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Another March, another talk radio convention.

Operative word: tired. Flew from Long Beach to Dulles, and, for once, everything went smoothly- no traffic to airport, plenty of parking, fast check-in, fast security check, plane left on time, flight landed slightly early, got off plane fast, caught shuttle to terminal by 10 seconds, bags came out very fast, got cab immediately, no traffic to hotel, checked in immediately. I haven't had a smooth trip like that in years. Nearly perfect.

Nearly, that is, because when I plugged into the hotel broadband, it didn't work, necessitating two calls to tech support before they fixed the problem. But I was prety worn out and hungry, so I went to the Hell CVS (the one in Chinatown where you get aggressive panhandlers hitting you up for cash IN the store and cursing you out if you decline) for some "room food" and bottles of water and grabbed a burger and fries from the Five Guys around the corner (memo to self: next time you hit Five Guys, remember NOT to get the large fries, because "large" there means "more fries than any human being can possibly be expected to eat in a week"). Decided to skip the Wizards game- just three blocks away (a block from the CVS) but just too much trouble for me tonight. Got some work done, then felt guilty and went down to the gym to work out while watching the insane Duke-FSU game (Stephanie Miller and her sidekick/voice guy Jim Ward came in to work out, thus mortifying me, since I was dripping sweat and looking, er, not so fresh and definitely not wanting to be seen. Hi, guys! Pardon the smell!). And now I'm here, mopping up the work for the evening.

As I've made abundantly clear in the past, I dread conventions, and talk radio conventions like this one are especially uncomfortable because it's more of a White Guys In Suits deal than some of the others. The NAB Vegas show has lots of techies in jeans, the Fall radio show has more PDs, but this one is a celebration of Ye Olde Tyme Talk Radio, the kind with said White Guys in Suits bloviating on the port deal and federal policy and all that stuff they talk about on Ye Olde Tyme Talk Radio, even when the host isn't particularly Olde. I'm sure there'll be a lot of talk about how the miserable month for Free FM bodes poorly for "FM Talk," because there won't be too many of us FM Talk types here, but just because someone's doing a very poor execution of the format doesn't mean the format won't work. It does and it has, and as one of the people to blame for the format, I know how to make it work. But nobody's asking me (and, more critically, paying me for the information), so I'll keep it to myself. Suffice to say that this kind of convention celebrates the kind of talk radio that gets a 1 share. And there's always a lot of Inside the Beltway talk, because they assume that everyone's just enamored with the workings of the federal government and gossip from Capitol Hill.

Not me. I'm here because I gotta be. I gotta represent my company, show my face, get the word out. And see some good friends who invariably show up. And drink beer and trade gossip about radio people and visit my friends in Virginia.

Okay, it's not all bad.

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The day at this talk radio convention was highlighted when Rush Limbaugh opened fire on the audience at the keynote address, mowing down hundreds of people with his Kalashnikov while screaming "Phil Boyce made me do it!"

Okay, I made that up. Maybe I hoped for something that exciting. What really happened was this:

I woke up.

I worked.

I went for a run. It was cold and drizzly.

I went to lunch.

I worked.

I went to the keynote. Rush was Rush. No automatic weapons fire.

I talked to some nice people in the hallway. A camera crew from PBS' "Frontline" taped me self-consciously exchanging pleasantries with Salem's Tom Tradup. I'm not sure why they were taping it. I know they didn't appreciate my constant references to their taping me. I am certain that if they use the tape, they will make me look like an ass. This will not be difficult, since I provided them with enough material to do the job.

I went to the cocktail party, talked to some more nice people, began to get that I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW feeling, wandered aimlessly for a while, left.

I tried to get dinner but every place I went had lines snaking out the door. I decided I wasn't all that hungry anyway.

I came back to the room

I worked.

The end.

There are parties tonight, including the "official" one sponsored by ESPN Radio, but I'm not invited to any of the private ones. I got that uncomfortable deal from a friend who asked if I was going to one major syndicator's bash and I had to say I wasn't invited. I'm never invited to any private radio parties, because I'm not a program director and therefore they don't think I can be of use to them. I'm a waste of schmooze, they think, because I can't put their shows on my station. But what do you say when you discover someone else isn't invited to the party you just said you were going to? Yes, of course, you say "I'm sure you can get in if you want," and maybe that would be true, but I hate crashing parties. I don't really want to be somewhere where they don't really want me to be. How can you have a good time when you know that you weren't important/liked/special enough to be invited?

Whatever. I'm here to show my face and keep connections alive, not to have a good time. Good thing, that last part. I like easily-met goals.

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It's late and I just got in from a smoke-filled lounge, so I'll keep the Friday talk radio seminar thing short. Here's what I learned:

Never wake up early for the breakfast address. Use the time to sleep in or work out.

