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1. Sewer still inoperable. Thank you to the 76 station on the corner, the Starbucks next door, the Marie Callender's at the top of the hill, and, especially, the Y in Torrance for the use of your facilities. Plus, I went into the pool for a quick early rinse. Air temperature: upper 80s. Water temperature: what's the lowest is can be before it goes solid?

2. Sopranos update: I really think Meadow's boyfriend should have gone to the Yankee game with Vito. Really.

3. We didn't go to the Coachella festival this weekend. Considering that it had to be something like 300 degrees in Indio, I don't think I missed a thing. Somehow, seeing Death Cab for Cutie or Radiohead or the Stills (gee, think they did "Still in Love Song"? Do they have any other songs?) while standing in a convection oven/dust field and paying for the privilege just never came up on the list of options today. If it was too hot to watch the Dodgers and Expos from the shade of the press box, Coachella was absolutely not a possibility.

Coming Monday: the plumbers return. Oy.

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So, what do you get for your $3,200. these days?

You get a front lawn that looks like this:

And still no sewer service. They say we'll be back and draining by midday tomorrow, but this fearsome pit is missing one thing so far: any sign of the drain pipe.

I'm getting REALLY tired of this.

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It turns out that there IS a full moon, which may explain why something strange happened today. I cranked out the usual weekly newsletter that All Access sends out to promote the news-talk-sports section, and it was pretty much the same thing I do EVERY week- a chatty, stupid letter about what's going on, followed by a couple of paragraphs plugging the site, a lame closing joke, the end. It was about the same length, too- in fact, when I sent it off to be composed, it looked a little short.

Result: several angry e-mails from people I've never heard from before, complaining about the length, the "babbling," "GET TO THE POINT!" I haven't been subjected to this kind of anger since I was at KLSX when we dropped classic rock, went to talk, and got fried by everyone.

Could it have been my lousy writing?

Nah.

Had to be the moon.

Geez.

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The local Mexican restaurant- yes, I'm aware that there are roughly two Mexican restaurants per block in Southern California- is celebrating Cinco de Mayo this week the way every Mexican restaurant celebrates Cinco de Mayo, with strolling mariachis and drink specials. We were serenaded throughout dinner, and it was entertaining inasmuch as they were slightly off-key, not in the standard just-sounds-like-it's-off-key mariachi sense but in the P.U.-that-was-a-rotten-note sense. And they were loud, too. They did all the classics- "La Bamba," and that one that goes, you know, you've heard it... there were a lot of those familiar tunes the name of which you don't know. And then there was one that strikes an immediate, warm, familiar chord with anyone of a certain age group. If you're in your 40s, you know it. Sing along with the band:

Ay, ay, ay, ay....
I am the Frito Bandito!
I love Fritos corn chips, I love them, I do
I want Fritos corn chips, I'll get them from you!

There are real Spanish lyrics to the song- yes, I know it's "Cielito Lindo"- but if you're an American who remembers the late 1960s, you don't know them, you know the Frito Bandito. F.B. had a short, happy life as the TV commercial spokesstereotype for the corn chip, and was then unceremoniously erased from the airwaves when someone decided that the character was offensive. You can see why they'd think that here. Or, better (or worse), see choppy RealVideo of an actual 1969 spot with Mel Blanc doing his stereotypical Mexican accent for the Bandito and a moon landing theme here (by way of the fabulous TVParty.com).

But we didn't know from any of that as kids. Kids are smarter than adults want to believe- we knew it was a stereotype, we knew it wasn't representative of all Mexican people... we knew it was a CARTOON CHARACTER, for chrissakes. And so did most everyone else. But the ads came down anyway, the character got back-burnered, and that was that.

And here we are 35 years later, the band strikes up "Cielito Lindo," and Fran and I look at each other and mouth the lyrics to the Frito Bandito song. Does advertising get any more effective than that?

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Sewer's "temporarily" working. They found the pipe, cleared it, patched it. We have indoor plumbing again!

Needless to say, I'm thrilled.

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Ah, whatever.

