Category Archives: Uncategorized

More than seventy minutes ago, the woman stole a police vehicle and she's been driving in circles and running stop signs and red lights ever since, often weaving over to the wrong side of a road. A newsperson just said, "We have unconfirmed reports the woman is extremely agitated." You think?

I'm watching a police chase on TV at the moment. A woman has stolen a police SUV — they say it's a Ford Expedition — and has been driving around and around mostly the same streets in Lancaster and Palmdale for more than an hour. The newsfolks on KCAL Channel 9 are locked into that awkward position of having to say the same things over and over…and they really don't know all that much to begin with. At the moment, we're kind of on Tire Watch, wondering how long it'll be before a shredding left rear tire renders the vehicle undriveable. Stay tuned.

I have no idea what I'm doing up at this hour, either. But while I'm here, I might as well post something about bogus e-mails that pretend to be from PayPal or your bank or some other business institution. I get about twenty a week that tell me there's some problem with my account at Chase Manhattan Bank and, of course, I've never had a nickel in Chase Manhattan.

If things like this are causing you any confusion or problem, here's an idea you might want to consider: Dedicated e-mail addresses. A lot of people think they can only have one or only manage one. Actually, you can many different ones and if you bank, let's say, at Bank of America, you could have an e-mail address that's only for your correspondence with Bank of America. Once you've set it up, you can just assume all e-mails that purport to be from Bank of America but arrive at other e-mail addresses are phony.

I have a separate e-mail address for each of about two dozen companies with which I do real business. That doesn't sound as difficult to manage as it might because they're all set to forward to one master "business" e-mail account so when I download messages, I download them all at once. It's simple then to have the program I use to manage e-mail (Mozilla Thunderbird, which is free and wonderful) filter the incoming e-mail on that account and sort the messages into separate folders — the ones from my bank into one folder, the ones from the Gas Company into another and so on.

How can you get so many different e-mail addresses? Well, I control several domains and each domain gives you unlimited e-mail addresses @ that domain. You could achieve the same thing with several of the free e-mail services online. G-Mail, for instance, will let you sign up for as many accounts as you like and you can set each account to forward to another. If you're on AOL, I believe they still give you a number of screen names on each account.

Multiple e-mail addresses can be very handy for weeding out unwanted e-mail or separating the e-mail you really care about from the stuff you sort-of care about. I have a couple of accounts that I use when I have to sign up for something on a website — "junk mail" addresses, you might call them. If you have everything coming to one e-mail address, it swells the mailbox you care about and when you download your important e-mail, you have to download all those ads and newsletters with it. Most of my "robotic" e-mail — mass mailings from companies I've ordered from, for example — goes to one special address which I download once or twice a week. This separates them from my main e-mail account which receives messages several times a day.

Multiple e-mails and e-mail forwarding are easy to set up with most programs. Just something you might want to consider.

I just received a phony e-mail that claimed to be from PayPal. The subject line was, "Protect yourself from phony e-mails that claim to be from PayPal."

There are polls out saying Bush and Cheney are hitting unprecedented lows in personal (and policy) unpopularity, and that a solid majority of troops in Iraq think the U.S. should start packing to leave. I never believe any one poll but I suspect these are at least showing the direction in which opinion is moving. With Bush sticking to his guns on this Dubai Ports deal despite overwhelming public opposition…and with Cheney handling that shooting incident the way he did…it ain't hard to believe both men could have dropped a few points in the last week.

What I find amazing is that the American public is coming to these conclusions with very little help from the Democrats. There are a few Dems like John Kerry out there attacking the administration but not too well and without much notice. Frankly, I think Kerry's wasting his breath. This country never listens to anyone who lost an election; not until many years after, and then only when the person seems to have a good shot at becoming a winner again. Much of the U.S. didn't listen to Kerry before he lost and we don't even listen to someone like Al Gore who got more votes than the guy who allegedly beat him. With the occasional exception of Howard Dean, who doesn't get a lot of air time, I don't see any prominent Democrat out there making even a semi-effective case against the war and Bush policies. And yet, the country is getting there without them.

