I've been listening to MP3 files of Al Franken's new radio show and I have to say I'm impressed. I don't agree with all that Franken says but unlike a lot of Talk Radio shows I've heard, he is often willing to engage in a genuine back-and-forth exchange with others. The last few times I've tuned in Limbaugh, I felt there was a desperate, underlying need to not allow non-Rush viewpoints to be fully expressed. The minute some caller (apparently pre-screened and selected to serve as prey) got thirty seconds into presenting a contrary opinion, he'd be cut off and then Limbaugh would spend five minutes dismissing what little the guy got to say. I've never been half as bothered by Rush's views as I am by how fervent he always seems to be not to let anyone else even state the case against them. Has this man ever appeared in a debate format where he couldn't cut the other guy off?

I guess I was expecting Air America Radio to be the Liberal implementation of the same practice…and the show hosted by Randi Rhodes comes close. Even when I agree with her, I find myself repelled by the theatrics and the demonization of the opposition. The other day, she spent about 10 minutes yelling at Ralph Nader, who was on the phone and eventually hung up on her. There may be valid reasons to yell at Ralph Nader but at best, what she was doing was letting out emotional frustration and at worse, trying to entertain by being rude to a guest. In either case, no one got to say anything of substance…and, well, I don't think I'll be listening to Randi Rhodes in the future.

I also sampled Janeane Garofalo's show and while I think she's a smart, outspoken lady, I don't find her compelling on the radio. Maybe she'll grow into the job but I thought she did some fairly uninteresting interviews with some interesting guests. I'll check back in a month or so if she's still there.

But so far, I like Franken. I just listened to a long discussion with David Kay, the Weapons Inspector, who strikes me as a very informed, non-partisan gentleman. It aired on 4/6 and if Air America ever gets their archives page up and running (it doesn't work yet), I'd recommend a listen, at least to that segment. Kay did not engage in wholesale Bush-bashing and did defend the administration on many points…and I can't imagine any right-wing radio show giving so much air time to a learned, rational official who would speak as well on behalf of Bill Clinton. Franken and Kay agreed on some points and disagreed mightily on others, which is how a debate ought to work but on radio or television, seldom does. Kay cited errors and misrepresentations in the Iraq invasion but without trying to score electoral points. Franken did try to spin him to say Bush was a liar, Rumsfeld was wrong, etc., but he gave Kay ample time to make all his points and showed him great respect. I actually felt I came away from the exchange a little more informed about the topic than I'd been before, and not in the sense that I was propagandized into the host's point-of-view…because I wasn't. I also liked that it was a long discussion, or at least somewhat longer than one usually gets on television.

I have no idea how this approach will play with the radio audience. They may simply reject it for lack of fireworks and I still think that Air America has much going against it, just trying to establish a new franchise, regardless of content. Conservatives are already eager to declare it a flop and to sell the idea that there's no market out there for Liberal viewpoints, which may be true…or the whole enterprise may fail for other reasons. I'm still afraid that in search of ratings, the whole thing's going to have to get more theatrical…or at least, think it has to.

I've had my picture taken with a couple of famous people. But it's nothing compared to Jeremy.

I've lately been playing around with the new Rio Fuse MP3 player. It works just fine but being as tiny as it is, it has one drawback. A small player means small controls.

I've been recording Al Franken's shows and some others that aren't on Air America and attempting to listen to them while walking or driving or even working. What keeps happening is that I get two or two and a half hours into a three hour recording and then I have to pause it and resume later. There's a way to do this if you're real careful and delicate with the controls but I'm your basic klutz and what I keep doing is hitting the buttons wrong and losing my place. So when I go to restart playback, I find myself at the beginning of the recording. This is much easier to do than it oughta be.

I've partially solved the problem by chopping the MP3 files into small files but it's still annoying to listen to 40 minutes of a 60 minute file then lose your place. What I'd like to do is find another MP3 player where this won't happen. (I also wouldn't mind one that held more than 128MB.) I'd like to be able to listen for a while, then turn the thing off, then turn it on the next day and be right where I left off. And I'd like it not to be easy for me to lose my place. The Fuse has a "bookmark" feature but it seems too awkward for my purposes.

Anyone here got an idea what I want to go out and buy?