Talk radio for women will make a boatload of money. This was repeated throughout the panel on talk radio for women, and I believe it, too, but nobody really quite defined "talk radio for women." You know it when you hear it.

Turns out that Ann Compton interviewing Fred Thompson isn't all that exciting.

Turns out I just don't have the heart to really hold up signs in the front row to distract Jeremy Coleman on the FM Talk panel. I said I'd do it, he thought I was gonna do it, didn't do it. Bark worse than bite.

Those Brazilian places where they carry meat on big skewers and you just keep taking slices from each as they come to your table? I like 'em. Unlimited meat and good company- what's not to like? (Thanks, Tom!)

Free beer is good.

Tomorrow: Oh, I don't know, the exciting conclusion or something, if I get back in time. Gimme a break, it's late.

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This was the final day of the talk radio thing, but I have to write more about it tomorrow. All I'll have time to note at the moment are the armed guards.

Explanation? There is one. Tomorrow.

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The convention ended with the usual routine- nobody recovered from Friday night (Beer! Another beer! Unlimited meat! More beer!) early enough to make the morning sessions, they did the luncheon (hosted as always by Mr. Sabo), and the moment the luncheon was over, hundreds of people disappeared more completely than if David Copperfield had set up mirrors. Seriously, I saw people actually breaking into a sprint out the door as soon as the last "thank you" hit the PA. I think there were scorch marks on H Street towards Union Station from the stampede heading for Amtrak. I wasn't joining the exodus- one of the distinct pleasures of going to DC in alternate years for this convention is that I get to visit my friends the Scott family after the radio stuff's done- so I stayed in the lobby killing a few moments waiting for them to arrive, and that's when the guns showed up.

When the radio people checked out, another convention checked in, this one for a political action committee which represents a cause that makes some folks upset. It's not that the PAC's cause is bad, it's that, well, some people out there hate the nation that the PAC represents and the religion with which it's associated, hate them so much that they would like to wipe them off the map. And I was unaware that they were in the hotel- MY hotel- until I saw the armed guards walk by and the big projection TV screens overhead which had switched from CNN Headline News to instructions on registration for the newcomers. My friends saw a bus pull up to the hotel, accompanied by a police escort.

Shouldn't they warn people about that? I might have chosen another place to stay that night had I known that... oh, right, they wanted me to stay right there and pay for another night. Never mind.

So after a lovely evening on Chesapeake Bay and in Annapolis, I returned to Camp Renaissance, where the guards were still lurking and the folks from the PAC were partying all night long in my hallway, which made the prospect of getting up at 4:30 am Eastern pretty horrifying. No sleep, no sleep on the plane, no sleep today, no sleep. I've been up since the equivalent of 1:30 this morning, Pacific time. Brutal. I'm so loopy right now, I can swear I just heard them give the Best Picture Oscar to "Crash."

But I know that can't be true. It's the exhaustion talking.

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Travel's caught up with me- brain's fried, sleep necessary. Long day. Don't even have another thought about the Oscars. It all just kinda flew right out of my head.

I'll try again tomorrow.

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Back to the old basketball programs and media guides for another round of "Where Were They Then?" This time, it's the special "Let's Marvel At How They've Changed" edition. Ready? Let's begin.

First, you know what happened to this youngster, depicted in the 1974-75 Spirits of St. Louis yearbook:

He was 22 at the time, and check out that glare. He looks like he wants to kill the photographer. And before you laugh at the mop on his head, we ALL looked like that in 1974. They'd laugh at you if your hair was short.

These guys on the Notre Dame team that played at UCLA on December 9, 1978, from whence this program came, went on to the NBA, and are still around, Laimbeer coaching in the WNBA and Tripucka scouting for the Knicks:

Here's the tough guy now:

And here's Tripucka now:

Weirdly enough, Tripucka was the star of Bloomfield High when they played my high school team, and Laimbeer went to the high school up the road from where I now live. And doesn't the young Kelly Tripucka look like Jon "Napoleon Dynamite" Heder?

Now, here's the big finale. Who's this young San Antonio Spur with the big mop of hair?

Here's another shot- he's the third from the left:

Oh, okay, here he is as a rookie:

And here he is as you know him now, on the left, of course, as the coach of the Denver Nuggets:

I mean not to make fun of the guy for losing his hair, bulking up, getting older. We all do it, and Lord knows I'm not fitting into the clothes I wore at age 22, either.

My point? Aging sucks.

But you know that.

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From some TV Guides in 1964-66, proof that Nabisco hasn't had an unblemished track record in snack development:

Perhaps it's just me, but does ham strike you as what you want your snack cracker or chip to taste like?

