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My appearance on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” tomorrow has been postponed to an indeterminate date. Apparently the host hadn’t had enough time to read the book. Now, I thought NPR was more on the ball, but I have mixed feelings about it. At least it shows that maybe the host will be prepared for the show.

That’s always a gamble when you’re out flogging a book. You don’t know what it’s like to bite your tongue when some morning deejay holds your book in the air and says something like “I haven’t had a chance to look at it, but I’m sure it’s great–I only wish I’d written it.” And all that goes through your mind is, “You unemployable gasbag, you’re on the air three hours a day, which includes commercials, and you have interns and assistants who open your mail and answer your phone. And you didn’t bother to even crack my book, which is all of 150 pages, which may be intimidating to even such a voracious intellect as yourself, but you didn’t bother to take the damn thing out of the envelope, and you’re telling me that you think you should write books now, too? Is there a special holding tank for people like you? Do they let you out of the building unescorted? Do the authorities let you drive unsupervised?”

This is never the case with NPR, of course, as this postponement obviously shows. I love those guys to death. And at least their listeners buy books, unlike the Morning Madhouse type crews. Man, they crazy.

Whenever there’s news, I’ll post it here.

For those of you who are near a radio in the afternoon, tune in to NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” this Thursday at 3:45 Eastern time. I’ll be on flogging the new book (Recut Madness, which should be on shelves everywhere now) and ladling out the charm like canned gravy.

Remember. Thursday. 3:45 pm Eastern. “Talk of the Nation.”

And make sure you keep talkin’.

I have just been informed by a friend with impeccable academic credentials that this Sunday morning, at 3 minutes and 4 seconds after 2 A.M. , the time and date will be:

02: 03: 04/ 05. 06. 07

Cosmic coincidence? Hardly. Get ready for an invasion of three-eyed alien dames carrying old camera bulbs.

Thanks Pete Tiglechaar

Looks like Rupert Murdoch’s surprise bid for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal was shot down in less than an afternoon. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Something about the man instills fear and revulsion in the hearts of even staunch capitalists like those who own and run the Journal. I wonder what that could be?

Must be just a gut instinct.

Just heard a hilarious segment on “Talk of the Nation” about the movies that make men cry. One of the interviewees was the Trib’s John Kass, who wrote an article about the topic earlier this month. Kass gave some broad categories of movies that make men cry. Sports films. Movies in which a dog dies. Patriotic movies. He also discussed the sounds men make to cover up the fact that they’re crying at a movie. That discussion alone is worth downloading for.

Kass also gave young women a warning: If your date insists on renting a movie like “Fried Green Tomatoes”, get out of the situation immediately. It is dangerous and unnatural.

I agreed with a lot of the movies discussed during the segment. Field of Dreams. Old Yeller. It’s a Wonderful Life. The Sound of Music. Saving Private Ryan.

But the strongest reaction I’ve ever had to a movie involved one that I had seen as a kid, but watched again with my own kids (probably 5 and 2 at the time). The movie was “Mary Poppins.” One big larf from beginning to end, right? A jolly ‘oliday, as the song goes. What could break a man’s heart in that movie, aside from Dick Van Dyke’s attempt at a Cockney accent?

There’s a series of scenes that likely go over every child’s head: When Michael won’t give his tuppence to his father to invest in the Bank of England, and his screaming causes a riot and a run on the bank. The children run away, are taken home by Bert, have their dances with the chimney sweeps, and have a grand old time.

Later, when Mr. Banks gets home, he gets a call from the bank for him to come in and be fired. He waxes philosophic with Bert about dreams dashed and life collapsing, all because of that Poppins women.

As Mr. Banks is sitting in the parlor, considering his life a wreck, the brave Michael comes down in his bathrobe, along with his sister. He walks slowly up to the father who’s treated him like a drill sergeant through the entire picture. He reaches into his pocket and brings out the tuppence. “Here, father, you can have the tuppence.”

His sister asks, “Will that make everything all right?”

And the father just stares at the money and says very quietly, “Thank you.”

Even typing this up, I get a little watery-eyed. I don’t know if it’s because my own father was never given to showing emotion and worked in finance, and was raised by an English father to boot. Maybe it’s the gulf between what the children understand and the reality of the situation. Maybe the old man’s heart is finally melting a little. But I love it that instead of a maudlin, inauthentic, “well, don’t worry yourself over it,” Mr Banks only manages to spit out, “Thank you.” It’s a perfect scene, and I cry like a perfect idiot during it.

Men, have you got any movies you cry watching? Let us know. Let us unite in our wussiness and rejoice. And then make loud huffing sounds.

Don Ho, the world famous Hawaiian singer, died in Waikiki on Saturday. The 74-year-old entertainer, who had his big hit in the 1960’s with “Tiny Bubbles”, died of heart failure. He is survived by his brothers Westward, Tally and Yoho, and by his estranged sister, NaPea-Headed.

I lost it at the Apple Store. (Well, not really, it happened by phone in my office, but I had to make the metaphor stretch a little.)

