yes, horse semen.

Allow me to explain.

The hot topic in this hearing was indecency, and the Senators and panelists were all in agreement that programming on TV and radio has gone to heck in a handbasket and there ought to be something the government can do. And FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, the hero of anti-consolidation forces who don't pay attention to what he actually says, raged about the legendary WKRK/Detroit incident and insisted that someone ought to lose a license for all this smut. Meanwhile, the issue of an episode of Fox' "Keen Eddie" involving stolen horse semen and a prostitute hired to get the horse to, er, produce came up. Everyone agreed that this was reprehensible and must be stopped, and that the public will not stand for all of this indecency. Bloviator L. Brent Bozell III, the Man Who Is Incapable Of Having Fun, was there saying something about how 97% of Americans want indecency eliminated. There was a consensus- television and radio are open sewers that must be cleansed by judicious regulation. Everyone congratulated each other and moved on to lunch.

Wait a minute.

Let's say a small child is in the room and that episode of "Keen Eddie" comes on. There's a horse, a bunch of cockney thugs talking about horse semen, a woman complaining about having to get the horse aroused, lots of fast edits. Let's agree for the sake of argument that this is indecent.

So what?

Can someone please explain what harm will befall said child? Will someone please explain how this "indecent" content creates, well, anything? Let's go even further- that WKRK bit about Dirty Sanchez and Cleveland Steamers will cause a kid to do what? What will happen when an innocent child is exposed to coarse, crude humor?

I have the answer.

Nothing.

Nothing will happen. The kid won't grow up into a pervert or molester or sexual deviant, not unless he or she was going to do that anyway. No harm.

How do I know that?

I was that kid.

OK, we didn't have Howard Stern or Maxim or Skinemax back then. But I remember when I was 7, wandering around a magazine stand in Montreal and seeing a stack of Playboys, popping it open to gawk at the centerfold before Dad caught me in the corner of his eye while buying a paper. He grabbed my arm and led me away, but he was laughing. And after that, during my childhood, I sneaked more peeks at porn, saw movies rated R (and, before that, SMA- remember that?), and, most importantly, learned all about sex and dirty words and stuff from conversations with my fellow indecency-addled classmates at Lafayette Elementary School. I learned the F-word, the C-S-word, the C-word, the mechanics ("oh, so it goes in THERE?"), variations ("yeah, but where does he put it if the other guy doesn't have a... OOOOOOhhhhhh."), everything. By the time I got around to the real thing, I knew all about it. Nothing my parents could have done would have prevented it. And since then, I have listened to Howard Stern, watched films of no apparent artistic merit filmed in the San Fernando Valley, watched that very episode of "Keen Eddie" and read the transcript of that fateful WKRK broadcast, performed by friends of mine with whom I am proud to have worked. In short, I have been exposed to the harmful rays.

And despite all this, I am a married, faithful, monogamous suburban adult. I vote, I pay taxes, I pay my mortgage. I am kind to children and animals. I do not care for porn all that much, I don't partake in drugs, I drink more water and iced tea than beer (and never drink harder stuff). I'm a freakin' angel, I am.

I suspect that I'm not alone. There are people of majority age that grew up with Howard Stern on the radio who have become fine, well-adjusted adults. There are people who grew up with HBO, Penthouse, the devil MTV, who are the same. Moreover, there's another element the politicians forget- most kids, presented with "indecent" material, yawn and change the channel. Kids generally DON'T listen to Howard, wouldn't bother watching "Keen Eddie," pay no attention to "adult" content, except for the sneak peeks at sex, which only has the effect of previewing the future (they hope). And look at other nations who some hold up as better-than-us paragons of virtue- the soft-core we hide on pay cable is there on broadcast TV in Canada, and nudity and swearing and sex are routine on British TV (more "indecency" in a single "Bo' Selecta!" episode on the UK's Channel 4 than airs on any US station in a month). And don't even ask about French, German, and Italian TV.

So, do we just eliminate all indecency rules? I don't know, but I suspect that if we did, stations STILL wouldn't air much of it. Advertisers shun it, the ratings aren't better (when has Cinemax outrated anything in late nights?), the market would push it aside the same way it multiplies channels for children and families. It's better for business. But "dirty" stuff will survive, too. Face it- many adults want adult entertainment. They want it on TV and radio. They want it whenever they choose. Regulating it into oblivion isn't only unnecessary, it's antithetical to the true (not stated for polls, but real) desires of most of the public.

In short, you want it. You should have it. And to the Michael Coppses and L. Brent Bozos of the nation, geez, if you don't like it, change the damn channel, but leave my indecency alone.

