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"It's like that Randy Newman song," Fran said while we were driving along listening to the news reports from New Orleans. And I knew which song she meant:

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline


Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

It's about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, but you could easily mistake it for something else. There's even the political element:

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a notepad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man, isn't it a shame
What the river has done to this poor cracker's land."

When's President Bush going to show up with notepad-wielding people? When are they gonna send in the cavalry? How long can we watch this happen?

At least Fats is OK.

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It's September 1. It's time to give. There's this flood aid thing happening around the Net to help Hurricane Katrina victims today, so it's time to pull out the wallet and do something good.

There are plenty of places to give. United Jewish Communities is where I did it; there are a lot more choices at Instapundit's roundup.

Please don't wait.

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The Katrina fatigue actually set in several days ago. I've been finding it hard to watch the coverage, hard to even listen, nearly impossible to write about it, which I've had to do several times a day for All Access. Today, when I got in the car to go to the post office, even the sports guys on the radio were talking about it, not about where the Saints and Hornets will go but about the relief effort and the slow response and all that. It's not that everyone shouldn't be talking about it- it's really the only topic there is right now, and I have to send my respect to all those radio talkers who are talking about nothing but, all week and into the foreseeable future- but, like 9/11, there's a point where you need to take a break.

I'm there. I'm most definitely there.

But there really isn't a whole lot else on which to concentrate. Sport seems meaningless, there's precious little happiness in the newspapers, TV's still mired in reruns and I've already watched most of the stuff we've recorded from past weeks ("It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" has been a particular favorite of late). Time to immerse myself in books, and, well, whaddya know, it's a long weekend (which for me, means I can push Sunday's work to Monday). In the meantime, I can only pray that the arrival of the cavalry means that the conditions in New Orleans will start to turn for the better, and I'll remind you that your help is needed, so give, give, give.

Okay?

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It's Saturday, and what do people do on Saturdays?

Movies, of course.

So here's a movie- I'd forgotten I had this on the still camera. It's actual video of Katrina as a Category 1 rolling into Florida.

No, it's not all that exciting, but it's Saturday, so live with it.

Click here and enjoy.

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Still trying to have a weekend, but every once in a while reality slaps me in the face and I get all agitated again. Every time I turn on the TV or radio, that happens, so I tried to take a nap. Forget it. I can't nap. I just lay there and drool, but I never actually fall completely to sleep.

And then there was the sight on one of the cable news channels of some Katrina victims on a rooftop of what seemed to be a typical retail strip, surrounded by water lapping the second floor of the buildings. They weren't waving towels or trying to get the chopper's attention. Instead, the guys- about three or four of them- were under a blue portable canopy providing shade, sitting in plastic pation chairs, drinking from styrofoam cups, a portable grill set up beside them and coolers at their feet. They look like they were tailgating before a Saints game. And they reminded me of what I love about New Orleans, the attitude, the laissez les bon temps roulez thing that probably caused some people to lose their lives ("ain't gonna let no rainstorm push me around") but defines the city. We know it has to be rebuilt, as unwise as rebuilding a city in a below-sea-level bowl is, because there has to be a port in the Delta to ship out agriculture from the Midwest. And there has to be a city there because there has to be a place for the folks who work the port and work on the Gulf oil rigs to live. And there has to be a city there because there's no place else for people like those guys kicking back on the roof waiting for rescue but in no particular rush- that's New Orleans. There has to be a New Orleans. And there will be again.

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Maybe the government screwed up, but there are private interests picking up some slack. Here's a smart idea: a registry of phone numbers, so survivors can register their numbers and people searching to see if someone's OK can check their number in a search:

(via Instapundit)

Good idea. As is this registry of missing folks, where you can put in the vitals of a missing friend or relative and a contact so people can get in touch with you:

Katrina Finder.

And credit where credit is due: Air America Radio (!) has a free voice mail system so survivors can enter their number and people searching for friends or relatives can dial in, enter the number, and get a contact message. The info's here.