Christie Liu of Western Ontario University (home of the Fightin’ Mustangs!), specifically their grad journo program, talked with me last week about how I came to write PC Bedtime Stories, and wove it into a not-bad examination of the topic. You can find it at the link below, to Rabble Podcast Network. Associating with “rabble” must help my street cred a little, right?

Rabble Podcast Network

I’ve grown tired of this topic in recent years, as other deadly threats to the brain and health seem to emerge daily. But hey, I’m always willing to help someone on deadline. The show’s high point is an interview with Dr. Heinz Klatt, who gives the most succinct yet comprehensive definition I’ve heard of political correctness.

And for a good example of how maddeningly subjective the entire topic is, listen to the interview with Lorin McDonald, “a law student with hearing loss.” I put the description in quotes because she has very definite opinions about the proper terminology to use for those people who are hard of hearing. (Hey, I’m finally in a possibly oppressed minority! At least, I think that’s what she said.) For the life of me, I can’t follow her logic about why it’s okay to call herself “hard of hearing” but not “hearing impaired”. She says that

impaired implies that something is broken, and for those of us with a hearing loss, all it means is that we don’t have the same level of ability to hear. ..it’s not impaired, broken, needs to be fixed, it’s just that we have to approach things in a different way…

My ears are broken. Actually, I was the one to break them, specifically by decimating many of the cilia in my cochlea by constant loud music when I was young and stupid. And if there was a way I could fix them, I would walk over my mother to do it. I can’t fucking stand it, nor can I stand the ringing in my ears. And you can say I’m deef or stone-eared or have hearing nay-nays, it doesn’t effect me one crumb.

She also prefers the term “disability” to “condition…because a condition is a very negative word” and as more aging baby boomers are “acquiring this disability,” we need to treat this as just another part of life. So, a condition has more negative connotations than a disability? Do people protest for the rights of the conditioned? Jumpin’ horny toads, woman! Your hearing doesn’t work. Your ears or your nerves or your brain IS broken, as in, doesn’t function as well as it could. You should be proud that you’ve overcome it with lip-reading and hearing aids, and you don’t have to change things if you don’t want to, and you DEFINITELY should fight against discrimination, but how does the word used have any effect on the price of butter? If she “feels” the word “condition” has a negative tone, I’d say she’s imagining things and has hamhanded skills in the English language besides. Which of course, in the PC world, doesn’t disprove her argument one bit.

To listen to how quickly symptoms can morph into effects, creating a condition that might evolve into….something even more awful, listen to this clip from “Doctors Hospital of Medicine,” from the Waveland Radio Playhouse. (For a few other clips of WRP, go to this page of my website.)

From the most accomplished Gaelic poet of the past quarter century, Shane MacGowan:

The island it is silent now
But the ghosts still haunt the waves
And the torch lights up a famished man
Who fortune could not save.

Did you work upon the railroad?
Did you rid the streets of crime?
Were your dollars from the White House?
Were they from the five and dime?

Did the old songs taunt or cheer you
And did they still make you cry?
Did you count the months and years
Or did your teardrops quickly dry?

Ah, no, says he, t’was not to be
On a coffin ship I came here
And I never even got so far
That they could change my name.

Thousands are sailing
Across the western ocean
To a land of opportunity
That some of them will never see.
Fortune prevailing
Across the western ocean.
Their bellies full,
Their spirits free,
They’ll break the chains of poverty,
And they’ll dance

In Manhattan’s desert twilight,
In the death of afternoon,
We stepped hand in hand on Broadway
Like the first man on the moon,

And the blackbird broke the silence
As you whistled it so sweet,
And in Brendan Behan’s footsteps
I danced up and down the street,

Then we said goodnight to Broadway
Giving it our best regards,
Tipped our hats to Mister Cohan,
Dear old Times Square’s favorite bard

Then we raised a glass to JFK
And a dozen more besides.
When I got back to my empty room,
I suppose I must have cried.

Thousands are sailing
Again across the ocean,
Where the hand of opportunity
Draws tickets in a lottery.
Postcards were mailing
Of sky-blue skies and oceans
From rooms the daylight never sees
Where lights don’t glow on Christmas trees,
But we dance to the music
And we dance

Thousands are sailing
Across the western ocean,
Where the hand of opportunity
Draws tickets in a lottery.
Where e’er we go, we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees.
From fear of priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies
And we dance

And as captured by the BBC, at a free open air concert in Belfast three years ago,

Cheers.

For a weekend in which we had nothing pressing to do, it somehow completely exhausted me by the end. Don’t know what it was, but it might have been trying to negotiate with a daughter who was ready to scream at the drop of a hat. Is eight too early an age to worry about her hormones running amok?

Went with Number One Son to see the Ghost Rider movie at the Davis Saturday night. It wasn’t a good movie–not by a long shot–but parts of it were quite superb, and it was a very enjoyable time. Not least because we could walk to the movie and back and talk about it. It’s almost as good as being in a 70s Woody Allen movie, except we don’t have to live in Manhattan and worry about rats scurrying around our feet in the theater. And also, we can talk about Stan Lee and not Leni Reifenstahl.