I had a whole column ready to go on Ted Rall's cartoon and the death threats he says he's gotten, but after I pretty much finished it I read it back and decided that a) I can say it in a few sentences, and b) I don't really care that much. So here ya go:

When you call someone who just died an "idiot" and "sap," you can expect a negative response. When you attack the President as stupid and treasonous and whatever like the Democrats have been doing for months, and he runs negative ads in response, you can't be surprised and offended. The left has been acting like the kid on the playground who sucker-punches everyone and then runs crying to the teacher when someone hits back. You are free to say what you want, but you're not free to do so without accepting the consequences. And Ted knows that, and when you read the shocked press coverage of the way people are vilifying Mr. Rall, remember- he knew he was saying something that would be unpopular. He wanted to shock people. I don't think even he would say the reaction was unexpected or even to some extent unwanted. But the idea that people being upset by his name-calling is somehow wrong (besides the death threats- I've gotten those, and they're never OK, but you know that) is the kind of attitude that you get when you're that sucker-punching cry baby bully.

Of course, Ted would probably say the U.S. is a sucker-punching cry baby bully. That first punch gets forgotten fast.

There, that's everything. Next!

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Now, THAT was a final episode.

Were you just a little bit surprised when Ross and Chandler finally kissed? I mean, there were hints all along, but, really, it was still a shock when it happened. I could have done without the whole Rachel Chlamydia story line- so extraneous- but I thought the topic of Joey's retardation was handled with sensitivity, and when Phoebe overdosed, I swear, there wasn't a dry eye in the house. When they served Marcel as an appetizer at her funeral, you know, that was truly creative, working the monkey into the story that way. And after that, the suicide pact was a logical extension. Truly, this was the right way to go.

Or maybe I dreamed the whole thing. It was such a nice dream, though.

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My run of luck continues. No sooner did the sewer guys finish up then I went for a snack of peanut butter in the kitchen and, while eating, noticed that the stuff had turned from smooth to chunky. A quick examination of the foreign object- white, shiny, hard- led me to think that it might be a piece of tooth, but, no, it was such a LARGE piece, and I didn't FEEL anything, so it CAN'T be a...

...no, wait...

damn.

Half of a tooth was gone. It wasn't even one of the many teeth the dentists have been working on so far this year- no, it was another tooth deciding to give it all up. And that's why I spent most of the morning back at the dentist.

At least the toilets are working again.

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The caller was insistent. The problem, he told Joel Meyers on the daily Lakers talk show on Xtra Sports 690 and 1150, is all the criticism. "You"- he meant the media- have to stop complaining about Kobe's play, he reasoned, because Kobe reacts to the negativity and goes into a funk and that's how he stinks up the joint like he did in the first half last night.

I love this.

I do live in Laker territory, that's true, but, like so many of my neighbors, I retain loyalty to the teams of my relative youth, in my case, a team that shall remain nameless other than the fact that their nickname is based on a year and they have a star who'll score 30 a game on 30% shooting, meaning he takes an incredible number of shots and misses most of them. And he's The Answer. Oy.

But that also means I retain an innate dislike of the Lakers, indeed of any team from L.A. This goes way back to the 60's, to the annoyingly good Lakers- Baylor, West, and, disappointingly, the Gone-Hollywood Wilt- and the dull Dodgers, who'd broken my Dad's heart by moving here in '58 and were at the time a single-bunt-move to third on a flyout-sac fly kind of team and the glitzy Rams. (The Kings were around, but nobody cared) But they were ALL Hollywood- the Dodgers even appeared in sitcoms. Remember Mr. Ed sliding into home to the astonished gasps of Leo Durocher, or Beaver and his pals calling Don Drysdale in the clubhouse? All too much. You didn't see any Phillies or Sixers or even Mets or Knicks on sitcoms. And that time the Sixers were about to close out the Celtics and go on to play the Lakers in the finals and the Boston Garden faithful chanted "BEAT L.A."... well, there it was, the unifying element among all sports fans.

So hating L.A. teams runs deep. But the general apathy of L.A. fans makes that a little shallow here- how much fun is it to hate someone who doesn't care much one way or the other? Laker fans are different. Laker fans are arrogant, secure in the knowledge that their team's the best whether or not they actually win, ready to blindly support Kobe whether or not he's guilty (and blissfully ignoring his own teammates' opinion of the guy), calling sports radio shows to propose trades only a Laker fan would think is fair ("Hi, Hacksaw, I have a trade I think the Lakers should make. How about, um, Luke Walton and Bryon Russell for Tracy McGrady?"), a trait shared by Knicks fans ("Hi, Mike and Chris, love your show. I think the Knicks should trade Mutombo and Anderson for Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin.") And then there's Jack and Dyan at courtside, smug and devoted.