Busy day and evening today, so I'm kinda thinking in a disjointed manner tonight. I shot my wad on the daily e-mail newsletter, which I'll repost here; in the meantime, just one thought: can you imagine being such a horrible person that when you're killed, the world's financial markets go up in celebration? The only people in the West who seemed to be saddened by the Hussein Boys' death were at the BBC, but you expected that. (I swear, if it wasn't for "The Office" and "Coupling," the promise of more Alan Partridge series, and the occasional "Have I Got News For You" episode I find in my Net travels, I'd never watch that network again)

Anyway, here's today's "THE LETTER from All Access News-Talk-Sports," in case you're not on that particular mailing list (talk about repurposing!):

I was just sitting there trying to come up with ideas for the Talent Toolkit feature at All Access News-Talk-Sports when... OK, here's the way my mind works: a site about weird sports like "wallyball" reminded me of gym class in high school, when they used to send us into the frosty suburban morning in shorts and t-shirts to play something called "team handball," which led to me thinking about...

..."Chicken Fat."

Chicken what?

Return with me now to those golden days of yesteryear. It's Monday morning at an elementary school, and the kids are settling in for class when the teacher walks in lugging one of those brown "portable" record players, the kind with the flip-top lid and the speaker on the front. She plops the thing in front of an outlet, plugs it in, pulls out a worn 45 with a yellow Capitol label, slaps it on the already rotating turntable, and drops the needle on the record to reveal the booming voice of Professor Harold Hill himself, Robert Preston, performing a song exhorting us flabby little kids in "Husky"-sized clothing to get off our Bosco-padded butts and do some toe-touches. That song, that piece of torture that somehow evaded the Geneva Convention, that relic of President Kennedy's Council on Physical Fitness, that unforgettably annoying yet impossible to forget tune? "Chicken Fat." Here's a sample lyric (if you've never heard it, think of it accompanied by a jaunty marching tune in the "76 Trombones" vein):

"TOUCH DOWN! Every morning- TEN TIMES! Not just... now and then! Give that chicken fat back to the chicken, and don't be chicken again! No! Don't be chicken again."

"PUSH UP! Every morning- TEN TIMES! Push up, starting low! (Editor's note: easy for HIM to say) Once more on the rise, nuts (!) to the flabby guys! Go, you chicken fat, go away! Go, you chicken fat, go!"

And I haven't even gotten to the "Left! Left! Left! Left!" part.

Anyway, here it is decades later, the song's been out of print for about that long, and I'm sitting here remembering "Chicken Fat." And through the magic of the Internet, I discovered that you can find the song on the Net. This is like revisiting a favorite root canal, yet there I was, suddenly 8 years old again, straining to get my gut off the floor while Robert Preston screamed at me from the front of the room. And that's why I had to share the magic- go to Talent Toolkit at All Access News-Talk-Sports and you'll find a link to it.

But that's not all All Access Ne... you know, I'm tired of typing that again and again. Call it AANTS. (Hey, that's good- we're as ubiquitous and annoying as ants) AANTS is also the home of Talk Topics, where this week, amidst the Kobe and Uday and other big-time news stories, you'll find homeowners' associations gone power-mad, why mooning a jury is not an accepted court procedure, a car wreck caused by underpants, an autopsy technician who made the mistake of taking his work home with him, and so much more. Plus, there's "10 Questions With..." syndicated talker BRUCE WILLIAMS, Talk Net Talk's generalized mayhem, and other stuff I'm too tired to think of right now. And the rest of All Access? Arbitron ratings, Net News, the columns, Net Talk, the formats, occasional Beyonce banner ads... what else could you possibly need?

You need to lose a few pounds, that's what you need. Ready? "PUSH UP! Every morning- TEN TIMES! Push up, starting low..."


Yours in good health,


Perry Michael Simon
Coach/Editor
All Access News-Talk-Sports

It would be nice not to be handy around the house.

Some guys are genetically incapable of any kind of handyman activity. They can't fix anything, they're baffled by mechanical things, they just call the expert in on everything. It's a built-in excuse. "Gee, honey, I don't know why it's dark in here. Let's call an electrician."

I'm capable of a certain amount of Tim the Tool Man stuff, which is a problem when something goes wrong, because I'm expected to FIX it. As I said, I'm capable of a CERTAIN AMOUNT of fixing, not ALL fixing. This means that when I flop, it's doubly hard to take, because I try, oh, how I try to make thing work, and it's so hard to admit defeat.

