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You know, work has now pretty much taken over Sundays as well as Monday through Friday and part of Saturday. I wonder what'll happen when the last parts of the week fill up with writing. Will the work just overlap on itself? Will I then implode?

Should be interesting...

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A brief note about the difference between talk radio stations before I try to wring a few minutes of relaxation out of this weekend:

While listening to our local liberal talker, I heard promos telling me that, because I am of a different political bent, I am, according to Janeane Garofalo, "dumb, or cruel." Similar sentiments came forth from Mike Malloy. I have no problem with their making those statements on their shows- they're entitled to think that, and definitely to say that. But if the station's promoting itself with clips like that, they're telling me I'm an idiot and not welcome. Even the most right-wing of right-wing stations doesn't run promos telling liberals they're stupid and the station is not for them.

Funny thing is, some of the stuff on that station is completely palatable to even those who disagree with the political sentiments. They have several hosts now- a couple of syndicated shows, a local weekend show- who have proven themselves on stations where they were among the few left-leaning voices in otherwise conservative lineups. But I guess the station doesn't want me- I'm simply not welcome if I don't agree that the President is an evil chimp, I suppose.

Of course, I don't think the station wants to drive me or anyone else away. I just wonder if they realize that promos emphasizing how "dumb, or cruel" I am have that effect.

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The Regular Guys, who appear to have alienated no less than Atlanta sportswriting legend Furman Bisher (!) by their very existence, return to 96 Rock in Atlanta Monday morning. Listen.

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Newspaper circulation, early results:

Los Angeles: Times down a lot
Baltimore: Sun down a lot
San Diego: U-T down a lot
Orange County: Register down a lot
Newark: Star-Ledger down
Buffalo: News down
Orlando: Sentinel down a lot
Cleveland: Plain Dealer down a lot
Columbus: Dispatch down a lot
Dayton: Daily News down
Toledo: Blade down
Portland: Oregonian down
Eugene: R-G down

What do all of these papers have in common?

They're all monopolies. Sure, they have suburban competition in some cases, but they're the only full-market dailies in their cities. And they're all down, in some cases by a lot.

How do you LOSE readers with NO competition?

In the New York Dead Tree Times today, an article covered the print industry's efforts to convince everyone it has a future. The magazine industry's spending $40 million over three years to get advertisers to stop bailing. The newspaper folks have hired an agency to convince everyone they're hip and cool and not at all old-farty.

And then they run Blondie and Gasoline Alley and other comics by dead people because the seniors will complain if they put in something more daring and contemporary. And they have crotchety old guys write sports columns and rock reviews and op-ed columns. And some, like the L.A. Times, persist in believing that they should emphasize news readers SHOULD care about rather than what they DO care about- international-only above the fold, maybe one mayor's race story below, the rest of the A section 100% international and national news, local an afterthought.

And even all of this isn't the primary reason they can't win. You know what the problem is: the Net. And radio. And TV. It's been building for decades, but now that you can get text and video and audio of news on an immediate basis, how can a newspaper written last night and printed early in the morning be relevant? What in the L.A. Times and Daily Breeze on my driveway at 7 am isn't stale and useless by the time I drag my ass to the curb and pick it up?

But you knew all that. And you know the arguments: we need papers, for the news gathering and the organization. Bloggers would be nowhere without them. Yes, yes, yes. But you can't escape the fact that even papers with NO PRINT COMPETITION are losing readers, and most are clueless about how to fix it.

I pay a lot of money to subscribe to the papers. I really can't tell you why it's necessary- I get everything in them online, hours and even a full day before the paper gets to my office. Habit? Probably. Will I eventually drop the subscription? Maybe. Do I have the answer for the papers' management? No, but that's not my job. I'm a consumer, and I'll get my news elsewhere. I already do. I wouldn't be investing in newspaper publishing right now. I don't even know why I invest in a copy of the daily paper.

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Day off from this. Can't get mind in gear. Sorry.

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Nancy Bea was hanging out tonight, chatting with the radio network guys in the back row while waiting for her turn to play. She doesn't get to play until late in the game, but when she does, suddenly, it's like old times.

Nancy Bea plays the organ at Dodger Stadium, of course, but she has to wait while they play prerecorded music for the first six or so innings, and there's something wrong about that. I understand the desire to be relevant to a young audience, but baseball isn't the 50 Cent version of "Disco Inferno" (tonight's "winner" of the nightly fan applause vote for song of the evening). Baseball is Jane Jarvis at the Shea Stadium Hammond Organ, Paul Richardson at Connie Mack or the Vet, Nancy Faust at Comiskey and Nancy Bea Hefley at Dodger Stadium. It's cheesy versions of old pop hits, traditional ditties like the Mexican Hat Dance, DAH-duh-duh-DAH up to the Charge! call. It's not the cacophony of pop music and hip-hop and rock cranked through a stadium PA until ears bleed.