I hope you find everyone you're looking for, safe and sound.

And if WWOZ's web page is correct, good news: on their list of New Orleans musicians found safe is Alex Chilton.

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We'll be doing something sadly uncharacteristic tonight- our civic duty, sort of. I'd prefer being at the ballpark tonight- think Barry will play?- or at home relaxing, but we'll be at the city council hearing instead. Should be at least a little interesting, since the main topic is consideration of environmental studies of a plan to build a big development of McMansions up the street from us. There wouldn't be much of a dispute except for one small item: the owners want to build on land that's prone to, er, landslides. Previous projects in the area have caused the land to move- the main road is repaved every few months because the land beneath it keeps moving- and it seems folly to build where there's a more-than-small chance that the whole thing might slide across the road (into our neighborhood, naturally). And there's another small matter- last Spring's mudslides, caused by drainage from... yep, the area where they want to build. There's been a moratorium on development of that land for 25 years, the owners bought it knowing of the moratorium, and they're applying for an exclusion so they can build 84 homes on 60 acres, displacing and then recompacting 4 million cubic yards of soil.

In a landslide zone.

And by the time the disaster happens, the developers will have sold all the properties and run off with their millions in profits.

There'll be dueling environmental reports, one from the developers that says, well, we may be able to build on the land and maybe nothing will happen, we dunno, and another from opponents that says IT'S A LANDSLIDE ZONE, DAMMIT! And I expect the usual parade of dull speakers and weirdos who always get up to speak at these things. We've been here over 10 years now, and this will be the first civic anything we've done other than to pay business taxes and property taxes and vote.

I feel so... local.

Anyway, we're going and this could be the start of more civic involvement or maybe the last thing like this we ever do. We'll see.

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Oh, my Lord, was that dull.

The crowd overflowed the surprisingly small, spartan council chambers, the 60 or so plastic chairs inadequate to hold the throng, so after a brief ceremony involving a Boy Scouts color guard, they took those of us who didn't get seats to another room where the meeting was being televised. Of course, it was being televised at home on cable, so while there was some benefit in showing up in numbers, the whole exercise turned out to be pointless. We stood at the back of the second room, then sat on the floor (no seats there, either), then squirmed while listening to a parade of speakers, each of whom set forth good reasons that the Environmental Impact Report prepared by the developer was bogus. And it was all very important, and I started to lose consciousness by about 8:30; we left at about 9:20 and we're home now, and the meeting is still going on. They won't be voting on anything tonight- it was purely for public comment.

When we were in the chamber, I had a sickening flashback. It was 20 years ago, and I was doing my brief time as a practicing lawyer, advising a town in New Jersey on municipal law, and there they were, a bunch of Stuffy White Guys in Suits. The same as the council members today. The same as all the people I see at the NAB conventions.

I'm gonna stay away from those council meetings for a while.

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Today's trip to the gym featured the following:

1. CREEPY OLD GUY WHO PICKS THE LOCKER NEXT TO YOURS, DISREGARDING THE FACT THAT THE RATHER EXPANSIVE LOCKER ROOM IS LARGELY EMPTY: This one looked like a cross between the "Pepperidge Fahm Remembahs" guy and Wilfrid Brambell-as-Paul's-Grandfather-in- "A Hard Day's Night" (as opposed to Wilfrid Brambell-as-Albert Steptoe, which would be both creepy and unsanitary).

He cheerfully walked right up to me, opened the locker next to mine, dumped all of his stuff there, then pulled up three stools and placed his stuff all over them. Do you say something to a guy who does that, or do you just ignore it? I tried to ignore it. I did hold my tongue. But, dude, next time, give me some space.

2. GUY IN SHOWER WITH EMBARRASSING BUT UNAVOIDABLY OBVIOUS RASH: I wasn't looking for it. He was clear on the other end of the showers, a long way away. But you could not miss it. It was in a particular place that made it look particularly disgusting. I know he can't help it, but it was the kind of thing that makes you want to just immediately coat yourself in Gold Bond. I know it will cause nightmares.