Reminds me of a joke I wrote after the 1972 election…one of the first I ever had performed on television by a professional comedian. It was, "Every time the Republicans do something wrong, I blame George McGovern. Because if Nixon had run unopposed, he would have lost." Bush is operating with pretty feeble opposition…and he's losing.

Two more of those "Personal Best" Monty Python specials run tonight on most PBS channels. I'm told by folks who study such things that some of the programs have some minor bleeps and the fuzzing of brief nudity, even though the exact same footage has run unexpurgated on PBS many times in the past. We have apparently reached the stage, post-Janet Jackson Super Bowl appearance, where a lot of broadcasters are terrified of fines. In the case of PBS, there are folks in the Bush administration who just plain don't like the institution and may be looking for an excuse to administer a few slaps.

The episodes featuring Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam reportedly are identical to what's on the DVD versions of the shows. The others have small changes except that there's a big alteration in the Eric Idle show where the entire musical number, "Sit On My Face," has been replaced by "The Philosopher's Song."

As mentioned earlier, PBS will soon rebroadcast all the original episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, from which most of this material was drawn. One wonders if they will be uncut and if so, why these compilations had to be laundered.

As noted here, cartoonist Aaron McGruder is taking a six month hiatus from producing his newspaper strip, Boondocks. During that period, newspapers will either run reruns or some other strip entirely.

Back when Garry Trudeau started this practice, taking some time off from Doonesbury, a number of older cartoonists criticized him. The criticisms were along the lines of "These kids today are so lazy." And it is true that in the "old days," a guy with a syndicated strip could only take a vacation by getting ahead on his work, and that most strips then required somewhat more drawing on a daily basis and a lot more on Sunday. Strips now are smaller and simpler, and a top creator of one current comic strip once estimated to me that, even putting in as much detail as he dared, there was still less drawing in a whole week's worth of his strips (7 days) than George McManus used to put into just the Bringing Up Father Sunday page.

I'm not sure why McGruder needs six months off, especially if it's true that he no longer draws the strip himself. Comic strips don't take that long to write. But let's say he does need to get away for a bit. Only a writer or artist truly knows the way in which his work fatigues him and what is necessary for recovery. Still, if I were the editor of a newspaper that has been buying Boondocks for years, I think I'd be annoyed. Boondocks is at its best when it's topical so reruns are really going to feel like a cheat. And if I bring in another strip to take its place for six months, am I not risking that my readers will forget about Boondocks and not welcome it back? Or want to see that replacement strip displaced? Reader loyalty to the comic strip page has already gotten pretty fragile in some cases and this won't help.

I wonder if the syndicates would consider offering some strips as time-shares. Maybe a strip doesn't have to run seven days a week. Couldn't it run Sunday through Friday, and then give the Saturday slot to some new feature? Perhaps the answer to shrinking newspaper space is to double-up. Instead of two cartoonists straining to produce seven strips per week and burning themselves out, maybe they could share one space — one strip on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; the other on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and then they take turns doing a Sunday page. Some strips might profit creatively from such a schedule.

Maybe it isn't that much of a problem. Most cartoonists don't take sabbaticals. Then again, most of them don't have a loyal-enough audience that they dare.

I'm a big fan of a chain of restaurants called Souplantation in some states and Sweet Tomatoes in others. I have no idea why the two names, or if there's any palpable difference. They all seem to be places where you can load a plate with salad, select from an array of soups, have some pasta, grab some muffins or foccacia bread and finish your meal off with something from the dessert bar. I wish there was a bit more animal-style protein to be had on the premises but apart from that, they're great places to dine. I've probably been in at least a dozen different ones in Southern California and the food and mood are always to my liking.

