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I made the run to Vegas today- it takes about 5 hours, give or take and depending on how long you spend eating your burger and strawberry pie at the Bun Boy in Baker (under the World's Tallest and Least Accurate Thermometer). It's cool in Vegas at the moment- 60s and breezy for the high- but I found the one hot spot in town, which happened to be the Convention Center where the NAB and RTNDA conventions are being held. I had to run in, get my press credentials, grab the print materials, and get back out of there, which naturally required the World's Longest Walk in the World's Warmest Building. By the time I walked from the Hilton parking garage, through the Sports Book and casino, down the hall, through the entire RTNDA convention area, across the street, down the block, up the escalator, down a long, very warm hallway, down another hall to the press room, then reversed the process, I was schvitzing something fierce. Why is it that convention halls must always be at least 20 degrees warmer than the legal definition of "hot"? And why am I the only one who notices this?



So, I'm at the NAB. I'll be reporting on the show for AllAccess.com, and I'll post some of my impressions here. Fair enough? Good. Now, I've been driving all day, and writing all evening, so it's time to do what nobody's ever supposed to do in Vegas- sleep. See you tomorrow, and if you're at the NAB or RTNDA, stop by/say hi.

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So far this morning at the NAB Convention: a bunch of Senators and Congressmen said nothing, then Cokie Roberts got an award for, apparently, being Cokie Roberts and Barry Diller told everyone their industry should be reregulated. Then I went to the Media Room and waited for an Ethernet port to open up while a bunch of the foreign press looked me over like I'm an alien.



Oh, yeah, traveling to Vegas conventions is a LOAD of fun, absolutely. I might as well be in Duluth- at least I wouldn't feel like I was missing anything.

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We were heading for a bite to eat when we walked by the Venetian sports book. On the assumption that being in Vegas during the Final Four and NOT betting on the game would be heresy, I went ahead and dropped $22. on Syracuse-plus-5 1/2 to win.



Good move.

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And now, the results of the exclusive Las Vegas Hotel Health Club Poll. Results are plus and minus 100 percent.



When we checked into the hotel, three of the four big-screen projection TVs over the cardio area of the hotel spa were tuned to war coverage on the cable news channels.



On Monday, it was down to two.



Today, the sets had a) Lakers-Dallas, b) Fox News, c) A&E Chuck Barris bio, and d) VH1's airing of "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America."



Our exclusive Insta-Fraud analysis: America is officially "over it."

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Apologies for not posting too much this week- travel and news coverage duties (this week, I'm practically Jimmy Olsen, Cub Reporter) are taking up way too much time. The good thing is that there's a ton of material being harvested, so later this week, and maybe even by Thursday, there'll be so much you'll be screaming for mercy. There's My Lunch With Radio People, FCC Commissioners Run Amok, the Foreign Press and the Free Sandwiches, Why I Hate Photographers... maybe a repeat visit to the Special World of Danny Gans, too.



Meanwhile, I gotta run. Did I tell you I'm running in the black this time? Did I tell you Syracuse plus 5 1/2? Did I? Huh?



OK, I'll go.

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You wake up in the morning. You find the switch on the alarm clock, you slide out of bed so as not to wake your wife, you stumble out of the room. Bathroom, brush teeth, stumble out. Feed the cat, scratch yourself, maybe start the coffeemaker or grab a bagel. Turn on the computer, switch on the radio, discover the world has changed again.



Dancing in the streets. Looting. Statues toppled, victory signs, celebration. Outpourings of emotion about the torture, the suffering, the indignity of life under the thumb of an evil man. You wonder what people who railed against the war are thinking now. Perhaps they don't believe it's true. But you hear the rumble of millions of people running to catch the bandwagon that left without them 22 days ago.



There will be a lot of bumps on the road ahead. The fighting's not even over, the country still not fully liberated, the "resistance" and the terrorism surely ready to keep killing. But right now, there are millions of people free today who weren't free yesterday, and that's worth some celebration.

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On one side of the world, a tyrant is overthrown, the oppressed are free, the world watches in true shock and awe.



On the other side of the world, Danny Gans is king.



Danny Gans, for those who have never been to Las Vegas, is an entertainer who... oh, sorry, he's not merely an entertainer. No, he's ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR, writ large on countless billboards, bus cards, taxi roof ads, and, for all I know, on tattoos placed on each cheek of the Mayor's butt. The moment you deplane at McCarran and go to get your bags, there's the grinning face of the ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR, looming over the baggage claim, perched atop his customary black turtleneck. Here in our hotel room- a hotel right across the street from the Official Hotel of Danny Gans- there's a copy of a tourist magazine, and right on the cover, crouching and gazing from in front of the publication's logo with a please-love-me expression, is the ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR himself. Why not? He's the ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR.