3. GUY TALKING TO HIMSELF: Fearsome, large man hogging the cable pull machine, listening to something on a CD player, muttering with some evident anger. I thought he might be rapping along to the music until he detached the CD player, placed it on a bench, left the headphones on, and kept muttering. I needed to use the cable pull, but I gave him a wide berth. And, later, I realized that he may have hit upon the secret of being able to hog a machine or bench without being bothered. Nobody tells a guy who's talking to himself that he's over the 20 minute limit.

4. IMPATIENT GUY: I just started doing crunches when I felt a presence looming over me. Sure enough, it was Impatient Guy, standing at the foot of the bench, scowling, making sure I knew he needed to use the bench and I should get out of the way because he's far too important to be kept waiting.

I slowed down. Do NOT rush me.

Missing today: annoying kids. School's back in. My favorite time of year.

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I rarely remember my dreams. When I do, I realize why that must be: because my dreams are unbelievably mundane.

This morning, I woke up with the alarm clock, a rarity- I usually wake up 20 minutes or so before the radio clicks on and I get an earful of KFI. The alarm's a fail-safe for the rare times I'm actually sleeping at 4:30 am. Today, I was, and I was dreaming. Okay, Dream Doctor, analyze this:

I'm in a college building, a student center of some kind, on a campus that doesn't resemble my alma maters or any other college I would recognize. I'm sitting there, not waiting for anything in particular, just sitting. And about two or three people come by at random intervals and ask me where a particular room is, and I tell them the general direction and that there's a map of the building on a bulletin board across the way. They thank me and go look at the map. I go back to sitting.

The end.

Maybe the sudden George Noory blast interrupted the story before the big payoff, but I don't think so- I think that was it. That's what's going on in my mind. Other people have complex dreams with several layers of meaning. I have dreams where nothing happens, I'm not doing anything, and there's no conflict or stress or anything.

It's possible, now that I think about it, that the dream's about how I tend to be the guy who everyone comes to for information, for answers to weird questions for which nobody else has a quick answer. (That propensity led to an "Ask Perry" segment on the morning show at one of my old radio stations; it's my burden in life, I suppose) But the lack of concern or stress in the dream doesn't really indicate any feeling about that situation- no pleasure, no pain- and it doesn't bother me in real life, so what's the dream saying?

Apparently, nothing. It just... is.

It's official: I am the most boring person on Earth. My subconscious fantasies are blank.

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This might become a habit, but for the second night in a row, I remembered my dream. I never remember dreams, so for two in a row to occur, the stars must be particularly correctly aligned.

Unlike yesterday's terminally dull dream, this one was easy, I think, to interpret. Here's the rundown:

I'm in a large, ornate banquet hall. There are two long tables, and I'm at the head of one of them. The place is crowded and very busy with diners and waiters and busboys buzzing about. Dinner is being served- turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, and apple pie. The dinners are being brought out and consumed, and I haven't been served.

I realize that I'm the only one who hasn't gotten dinner and I get a waitress' attention. She tells me she'll be right back and disappears. Meanwhile, the other diners are getting up and leaving. I wait for a few minutes, then I get up to go to the kitchen to find out what's going on, and I see my dinner plates, one on top of the other, squashed and waiting to be taken away to be cleaned.

And I wake up.

"That's easy," Fran told me when I related the dream to her this morning. "You feel deprived of food." I've been watching my diet lately, since I've gained a few pounds. But no, that's not it. Let me see if I have this one nailed:

I've been feeling a little unappreciated lately, careerwise. I've been kinda feeling like I don't get enough credit for the stuff I've done and the stuff I do. And yesterday, when I heard a radio host do a topic I know he got from my All Access column and give another site credit for it, it just rubbed me the wrong way- I don't expect credit for those topics, but if you're gonna give credit, give it to the right place, you know what I'm sayin'? I'm just feeling, well, overlooked.