Oh, yeah, you can really build a hatred of this team.

So right now, with the Spurs up 2-0, it's a good time to be a Laker hater in Laker country. Can't beat the whining, and if they don't win both at Staples, it can only get more entertaining, from the clownish radio commentator Vic "The Brick" Jacobs, a middle-aged guy trying desperately to sound "street" and whose nose is permanently planted in Shaq's behind ("Big Man!!! Smellin' the love!!! The flava that you crave-a!!!"), to the kids at the Y in Kobe gear insisting that they'll come back because San Antonio's "due for a loss." This ought to be a lot of fun.

Unless they come back. In that case, I'm not going to be very fun to be around for a while.

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A few years back, I was asked to join the staff of an ambitious but doomed radio project. It had started out as a Net-only venture, then tried for broadcast affiliates when it became painfully obvious that there was no money in streaming, not enough to pay a large staff, anyway. I was on board for a specific purpose, which was to whip one particular show into shape as a viable radio property, and I did that. And on the day the show was cancelled, the explanation given to us was that we'd been TOO successful, that the show was a good, solid radio show but that they didn't WANT a good, solid radio show. No, they wanted to "push the envelope" with "cutting-edge" programming that would out-raunch Howard Stern, so they decided to go with newer, "fresher," radio-inexperienced talent, which made sense given that several of the people calling the shots similarly had no prior radio experience.

A month after I left, the network folded. The staff hadn't been paid in weeks.

I've been thinking about that experience when reporting on the travails of Air America Radio, AKA "the liberal talk network." Another of the network's executives, a radio sales veteran, bolted today, following four others out the door, and reports indicate that they missed Wednesday's payroll, although there are conflicting reports that they paid up on Thursday. These are obviously bad signs, but you gotta wonder how they got here.

I can tell you that. They're afflicted with the same disease that other network had- the desire to show everyone how it's done by trying to do it from scratch. Talk radio veterans? Don't need 'em. We know better. Regular talk radio is too white and male, so we're gonna go out and have lots of women and African-Americans- and we're gonna load 'em all onto the same shows! One host per show- how passe. And experience won't get people to listen, but star power will, and doesn't everyone just LOVE Janeane Garofalo and Al Franken?

Ah, no.

You know all about that. Perhaps you've sampled the network's odd mix of NPR elitism and somnambulism with stridency and strained "humor." I have the network on right now, and they've gone through about 4 or 5 minutes of an interview with unnamed actresses about an unnamed movie at the Tribeca Flim Festival- oops, they finally identified the guests as the daughters of Sidney Poitier. Exactly who would want to listen to this is unclear. (They just aired a song with the lyric "when I suck you I really suck you "- they then bleeped the word "fuck," as if that's necessary after the first line) The question isn't whether the programming mostly, ah, sucks, but how it got this way. It's that impulse to reinvent the wheel, to create talk radio without finding out what works in existing talk radio. In fact, it sounds like they aggressively hired people who have never been involved with successful talk radio, who have never even HEARD successful talk radio (or, if they have, don't understand WHY it's successful). There's not a single show that sounds right, with the occasional exception of Randi Rhodes, who was better on WJNO. And it's not like there weren't experienced, solid, local liberal hosts to hire- Mike Webb, Johnny Wendell, Bernie Ward, Lynn Samuels, etc., etc. The network just wasn't interested. They also didn't need to do a 24/7 network- developing individual shows for syndication, as another group did with Ed Schultz, makes a lot more sense and would have given them a fighting chance at getting on decent stations in more markets, but they listened to someone who fed them a line about being unable to put liberal hosts on otherwise conservative stations. And, so, we're here, with a handful of weak affiliates and taking on water.

It's not about the ideology, it's about doing good radio. And while I think the ideological element got in the way, the bottom line is this- they could have been a contender. They aren't. And it's because history repeated itself- the same attitudes that sank that network I worked at are sinking this venture. It's Business 101- if you want to develop a car company, you have to hire people who know how to build, and market, and sell a car. You don't hire people who make cereal and tell them to build a sedan and a minivan, stat.

And you don't hire people who apparently despise talk radio and tell them to DO talk radio.

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And I suppose YOU'd be blogging up a storm if YOU, as did I, were in the midst of a 6,000 mile day trip.

Back in L.A. tomorrow. Can't guarantee anything regarding being awake.

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