Crackers and salty snacks shouldn't taste like meat. You can put meat ON them, but they should not taste like meat. (Unless they ARE meat, like pork rinds or jerky)

(Note: The ad says these are shaped "funny." Yeah, they're hilarious.)

I'd say it for beef, too, and chicken's dicey as well, but under no circumstances should a cracker or Cheeto-equivalent taste like pork. No wonder you don't see these in stores today. (You DO see Chicken in a Biskit or whatever those crackers are called, but that's right on the borderline- you COULD use chicken broth in the baking process. But not pork. No pork. Are we clear on this?)

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Just browsing through some more old TV Guides- hey, you do heroin, I look at old magazines- and found a few

things....

One evening in 1977, you may have plopped down in the Laz-E-Boy, pulled out the new TV Guide, and saw this:

True confessions: I never saw "Roots." I never saw "Titanic" or countless other "universal" TV and movie events.

That's not to say they're not any good- can't tell you, 'cause I never saw them. Why? Dunno. Just didn't strike

me as my kind of entertainment. I never go to see sad or overly serious movies, don't like soap operas. I'd rather

watch "Odd Couple" reruns. Does that make me a bad person?

Now, this evening was priceless:

Arnold meets The Greatest! Followed by "Hello, Larry!" Co-starring Meadowlark Lemon! Damn straight I'm watching

that! (I probably did...)

And then there was this attempt:

The ads tried to make it Canada's "All in the Family," but it wasn't- the King ("Larry King," no joke) was more of a warmhearted sort. But check this out- among the guest stars during this sitcom's run were Eugene Levy, John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Robin Duke, Tony Rosato... most of the eventual "SCTV" cast. And Maury Chaykin, Linda Thorson, Saul Rubinek, Helen Shaver, and, yes, Mike Myers. And the star, the late Al Waxman, went on to success on American TV in "Cagney and Lacey" and as one of those "that guy" character actors.

And the show STILL kinda sucked. You can get all the best Canadian actors available, but it helps to give them a funny script.

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It's actually very cool that this is happening: several cartoonists are pitching in with one comic strip each to fill in for "Big Top" cartoonist Rob Harrell, who's recovering from the removal and treatment of a cancerous tumor behind his eye. You can read about it here and see the results here- the cartoonists each take the regular characters and spin them their own way. As I said, it's pretty cool.

And it reminded me of the one and only time I took off and had someone else fill in- that was about six years ago, when we went to Hawaii for a week and I arranged for some of my regular Talk Topics contributors to post items for me. They did a great job. And all I got was complaints- why wasn't I there, where was I, why did I abandon everyone. And it wasn't that I'm so damn special- no, they just didn't like the break in continuity.

I hope Rob Harrell's readers aren't that way. If they are, he may end up like me, lugging a laptop everywhere I go, lest I get another wave of indignant reaction. Vacation? Not unless I'm ready to face a firing squad.

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Mr. Boh is back, sort of, in Baltimore, where there's a big market for nostalgia and the beer icon is selling on souvenirs and even on a tall building, where they've put a neon winking Mr. Boh on top. Mr. Boh was the character on commercials and labels for National Bohemian beer, a Baltimore brew known as "Natty Boh." It still exists, but only as a label for a beer brewed by Pabst. There's an article in today's Baltimore Sun about it, with a clip from a documentary about Mr. Boh and Natty Boh- read it by clicking here.

(And there are some great old Natty Boh commercials here)

Beer wasn't always a business dominated by huge, taste-free national brands. You had Rheingold in New York, Schmidt's and Ortlieb's in Philly, Yuengling in York, Narragansett in New England, Hamm's in the Midwest, Old Style, Pearl, Iron City, Rainier, Utica Club, Genesee Cream Ale, lots of local and regional brands. Most of these still exist, some the same as ever, most only as labels- Heileman, then Pabst ended up brewing a lot of them, and they're now brewed by another company under contract with Pabst, which owns the names. They all taste the same now. And they pretty mich all did back then, too.

But there was something good about having different dominant regional and local beers, just like it was cool to have different local and regional department store chains and gas station brands and everything else. It was a sense of being in a specific place- you could identify by the local brands and stores where you were. Then, Philadelphia was Schmidt's and Ortlieb's and Strawbridge and Wanamakers, Seattle was Olympia and Rainier and the Bon, Detroit was Stroh's and Hudsons. Now, every place is Budweiser and Macy's. In some ways, that's better- you know what to expect when you're in a strange city, and your credit cards are good everywhere. Doesn't matter- I still miss those little differences.

