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Ladies and gentlemen, shot on location and wholly unscripted, here it is, the long-awaited world premiere of the major motion picture...
"Never heard of it!"- Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
"I thought I told you not to bother me at work!"- Manohla Dargis, New York Times
"Who is this, anyway?"- Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times
Featuring The Kid In Pink Jeans as His/Herself!
ShareTrust me, I'm in no mood to write anything right now.
I spent much of the day either on the phone with Sprint tech support or in the Sprint store waiting for my Treo 700wx to be fixed. The sequence:
1. Went running, pulled out phone, checked e-mail, wouldn't connect to Internet.
2. Tried several times. Nothing.
3. Called tech support. 10 minutes on hold, talked to CSR, 10 more minutes on hold, talked to another CSR, hung up and waited for call back, got call back, 10 minutes on hold.
4. Tech support guy had me sync phone, then hard reset, then resync. Now no Internet, no phone calls, all programs gone, all e-mail accounts wiped, all speed dials wiped.
5. Reinstalled some programs. Still no calls, no Internet.
6. Drove to Sprint store. Got calls working. No Internet.
7. Left phone with tech department. Went home. Worked. Felt naked and isolated without cell phone.
8. Went back to Sprint store. Phone works! Eureka! But still have to reinstall stuff.
And now I'm aggravated and behind on work. But at least the phone works. For now.
ShareLord, am I unmotivated tonight. Too busy. And I can't even get anything going by perusing the old reliable TV Guides for scan material.
Well, here's one from October 10, 1957:
I watched "Zorro" as a kid. It was a few years after this, of course- they reran the thing into the ground. But even though I remember watching it, all I can remember is what everyone can remember:
Zzzp-zzzp-ZZZP!
Three swipes of the sword. La Gran Z. That's all. I remember nothing else of it. I'll bet 90% of people my age remember watching it but can only remember the Z.
Who was Zorro? Why was he masked and running around slashing Zs into everything?
Dunno. Just remember the Z. Sorry.
I TOLD you I had nothing today.
ShareI want a soft pretzel.
Not one of those Superpretzels in the frozen food case- those are ballpark pretzels, too soft.
Not the kind you get from a cart in New York, toasted on foil along with chestnuts nobody ever actually buys.
Not Auntie Anne's or any other mall knockoff of the kind you get at Fisher's in Reading Terminal Market- Fisher's is fantastic, but that's not what I want.
Not hard pretzels. I have a box of Snyder's hard sourdough pretzels- good, tasty, not what I want.
I want a soft pretzel.
Like these. Or these. Or these. The kind you get at the end of the off ramps off I-95 in a paper bag. The kind you get at the Wawa along with your Daily News and a bottle of Mountain Dew. The kind you squirt French's yellow mustard all over. The kind that are harder than "soft" but softer than hard- you know what I mean. Doughy, dense, chewy. A real authentic Philly soft pretzel. That's what I want.
Can't get one, not tonight, at least. But I want it.
I was driving home from the gym today when I felt it. The craving hit hard and out of the blue- I have no idea why- and I had to think hard whether there's any place in Los Angeles to get a real Philadelphia soft pretzel. Maybe one of those faux-cheesesteak joints, but we don't have any in the South Bay. You can order boxes of them, but a) that takes time, and b) I don't want THAT many pretzels. OK, I do, but I'd only eat them all in one sitting and I wouldn't be able to fit into my clothes.
I want one soft pretzel. Maybe two. Yeah, two. Right now. Is that too much to ask?
Anyone enterpreneurial enough to open a real pretzel stand in the South Bay will have at least one customer from day one. But tonight, I'm just going to have to fight the craving.
ShareToday's All Access newsletter is about theft versus "homage," sort of:
Here's where I take something entirely unrelated to radio, labor mightily to make it somehow relevant, fail miserably, and end up just plugging the columns and getting out of here. It's what I do best.
First, the Thing Unrelated to Radio: Earlier this week, a sportswriter for a major daily paper was hit with a long suspension for plagiarism. This guy did the "notes" column for the paper. Every paper seems to have one of these- it's a compendium of little human interest and kicker sports stories, usually tied together with some jokes and a trivia question. If you've seen one, you've seen them all, and there's a good explanation for it: the guys who write these columns get their material from the same places, the wires and each other.
Each other? Yes. They go on message boards where they trade stories, and the assumption is that the stuff that gets posted is fair game to be "borrowed."
Now, the Part Where I Try to Relate It to Radio (and Fail Miserably): Does that trading-bits thing sound familiar? Right, they do what radio guys have always done, trade bits and ideas. It's not unethical to do that in print if you properly attribute everything; the writer's real transgression was that he didn't rewrite the bits he took, he just printed them verbatim.