Certain fast food chains keep to certain areas. In-n-Out Burger, f'rinstance, is only in California, Nevada and Arizona. Koo Koo Roo is only in Southern California. Hardee's is only in 32 states…and so on. Some of these chains don't expand because they don't think there's a demand and others have reciprocal deals not to go into certain areas. Some just plain don't want to bother with setting up facilities and supply lines in other states.

For a long time, the big holdout to expansion has been White Castle. They're only in Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Jersey, New York, St. Louis and a few cities adjoining these places. Frozen White Castle burgers (or a reasonable facsimile) are available in the refrigerator cases of many supermarkets across the nation…and sometimes you'll find a stand that tries to confuse the issue by calling itself "White Palace" or "Blue Castle" and serving some approximation of the White Castle cuisine. But genuine White Castle outlets have been confined to the aforementioned places.

Sometimes, some company that's assembling a new food court in a mall or some sort of amusement park outside those territories will decide that it wants to include a White Castle. Those who have tasted the greasy biscuits that the White Castle people pass off as burgers will wonder why anyone would desire such a thing. The answer is usually that some exec grew up in one of the above locales, has had a jolt of misremembered nostalgia, and somehow thinks that the citizens of some other vicinity will flock to buy 'em by the bag. With this as a premise, they approach the White Castle people and offer generous terms, only to receive a polite no.

Several years ago, I found myself at a party with several folks who were involved in the planning and construction of a forthcoming Las Vegas mega-resort. (A mega-resort is basically a hotel where you have to walk a long distance to your room.) The gent who was in charge of the food court told me — with a note of pride and achievement in his voice — that the selection of fast food outlets would include…a White Castle. I said, "Really? I always heard they refuse to go outside their area. How did you get them to agree to set one up in Vegas?" He revealed, as if mentioning a minor technicality, that the White Castle Board of Directors was as yet unaware that their wares would be in his food court. "They cannot say no to our offer," he said in a manner that echoed Don Corleone and explained that the terms he'd be presenting were such that someone would have to be brain-dead to decline. Then he added that if by some chance the head honchos at W.C. were brain-dead or foolishly stubborn, his hotel had "certain business connections" that would and could pressure them into accepting his generous proposal. I don't think he meant Mafia or anything of the sort. I think he meant genuine, above-board business connections. I also think that at that moment, he would have bet his house and kids that he could bring the White Castle execs to their knees and force compliance.

Eight months later, the hotel opened. In its food court, in the slot that was obviously intended for a White Castle, there was a Wendy's or maybe a Fatburger. Many years later, there is still no White Castle stand in Vegas or anywhere west of St. Louis.

But we may be seeing the end of an era. At the end of July, a new movie is being released called Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. It's a road trip movie about two guys who crave White Castle burgers. The very existence of the film will obviously give a pretty good boost to the chain in terms of publicity…but a friend of mine who works for the company releasing the movie says that this will coincide with White Castle coming to Hollywood. He says one will open at or around where Sweetzer Avenue intersects the Sunset Strip. This is very close to the location of Carney's, which is one of the best places in L.A. to get a burger or hot dog swimming in chili but my friend says, "That's where they're saying it's going to be."

You now know as much about this as I do. My friend may be wrong (he's been wrong before) or plans may change. But I do think that if they do finally open a White Castle here in Los Angeles, an awful lot of people are going to rush to eat there. Once.

What do you get for the person who has an enormous blank wall and nothing to put on it? Well, how about a billboard?

One thing I love about this weblog is that when I ask a question here, someone always has the answer…

Driving along today, I noticed a Ford Explorer with something odd attached. A hose about a half-inch in diameter was coming out of the bottom of the back seat door on the driver's side. The door was closed so there may have been some sort of notch cut into the door to allow this. Anyway, the hose led over and attached to the center of the hubcap on the rear tire on that side.

What the heck is that? The only thing I could guess was that some kind of battery is being charged by being connected to the spinning tire…but that doesn't seem particularly energy-efficient.

But like I said: Someone here will know…

One of the many things I find funny about politics is the way folks will try and spin almost any event as a victory for their side. Here's a trivial example: The other day in a short press conference, Bush had the following exchange with a reporter for the Associated Press…

REPORTER: Sir, in regard to —

BUSH: Who are you talking to?