But not the beer. Schmidt's sucked and gave you the runs. At a quarter a glass at Roache's bar on Lancaster Avenue, along with a great Roacheburger on a hard roll, it was fine. On its own, a quarter was too much.

And now, I'm thirsty. There's a Red Hook in the fridge. The actual beer is better nowadays, come to think of it.

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Good one. Not great, but good.

I like how HBO didn't tack a "scenes from the next episode" on the end. Yeah, they did it so that you wouldn't be able to change the channel fast enough to avoid "Big Love," but it also leaves that doubt in your mind about what'll happen next.

If you didn't see it, I won't spoil it (I'm writing just after the first, East Coast airing but well before the West Coast feed). Ended with a bang, and blood, and question marks. Minor character dispatched, another also dispatched- strange how that one was the main plot of the episode, introduced and wrapped up all in the same hour. But it's back, it's good, it's still better than anything else on TV.

Except maybe "Family Guy," but I'll watch that later.

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Romanesko's site is where mainstream American journalists go to discuss the issues. You can get a good feel for where the reporters stand by perusing the letters column. Here's a letter about McClatchy's spinoff of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and eight other papers in the Knight-Ridder deal:

Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 3/13/2006 3:01:40 PM
Title: Paging George Soros!
Posted By: Jim Romenesko

From DAVID WALLIS: George Soros should rescue the dozen papers that McClatchy plans to jettison, thereby starting a truly progressive media company. That's what America needs.

Yes, America needs a progressive media company, because it doesn't have this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this, or this, or...

You get the point.

They don't.

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The newsletter I send out to All Access subscribers every Tuesday went out again today, and this time I got a ton of response. So here's the relevant portion, and remember that we're talking tongue-in-cheek here (there ARE exceptions, and to all the Syracuse fans who flooded my e-mail inbox, yes, townies can get special dispensation, especially if there are no local pro teams and not much else to do in town):

March Madness is upon us and time to review the rules. Not the rules of basketball; no, we're talking about my own Official College Basketball Rules of Picking "Your Team." I have to establish these rules because it's always just about this time of year that people who not only never attended Duke but have never, ever even BEEN to Durham, NC suddenly become pennant-waving, face-painting, Dick Vitale-imitating, Coach K-revering Cameron Crazies, and this HAS to stop.

Rooting for a college where you have no connection is one of the more heinous things you can do in sports. It's not something isolated to college- we have generations of non-Texas-resident Dallas Cowboys fans as testament to that fact- but it's more of an issue in college sports. So, without further ado, here are the rules:

1. You can only root for a school you attended, or

2. You can root for a team an immediate family member (spouse, child, parent, grandchild- no uncles or cousins) attended, or

3. You can root for a team on which you placed a substantial ($100. or more) bet, or on whom your entire office-pool bracket depends, or

4. Er, that's it.

That's not to say that you can't take a rooting interest from the negative angle- it is perfectly OK to root for "whoever's playing Duke," for example, or "anybody but Syracuse." But if you didn't go to a school, please, sit there quietly and enjoy the game.

I, on the other hand, do have a rooting interest based on rule number 1, and this year, my team- Villanova, where I loitered in the back of law school classes until they tired of me, shoved a diploma in my hand, and booted me onto Lancaster Avenue, never to darken its halls again- is a number one seed, which is a spot to which I am unaccustomed. Villanova is usually an underdog, at best a middle-of-the-pack seed, and nobody sees them coming until it's too late. In fact, they were an eight-seed the year that they managed to win the whole thing. 1985 was a good year. This year? I dunno- I always approach the tournament assuming that disaster will strike at any moment. Usually does.

But at least I don't root for Duke.

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So, what have we learned from the FCC's Indecency-O-Rama today?

Simple: if you're Oprah Winfrey, you can say exactly what got a talk radio show fined for indecency and you won't get fined because, by gum, you're Oprah, and when you do stuff for ratings, it's not pandering, because, well, you're Oprah.

And what's OK at 10:01 pm is not OK at 9:59 pm, and what's OK in the 10 pm hour in the East is not OK when broadcast simultaneously in the Central zone, because they're an hour earlier.

And that the FCC commissioners- every single one of them- is a craven, pandering politician.

But we knew that.

I wonder why nobody asks what I've asked here before- what's supposed to happen to a child if he or she happens to witness Janet Jackson's breast, or a pixellated naked breast (that, on "The Surreal Life 2," was also found indecent), or hears someone say the "S-word" or the "BS-word"? If the answer is that the kid isn't harmed- and, since all of us can say that we heard those words and saw nekkid bodies before we turned 18, I think we can agree that we weren't harmed- then there's absolutely no rational basis for this regulation other than "we're doing it because we can." And "we're doing it because L. Brent Bozell had his people send us nasty letters and we want them to leave us alone." And "we would like for TV and radio to become nothing but religious shows." Debi Tate actually wanted a benign "Simpsons" episode to be found indecent (although, inexplicably, the "Family Guy" episode with a parade of penis euphemisms was okayed).