(SFX: world's tiniest violin)

Plus, I'm hungry.

(I liked it better when I didn't remember my dreams.)

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Three in a row.

This time, the dream involved being at a convention in a place that looked like a sanitized version of Bourbon Street. I was walking up the street in the evening; it was largely empty, and I was looking for a place to eat. And at one place, the maitre d' said "Oh, you don't want to go to that place"- he gestured across the street- "Danny DeVito's there." And, sure enough, there he was, sitting at a sidewalk table, alone. The end.

Too easy: I really AM hungry from the diet. I'm going to a convention in a couple of weeks. New Orleans is obvious. And Danny DeVito was mentioned in a Bill Simmons column I read yesterday, cited as a lousy director.

Or it could indicate deep psychological issues. But I'm sticking to the diet-convention-hurricane-column theory.

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Can't remember any dreams from last night.

Woo-hoo!

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Yes, in case you're trying to get into AllAccess.com, it's down die to the L.A. power outage. The main office has lost power and the servers are out as well. E-mail at that address is out, too, so use perry@pmsimon.com to get me, not that I can do much.

And if the site's still down in an hour or so, I'll post some Talk Topics here so you radio guys won't go through withdrawal.

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Power back, servers fixed. Go there for your radio news and topic needs. Stay here for random useless junk. As per usual.

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Before I forget, is anyone else mourning the death of the Fox Sunday night lineup?

Let's face it, "The Simpsons" ran out of material a long time ago. Last year, I recorded most of the second half of the season on my DVR, and only got around to watching last week- ugh. The show's become a parade of stunt casting for no reason other than they can get the individuals to do the show, with plots that seem like a bad parody of the classic episodes of years past. Last night, the episode was about- stop me if you've heard this one- a dissatisfied Marge walking out on the family and finding fleeting fulfillment with a dashing third party. Yeah, not dissimilar to the bowling episode from the early days, except this one was entirely not funny. The funny moments are getting fewer. I used to think, well, it's still funnier than most sitcoms on the air these days. Now, I'm not sure about that, as bad as other sitcoms may be.

And bad sitcoms are plentiful, but Fox unveiled what may be the worst last night, "The War at Home." Let's see, unappealing cast? Check. Stilted, joke-free script? Check. Cloying, obviously fake laugh track? Check. Lame gimmick? Breaking the fourth wall and speaking to the camera- check. But that understates the depths to which this show sank- there was, no lie, absolutely nothing funny in this show. The hurricane was funnier. Michael Rappaport can't act- in this thing, he's an Al Bundy type, a conservative, whining, bigoted father and husband- and the rest of the cast is worse. The phony audience is amped to 11 by jokes that amount to "I think my son is gay." Seriously, that's all there is. I lasted halfway through the debut and gave up. It makes "According to Jim" seem like "The Office." Now, I've seen a lot of busted pilots over the years, but you cannot possibly tell me that there were no better sitcoms in the pipeline at Fox. There's at least one better one at UPN that was once a Fox property- "Everybody Hates Chris." Fox passed on that and put "The War At Home" on the air. Their programming executives are either blind or... well, let's be charitable and assume they're visually and auditorily impaired.

"Family Guy" is the funniest show in the lineup, which doesn't mean much in light of the rest of the lineup, but it IS still funny. This week's episode was a lesser one with a lame "plot" that degenerated into an extended James Woods joke, but that's not what you're watching for when you watch the show- you're watching for the ridiculous flashbacks, digressions, parodies, and "I can't believe they're getting away with that" moments, and there were some decent ones this week, including a "Star Trek: TNG" parody replete with Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, and Michael Dorn providing the voices. And Stewie turns out to be a pimp (blink and you missed it). But I laughed, which is more than I can say for "American Dad," which, well, ain't "Family Guy," even if it's Seth MacFarlane's own "Family Guy" self-rip-off. They forgot the humor and characterization part. And Stan Smith ain't Peter Griffin.