The Dodgers do realize this to some extent- they've turned the volume down- but when you're in the ballpark, you don't want or need music from 2005. Sometimes you need it to be 1963. You need Nancy Bea.

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The Dodger game was yet to start when the conversation turned to youth, memories of ballgames past and the sudden declaration by Denholm that he missed Wiffle Ball. "We ought to get a league together," he said, before he remembered that everybody lives a long way apart and it wouldn't work. I brightly suggested that we COULD use the parking lot if it was early enough before the game, but it just seemed like too much work and too little available time. But I DID see a rack of Wiffle Bat-and-Ball combos- you remember them, the plastic bat with the red cardboard receptacle at the end with a ball in it- the other day at Albertson's, of all places, the Torrance Albertson's, right by the service meat-and-fish counter, and I very briefly entertained the idea of buying it until remembering I have nowhere to play it- the yard's mostly pool, no big grassy areas- and nobody to play it with. And, besides, even when I was younger and thinner and more athletic, I couldn't hit the curve ball.

The curve ball, of course, is what the Wiffle is all about. You can't NOT throw a curve with a Wiffle ball. Actually, it was less a curve ball than a pitch that fluttered briefly, then dropped straight down- you had to take a couple of gallops forward and swwwwwwING! into it and it would fly a few feet, wobble, and drop like a rock, whereupon a "fielder" would pick it up and try to wing it to first, only it would wobble and drop again, and, well, that's why the whole Wiffle thing is a bad idea- the same properties that make the ball do tricks when pitched plague the hitter when he hits the ball and fielders when they try to throw it.

But it was fun. Oh, lord, it was fun. Pointless, frustrating fun. And it struck me that there was one place I'd love to play Wiffle ball- right on the field at Dodger Stadium. Would that not be a trip and a half? Granted, you wouldn't need to use much of the field- a small square in front of home plate would do it- but standing at the plate with a (plastic) bat looking out at That Field and waiting for the pitch- here it comes- two gallops and swwwwwwING! and it's a screaming line dr... no, it's a dying quail, and then the comedy begins, but that would be SO cool.

It'll never happen, but I can dream. And in the meantime, I can always play this.

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The U.S. intelligence community is monitoring what appears to be preparations by North Korea to conduct a nuclear test, a Defense Department official told CNN Friday. But the official strongly emphasized that it is unclear whether the activity is real or deceptive....

In an interview with CNN Friday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the reports, if true, send a "very, very bad signal to our effort to roll back the North Korean program."

"I would hope that every country right now, every leader, is on the phone with Kim Jong Il, trying to convince him to restrain from going ahead with this reported nuclear testing," he said.

Yeah, hello? Kim Jong Il, please... yes, I'll hold...

Hello, Kim? Hey, good to talk to you. How are things in North Korea? Really? That's nice- hey, listen, dude, I just wanted to mention something about that thing on CNN, you know, the nuke deal. That true?

Wow. That's, er, interesting. Hey, look, man, I kinda wanted to tell you that I think- and, listen, it's just me talking, I'm just one guy, it's not official or anything like that- I think you might want to lay off that testing thing.

The nuke test. It might be better if you don't...

Dude, you don't have to shout. I... what? No, man, I'm just... look, Mohamed told me to call and...

Mohamed. Mohamed ElBaradei. From the U.N. Bald guy, glasses... Yeah, that guy... what's so funny? I don't... Kim, man, I don't think I can tell him that. He...

Hello?

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My Mom would have been 71 today, her birthday. Or 73. Or 72 or something. We never knew for sure what her age was. She didn't want to tell us. I think she didn't want anyone to know much of anything about her; she was a Holocaust survivor, and even after decades of safety and security as a suburban New Jersey housewife and mother, she seemed to want to lay low, fearing that the German authorities might somehow find her and... and... and I'm not sure what she thought would happen, but she was worried, worried mostly that Germany would reunify and try something. The reunification happened, but they didn't try anything before she left us.

She used to amuse us with her accent, with the occasional mangling of the English language, sometimes deliberate ("Conshohocken" came out "Constipocken"- she knew how to say it, but she knew it'd get a laugh the wrong way). She spoke Yiddish to her friends on the phone, assuming my sister and I wouldn't understand it. (We did, at least enough to be dangerous) She was nervous and insecure, but, way more than that, she was loving, caring, nurturing. She loved us. We loved her back.

We still do.

Mom died in '94, way too young. Fran and I had dinner at a deli tonight, and while devouring the kishka with gravy, I thought how much she'd have loved it. I looked at the Mother's Day menu they put on all the tables, looked at the mothers and grandmothers at the tables around us, and I wished Mom was there, too. Maybe she was.

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