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Happy Sunday, Homies.

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The other day, I was randomly punching up stations on my Walkman while running and I came across a show on the Air America station in Santa Barbara. I guess it was a network weekend show, and they were interviewing Eric Bogosian, so I stopped and listened for a few minutes. After some general platitudes, they announced that Mr. Bogosian would read a passage from his 1998 book "Pounding Nails in the Floor with my Forehead," and after joking that he called the book by that title to make people introducing him say the phrase, he launched into what appeared to be a monologue representing the thoughts of a typical suburban man after patronizing a supermarket. I don't have the script in front of me, so I can only paraphrase; the gist was that the man, agitated before shopping, was now serene, because, essentially, he is a shallow American male mollified by consumerism. He has been anesthetized to everything because he has been enveloped in the warm embrace of capitalism. I'm sure Bogosian thinks that this is really what the suburbanites he hates are thinking, and I imagine the book, and the stage version, have gotten knowing nods from the hipsters in Manhattan over the years.

I turned off the station, and I thought about the monologue, and I concluded this: people like Bogosian like to think they're the tolerant, wise members of society, but they are without a clue. It manifests itself in many ways: the orgy over the revelation of "Deep Throat," the assumption, voiced by Janeane Garofalo in an oft-played promo on Air America, that anyone who voted for Bush is either evil or stupid, the Thomas Frank "What's the Matter With Kansas" assumption that middle America is so stupid that they vote against their self-interest. Eric Bogosian knows what you're thinking, America. So do Garrison Keillor and countless NPR favorites. You are stupid. You are evil, although inadvertently so, because you're so stupid. You don't even know that Howard Dean is GOOD for you, because he will take your income and give it to people who need it more than you. Don't you know that you don't deserve what you have? Don't you know that it's in your best interest to have less so that someone in OUR cities can have more? WE can afford high taxes on OUR income- what's YOUR problem? And don't you know that war is never the answer- that if someone hits you, you apologize and wait until they go away? What is WRONG with you?

What's wrong with us is this: we are too busy earning a living and putting food on the table and gas in the tank to attend performance art pieces and monologues and readings. We really DO go to Wal-Mart and Target and Ralphs instead of taking our meals at some out-of-the-way Vietnamese place near Sunset that has a special menu all in Vietnamese that they keep behind the counter and only give to the right people. And we're too busy to contemplate what buying bread and milk and Cheerios has to do with anything other than eating. Do we not care about or understand the import of Bush, war, peak oil, Third World debt? No, we care, we read the paper, but if our conclusions differ from some actor-playwright-performance artist's views, something's "the matter with" us. And that's how they get their tin ear for the "red states"- instead of trying to understand what it's like to really have to work and shop and take care of life, they make condescending assumptions. Maybe it's true that we hate what we do not understand; no wonder Bogosian and Dean and Garofalo are so free with the invective. (You can say the same about the Ann Coulters of the world, and you'd be right, too)

More power to the Eric Bogosians and NPR people and Air America hosts who sit around mulling the stupidity of Americans- it's nice they have the time to do that. The rest of us are busy actually living our lives, and they do not know what that means.

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I've been saying for a while now that terrestrial radio ought to be developing programming that cannot be duplicated by satellite, by streaming, by iPods. By that, I mean they should be signing up entertaining talk radio hosts and not be afraid to do- gasp!- new forms of talk and even talk on FM.

The industry's response: radio stations that are actually PROUD to say they're JUST LIKE AN iPOD, but an iPod for which THEY, not YOU, pick the music.

Once again, free advice for broadcasters: talk. Do good talk radio. Find talented, charismatic people- they're out here- and sign them to exclusive contracts. Do poltical talk, pop culture talk, sports talk, comedy talk, sex talk, kid's talk, health talk, money talk, tech talk, talk about cars and animals and home improvement. And if someone else beats you to a talk category, find better hosts and local hosts and go head-to-head. Anyone can duplicate whatever music format you can devise. Nobody can clone a good host.

So why wouldn't you do what nobody can duplicate?

Time's a-wastin'.

And, oddly enough, I took a break and found that the Notorious Mr. Wachs wrote similar sentiments in a far more entertaining way. That's two people thinking this way. Anyone else?

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Things I hate about travel:

Packing.

Driving to the airport.

Parking at the airport.

Getting the suitcases to the check-in.

The check-in line.

The security line.

Getting through security.

Waiting for the flight.

Boarding the flight.

Taking off.

The flight.

Landing.

Getting off the plane.

Getting to the baggage carousel.

Waiting at the baggage carousel.

Getting to the taxi stand.

Waiting for a cab.

The cab.

The cab ride.