REPORTER: Mr. President, in regard to the June 30th deadline…

As this was initially quoted on the Internet, it sounded like Bush had scolded a reporter for referring to him as "Sir" instead of "Mr. President." Almost immediately, if you browsed political blogs and chatboards, you saw two diverse opinions on what it all meant. The pro-Bush folks were whooping with delight that Bush had slapped down an insolent reporter and made him show some respect. The anti-Bush folks were saying how petty Bush looked for insisting that he be addressed as "Mr. President" instead of "Sir." (What's the difference, you ask? Well, some of the right-wingers have suggested that some reporters avoid addressing him as President because they're still trying to sell the idea that Al Gore earned that title.)

As it turns out, both sides were probably claiming something that did not occur. A more thorough report on the incident reveals that Bush had suddenly, unexpectedly, called on the reporter to ask a question and the guy, unprepared for it, was caught talking on a cell phone. So when Bush said, "Who are you talking to?", he wasn't complaining about not being addressed as Mr. President. He was joking about the fact that the guy was talking to someone else. That's something else altogether.

This brings me to today's testimony by Condoleezza Rice which is getting spun like a Duncan yo-yo across the 'net, with both sides seeing things that probably were not there. Just read one site where right-wingers were cheering how she body-slammed and humiliated her interrogators; another, where left-wingers were declaring her an obviously-fibbing failure. Based on the last hour or so (which I caught) and a few excerpts from the first part, I think both are wrong. If she did Bush damage, it was only for what she didn't do…make any kind of serious rebuttal to Richard Clarke. But she also helped Bush in that she pointed up some of what is to me an essential absurdity — the contention that we can look back and affix blame for 9/11 to specific actions or inactions. I'm afraid I don't buy all this hindsight and attempt to assign guilt to anyone who wasn't part of Al-Qaida.

Yes, there are things we can probably learn from discussing our pre-9/11 shortcomings. But when I hear folks talking about improving the handling and distribution of intelligence, I think they're overlooking an essential question: Is our intelligence any good in the first place? I mean, didn't some of our intelligence tell us that Saddam Hussein had all these Weapons of Mass Destruction? That they could be readied and used against us within 45 minutes? That they were definitely, absolutely in all those places that Colin Powell identified to the U.N.? If that was the quality of intelligence we were getting before 9/11, why is anyone suggesting that better distribution of it between government agencies might have stopped the suicide hijackings?

On the other hand, maybe our intelligence is much better than that. Maybe the pre-war intelligence on Iraq was 95% correct about those weapons and 5% wrong, and all those hawks in the White House — Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and (of course) Bush — chose to believe the 5%. If so, that would probably be a failing of human beings, not of the system. I think we should forget about investigating whether someone could have prevented 9/11 and instead ask how we can avoid sending American soldiers into battle without our leaders having the slightest clue as to what weapons the enemy has or where they have them. Regardless of how things turn out in Iraq, that's no way to run a war.

The folks who brought you the movie version of Chicago are planning a remake of Damn Yankees. Okay, I don't think there was anything wrong with the first film of Damn Yankees, either…but a fresh interpretation might be fun. And I'd hereby like to nominate Christopher Walken for the role of Applegate.

The Carnegie Deli in New York — maker of sandwiches so tall they oughta come with a step ladder — was briefly closed last night for a couple of health code violations. Every time I've eaten there for the last ten years, no matter where they sat me, Jackie Mason was at the next table. Why isn't that a health code violation?

…but this one is too funny not to note. At a fund-raising dinner for George W. Bush, folks paid $2000 for a sumptuous meal but were not given utensils with which to eat it.

Beginning this weekend, TV Land will be running four shows produced by my occasional employers, Sid and Marty Krofft, on the "Kitschen" programming block. Friday night, they have the first episodes of H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and ElectraWoman and DynaGirl. Saturday night, they have the second episodes and then, assuming I've been correctly informed, the following Friday will offer the third episodes…and so on. The festivities begin at Midnight, at least in the East, so someone is figuring to attract adults who remember these shows, as opposed to kids who might be discovering them today…though there might well be a lot of those. There was always something wonderful and weird about Krofft shows and in the mid-seventies, when I was asked to go to work for them, I jumped at the opportunity. I didn't write any of these shows but I'm now going to jump at this opportunity to watch them again.

I paused in my deadline to check e-mail and found one challenging — no, daring me to predict John Kerry's running mate. Okay, I will: Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. Now, it's back to work…

Barring some breaking news, posting here will be light for the next few days while I finish a seriously-due manuscript and my income taxes. For some reason, doing the latter makes me think it's time to post another one of these…

Here's an interview with one of the cleverest humans on this planet, Larry Gelbart.