There's one more season of "King of the Hill" coming, which should redeem Fox Sundays for at least a while, but it's disappointing to think that I don't even care to watch "The Simpsons" anymore. In fact, screw it, I'm taking it off the recording list. It was fun while it lasted. Too bad they didn't know when to pull the plug... or hire better writers.

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Was there a game tonight? I didn't notice.

(Urgh.)

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Nice running game.

McNabb's suddenly a pocket QB? That's not gonna work.

Whatever. It's week 1. You want to win, but there are 15 games to go. And it's the NFC, right?

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I was going to write something profound, but "Rock Star: INXS" got in the way.

Oh, I'm not watching it. But as I was sitting here trying to put the profundity in just the right words, Fran put the TV in in the living room, and from it presently is coming an ungodly sound, the sound of what sounds like a lounge singer mangling "Paint it, Black." And now, I can't think.

Oh, geez, someone's croaking out that Seal song. "Kiss From a Rose."

How am I supposed to work with that going on? How am I supposed to have any faith in the future of humanity when "Rock Star: INXS" is permitted to exist?

Now Brooke Burke just asked the audience "is anybody else totally sad that this is the last performance show?" Totally.

It's erasing my thoughts about the hurricane, about the football game (a good thing, that is) and the Senate grandstanding over John Roberts and pretty much everything else. Sucked it right out of my head.

I was supposed to be at Dodger Stadium right this minute, but I told myself no, I have too much work. And now THIS happens. J.D., Marty, Mig, or Suzie- who will it be? I. Don't. Care. Pick one and disappear, please.

Solution: earplugs. But it's too late to salvage this evening.

Enjoy your 15 minutes, kids.

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This is gonna be a long afternoon/evening.

My primary computer crashed while I was at lunch. Still not working. And it has everything I need on it- e-mail, work files, everything.

You don't want to talk to me right now.

Unless you'll give me a top-of-the-line Mac. For free.

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This much is certain:

1. Computers wait until the worst possible moment to break down. I was facing two days of extra work- a ton of deadline-intensive extra work- when the latest disaster struck.

2. Computers break down for no apparent reason. I left for lunch yesterday, came back, found the screen frozen, whammo.

3. Tech support is useless. Every time- EVERY TIME- I call Dell with a problem, the India tech support people reading from the Big Book of Computer Lies tell me that the first and only solution to every problem, whether it's a hard drive crash, software corruption, whatever, is to reformat the hard drive and lose all data. Since I happen to know that this is unnecessary in many if not most cases, I have to tell them "no way in Hell." Then I proceed to tell THEM how to do it. They are useless. Compare the methods:

Me: Use the Recovery Console in Windows to run a deep chkdsk, create a new user profile, transfer the old settings, reboot, there you are, most programs and all data still there.

Them: Reformat the hard drive, reinstall Windows, reinstall all programs. Data gone forever, sorry.

That I'm here today writing this is testament to the fact that my method worked. Theirs would, too, if I didn't mind losing thousands of files and e-mail and having to reinstall dozens of programs. That's not to say that my method's perfect- I spent most of today doing things like painstakingly removing and reinstalling Norton Anti-Virus (I know, I know, but it was preinstalled) and reconstructing the old Outlook e-mail file and reentering a zillion passwords that went bye-bye when Windows went goofy. But I have everything back in working order, mostly, sort of. Windows Media Center's acting weird, but it always acts weird.

4. Dell sucks. Dell blows. Dell bites. Jeff Jarvis is right. If I wasn't pretty much an expert level user, this box would be an expensive doorstop.

5. Next time, Mac. And I say that as someone who had to fix countless Macs as a tech geek on a movie lot- they break, they malfunction. They don't, as Mac Kool-Aid drinkers insist, "just work, always." But OS X beats the hell out of Windows XP. There, I said it. So I'll have to go out and buy all new software, pay full price to replace Photoshop and Office... aah, who am I kidding? I'll probably buy another PC.