The only negative I have about going to Souplantation is that most of their soups are not as wonderful as you might expect from a place with that name. This will not be the case during the month of March. In March, most of their restaurants are featuring among their selections, a Creamy Tomato Soup which — unless they've gone and changed the recipe on me — is heavenly. It's kind of like Campbell's done right…and Campbell's Cream of Tomato soup is pretty decent to begin with. The last time Souplantation had Creamy Tomato in their soup rotation, I bombarded Souplantation H.Q. with demands that they bring it back. I'm reticent to take full credit but I'd like to think you can have it this month, at least in part, because of me.

By the way: At least in the Souplantations in Los Angeles, you can get 10% off if you show the cashier a membership card in the American Automobile Association (i.e., "The Triple A"). They don't advertise this much, and I admit it's not as good as free pancakes. But hey, 10% off is 10% off.

Watched the return of Deal or No Deal (out of synch) last night. For reasons I can't explain — it may just be the expertise of Howie Mandel at hitting all the right notes — I liked the show during its brief run a few weeks ago. This time though, I could already feel myself losing interest in the game, especially in the first half hour where you know the contestant ain't gonna take no deal.

The producers seem to have solved one problem. During the first week, it was way too obvious that much of Mandel's dialogue was dubbed in after the fact. I think they did it a few times last night but it was a lot less noticeable. Still, the show still had some awkward edits, especially during the entrance of their pointless cameo guest, Donald Trump. The Donald came on to "advise" the contestant about whether or not to take the deals being offered him…but of course, Trump really couldn't add anything. It's the contestant's bank account on the line, not his, and there's no decision involved of the kind about which Donald Trump might be considered an expert. I wish Trump had just said, "I have no clue what you should do. I'm just here to plug The Apprentice and let everyone stare at my hair."

It was also kind of funny to see television's two biggest germophobes — Mandel and Trump — on the same stage, grudgingly hugging the contestant.

Two other points: The player last night walked away with $359,000. If you were paying attention, you might have expected he'd get to that amount because it was flashed during the opening montage of scenes from the show. Also, it struck me as odd that they seem to have replaced several of the models on the show. Just what is it that a beautiful woman could do that would cause the producers to say, "We've got to get rid of her. She doesn't know how to stand there and open a briefcase"?

A friend on the inside tells me the producers are well aware that the show can get repetitive and that they have a lot of plans on how to add new elements and surprises, so I'm not giving up on it yet. I just may be carressing the Fast Forward button while watching.

As far as I know, there's been no official announcement but a lot of folks in Las Vegas are assuming the Tropicana Hotel is a goner. The place has stopped accepting advance reservations beyond April 15 and there's a news story out in which one of the companies that implodes Vegas hotels is openly discussing the challenge of razing the Trop's twin towers at the same time. The rumor is that two separate but connected hotels would be built on the land.

If this is all true, it's one of those good news/bad news things. I haven't stayed at the Tropicana in well over ten years…since I had the second-worst hotel room and some of the worst meals I've ever had in that city. I have yet to hear a report from anyone that suggested my experience was atypical or no longer the norm. But I always enjoyed walking around the place, especially the pool area, which was one of the most pleasant places you could stroll or sit and escape the relentless sound of the slot machines. I remember sitting there for most of one afternoon once with a note pad, jotting down ideas for a script, watching a colorful array of tourists, bathing beauties and even some tropical birds pass by. And the long-running entertainment at the Tropicana, the Folies Bergere, was and is probably the best "classic Vegas" production show in town. (You can see a few seconds of it over on this page.)

I guess the sad thing, if there is a sad thing, is that an entire era is going away. I don't think I'll miss any of those places on an individual basis but something's being lost in that city beyond gambling money. The Tropicana opened in April of 1957. Only four standing hotels in Las Vegas — The Frontier, the Flamingo, the Sahara and the Riviera — are older and I don't think anyone expects the Frontier to be there much longer. I might not stay in any of those establishments (the Flamingo, once in a while) but their existence provided a nice connect to the heritage of the city. Everyone loves stories of Old Vegas. They may not want to stay in the hotels that represent it but they love the stories.