Today, the lawn sprinkler system got me, but I was all ready to chalk it up to something I just don't have the equipment to do until I shorted out another zone. See, the sprinkler was for some reason not being triggered in the front lawn area, so I got out the voltage meter and I went to Home Depot and got a solenoid for the valve and a new digital controller because the one we had was confusing and old. I replaced the controller, made sure all the zones worked... nope, the front lawn's still dry. I replaced the solenoid out on the valve. (You know I'm a handy guy- I know what "solenoid" and "valve" are) Nothing.

So it must be the wire between the valve and controller- ah, can't fix that, it's underground and I don't have the time, tools, or patience to dig. OK, let me check the other zones... uh oh. Another zone- the patch of grass by the front window- suddenly doesn't work. Screwdriver to terminal, readjust the connection- aha, there's the water! Uh oh, water abruptly shut off. And I can't get it to work again. This is when I panic- I didn't fix it, and now The Professional will be coming in at $85. an hour to look at the controller and the valve and shake his head and say "who did this work?" in the tone that says "this work sucks." And I'll just have to look sheepish and say "gee, I dunno."

You didn't think I'd let him get the satisfaction, did you? He's already getting the $85. an hour plus parts.

I'm not gonna post a link to a couple of web sites that name the woman charging Kobe Bryant with rape and show her picture with her high school cheerleading squad. I'm just gonna say something about the Net, nothing earthshaking and nothing you don't know already, so if you want to go see what Lileks' Monday column is about, go ahead and go there.

Still here? I'll keep this short, because it's obvious and it's Sunday night and I've been writing for hours. It's just that the Internet allows people to exercise their free speech- good- but allows people who have no regard for small things like libel and privacy to post whatever they want- good in the abstract, bad in practice.

The abstract is that free speech is always preferable to restriction, that the only way for the truth to emerge is for all information, including things you don't want to hear, to be freely available. Fine. The practice, however, means that people can call a possible rape victim "Kobe's bitch" and someone who's, basically, a liar. In this case, the people posting the picture and name (and their conclusions in the case) certainly see this as a joke and themselves as incomparably witty and cool because they have the "guts" to name names and announce the "truth" when those wusses at CNN and Fox won't. What they won't bother to consider is that there are real people involved in this case, one of whom was not, and is not, a public figure. (Sidebar: for those saying she's doing this for the money, if her name's officially anonymous and she's making no public statements, exactly how is she supposed to make money doing this? Why would you make this charge if you know it's only going to result to a nightmare of media and public scrutiny and some University of Vermont student calling you, in effect, a whore?) And I can only wonder what they'd do if a family member of theirs was raped and some asshole college student somewhere posted her name and picture on the Net and called her a lying slut.

Think that'd be funny? Clever? Fair?

I'm starting to hate humans again.

Ah, now I understand.

Check this article out- it's all about a handful of left-leaning folks who are considering moving up to Canada from big bad oppressive "neo-conservative" America. Besides the use of "neo-conservative" by someone who clearly doesn't know what that term means, I noticed something else, this little note:

"In school I was always told this is the best country on earth, and everyone else wants to be American, and that never really rang true to me," she said. "As I got older, it occurred to me there were other choices." Her husband, George, 44, has spent little time in Canada, but said it seems to offer a more relaxed, less competitive way of life. He has no qualms about leaving his law practice and selling the family's upscale home in Minneapolis.

"More relaxed, less competitive." There you go. Stress that last part: "less competitive." With those two words, this guy's betraying more about the America-Sucks mindset than he knows.

Here's why: I've known several Canadians who told me the same thing about their country. They all love it, but they all feel that in order to really make it in their work, they have to move south of the border. I asked one guy why he felt that way, and he said "Canada has a weird mindset. They don't want you to succeed too much. You're not supposed to get too big, too successful. And there are plenty of people up there who are content to stay there, be medium sized fish in a medium-sized pond. If you have a creative or enterpreneurial bone in your body, you get out as soon as you can. You don't want to, you have to."

And that's the opposite of the mindset of Americans who want to bolt to another, less "competitive" country. If you truly don't think you can cut it in a competitive situation, what you're saying is that, deep down, you think you're not good enough. It's easy, then, to want to go someplace that cuts all the tall grass down to a more manageable size, rewards success and failure at roughly the same rate, treats everyone as the same (in other words, socialism). In America, you're rewarded by the success you achieve, the ability you demonstrate, the value the market places on what you do. If you're afraid that you're not good enough, if you're afraid of your own individuality, that's when you want the government to take care of you, to subsume you into the whole. You make a run towards a system that celebrates mediocrity.

I happen to like Canada a lot. I know many excellent people and great intellects in that nation (some, in fact, are linked from this site- go read them). But the people cited in this article are going to Canada for reasons that will only perpetuate that great country's muddled thinking, that Chretien malaise. To all Canadians who aspire to make their country greater, I can only say, on behalf of America, hey, look, we're sorry you have to take these losers in, but, well, better you than us. Besides, we got Avril Lavigne and Bryan Adams, so we have to get even somehow.