But if I fall for another fabulous cheap price and great financing from Dell, slap me until I come to my senses.

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Been up since 4, I'm exhausted. Tune in tomorrow for more coherent commentary.

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A sports talk show host was talking about raising money for Hurricane Katrina victims, and he started to say how this was the worst disaster since... the worst since... no, it was WORSE than 9/11, because, you know, when you compare all the devastation to, er, New York....

Advice to him and everyone else tempted to comment on stuff that's way beyond the scope of their expertise: sometimes it's better to shut up.

You can't compare 9/11 and Katrina. In fact, that's the problem with the government's response, isn't it? That FEMA and Homeland Security are geared towards helping in a terrorist attack situation and took their eyes off the natural disaster ball? Two different things, each devastating in their own ways- the 'cane affected a larger territory and more families' material possessions and lifestyles and jobs, while 9/11 was a group of men's deliberate murder of thousands of innocent people to get attention, and it affected everyone in a profound but different manner. Two different things. The common bond is that they both hurt. Do we have to determine which one is "worse"?

But a sports guy, I suppose, will look at things that way, the same way he tries to decide who's the best quarterback or which team is better. And guys who routinely muse on whether the 1967 Packers would beat the 2004 Patriots- in other words, comparisons that could never happen AND require additional context, like changes in athleticism, equipment, opponents, and travel- might look at everything that way.

You are not required to have an "opinion" on everything. That will only get you in trouble. Stick to what you know, what you're qualified to discuss. (That goes double to Cindy Sheehan, who is eminently (and sadly) qualified to discuss the pain of losing a son in a war, but is truly unqualified to talk about much else, especially in light of her comment demanding Bush pull troops out of "occupied New Orleans." I can only imagine her followers wincing at that one. Or maybe not) This isn't sports. This isn't "who would win in a fight, Rocky or Rambo?" Don't, as cliche-users might say, go there.

I, on the other hand, am completely qualified to talk about everything.

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Tonight's Emmy Awards opened with a segment celebrating the following:

a) A weird guy discussing his affair with a woman (now deceased) old enough to play his mother in a TV movie.
b) A woman celebrating her "fighting back" against criticism of her role as a single working mother who fathered a child deliberately out of wedlock.
c) An actor who served time for killing a man.

And they wonder why people say Hollywood is out of touch with the "red staters."

I felt sorry, however, for Ellen DeGeneres, who truly bombed with her monologue- no laughs. I won't liveblog this- the Phillies are on, and I have work to do- but I will also note that in the short time I watched, the number of truly cringe-inducing moments was increasing rapidly. Earth, Wind and Fire (how, er, cutting edge) and the awful Black Eyed Peas doing "September" with terrible "new" lyrics about "Desperate Housewives" and "Everybody Loves Raymond"? William Shatner wins? Jeremy Piven gets beaten by Brad Garrett? And the coup de grace, Donald Trump and Megan Mullally (in character, no less) singing the theme from "Green Acres"? It's fire-your-agent night for sure.

Gothamist's liveblogging it, if you're into it.

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This article caught my eye (hat tip: Romanesko):

Of all the jobs in the newsroom, some seem more likely to cause burnout than others. War correspondent. Obituary writer. City-council-subcommittee-on-zoning-beat writer. But sports reporter? That's what Scott Reinardy, an assistant professor of journalism at Ball State University and a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri-Columbia, found in a new study: high levels of emotional exhaustion and cynical attitudes toward sources, especially among young sportswriters at local dailies.