Until the radio and TV industry stands up for itself- until it takes this to court and fights it, and until it does whatever it can to get the Ted Stevenses and Sam Brownbacks out of Washington- this will continue. And the NAB, the lobbying arm of the industry, would rather campaign to have the same nebulous, undefined, ridiculous rules applied to cable and satellite, too, so nobody would be able to give the public what it wants.

The good thing is that the Internet and podcasting and other forms of content delivery mean that thie regulation of broadcast indecency will eventually be irrelevant- you'll be able to get whatever you want when you want it without censorship. Until they try to censor the Net. And they will.

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Thanks to Defamer for bringing this to our attention: an AP report about a couple of former "Seinfeld" writers who won a prize at the SXSW festival with their first movie, "Live Free Or Die":

Kavet and Robin, both 37, met while studying at Harvard and writing for the Lampoon.

Okay, there's your warning sign.

They thought New Hampshire would provide a great source of comedy, especially compared to Vermont and Maine, which Robin described as more “effete.” They took their title from the state’s motto, inspired by the Revolutionary War, and shot the movie there over 21 days.

“It’s just a totally different kind of place for us than anyplace else in the country,” Kavet told The Associated Press after the film’s premiere. “You know, it is New England and it has that look and the people have kind of a toughness but it’s got its own attitude, which fits perfectly with Rugged. You’ve got this guy who’s trying so hard to be tough and the state is, like, ...”

And here's where you get the Hollywood/Harvard attitude kicking in:

“The state’s trying really hard,” Robin chimes in. “It’s got kind of a dumb, in-your-face attitude which is evident by the state motto. You know, ’Live Free or Die,’ everything’s so extreme.

“It’s also just this weird mix of beauty and horrible taste,” he added, having lived briefly in Sandwich, N.H. “Everything manmade has, like, a slice of cheese melted on it and an orange wedge next to it.”

Unlike Los Angeles, where everything is quite tasteful.

But Robin and Kavet were quick to add that the locals in the western New Hampshire town of Claremont (population 13,000) were extremely helpful in getting the film made — after their location manager did a little shmoozing, that is.

“All of a sudden it went from being a place that was really skeptical about filming to a place that, like, would do anything,” Kavet said. “They really did go completely out of their way.”

Why, they're just rubes! All you have to do is grease a few palms and they'll be eating out of your hands!

I've long noted that condescension comes easily to those in the entertainment industry (Harvard, of course, goes without saying). Comedy, especially, is full of condescension towards the flyover, or anyplace other than New York, L.A., or the Hamptons. The really good ones balance that by, essentially, LIKING the characters. "King of the Hill" is a great show because while it lampoons the Texas stereotypes- the stolid, dull, out-of-the-loop Hank, the paranoid conspiracist Dale, the incomprehensible Boomhaure- Mike Judge seems to actually LIKE them, because he knows them (okay, he lives in Austin, which isn't exactly "Arlen," but still). "Fargo" only works because Marge is not just a hero but likeable and down to earth, so the broad "you betcha" Minnesota Nice caricature becomes more three-dimensional. The redneck stereotypes are rampant in "My Name Is Earl," but EVERYONE in the show's a caricature and the hero's a likeable, if dimwitted, guy. But it's easier to treat them as "dumb" and "so extreme" and having "horrible taste," because that's what Harvard/Hollywood guys really think about those places. You know that when the one guy "briefly lived in Sandwich, N.H.," he couldn't wait to get back to someplace where they said "Tall" instead of "Small" and "Venti" instead of "Regular."

Ah, whatever. Maybe it'll be a good movie. But when the guys making it trash the locals after taking advantage of them, it's hard to hold out much hope.

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Message to CBS from your HDTV viewers:

1. Is it too much to ask to stop putting the scores of other NCAA tournament games across the top of the screen so obtrusively that it sometimes blocks some of the action? Especially when all the games in question are over? Can't you just put one in the corner and rotate the scores like you've done in the past?

2. When a game's going into double overtime, is it necessary to switch the digital feed to another game that's starting at that moment instead of sticking with the game to its conclusion? Who made the decision to switch KCBS-DT/Los Angeles from the (4:3 standard def with blue bars) second overtime of Boston College-Pacific to the beginning of the (1080i 16:9) Winthrop-Tennessee game? Who in Los Angeles needed to see the tipoff of THAT one?

Thanks. I'm sure you'll react immediately.

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Man, was THAT uninspiring or what?