I do not know if the incident between Kobe Bryant and the woman in Colorado was a rape or consensual. It doesn't matter, and that's what some of the Laker-fan callers and sports hosts I've heard today don't understand. Let's get some stuff straight here:

1. Kobe Bryant is a great basketball player.

2. Up to now, Kobe Bryant has been considered one of the good guys, intelligent and with his head on straight.

3. He now admits to having committed adultery.

4. He cheated on his wife and baby.

5. He knew, or should have known, that even consensual sex with that woman was wrong, cheating, a slap to his wife, not an act a "good guy" would do.

5. Ergo, whether he gets convicted or acquitted, and if his life is a living hell for the next period of time, he deserves everything he's going to get.

Let his punishment start today. Let him think, agonize over what he did to his wife, his child, his reputation. Let him not be excused because, as I heard die-hard Laker fans and local homer sports hosts say at various intervals today, the victim was "loose," or "should have known what she was getting into," or "wants the publicity to make money" (how do rape victims make money off of it? What rape victims HAVE made money off of it?). Let him twist in the wind, and if he's convicted, let him rot in prison. But let this be, for once, a case that restores the sanity lost by so many in the Clinton case- you don't cheat on your family. You don't. Forget the specifics of who this is and how this came to be public. Forget any claim that, well, people are human and make mistakes, or they have needs, or any excuses- if we can't agree on whether anything else is moral or not, let's just agree that betraying the trust of your spouse and children is wrong, amoral, deserving of scorn. If nothing else comes of this, maybe people will see the light on this one simple point. Screw your boss, cheat the system, run that stop sign, jaywalk, but you don't hurt your family.

Why is that so hard to understand?

Just got back from the Homeowners' Association meeting. It's interesting to go to these things, because, often, it's the only time you'll ever see the people living in your neighborhood. I think I recognized one other person at this thing (besides my wife, of course) and that's it. The meeting took place in someone's house, which appears to be in a constant state of construction- it's still sparsely decorated, and I had to spend the whole 90 minutes on a hard metal folding chair, which didn't help my attention span.

The meeting dealt with many issues, including insurance and repairs and landscaping, and everything came down to the following things:

1. We'll have to pay more money.

There are very good reasons for this, too, but I couldn't tell you what they are, other than that they HAVE to be done IMMEDIATELY or we're in BIG trouble because several TRIAL LAWYERS will not make BUNDLES OF CASH unless we PAY and PAY NOW. Naturally, this is entirely legal. In fact, the official Homeowners' Association people appear to believe it's their sworn civic duty to remove money from my pocket. So I had a wonderful evening listening as other people debated how much of my money they're going to spend. Can't beat this kind of entertainment.

Now I'm going to go and cry.

A plug for a friend and very funny guy: Greg Behrendt is headlining tonight and next Wednesday (and supporting David Cross next week) at the Irvine Improv. If you're in the Orange County area, go- I'll see you there tonight. (That's also an explanation of the short items today...)

More evidence: it cooled off today, got overcast and more comfortable, and I flew through writing my column today, picking up a scoop along the way and generally feeling sharp. They say the heat will return, so if I drop back into incoherence, we'll have ample proof of my heat vs. brain theory.

Every summer, the gym where I go to work out gets crowded. Kids are off from school, people take vacations at home, everyone goes to spend the day at the Y. And every year, I get annoyed. You'd think I'd have figured this out by now- summer, crowds, get used to it, shut up- but I still feel my blood pressure rise when I show up and the parking lot's loaded and you can immediately see the indoor pools are packed with screaming tots left for impromptu day care by their harried mothers and elderly ladies wearing yellow water wings doing exercises in the first lane. Through the window behind the registration desk, I see little kids filling the basketball court, playing that brand of hoops that involves a) missing every shot and b) muffing every pass while c) running in circles like a maniac and screaming. The weight room has teens using the machines as places to sit and flirt with other teens, the cardio room has a sweating newbie on every cross-trainer, the locker room is hot and smelly and filled with kids in Lakers jerseys taking up too much space in the aisles.

It is always this way from early June through the beginning of September. I should be more accepting of the situation, because it's far from unexpected. Still, the adrenaline flows, the tension builds, and I get the feeling that exercising under those conditions might be worse than taking the day off.