If I had the bucks to open a small hotel-casino in that town, I'd buy the rights to one of the defunct names — the Sands or the Thunderbird or one of those. And then I'd deck the place out like it was 1958, with pit bosses and dealers in tuxedos, and piped-in music from that period. You probably couldn't stock the place with older slot machines but I would have a showroom with the best impersonators I could get of Frank and Dean and Sammy and even Liberace. And whenever I could, I'd book the real Tony Bennett. There'd be a guy at the door named Vinnie and I'd price the tickets so you could afford to tip him twenty bucks to seat you at a good table. I'd have a kid who sang like Wayne Newton playing the lounge there…although if I waited long enough, I might be able to get Wayne. I'd also pay Shecky Greene to walk around the casino, shake hands and tell everyone stories about mobsters, hookers and people getting beaten up in the back room.

I think people would flock to it. The Palms is about to open the first Playboy Club since the last one closed in 1986. They were irrelevant and silly then but irrelevant and silly have a way of becoming retro and hip, and I bet you won't be able to get into that Playboy Club for months after it begins welcoming patrons. Old Vegas is due for a comeback soon, too. It'll start just as soon as they get rid of the last of it.

Quite a few of you have written to inform me of the origin of Pancake Day. This e-mail from Brent McKee seems to provide a good summary…

Pancake Day is actually Shrove or Fat Tuesday, the last Tuesday before the commencement of Lent. It's the last day for eating an assortment of tasty treats. In England — from which Canada and most of the United States derives its traditions — this meant pancakes. In Newfoundland, the tradition is to put trinkets like coins and rings into the pancake. The person who finds a particular trinket has good luck in a particular area — the one who finds the coin will get rich, the one who finds the ring will get married in the next year, and so on. In some areas of the United States, the tradition varies. In Detroit, for example, you never hear of "Pancake Day", it's "Paczki Day" (pronounced "punchky") where they eat "paczkis" which are sort of a Polish fruit pastry which seems to resemble a jelly donut. In New Orleans, the tradition is (besides getting women to show off their breasts for beads) to eat "King Cake." As in the Newfoundland tradition, a trinket of some sort is found in the cake, with the person who finds it becoming "king" of the party.

Yeah, but what do you get in the free pancakes at IHOP? Or don't I want to know? I don't want to know.

I've also received a number of e-mails from folks telling me their horror tales of shopping at Radio Shack…and from two different folks, their unhappy experiences working in those establishments. Almost everyone mentioned the policy Radio Shack once had (I remember this, too) of demanding your address and phone number any time you made a purchase, no matter how tiny. I once bought a 10-cent battery there and had to give them that info, despite the fact that I was already receiving six or seven copies of every Radio Shack catalog. It took me a while to figure out, as I'm sure others realized, that the thing to do was to give them a bogus address and phone number.

Two people within the confines of KNBC wrote to me, separately, that they know their hi-def signal is occasionally out of synch and that they can't understand either why no one there is concerned about it. I'm not so much concerned about it as amazed. At every station, there's a department called something like Master Control that is responsible for monitoring the outgoing broadcast 24/7 and making sure it's as close to perfect as possible. The folks in those divisions are usually fiercely diligent…although once, I was in the NBC network Master Control in New York and the guys in there were watching The Price is Right on CBS because they'd been tipped off that there were major bikinis in the Showcases at the end. And once, I was in Master Control at ABC and the guys there were watching porn, which struck me as just plain dangerous. They were one wrong button-push away from replacing Grace Under Fire with Grace Under Fred. But that kind of behavior is not typical. Usually, they catch transmission problems and do everything necessary to correct them, long before any viewers phone in.

Lastly, many have written to tell me of other "Who's on First?" variations that have been done in recent years besides the one by the Credibility Gap. This Wikipedia page lists a lot of them, including one I wrote. I still think it's an incredibly stupid routine that works in spite of itself.