Checking in at the hotel.

The hotel.

Getting around town.

Checking out.

Everything about the flight in reverse.

Things I like about travel:

Coming home.

But you don't get to that part without the first part.

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Drive to airport: fast.

Parking: easy.

Check-in: fairly swift.

Security: efficient, fast.

Boarding: rapid.

Flight: mostly smooth. One big wing dip, landing a little rough, otherwise incident-free.

Baggage claim: almost immediate.

Cab stand: no line.

Drive to city: minor traffic.

Hotel check-in: instantaneous.

Room: Spacious, nice view.

Okay, then, never mind yesterday's piece. Except for one thing: it is hot here. Very hot. Nineties and humid hot. I sweated clear through my shirt several times. And all over the city, I saw guys in dark suits without a sweat stain in sight. I've been away too long- I can't take anything other than 70 and dry.

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One thing about travel for someone like me is that you end up feeling out of touch. Normally, I'm at the computer all day, checking and reading countless news sites, whereas on the road, I'm doing other things and the couple-times-a-day check doesn't do the job. I did brush through the Daily News, Post, and Newsday today, but there wasn't time to really pay much attention, let alone to read the Times.

And now I know the value of the free papers. Several big cities have free, thin, short-story wire-service-filled tabloids; in New York, they're Metro and Newsday's amNew York, and they take maybe 5 minutes to breeze through, but they cover the main news points. They don't go in-depth, but if you don't have the TIME to read a long think piece, you might as well go with the freebies. And, yes, they're free. The Daily News is 50 cents, the Post and Newsday a quarter each, Metro and amNY are free. Quick calculation: don't have time for a full paper, shorter one's free... hmm....

(OK, the freebies don't have big comics sections. But you can see "Get Fuzzy" on the Net, too. ANd they DO have TV grids. No sports agate, but you can look that stuff up on the Net as well)

This afternoon, I got handed another free paper on the street, but this one was from the New York Times, which bought into Metro and is also distributing a weekly classified section for free. I took it- it's 12 pages, mostly classifieds with a couple of articles and a few display ads. I'm not sure what the point of it is supposed to be- there's nothing in it that's worth a second glance, and there's very little ad volume. But newspapers are kinda desperate these days. The Times MarketPlace weekly seems like someone wracked his or her brain to come up with a product to compete with the freebies and this is all that came up.

I'm a long-term, confirmed newspaper addict, but when I missed picking up the News and Post on Wednesday, I didn't miss them. I got them today and barely read them. I don't know if you can use me as a valid sample, but if someone like me didn't miss the print papers, who will?

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"You wouldn't come back east?"

No, I won't. Not interested.

"Not even for the right job?"

Nope. I like my job, and I don't have to move.

"But it's New York! You wouldn't come back to New York?"

So far this week: over 90 degrees and humid. Sweating through my clothes in seconds flat. Constant sirens and honking, all night long. The aroma of baked urine and unwashed humanity. "101.1 Jack-FM." Yankee and Met fans. Aggressive panhandlers. Nah, I don't think so.

"But aren't there things you love here?"

My sister. My friends. The pizza. The bagels. The deli. The tabloids. Newsstands and bookstores everywhere. Throw in Philly down the road with the Phils/Eagles/Sixers and cheesesteaks/pretzels/water ice and summer afternoons in tree-shaded yards with good friends. But on the whole, I'd rather be in Palos Verdes. Even though there are TWO "Jack-FMs" there.

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An Artiste speaks:

"Reality television meets news and war ... tanks going into Baghdad with splashes of Viagra commercials in between. I was just so confused about what was going on. It comes from that standpoint," Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong said in an Associated Press interview.

It's actually quite simple, Billie Joe. The part where it says "News"? News. The part where it says "Survivor: Palau" or "The Apprentice"? Reality TV. The part where it's a Viagra commercial? A commercial. Nothing "confusing" about it.

You're welcome.

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The E train is New York writ small. Early Saturday morning, steam rising from the standing muck between the tracks, a woman in running shorts wearing a race number paced nervously waiting for the northbound train. A trannie tottered along balancing a Dunkin Donuts coffee and a newspaper. An Asian woman checked her daughter's scalp for nits while her two sons yelped and slid and jumped all over the train. Tourists with furrowed brows studied maps, a guy returning from the night shift caught some Zs before stumbling off at Canal Street, rubbing his eyes.

And at the end, the PATH station and the realization that you're there, and even though you've seen it before, seen it several times before, looked and stared and even rode the PATH train right through the hole, you have to look. And it's still a hole, and it's bogged down in arguments over design and timing and that's New York, too.

I hate this place. I love this place.

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