So, why do I keep going? Because I still feel guilty if I don't. That's weird, considering I get plenty of cardio running outside at other times of the day. I really don't absolutely NEED to go to the gym, but if I don't, I feel like I've failed myself. I wish I could be like the people who never work out, eat what they want, maintain their slim physiques and feel fine. If I live that lifestyle, I'm Orson Welles in a month, even if I eat nothing but half a rice cake every day. So I'm cursed to continually go back to the gym, cursed to complain about the crowds, cursed to curse the lack of free time in my life. Some people have all the luck, and some people gotta go do crunches and stuff. Can't be helped. Someone tell me to shut up and do another set of situps.

My brain-heat theory (see Monday, 7/14) continues to hold true today. It's still hot, and I can't focus on anything. Call the New England Journal of Medicine. Or Penthouse Forum.

I have a theory. I believe human brains are affected negatively by excessive heat. Mind you, I'm no scientist. My brilliant medical career was cut short by an inability to pass Organic Chemistry in second semester of freshman year of college, which culminated in the school allowing me to take a "withdrew" rather than "failed" if I promised never to take another science course at the college again and never apply to medical school without the unanimous agreement of the science faculty. ("Where do I sign?" "No, you don't understand, you'll NEVER be allowed to..." "Yeah, yeah, I get it. WHERE DO I SIGN?") But I believe that the brain slows down, withers under the application of heat.

My supporting data comes from the present time. The Southwest is under weather conditions that can best be described as "kiln." At 6 am, it's OK- there's a little marine layer fog, it's a little cool and breezy- but by 9, it's sunny and hot, even here at the ocean's edge. I go running and return so soaked in sweat I don't even want to go into the house, lest I drip on the floor and the carpet and the cat. We have no air conditioning- don't need it about 350 days of the year- but ceiling fans, desk fans, handy bottles of Gatorade... nothing helps.

So it's hot. That's not enough to prove anything, except for the fact that I'm staring at news stories and just, you know, blanking out. I'm reading things over and over and I can't scare up a thought about them. This is a problem in that having opinions on news stories is a significant part of the way I earn a living. I'm not having problems reading, or even compehending. It's just that my reaction to all of it is "uh... mmm... wha'?" This is a rare occurrence. I usually have a half-assed opinion on everything. Right now, you could tell me that Hillary Clinton was attacking Ann Coulter with a DeWalt power drill live on "Hannity and Colmes" and I'd look at you and maybe drool a little and that's it.

There you have it. High temperatures equals warmed brain equals inability to think. That's gotta be worth at least a few million federal research grant dollars right there. Could someone please have Matthew Lesko call me? If I'm gonna be slow, I might as well be rich and slow.

Short message to the guy who walked into Theater 8 at the Regal Theaters Avenue 13 in Rolling Hills Estates, CA at about 12:45 pm PT Saturday , answered his cell phone, and spent the next five minutes very loudly having a conversation with a friend that included the words "yeah, there's a big sign on the door that says 'turn off your cell phone'!" and continued to talk, and reacted with indignation and sarcasm when I told him to shut up: you're a moron.

Movie Review: "Pirates of the Caribbean"
br>Liked it.

Note: the scenes in the castle-like fortress were shot in my neighborhood. Not that it swayed my opinion. You can hardly see me running by.

I try not to allow myself the luxury of feeling bitter. It's counterproductive, it'll eat you alive from the inside, and... it's human, so it's hard not to slip.

I noted this week that another person who once did me wrong got a plum new job. It's another chapter for "When Good Things Happen to Bad People," and I've been subject to several case studies in my career. When the item about the person getting the job came across my desk, I had that momentary lapse, that cursing of the heavens, that "there is no God" feeling. I have to remind myself that it's no big deal, that it has no impact on my life anymore, that I've done very well since then, that it's no reflection on me.

But maybe it is. Maybe I went about my life and career in radio the wrong way. After all, I went with honesty, fairness, having the decency and guts to do everything in front of people rather than behind their backs. And I ended up a writer. They lied, stabbed me and others in the back, cheat on everybody and everything, drip with insincerity, and they're all in very lucrative jobs in the business, pocketing big cash and reveling in the perks. My way got me the job-a-year cycle. Their way got them bags of money. Guess I blew it.

Except for this: I don't want to be them. I don't want to live that life, play the oily salesman or the ambitious Sammy Glick. I look at these people and I know I couldn't be like that. And I wouldn't trade places with them for anything. They probably have more money coming in than I do, but I do OK. I also don't cheat on my wife, undermine others to get ahead, or work constantly in fear that someone else will surpass me.

So the item came across, and I felt that anger and stress welling up. Then I remembered that with my way, I can live with myself, sleep at night, look at myself in the mirror. And, ultimately, it doesn't really matter what kind of job those people have, what kind of car they drive, what label is on the inside of their suit jacket. I like what I have just fine. They can keep what they have. I don't want it.