Several hours later, the hi-def feed on KNBC Los Angeles is still out of synch. I think it's less pronounced than it was earlier but Mr. Leno's mouth is not moving precisely in accord with his audio.

To answer a couple of questions I've received: No, it's not my set. All the other channels are fine. And I talked to my friend Earl Kress who lives out in the valley and it's out of synch on his TV, too. He's noticed it several times in the past, too.

I just called NBC again and a bored-sounding operator heard me out and said, "I'll report it." Betcha nothing changes tonight.

This just amazes me. You'd think there'd be some NBC executive sitting at home, watching his or her network on a big hi-def plasma screen who'd notice this, call in and demand it be fixed. Apparently, they either can't afford good sets or they don't watch their own channel.

My longtime friend Dan Gheno gets a good letter-to-the-editor published in the New York Daily News. It's about halfway down this page.

I'm watching Deal or No Deal on our local NBC affiliate, KNBC, via their high-definition feed. This is about the seventh time I've tuned to this channel since I got my new TV and it's about the fifth time the video has been out of sync with the audio.

It's also about the fifth time I've called KNBC about it and don't think that's easy because the only phone number they seem to have listed is for the KNBC Newsroom. Each time, I call there and someone forwards my call to what they say is the appropriate department. I explain to the person who answers there what the problem is and they always say, "Let me forward you to the people who handle that," and they proceed to forward my call back to the same guy in the KNBC Newsroom, who of course has nothing to do with that.

He then tries forwarding me to someone else and eventually, I get to someone who seems to actually be in charge of the transmission they're beaming to all of Southern California. This person says something like, "Not again" and promises to get it fixed right away. The last four times, it hasn't been fixed, at least before I gave up and turned to a regular-def channel.

I don't understand this. I can't be the only human being watching NBC in high-def in this half of the state. And yet, in spite of how difficult they make it to reach the person in charge of their broadcast, I seem to be the only person calling up to say, "Uh, excuse me, but could you get the actor's lips to match the words coming out of their mouths?" It's like watching Godzilla except for the parts with Raymond Burr. I think I know where the guys who weren't good enough to work for RadioShack are getting jobs.

RadioShack has announced they'll soon be closing between 400 and 700 of their 7000 outlets. Blogger Rudy Panucci has a thought…

I've got a suggestion: How about actually having stores filled with electronics and the parts needed to repair them, and hiring sales people who care about what they're doing and have a clue about what they're selling?

You can read what else Rudy has to say but when I read the above, I thought, "He's right." The last few times I've been into a RadioShack — and I've been to maybe four different ones in the last year to pick up a cable or an adapter or something — there's been no one in the place with a clue as to what they had, let alone what to do with it. As Rudy notes, all the people there know how to do is to try and sell you a cell phone.

I went into one a few months ago to buy an extra-loud ringer for my mother's phone. The salesman told me they didn't have any such device and that I should buy a whole new phone with a loud ringer on it. I explained that her phone already had a loud ringer on it and that we wanted something louder. I easily found just such a device on the store's shelves and the salesguy — who said he'd been working there for more than two years — looked at the thing and said, "Gee, is that what these do?"

I bought it, took it to my mother's home, installed it and discovered it didn't work. I took it back and, lucky me, got the same clerk who suggested maybe I'd installed it wrong. (You plug the phone into it and it into the wall. A blind Amish person could get this one right.) I finally got him to exchange it for another one on the shelf…and watched as he put the one I said was broken back in its box and back on sale for someone else to buy.

I'm sure the rise of the Internet has hurt RadioShack sales since it's now possible to order any electronic part in the world online with a few mouse-clicks. But I wonder if World Wide Webbing has also harmed the company by draining the supply of folks who have a little bit of "tech" sense but are willing to work for minimum wage. I'm guessing those folks now have better options and RadioShack is stuck with too many of the ones who think that when a piece of software says "Press any key to continue," they're supposed to look for a key that says "any" on it.