When it was clear that Villanova was going to get a one seed this year, I had the sinking feeling that they might do what they have done at times in the past- come out flat and either lose or come closer than you'd like to losing to a lower seed. And sure enough, the Wildcats came out firing blanks against Monmouth, the only saving grace being that a) Allan "Popeye" Ray got warm, and b) Monmouth couldn't score to save their lives, either.

You'd assume that Nova would come out after halftime and take care of business, but they continued to be flat, again saved by Monmouth just not being good enough to take advantage. Nova won, but a one seed should beat the play-in team by more than 13 (and it was closer than that).

Villanova was unprepared. They looked confused and frustrated. It's common for a good team to look lousy against a team they expect to clobber, but that shouldn't happen in the NCAAs; that's a coaching problem as well as an overconfidence problem.

Arizona won't miss so many shots. Maybe this will kill off the overconfidence problem.

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As it turns out, the world CAN do without my messages of genius for at least one day.

You'll live.

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Ah, jeez, no.

Tony's in a coma, and that's the cue for hack TV, mostly involving the weirdness in Tony's mind while he's on life support and his family worries. There were hints of the upcoming power struggle, but more ominous hints that Tony will lay in a coma for a while and we'll be subjected to more of the same. Next week's preview pretty much guaranteed it- Tony's tubed up, Carm's yelling at A.J. again, Paulie Walnuts is looking like he ran out of Pepto, everyone's stomping around... not good, not good at all. Main character in coma, dreaming- I expect better from this show.

What did we learn tonight? Purgatory is a chain hotel in Costa Mesa. We knew that already.

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It is apparently too much to ask Windows XP Media Center Edition to work properly. I know, I'm being pushy and whiny, because I shouldn['t EXPECT a clean install on a fresh hard drive with all updates installed to work properly. I need to lower my expectations.

The latest problem's a weird mystery, so weird that I don't even know how to put it in a coherent Google search. The problem is this: without warning, with nothing obvious having happened, my ability to use the Web stops. There's still connectivity- e-mail still works, and my other networked computers don't lose Web access. It's only on THIS box. A reboot gets it working fine again, until the next time it craps out. I've scanned for spyware and viruses and malware frequently. Again, I don't even know how to phrase this problem.

I do know one pertinent phrase, though. "Next time, buy a Mac." Rolls off the tongue, don't it?

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OK, here's the deal- posting is going to be uneven for the next few weeks- there'll still be stuff and it'll roughly be daily as usual, but what I'm going to be able to do is uncertain. I can't really go into the details other than to note that the circumstances are such that you'd understand why if I told you; there's much to be done, a lot of stuff with which to deal, and it won't be conducive to doing a lot of writing outside of the columns that pay the bills. And if you've ever tried to be funny and coherent when funny and coherent are the last things in your life at that moment, you know how hard that is.

But I'll try to keep posting on a daily basis, maybe some more scans from pop culture's semi-recent past, maybe some TV and sports commentary (hey, I just saw a "Happy Days" post-shark rerun featuring Tom Hanks as "Dwayne," a karate-kicking geek with a grudge against Fonzie!), maybe some incomprehensible diatribes about the state of radio.

And exactly how does that differ from what's normally on this page?

Okay, it doesn't. But I guess I'm disclaiming the volume and the quality of material that's coming up, and it's unfair to do that, so forget I said anything. But bear with me. We'll get through this together....

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Someone else seems to have picked up on something I've been complaining about in various venues for years: if they want to sell HDTVs, why the hell don't retailers show you real HDTV on the sets they're displaying?

Broadcasting and Cable's John Eggerton is complaining, too:

I drove over to Best Buy to see whether they were making good use of the CBS HDTV coverage of March Madness to sell DTVs. They weren't One bank of TV's was airing the game, but the picture looked like something from a cheap motel TV set with a coathanger for an antenna.

The Best Buy and Circuit City stores near me use tape loops that do not appear to be true HD. They look muddy, soft, nothing special. Some sets will show DVDs, from standard def players, no upconverting- they look good, but not $2,000. worth of good.

Live sports in true HD- CBS is reliable for this, NBC not (too much bandwidth reserved on their O&Os for that useless "Weather Plus" channel), ABC inconsistent, Fox OK- sells HDTVs. The NCAAs in 1080i are awesome- that wide aspect radio and the sharpness of the detail gives you the kind of view you'd have from a good seat in the arena. You see that, you want it. But when I walk into the major chain electronics retailers, they have the sets displaying soft, crappy video.

Then again, I know what to buy and I don't own stock in any electronics retailers, so it's not my problem. But I always get frustrated when I see a job poorly done, no matter what the job is. At least I'm not alone.