Los Alamos couldn't happen today. Los Alamos, in case your history class skipped from D-Day to the Cold War, was where the Manhattan Project built the Bomb. It was a massive undertaking. It was also completely secret. It's fascinating, actually- the government went to what was a ranch for boys in the mountains northwest of Santa Fe, a mostly undeveloped area without adequate roads or infrastructure or anything, built a small city, sent 6,000 people to work there, developed the bomb... all of this without a word in the press.

Think about that for a minute. You can look at the front page of the Santa Fe New Mexican on the day after the Enola Gay dropped Hell on Hiroshima and you'll see that the existence of a city of 6,000 people an hour away from Santa Fe had been a total secret until that day, when President Truman announced that we'd fried part of Japan and, oh, yeah, we did it in Los Alamos, which we didn't tell you about until now. Surprise!

But this couldn't happen now. Think about it- is there any possible way to keep a secret anymore? Pick the most desolate area of the Lower 48, like, say, the desert or somewhere in the northern Rockies or wherever. Build a city there. Truck and train caravans bringing thousands of people, endless supplies. ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, AP, every paper in the country, Drudge... hell, Entertainment Tonight would be sniffing around in case Ben and J-Lo might be among the population there. The government is hard-pressed to get away with anything on that scale. Too much media attention.

This, I think, is a good thing. Someone needs to keep the government honest and in check, and that job tends to fall to the news media (a problem on other levels, but nothing's perfect). But had this been the case in 1943, there might not have been a Manhattan Project, might not have been a bomb. Hiroshima spared, Nagasaki too. The war could have dragged on while the warring factions of the Japanese government fought over whether to surrender. More lives could have been lost. And God forbid if someone else- the Russians, the Chinese- developed the bomb first.

I think a lot about happenstance and the randomness of life. For example, I'm here, in a bizarre way, because most of my maternal family was murdered by the Nazis- had there been no Hitler and no war and no Holocaust, my mother would never have been hidden and would never have been sent to New Jersey to her previously-escaped aunt and uncle's custody, would never have been at that mixer where she met my father, would never have had me. Same for Los Alamos- if today's media saturation existed in 1943, there's no way it would have been able to fly under the radar. No Los Alamos, no bomb, no end to the war, no way to know what might have happened, good or bad. But it was 1943, and it played out the way the history books now say it did.

I guess the point of all this is that there are whole eras of history that happened by accident of timing. Life, in a lot of ways, is an accident. That;s the kind of revelation you usually get when you're stoned and gazing at the dirt under your toenail. I assure you that I'm not stoned. If you find yourself up that way, stop by the Bradbury Museum and see if you don't walk out feeling that way.

I want a column in the New York Times. I want it right smack in the middle of page one, above the fold.

I want a TV show, too. On CBS. NBC, Fox, ABC, and the WB, too. (Not UPN.) I want it at 8 pm (7 Central), a full hour, just me and my opinions.

I want all of it. And I should be able to get it. After all, according to the Senate Commerce Committee, I'm entitled to it.

Oh, yes, I am. Did you watch the hearing on Tuesday morning? I did, every minute of it, and what I learned from their grilling of Cumulus' Lew Dickey is that the Dixie Chicks have a right to have their songs played on any radio station, and that radio licensees have no right to make programming decisions on a companywide basis. I was unaware of this exception to the First Amendment. I was also unaware that you don't just have a right to speak, you have an absolute right to be heard. So I want my prime-time network TV show. I want my column in every paper. They have no right to say no. I demand to be heard!

Of course, this won't happen. But that's what Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-Uranus) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Hell) think should be the case, at least for leftist country singers with maybe three or four brain cells still functioning. They were appalled that stations chose to stop playing the Dixie Chicks after Natalie Maines shot off her mouth in London. Boxer, making a bid for the title of Worst. Senator. Ever., wagged her finger and compared Dickey to the Nazis and Communists, which made me wonder whether she'd have been as appalled had Dickey made a corporate decision to ban the music of a real Nazi or Klansman. ("Sorry, Mr. Dickey, but you'll just have to add Skrewdriver to your playlists.")

But what it all comes down to is my rights. The Senators all said the Net isn't a factor, and here I am, not a factor, so I want my prime time exposure, my front page column, my constitutional God-given federal right to be heard. If "Landslide" gets that, so should I.