Parts of the movie certainly were corny and lame. Well, when you juggle such dog-eared elements as a deal with the devil, and mystical cowboys, and demons connected with air and land and water, it’s going to take a pretty deft hand to not make the awful. But somehow, the image of a flaming skull still packs enough power to make it all watchable. The flaming bicycle was worth it too. And Johnny Blaze, the human host of the Ghost Rider, always stops his channel surfing when a video of a monkey shows up. This made me identify with him as a hero, more than the stuntriding and the loving Eva Mendes and the whole head-on-fire thing. Monkeys are the great leveler.

Anybody who’s seen my office knows that I have a hard time throwing things away, but I think I may have reached a new low. Sometime ago, someone who knows that I love board games gave me a used copy of RISK. I recently looked through the box and, right between Irkutsk and Kamchatka, I found a weird cache of papers. The game apparently had been the house copy used in a bar near Bloomington, Ind., and Indiana University. I’m pretty sure it was from a place called the Crazy Horse, “Bloomington’s Beer Authority”, since someone’s paycheck stub is inside. There’s also an unused tube of Blistex and a name tag for the Butler National Golf Course, where this bartender Gene also worked. Then, there are 30 or more small slips of paper and napkins with girls’ phone numbers written on them.

So of course, you get to thinking, should I phone up these girls and pretend that I’m Gene, you know, GENE, the bartender from the Crazy Horse, yeah, THAT Gene, and say that, y’know, I just got into town again, and if, y’know, you wanna party or somethin’, Tiffany, that maybe we could get together and have some fun. Yeah, I know it’s been ten years, but y’know, I never forgot you, you’re one crazy chick, and hey, remember about all those games of RISK I let you win….?

And then I realize I don’t have an hour to spend on a prank, and throw the little slips away. Crap. Gotta go pick up the kids from school.

Follow the link here to be christened with your very own nom de cirque. If you click on it numerous times, you’re bound to get a terrific alias with which to run away with the circus to avoid the authorities who want to question you about the mysterious death of your wife.

Movie reference, anyone?

In the course of writing my new book, I’ve had to rent a lot of old movies and double check facts and dialogue and such. So a few weeks ago, my wife and I watched “Network”, starring William Holden, Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The movie is 30 years old now, and practically quaint in its depiction of a world dominated by four–yes, four–competing networks. In 1976, Fox wasn’t even a glint in Rupert Murdoch’s eye. Then again, maybe he saw this and said to himself, “Hey, there’s an idea.”

The premise is probably familiar to everyone–a struggling TV network puts on sensational shows with no concern for what it might do to the audience. It’s familiar, because you’ve been living it. Although today, if anyone watched Peter Finch screaming, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore,” instead of a rush to fling open the window, there’d be a shrug, a grin, and a comment on how he’s ranting to save his career. And the other elements included in the NewsHour, like Sybil the Soothsayer and the Hollywood Tattler, plus the live studio audience, aren’t shocking in the least. Like I said, we’ve been living it.

Still, it’s a terrific movie, with a punchy script by Paddy Chayefsky. Would any screenwriter today describe someone’s position on a policy as “intractable and adamantine”? It sounds even better when it’s said by a weary Robert Duvall in a tuxedo. Would anyone have an actor describe a psychotic dream as “a cleansing moment of clarity”? Equally marvelous are Finch, Holden and Dunaway, who’s 35 in this movie but looks stunning. (Things do drag when Dunaway and Holden are trying to sort out their love affair in the final third. I walked the dog during that time.)

One line in particular struck me, because it’s at the same time both accurate and inadequate:

“Right now, there is a whole generation that never knew anything that didn’t come out of this tube!”

Thirty years ago, this was true. Today, there’s a generation that doesn’t know anything that’s not from a computer, never had fewer than 200 channels at its fingertips, and doesn’t do anything without a cell phone plastered to its ear. Chayefsky might not have his technology exactly right, but about being “in the boredom-killing business,” he was as accurate as TV’s Sybil the Soothsayer.

And a few more chewy quotes (think of the raving Peter Finch while you read):

“Television is not the truth! Television is a goddamned amusement park!”

“We’ll tell you anything you want to hear. We lie like hell.”

“You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here, you’re beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal! You do! Why, whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing, we are the illusion.”

Now surf over to another site, before you get bored.

It’s so cold that the hoses for our washing machine froze solid on Sunday night, inside the house! **ba-dum-dum–cheee** Of course, I only figured this out after I took the back of the washer apart and started messing with wires and solenoids and other things I can’t put back together. The manuals always tell you to check the hoses first, but I didn’t listen. I wouldn’t have guessed that the little corner of the basement, where the drywall doesn’t quite fill the gap with the exterior wall, would turn into a freezer if it’s covered and insulated by a suitcase.

Sorry Johnny, but it IS that cold.