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Saturday morning TV was great in the 60's- Bullwinkle, Bugs, the Beatles. In the 70's, not so good. Here's proof from the 1977 TV Guide Fall Preview issue:

Look at this crap. The Pink Panther kinda sucked all the way through, but this is later, cheaper, uglier, worse. "CB Bears"? Way to jump on a lame fad and make it even lamer. "The Young Sentinels" looks like a Tom of Finland production. "The New Archie Sabrina Hour" is the kind of thing you get when a franchise is dying and you start to stick cartoons togther to try and keep it going for a little while longer. A Muhammad Ali cartoon, well, no. I don't remember "Thunder" or "Search and Rescue: The Alpha Team," and I doubt anyone else does. "Baggy Pants and the Nitwits," on the other hand, I do remember, and it holds a special place in my heart as a phrase that made my sister laugh a little too hard one morning. "The Red Hand Gang" sounds like a masturbation club with kung-fu grip; can't get away with that these days.

ABC was pretty pathetic that year- three shows lumping lots of characters together in uncomfortable piles. Notable: the Scooby Doo show included the debut of "Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels," which always struck me as two show pitches that somehow accidentally got grafted together. "Let's do a cartoon 'Charlie's Angels' for kids... oh, and we have this other pitch for a wacky Cousin Itt-like caveman transported to 1977... hey, let's do them both." And they mistook that to mean "at the same time." I never liked the Krofft shows, but, then again, I never dropped acid.

Good start with Bugs et al., but then, dreck: "What's New, Mister Magoo?" was an affront to the memory of the 1950s theatrical UPA cartoons and even made the crappy TV ones look good. The mess at 9:30, well, two words: "Robonic Stooges." Who thought THAT was a good idea? Only other redeeming value: "In the News" all morning. Christopher Glenn ruled.

Here's a bonus:

The show was never all that good, but introducing a female Sweathog smelled of shark-jumping. Ice Cube, take note.

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Today, I saw what I miss because I rarely leave home, and I was reminded of what I can't stand about leaving home.

We had to be at UCLA today, and I found myself with some time to kill between appointments, so I took a walk on campus. UCLA's campus is a lot like Penn's- lots of tall buildings crowded together with trees and the occasional green space dropped in- but the day was warm and sunny, and it really felt like spring in a city where the seasons aren't supposed to change (they do). I walked between the buildings, dropped into the bookstore (oddly, no NCAA tournament souvenirs yet- they had Pac 10 t-shirts but nothing about the team's participation in the tournament, maybe because many students are on break and by the time they're back, we'll know if there will be more updated souvenirs to be had), and wandered into Pauley Pavilion. The arena was being prepped for the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards, and while there was security at the main entrance, the back door was wide open; I stood with some production executives and gazed at the championship banners and the scoreboards and the very spot where John Wooden directed his troops and everyone from Hazzard to Alcindor to O'Bannon and Edney and Farmar roamed. It's no Palestra- it's a 1960's-bland, utilitarian arena, and I can imagine recruits turning their noses up at it when even San Diego State has a newer, nicer, state-of-the-art facility (and USC's will open hard by the 110 freeway in the Fall). But you walk in and you know some greatness lived there.

After the last appointment, we walked into Westwood Village to grab a bite, and for all the problems Westwood has experienced in recent years, there's something about a place where people actually walk and shop and eat and ride buses- almost a real city! I enjoyed the atmosphere, the buzz of students and hospital workers and businesspeople crowded into a restaurant, the hiss and gas fumes at the bus stop. The place just seemed alive, and, living and working here in the quiet, remote suburbs, I miss that.

And then came affirmation of the other side. The Sirius traffic report warned of severe traffic problems on the 405 south, and, sure enough, Wilshire seemed to be backing up all the way to Westwood Boulevard, so I decided we'd be better off sticking to surface streets. And that may indeed have been the wise choice, but it was the same idea everyone else had. Westwood Boulevard crawled. There was momentary gridlock at Santa Monica Boulevard- more 405 backup- and National had a long line at the Overland light that never seemed to move no matter how many (short) green lights we got. I bailed into the Cheviot Hills back streets, found the secret back entrance to the 10 East, and promptly hit another jam. Off to La Cienega, which moved well until the hill, where an accident had traffic jammed again. And more jamming at La Tijera, and so on all the way home.

How do people do that? I mean, I used to commute, and it never seemed this bad. They say that the jams are getting worse, have gotten much worse in the last five years, and, well, yeah. I kept telling myself not to get aggravated, not to worry- no rush, not a problem- but I couldn't help myself. I can't even imagine how it would feel if I had an actual schedule.

So it was nice to be out and about in civilization today. I'm promising myself it'll never happen again.