The route to Santa Fe is simple to remember- you get on I-25 northbound from Albuquerque, pass about a dozen Indian casinos, and then exit reality. Santa Fe is about an hour north of ABQ and about a light year away from the way the rest of the country lives. It's a relatively small area, actually- the "downtown" is roughly about a mile and a half wide and long, and you can easily walk from one end to the other. While you're walking, you'll notice a few things:

a) Every car seems to sport the same sticker, white lettering on green: "No War." The sticker appears on BMWs and beaters, VW buses and pickups. In a country where the majority of people at some point supported the war, nobody- I mean, nobody- did in Santa Fe. I threatened to wipe the "No" off the cars; Fran just laughed. If I'd had the time, I'd have stopped someone and asked if "No War" meant war's always bad, and in that case was fighting World War II a good thing? I suspected they'd have insisted that Roosevelt should have tried to just sit down and negotiate with Hitler.

b) There was not one local black person in the city. None. Nobody walking around, nobody working at the hotel or restaurant, nobody on the road or at the supermarket. There were a couple of tourist families, but not a single local. In a city that prides itself on its liberal, tolerant attitude, that seemed odd. I wondered why it had worked out that way, and whether anyone else around there noticed it. But then I noticed something else.

c) Lots of Hispanic residents, but few in the downtown district. They were all hidden away from the tourists, except at festive tourist Mexican restaurants. I was confused about this until I found where they were, mostly south of, say, Cordova, in comfortably bland apartment and townhouse complexes, in the aisles at Smith's and Lowe's, waiting patiently on line at the Bank of America, their kids happily chatting on cell phones waiting for the fireworks at Santa Fe High School, living normal everyday American lives in a world within a long walk of downtown but on a separate planet.

d) The city appears to have no ecomony beyond the tourism industry, and the downtown area, despite being home to the State Capitol and Federal Building, is geared 100% to tourists. The stores sell the kind of chotchkes tourists want, or artwork too expensive for most of the locals. The restaurants seemed filled with people from California and Oregon and Colorado and everywhere but New Mexico. I wondered what would happen in a year when the weather was bad and tourists stayed away.

e) The men all looked exactly like David Clennon. (This guy.) Graying hair, neatly trimmed, too long in the back, beard or goatee, gaunt, wearing a t-shirt and sandals, toting a latte, a croissant, and a copy of Utne Reader to a table at Downtown Subscription. I don't know the significance of this, other than to note that David Clennon is one of Hollywood's most liberal of liberals, and the David Clennon lookalike I saw today at Costco was loudly proclaiming his pleasure to snag a copy of Hillary Clinton's book there. For what it's worth.

So you might presume I didn't like Santa Fe, a weirdly segregated, touristy liberal enclave with perpetually extreme weather. You'd presume wrong. Actually, I loved the place- the natural beauty of desert and mountains, the artists on Canyon Road proudly displaying their work, the ultra-friendliness of everyone we met (this appears to be a New Mexican trait, present in Albuquerque and Los Alamos and Rio Rancho and wherever else we went), the unique and weird history (the Santa Fe Trail, the frankly commercial remaking of the city into a pseudo-historical location in the early 1900s, the bizarre and fascinating story of Los Alamos). Sitting in the Santa Fe Baking Co. having breakfast with the locals on a lazy Saturday morning, or sitting in the high school football stadium laughing with the kids as the band forgot the words to "Brown-Eyed Girl" and the tent above their heads threatened to blow off in the wind, or watching the bored local kids do the hip-hop walk and hang out in the Plaza with nothing to do on a Saturday night, I understood the appeal of Santa Fe. It's relaxed, it's liberal, it's tolerant, it's a throwback. It's 1969. 1969 may have been turbulent and war-torn, but the version in most people's heads is... is... is what Santa Fe is today.

We can't wait to go back. Not to 1969, to Santa Fe. Same thing, only, er, different. I can't explain it any more clearly. Just go, but a word of advice: when they tell you the food is spicy, it's an understatement. Beware the green chile.

Now it can be told: we spent a very interesting few days in Santa Fe, NM, where the endangered liberal roams free and an entire economy appears to be based on... well, I'll expound on Santa Fe, travel, Los Alamos, the plight of the Native American Tourist Attraction, Albuquerque, birthdays, and so much more your head will explode.

Until then, click here (Windows Media Player or compatible player required) to see what some of Santa Fe's July 4 fireworks looked like.

And so we reach the holidays relatively unscathed. (Maybe you're not there yet, but I'm wrapping things up early- time to get outa town for a little bit) I think I'll leave you with my July 4 Emergency Room story. I'll warn you right now, it doesn't really have a punch line or even much of a point. But since it's that time of year...