So, what does the ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR do to become the ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR? Well, he sings. He dances. He does impressions. He tells sincere stories about his family, his faith, his baseball career, his TV deals. And he does every single one of them poorly. Check that- not just poorly, but criminally bad. Awful. Sub-Star Search bad. Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour bad. Cable access bad. None of his impressions are close. His claims to have been a heartbeat away from the majors- are of dubious veracity. The singing and dancing are karaoke-level. He's been telling the sitcom development story for years and nobody's seen a pilot. I've seen the ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR perform live, and I can't remember a more cringe-inducing act, not even the Playboy Fantasy Revue at which I ended up, in an illness-and-alcohol-induced delerium, sitting ringside in Atlantic City inches from the Globe of Death and three male dancers in ape costumes miming to "Abba Dabba Honeymoon." The ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR is horribly, mind-numbingly, incredibly awful.



Needless to say, he sells out every night.



That's because Las Vegas isn't of this earth. It's a parallel universe, with its own customs, own moral code, own celebrities. Ah, the celebrities. Your Jack Nicholsons and Shaqs and George W. Bushes can slide through a casino with no problem, can gamble and drink and dance relatively unmolested, noticed only in passing in Norm Clarke's column or Tim McDarrah's column in the next day's papers. But Danny Gans- the ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR- will get mobbed. The Scintas are royalty on the Strip. Clint Holmes- "My name is Michael, I got a nickel..." Clint Holmes- is still a star here. Michael Flatley hops, Lance Burton makes magic, Rita Rudner slays 'em every night. There's even a Gallic imitation of the ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR, a guy named Andre-Phillipe Gagnon who does impressions of singers that sound like the real thing if the real thing had a French accent and sounded nothing like themselves.



Have I mentioned that it's all great? Because it is. Nowhere else on the planet can you get ripped on paper-umbrella drinks and watch washed-up singers and unfunny comics and people you've never heard of and have no reason to have ever heard of sing and dance and joke their show-biz hearts out in a way that's like watching "World's Wildest Police Chases XIV"- you can't believe you're doing it, you're aware you're wasting time and brain cells, yet you're enjoying the spectacle. (Some of the acts are even- dare I say it- not bad: Clint Holmes does a surprisingly good version of the standard Vegas showroom act, and, yes, he's fully aware of his own comic washed-up-ness) Like the rest of Tourist Las Vegas, it's all tasteless, schlocky, over the top, and exactly what you want from Vegas.



Except the ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR. Nobody should want that.

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Today, Vegas, one last tour of the NAB and RTNDA shows. Tomorrow, it's the long drive back, the Bun Boy, the World's Tallest Thermometer, the Highway Stations, Turn Off Your Air Conditioner Next 16 Miles, the Cajon Pass, and, eventually, home. And Ella.



I wonder if she'll recognize us.

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Back from Vegas, digging out from under- much work, no time, but safely back home. The drive was, for the Vegas run, quick and uneventful. The highlight, such as it was, had to be the stop for lunch at the Mad Greek, which, along with Bun Boy, is the Wall Drug/South of the Border equivalent here- the billboards spread up and down the 15 for miles, and the restaurants are across the street from each other in the only commercial area- the only area inhabited by more than 1 or 2 people- between Yermo and the Nevada line, in the middle of the Mojave Desert conveniently located adjacent to... nothing. (OK, there's a Del Taco and an Arby's and a couple of little convenience stores and the Alien Jerky stand, but that's it)



Sub-highlight- I'm eating my sandwich at the Mad Greek when one of the many celebrity pictures on the wall catches my eye. No, not the Nic Cage head shot, the one two pictures over to the left, the one with the curly-haired guy with the puffy, grinning face. Could it be?



Yes.



Eddie Mekka.



Carmine Ragusa.



The Big Ragu.



From "Laverne and Shirley."



The Big Ragu lives, and he eats at the Mad Greek in Baker, California.

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One of the striking things about what's happening in Baghdad was noted by WKLS/Atlanta "Regular Guy" Larry Wachs, who e-mailed me noting that the Iraqi looters, freed of inhibition and rule of law, went right for the electronic stuff- stereos, TVs, VCRs. It was like Everything Must Go at the Baghdad Best Buy.