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The winning points scored on a shot that never actually went into the basket?

I can't recall too many games ending on an undisputed goaltending call.

Imagine how Nova would have done had everyone shown up like Randy Foye and played the whole game instead of either sleepwalking or shooting bricks (coughAllanRaycough).

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Today's excitement: replacing a door knob, putting in a handheld shower head, buying a new router (old Microsoft one's slow and flaky- got a cheap 802.11g Belkin, Pre-N can wait) and uniterruptible power supply (old one died just out of warranty- thanks, Belkin), watching the neighbors rip down an enormous tree- don't know why, maybe they're putting in a pool. The noise is ridiculous.

And the Internet still cuts out for no apparent reason on this PC (but not on others on the LAN). Reset the cable modem and router, will replace the router (it needed replacing anyway), will cast wary eyes towards the NIC on the motherboard (but using my backup USB adapter didn't make a difference). Not pleased, am I.

But the most interesting thing was when we were perusing the routers at Best Buy- a woman and her daughter were looking, confused, at the display while Fran and I discussed the relative merits of g vs. g+ vs. g-MIMO vs. pre-N. The woman came over and said "you sound like you know what you're talking about" and asked me what to get. Within 2 minutes, she had the right router for her needs and was thanking me profusely. She said that the salesman on the floor was rude, had pointed her to the most expensive one and sent her to the Geek Squad desk for installation advice (at a price). For free, i saved her a hundred bucks (small house, adjacent rooms, legacy notebook adapter- all she needed was the same Belkin with which I ended up, thirty-nine bucks out the door and relatively simple to set up).

Why don't consumer electronics stores have one or two "answer men" to handle these kind of things? Most people who walk into those stores don't know what they need- they're not stupid, but they just aren't paying rapt attention to the latest in networking technology or the difference between HD and ED and "true HD" and 1080p vs. 1080i vs. 720p. They don't know because they're too busy living life to know. But Best Buy and Circuit City (where ALL the salesmen were busy watching the LSU-Texas game) hire people who know less than the customers yet have the sales technique of the car sales sharks down the street. If they gave sound advice and steered people the right way, sure, they wouldn't sell someone who needs a forty buck router the $169. version this time, but I'll bet they sell a LOT more stuff to the same customers over time.

But what do I know?

Just more than the salesweasels. That shouldn't be.

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Better this week. Any episode with Paulie Walnuts going berserk and getting a shot to the nuts is a good one. Tony's out of the coma, which is even better. The long Kevin Finnerty nightmare is over, and Tony refused Steve Buscemi/Tony B.'s invitation to come to the "reunion" to return to Newark, which has to be something of a letdown. Some funny moments, Paulie aggravates Tony right out of a coma, we get confirmed the notion that Costa Mesa is purgatory, Little Steven gets to act and do a Dennis Hopper-in-"Blue Velvet" schtick with an inhaler, Joe Hackett from "Wings" makes a return appearance, and much is right with the Soprano world. What a relief.

Oh, and if Curtis Sumpter hadn't gotten hurt again, could Florida have muscled Villanova around like they did today? Whatever. Guess it's all on George Mason now.

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This is one of those days: some unexpected additional agita and we're off on the road through Hell Week.

One thing, though: today was the first day of the second phase radio ratings trends for the Winter book, and one thought came from reading what one friend calls the "geek boards," the radio message boards on which fanboys and board ops write as if they know what's happening in the business. The trends in the Middlesex-Somerset-Union market came out and someone actually posted a note about how the trends were up for a middle-of-the-pack Central Jersey adult contemporary station, and all I could think is this: who other than the sales manager could possibly care about a station like that? How do you work up a passion for "continuous soft rock" and "personalities" described thusly:

"makes it easier to wake up and get going with the most Continuous Soft Rock in the morning"

"plays the Best Continuous Soft Rock that will help your day fly by"

"the best Continuous Soft Rock as you wind down your workday"

It's like caring about the performance of your toaster, only you don't even get toast.

The same "geek boards" tend to trash the idea of FM talk- why, FM wasn't made for talk! It's for music!- and support things like soft AC and dance music (oh, how they love dance music) and very low-rated quirky alternative stations. And with the miserable performance of "Free FM," you know the geeks will be predicting FM Talk's demise and gleefully anticipating the replacements- dance? Country?- and that's a shame, because, and I'm saying this both as one of the people responsible for the FM Talk concept in the first place and as a listener, it's not the format's fault if someone botches the execution. FM Talk is a great format and it will work if done right, but it needs a chance. I fear that the geeks won't be the only ones clamoring for the format's destruction. And I'd be happy to lend the folks presently trying to get a handle on what to do without Howard a hand.

But they'll have to pay me.

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