Radio's different. In radio, hosts "borrow" other shows' material all the time, and nobody goes on the air and says "here's an item that was originally done by Bob Otherguy on K-Competitor last week." (Bob Otherguy might go on the air complaining that you stole the bit, but nobody likes a whiner) In order for radio to have an ethical standard, we'd have to steal it from some other medium.
I'm not going to tell you not to do something that's been part of the business since Marconi counted down the hits of 1899. (Except "Hawaiian Shirt Friday." Don't do that) But if radio guys don't give credit to their sources, the very least you can do is to make the story or bit or item your own. With things like contests or comedy bits, the way to do that is to put your own spin on the thing- don't just lift jokes and characters and contests, do some creative heavy lifting and- gasp!- some writing of your own. That means you have to work. So work. Make them funnier and more relevant and more local and more specific to your own sensibility. Don't just read it off a sheet, and don't just do something the same way another show did it because it sounded good enough that way; find your own angle on it.
But what about those news stories and kickers that every single show does? As the provider of a lot of those items through Talk Topics, I get to hear the same stories (my babies!) batted around by countless shows every day. And in the case of big stories, it's unavoidable- EVERYONE has to talk about them. The best shows, however, take those stories and make them different from every other show's treatment of the same item, and they do it in a simple way: the hosts tell you their own opinion. While some shows just read the item ("Huh. Amazing story"), and others go with the most obvious gag line, the best go a little deeper- there's ample evidence that they've READ the story before bringing it up, and there's always a comment or angle that you didn't hear when another show did the same story. And that's why listeners come back to those shows: there's a perspective, a sense of humor and personality, that you can't get from another show even if they start with the same material. You want people to make an appointment to listen to you? Give 'em a reason. Make them want to hear YOUR opinion or commentary on every story. That's hard to do, but if you want to break out of the pack, that's what you need to do. Don't just take someone else's material. Rewrite and twist and invert it until it's uniquely yours.
Right. Now that even I'm not sure what I just said, I might as well just plug the place where you'll find all those stories and items and other stuff that you can try to rewrite and twist and invert into your own, Talk Topics at All Access News-Talk-Sports, where this week so far we have items like the reason why alcohol, lighter fluid, flames, and men's most-intimate-of-areas should never mix, the kind of invention that only a recent college graduate could develop, another reason that air travel's getting more annoying every day, the Amazing Very Temporary Recovery of Coma Woman, the mysterious case of the dead roommate, what the smart thief is stealing from your car these days, the result of the Big Bopper's autopsy, how man caught crabs, the tragic death of Captain America, death by toothache, why Beijing taxis stink, and the biggest story of the week, Ernest Borgnine stopping off for a soda at a fast food joint in Alabama. If that's not enough, you'll also find "real news" like the shame of the Walter Reed scandal and plenty of way-too-early presidential race stories, plus "10 Questions With..." WTAQ/Green Bay and Midwest Communications Northeast Group News Director Danielle Bina, the Talent Toolkit with sites recalling your favorite bad TV cartoons, and the rest of All Access with the radio and music industry's best, fastest, and most regularly updated news coverage at Net News, message boards, Mediabase charts, the Industry Directory, and everything else you need about the business, all free.
And if you're attending that talk radio thing in Marina del Rey over the next few days, I'll see you there. As usual, just look for the most uncomfortable-looking guy in the room.
ShareIt was a long day at the talk radio convention and I'm way too beat and incoherent to write anything now. To the most frequently-asked question "so, what are you gonna write about from this convention?", the answer is: check back when my brain's working.
But today was a nice day, I saw and/or met many cool people, and while there's still party action going on over in Marina del Rey, I've hit the wall. Waking up at 3:45 am every day will do that to you. G'night.
ShareI'll probably address some of the substantive issues raised at the Talk Radio Seminar in "The Letter" later in the week. Not discussing them now is a labor-saving device- I'd rather write stuff once and reach both the blog audience and the newsletter subscribers at the same time. Plus, I'm lazy and tired, so later in the week it is.
But while there was actual substance being discussed- not always well, not always effectively, but at least being kicked around for once- the event is always more a social situation, and it's nice to see the friends and acquaintances you only get to see at these things. It's also a great ego boost (yeah, I really need a bigger head) when people who read All Access and this here thing let you know it; I know what the numbers are, but everybody loves to hear it in person. And I met a lot more good people. Good times.
And Stan Freberg was there with his wife Hunter. Stan Freberg sat next to me at lunch. Stan Freakin' Freberg. Pete Puma, "Time For Beany," "St. George and the Dragonet," "Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America," all those commercials. All I could do is smile and be polite, because the only alternative would have been to be a fanboy pestering him about his days working with Daws Butler. Lunch with Stan Freberg.
Good weekend.
ShareThis page contains all entries posted to PMSimon.com in March 2007. They are listed from oldest to newest.
February 25, 2007 - March 3, 2007 is the previous archive.
March 11, 2007 - March 17, 2007 is the next archive.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