The study showed several reasons for the burnout, the main being the tough schedule and another being the disillusionment of meeting your heroes and discovering they're just, you know, guys. And that's true, but I think it's mostly the schedule. I get to see it close up at the stadium on a regular basis, and I can see it in the eyes of the writers and broadcasters this time of the baseball season, especially when the home team's losing. You want the season to end, end soon, end now. Each game is a drag on your energy, and you wind up rooting for games to go fast, as close to two hours as possible, and you curse the batters who foul off a lot of pitches or the pitchers who work deliberately, methodically, sloooooowly, because the more they do that, the later you'll get out of the place and the less you'll see of your family, your non-sports friends, the world. It's an insular, weird atmosphere. I can see why burnout's a problem.

But on the other hand, it's writing or talking about something you've always loved. It's not breaking rocks in the hot sun, even if it requires encounters with Jeff Kent. It's actually a pretty cool place to work, a pretty cool job to have. And your friends will think you're crazy for feeling like you've had enough.

Unless they've been watching the Dodgers lately. Then they'll understand.

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From the Loews Hotels website:

583 guestrooms, including 37 suites - all equipped with faxes, printer, and three telephones, including separate cordless and dual-line phones, a T1 line for Internet access, and a separate modem line.

The manager's statement to me upon my complaint that no printer is in my room: "I know you've probably noted that our web site says we have faxes and printers in every room. (Ed. Note: It's also stated in the Guest Services Directory IN THE ROOM) That is not true."

They offered to move me to another room. I told them I'm not moving. What's more difficult- moving someone with several bags' worth of stuff from one room to another, then having to clean the old room for another guest, or just walking into an empty room, unplugging the printer, walking it to my room, and plugging it in?

And I haven't even mentioned the operator who cheerfully informed me that I could rent a printer for $175. A NIGHT.

I've been a loyal, happy Loews customer for several years. They can't be considering losing a customer over a $49. ink jet printer, can they?

We'll see.

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The suits were in full effect this morning. It's hot and humid in town- less Indian Summer than a Summer that never bothered to end- and it's too damn hot for me. I brought a jacket, but I left it in the hotel room. Everyone else is in full Banker Regalia, which is because they're masochists, and also because they were here for the annual broadcast financing session, officially called "Broadcast Financing 2005: Radio on the Rebound." (Question: What is this "rebound" of which you speak?) A few people took off their suit jackets, but most left them on; they're interested in investing in radio, so you can't expect them to want to be comfortable.

These aren't really "my people." "My people" are the talent, the programmers, the people who work in radio because there's nothing else we can really do. Those folks generally skip this thing. I have to be here to cover it for All Access, but when I started coming in '86 or '87, I was on the corporate side, so I was a suit. It was only later that I realized I belonged with the misfits, because most of these guys are salesmen at heart, and I'm not. The morning crew today- the investors, the station owners, the GMs- these guys don't know me. I sat in the back of the room, taking notes, filing items for the site, being as inconspicuous as someone in a white shirt surrounded by guys in dark suits can be.

At heart, the people at the financial session seemed less like radio people than like people who intend someday to get rich, whatever the means. Radio's just a means to an end. It's like a Carleton Sheets graduate-level course, a room full of Men's Wearhouse suits wanting to be Armani. And a lot of these guys seem like guys who think they made a really grave error investing in radio.

One of the panelists, a banker, saud "I've been in radio business for a number of years." No, sir, you haven't been "in the radio business." You're a banker. You invest in radio. You've never run a station, never programmed a station, never been on the air or driven the van or answered the request line. That's "in radio." Crunching the numbers, that's not "in radio."

Or maybe it is, now. And that's a huge problem. The investors, the corporate guys, the lawyers think they're "in radio," but they're not, and one way you can tell is by the panel this morning. Not one of the financial guys spoke word one about what goes on the air, about HOW the stations make their money. It was all about inventory reduction and EBITDA and free cash flow. Programming and marketing and talent? Nothing. Public service? God forbid. They look at a station with a heavy local news commitment and community involvement and they see a station that could improve its cash flow this quarter by outsourcing news to a traffic service or just dropping it altogether. Why spend money on local news and talent? If you would ask that question- and everyone in that room would- you are not a radio guy.