It was July 4th, 1995, and it was my last trip back to our home on the beach in Long Island before moving to L.A. for good. I'd come back to help Fran pack, wrap things up, and have my last taste of decent pizza, salt sticks, and deli before heading west. The basement- we had a basement there, unlike here, where basements just don't exist- was the problem spot, tons of garbage we'd carted from Pennsylvania and Florida to Jersey to Pennsylvania to Albany to Long Island, and I went down to clear it out. While I was in there, I saw that the movers had beaten me to some of the work- they'd thrown some of the loose stuff in plastic garbage bags. Well, OK, I thought, I'll just grab those bags and carry them out to the curb.

Tip: when grabbing a bag full of garbage, make sure you have an idea of what's in there. More specifically, assume there might be something sharp waiting to spring out when you grab the bag.

Kitchen knife. Long, thin, cruddy kitchen knife of unknown origin. Long, thin, cruddy kitchen knife of unknown origin through my right palm.

The first thing that goes through your mind when you've accidentally stabbed yourself is a two word phrase, the first word being "oh" and the second your choice of two common four-letter words. (Mine began with F.) As the blood spurted out of my palm, I yelled for Fran, who admirably handled the cleanup and transport to Long Beach Memorial Hospital's emergency ward. I know she did this only because I didn't, and SOMEONE had to have handled it. I blanked out after "Oh F! FRAN!"

The next memory I have is sitting in the waiting area with a towel wrapping my hand and holding it up above my head. I sat that way for a long time. Hours. Many hours. Maybe about 8 or 9 hours. While I was wondering about things like tetanus and nerve damage and lockjaw, I surveyed the scene around me. Every seat was occupied, every other one by a worried-looking woman sitting next to a young man, probably her son, with a hand wrapped in a towel. I realized that they all couldn't have had a knife mishap in the basement, and then it hit me- these were firecracker casualties. Every single one of them had done the didn't-let-go-of-the-M80-in-time routine. And they were all looking at me like I'd done the same thing, only since I was clearly an adult, I had no excuse.

There are times in life when things seem to stand still, when time just refuses to proceed at a normal pace. This particular halt in life progress was because, well, it was a holiday, there was only one doctor in the ER, and I'd been triaged to the back of the list. Eventually, I got in to get stitched up and doped out of my misery, and we finally got out of there at something like 2 am, by which time the room had filled again with would-be Gruccis nursing their remaining fingers.

The moral of this story is... I don't know. Maybe stay home for July 4th. Maybe stay home, period. You can't get hurt if you never get out of bed. Bedsores, maybe, but injury, probably not. Something like that. Look, it's a holiday. You can't expect me to be coherent.

And may your weekend be fun, safe, and mishap-free. And computer-free, too- go outside and enjoy life away from this thing for a few days, OK? Great. Talk to you next week.

Some people never learn.

A particular radio host wanted some publicity at my other site and sent me an item in an e-mail that wasn't particularly newsworthy or time-sensitive, so I put it in the pile of things to do today and worked on more immediate tasks first. When it didn't instantly appear in the news, she wrote an e-mail to my boss.

Yes, she "told" on me.

Now, some background: eight years ago, the very same host went to my boss pleading for a tryout at a station I was (nominally, it turned out) programming. Unlike my present boss, who knows protocol and the truth, that boss insisted we give her an audition and booked her and her entourage to come to the station. She was booked for two days and lasted one- she a) had her flunkies steal guests from other shows on the station, b) booked lousy guests without approval, c) pretty much ignored everything I told her to do, and d) treated the station staff, especially the support staff, like crap. I wasn't pleased with any of it, but d), to me, is a capital offense for someone who DIDN'T EVEN WORK THERE YET. I called her at her hotel and told her not to come in for day two.

Now, it's eight years later, and she "needs" me for some ego boosting. And, you know, despite her attempt to make me look bad, I went ahead and ran an item. Why? I don't need "revenge." I do OK on my own, and I wouldn't gain anything but temporary satisfaction by doing the thumbs-down routine. But I also know this- someone who behaves like her will never quite succeed, and she'll never understand why. She'll miss out on jobs, or get canned by a quick-trigger boss, and she won't realize that when you treat people you think aren't "important" enough like garbage, those people will not forget. And they talk. And that's how you get a reputation. It goes without saying, too, that today's insignificant drone could very well be tomorrow's very powerful person.

I didn't go around telling people this story, and I'm not attaching any names to it even now (and don't ask me to- I won't). I don't have to. Several people over the years have told me stories, and they were all the same- a prima-donna attitude, lackeys stepping on everyone's toes, mediocre or worse ratings, not worth the trouble. There'll probably always be a clueless PD or GM who just hasn't heard the stories, or refuses to believe them, so she'll find work. But she'll never quite make it the way she thought she would. If she reads this, which I doubt, maybe she'll now know why. And maybe she'll realize that talent isn't the only thing you need to have to succeed.