This is interesting, because you didn't see women running around looting. If women were involved, they'd be going for boring things like food, medical supplies, personal hygiene products, things for the children. Men go for TVs. That's what they did when South Central caught fire in the Rodney King riots, it's what happens any time law and order break down- guys make a bee line for electronic stuff. Think about it- when the L.A. rioters were shown emerging from a liquor or convenience store, what were they carrying? A 40 and the surveillance monitor and a cash register with drawer flapping open, cashless, worthless, but, hey, it's electronic.



So the Baghdad looters lug the TVs home and plug 'em in. What are they gonna see? You know, I STILL haven't been able to find any information about what Iraq TV airs, except that it tends to air Saddam speeches and Hollywood movies of a few years back, preferably with Bill Paxton or Bill Pullman or someone else named Bill. Is that worth stealing a TV to watch? They're probably going to have to sit there watching snow and test patterns until the new government gets its act together and signs on with the new Fall season, which I'm willing to bet will look suspiciously like last season, because they can't afford anything good and the Bill movies are just sitting there on what's left of the shelf and they do fill up time. Replace the Saddam speeches with Bush and Blair speeches and you got yourself a schedule, don't you?



But it doesn't matter. Guys are guys. Iraqi guys may worship in a different religion, live in a different culture, believe in a different value system, but they're guys, which means that they want big-screen TVs. And porn. But I don't think there was any porn to loot.



Yet. There will be, soon, because they will be free and guys are guys.

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Ah, yes, I'll never forget the NAB2003 convention. What an amazing time- while Baghdad was falling and the world watched with jaws dropping, I was watching the foreign press corps attack a tray of sandwiches and my jaw was dropping, too.



The convention was, as usual, big and tech-heavy and exhausting, and there was a reasonable amount of news to report, so I was busy throughout the week. But the most lasting impression I took from the event was about the behavior of the foreign press. This year, the NAB thoughfully provided Ethernet connections for high speed Net access so people like me could file reports and check e-mail- you know, work. And when I could grab a Cat-5 cord and hook it into my computer, it was great. Getting a free cord, on the other hand, took some work, because the connections seemed to be constantly occupied by people whose badges indicated that they a) were from another continent, which in and of itself isn't a problem, but b) they weren't writers. No, they were photographers, or assistants, or anything but actual reporters. They had the Net hookup, and they were using them for...



...for what? For reading web pages, for checking friends' e-mail messages, for watching videos. I needed to get in there, and they would not budge. Most, in fact, feigned inability to understand English. There was one thing they understood, however, and it was the only way I got to use the Net hookup.



Lunch time.



The NAB provides a small amount of food so reporters can grab a bite while continuing to work. That's not who ate the food. The foreign press, the non-reporters, the photographers, the ones hogging the Net- those were the ones who ate the food. And they got all of it. I walked into the press room, checked and saw that the food hadn't arrived, found a free Net connection, used it for 3 minutes to file a report, got up, walked around the corner to check on the food, and it was all gone, snarfed up in seconds. I saw a guy carrying four sandwiches- two in each hand- away from the table. It was carnage. But at least I could console myself in that the sandwiches looked horrible.



Anyway, I came away from the convention remembering not what happened in the sessions or on the exhibit floor, but what happened in the press room. Next time, I'm brown-bagging it. And if the non-reporters take up all the Net connections, I'll just rip the cord from their computers. I'll bet they'll suddenly understand plenty English.

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This is how travel affects me: I am at a loss to figure out what day this is. I thought this was Thursday all day. I thought yesterday felt like Friday.



And when I went to the Y for a workout, I opened my gym bag to discover I'd packed one sneaker, three shower shoes, and no brush.



What day is this again?

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This is a little test- if you're able to read this, I have successfully figured ouy a way to post from my cell phone. Because I can, that's why.

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OK, so I can post from my cell phone. Here's what was going on at the time:



I was in a movie theater at the time, killing time during "The Twenty," the cavalcade of promos and ads 20 minutes before the 20 minutes of ads and trailers that start when the movie's scheduled to start. I have one o' them Handspring Treos with net access, so I was trying to see if I could post from it. Evidently, I can post to the queue, but not directly publish to the site- it can't handle the FTP function.



Ah, gadgets. What would life be like without them?