Look, I understand it. I respect that these guys are looking at the radio business as a business. I get it. But if you want to understand what the problem in radio is, you need to understand that treating radio as a widget maker for the last decade has not been a good thing for radio.

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Too late for a full entry- I have to save it for tomorrow. Expect diatribes about radio sales and lost shirts. Separate stories.

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This is what I was going to ask the radio group heads on the panel at Thursday's NAB show when they were talking about how they like to have huge sales staffs and sales are so important to their business:

Why would you want to have 30 salespeople for a radio station fighting over limited business? How is that good for radio?

Why, if salespeople are so key to the business, do you treat them like crap? Why do you do things like cut commission rates when it will hurt the salespeople but help your bottom line for the quarter, like when Infinity cut fourth quarter commissions on Howard Stern sales because they're doing so well they want to "discourage" salespeople from selling Stern? Why are accounts ever turned into "house accounts" or lower-commission "repeat business" when it's the salesperson's efforts that made that client long-term to begin with- why punish the salesperson for doing the job well? Why is there almost no training of new salespeople- why are they thrown onto the street with an armful of media kits and no clue? Might that not be something to consider when you have salespeople gone 90 days after being hired?

Why, if you've been selling 60 second spots for years and telling clients that's the way radio works, are you now trying to convince the same clients to pay almost the same amount for 30s and claiming they work as well or better? Are you admitting that you've been ripping clients off for decades?

Why, in a discussion of the troubles state of radio and its future, was little attention paid to the value of talent? Is talent irrelevant to you? Do you even listen to your own stations?

But I didn't ask. I'm having enough troubles as it is.

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The third day of the NAB show was uneventful- no major news, except for seeing my boss suddenly appear on a panel (he was an emergency fill-in and acquitted himself very well indeed). Randy Jackson- Randy Jackson?!?- was the featured speaker at the official luncheon. We skipped that.

The overriding theme of the convention was fear- fear of satellite, fear of iPods, fear of the future. And the response was an odd mix of defiant bravado and abject terror, voiced in terms of "the other guy sucks": satellite's bad, satellite's evil, satellite ought to be regulated, satellite gets all the breaks, satellite gets all the good press, satellite has no business plan, iPods can't give you emergency information, iPods can't give you personality, iPods can't give you new music. I heard very little positive about anybody or anything, save for the industry's patting its own back for the Katrina coverage. If WWL didn't exist, they'd have had to invent one to justify the industry's existence.

Is radio doomed? No, yes, maybe. No if it realizes what its strategic advantages are and what its strategic advantages aren't. Radio can Jack all it wants, but it has to realize this: it can't outdo satellite for music, can't outdo iPods for music, can't outdo anyone for music. Satellite has commercial-free music with great variety. iPods serve up purely the music the user likes, nothing more or less. If radio plays the music card, it loses.

Personality? There ya go. Radio SHOULD have learned from 25 years of Howard Stern that high-profile, talented, funny, outsized personalities are their winning play: attract the most creative, talented people and let them work unfettered to become stars that can't be heard anywhere else. But they won't do that. They'll hire people and make them fit a "wacky" formula with "wacky" fake names and "wacky" bits strangely similar to "wacky" bits the PD heard worked in another market. Or they'll hire better talent and sell them down the river the moment some crank complains to the FCC. Either way, a young comedic talent good enough to be a calling card for radio ends up frustrated, or decides to find some other line of work. And we get an endless procession of Morning Zoos and Jacks and More Music In the Morning. And radio suffers.

And then we sit in convention hall meeting rooms discussing how shorter commercials are the answer.

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Too busy.

Igs won, though. And there's nothing like driving beneath the palm trees in full view of the Pacific while Merrill Reese is on the radio screaming with joy because David Akers nailed the winning field goal despite a pulled ass muscle.

Good times.

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On an airplane, a woman with two children wants to get off the plane first. Unfortunately, she's sitting at the back of the plane, and