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Movie Review


I'm angry. I'm so angry. We saw a crappy movie and it wasn't merely bad in the "aah, I just wasted money on this crap" way, it was bad in the "how could anyone in Hollywood have read this script and thought it would make a good movie" way.


Do yourself a favor. Skip "Anger Management."


OK, so I shouldn't expect a movie with Adam Sandler to be good. I'm not a 13 year old boy anymore. (13 year old boys love Adam Sandler- the theater was packed with them) And the trailers should have been ample warning, too. But I needed an escape from tax forms and receipts, and it was either that or "Head of State." It was a coin flip. The coin flipped wrong, so we saw "Anger Management."


I'll spare you a lot of the details and skip to why I got upset. I guess it's the Writer's Curse: if you write for a living, and you see lazy or just plain bad writing hit the jackpot, there's a certain amount of jealousy/resentment that wells up in your chest. How the hell can something this bad make money while I, great undiscovered talent that I am, toil away in the obscurity of the freelance life? But I don't think this one's bad just because of jealousy. I don't begrudge people success, even people who might uncharitably be termed hacks- hey, I've cranked out stuff I thought was crap to make money (I have integrity, but sometimes I gotta pay the mortgage). This one was worse- a combination of a few stock plots and hammy acting by a cast of big names slumming for a friend. Here's how you could tell this wasn't going to be a good movie:

Celebrity cameos. When athletes and actors show up in tiny walk-ons just because, well, just because, you know there's a problem. It's the Simpsons Guest Star Rule: when a celebrity guest voice is on the Simpsons, the episode will be subpar, and when the celebrities play themselves ("Hey, you're Tony Hawk, the famous skateboarder!" "That's right, Bart!"), the episode will REALLY stink out loud. "Anger Management" has Rudy Giuliani embarrassing himself, Woody Harrelson REALLY embarrassing himself in drag, John C. Reilly in a bad bald wig and robe, Luis Guzman as an effeminate stereotype, Heather Graham in Red Sox underwear stuffing her face with brownies, and Roger Clemens and Derek Jeter as themselves. The movie had no chance.


Hammy acting. Jack Nicholson's worst instincts are all over this one- after one of his best, most understated performances ever in "About Schmidt," he does the eye-rolling wack job thing in this one. And then there's Sandler and Marisa Tomei, which should be enough for anyone to stay away, but in case that's not enough, there's John Turturro as a psycho. Not good.


Weird obsession. Some scripts have an inexplicable focus on something that's clearly a problem for someone who made the movie. This one's homosexuality- there's the stereotype mincer, the crazed lesbians, the two-guys-in-a-bed scene, the staring-at-the-penis-of-the-guy-at-the-next-urinal gag... someone who made this movie's uncomfortable with his own gender preference, or he's a real homophobe, or both.


Adam Sandler's in it.

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This weekend is mostly a blur of taxes and receipts and more taxes. For some reason, I just didn't get around to the gruntwork of getting the taxes finished until the last minute. Maybe I suspected (rightly, it turns out) that I'm not gonna like what the bottom line shows this time. Maybe I assumed I'd get to it when I really wasn't going to have the time.


Maybe I'm just lazy.


I wish I had the kind of finances where I could take a box of receipts, dump them all on some accountant's desk, and say "here, you do it." But I have to do it myself, the curse of the small businessman, too small to hire someone to handle the finances, too big for the 1040-EZ. Usually, it's not too bad- between Quicken and Turbo Tax, a lot of the work's easier than it used to be. But this year, between the war and conventions and business, I've just about run out of time. I should be able to file on time- maybe a day early- because I've buckled down and I've been working for a few days to catch up, but I scared myself by waiting so long. I miss the days before I had to worry about income taxes and property taxes and mortgages and everything about adulthood. I close my eyes and it's a summer afternoon in 1969 again, out in the back yard on the wide expanse of grass with the soggy part out by the property line where the drainage is screwed up, and my dad's throwing a baseball WAAAAAY up in the air, yelling "major league pop-up!" as I circled under it, imagining myself to be the next Willie Mays or Tommie Agee, no responsibilities in sight. And then I wake up, and I'm just some guy who needs to pay the bills and file his 1040 and pick up the dry cleaning on his way back from the gym.


Not that I'm complaining. But it would be nice to take a vacation from adulthood for a little while. You know, I think my baseball glove's in the garage, and I have an old National League baseball on the top shelf in my office. Maybe when I finish the taxes I'll throw myself some major league pop-ups, close my eyes, and be Willie Mays all over again.

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