I've never been able to watch the CBS News with Dan Rather. Even back in the early 90s when I was a raging news watcher, I'd always pass on Dan. Not only because I can't stand the guy's schtick (and no anchor should have a schtick), but because the guy just oozes self-love. And not the good, healthy zen confidence kind of self-love. I'm talking about the narcissistic, smug, self-satisfied kind.

He's finally retiring, and CBS News can now grow from being Rather biased into a watchable news broadcast. If they hire the right guy to take his place. It's a real opportunity to gain back all the viewers they've lost over the years.

The right guy is Tim Russert. He's quick, he's eloquent when a moment calls for it, he's clear, he's fair, and his objectivity has a proven track record. If Russert is the hire, CBS News will be in my living room when I wanna see what's going on out there in ze vorldt.

And I'm not just saying all this because Russert is from Buffalo and is a huge Bills fan.

Seriously.

No, I mean it.

Shut up.

Speaking of football fandom, ya gotta hand it to the Yale pranksters for pulling this one off. Love it. How will Harvard respond?

Speaking of higher education, I think the half film/half documentary masterpiece "Band of Brothers" should be required viewing for every senior class in every high school in the country. The further we get from the greatest generation, the more important it is to keep them alive in our minds. Cheers to Tom Hanks for realizing that and pulling off the best, most impactful war film ever made. That's saying a lot, but I think it's true. If you haven't seen it yet, I bet you'll agree.

Speaking of required viewing, you *have* to check out Kurt Wenner's street art. In a word, incredible.

Speaking of incredible, if you haven't seen Pixar's latest, what are you waiting for? I won't bother singing its praises here. It's Pixar. Go.

Ten years ago, a woman named Diana Duyser of Hollywood, Florida, bit into her grilled cheese sandwich and munched indifferently. Going in for the second bite, she looked down and noticed that her grilled cheese was actually Mary, Mother of God.

If you're like me, you heard about this a while back but you never gave it much thought. This is understandable, considering the subject is a grilled cheese sandwich. But there are many interesting little aspects of this story that all tell a different story. First of all, the fact that it was a grilled cheese sandwich is one factor that allowed this non-story to become a story. If it were a breakfast crepe, it wouldn't have made the rounds in everyone's office inbox. It wouldn't have sold on eBay for $28,000.

The grilled cheese sandwich is a piece of Americana. We've all had one, if not ten thousand. All those people, all those kitchens, all those spatulas, yet a grilled cheese prepared in a trailer in Florida is going to be the same as a grilled cheese prepared in a galley kitchen on the upper west side or in a five-star restaurant in SoCal when your kids don't like anything on the menu.

Then there's the whole face thing. We humans, being so human-centric and generally gullible, tend to see faces in random patterns. So much so that the tendency has a name: Pareidolia, which the Skeptic's Dictionary describes as:

"...a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. For example, in the discolorations of a burnt tortilla one sees the face of Jesus Christ. Or one sees the image of Mother Theresa or Ronald Reagan in a cinnamon bun or the face of a man in the moon."

It's the sort of thing that has allowed Jesus to show up on a Dorito, a muddy towel, and a rose petal. It shows us Mary in the clouds, in reflections off a lake, or a dirty diaper. Yes, that even. And it's always a religious figure or an anti-religious figure. You were probably forwarded that photograph of the "face of Satan" in an explosion from 9/11. It's never the face of Bea Arthur or Tommy Chong. Some claim that this lends credibility to the notion that the holy and the unholy reveal themselves to us. These people are the same folks who record 700 club reruns. They see these faces in random patterns because they want to. The "face" on that sandwich looks more like Clara Bow than anyone else. God doesn't show up in your baby's diaper diarrhea, or the flour on your counter top as you're making pancakes. Come on, people. Know thyself.

And what is it that fuels interest in this? Is it drilled into popular culture by a believing society, or by a society that feels pity for those who would believe it? I think it's the former, but I hope it's the latter. This is the sort of thing that cheapens faith and religious beliefs, like Earnest Angely.

It would be an interesting poll to take. How many out there roll their eyes at this sort of thing, and how many are inclined to believe? So far, it's 1-0.

Saturday Night Live, which hasn't been much good in a long while, had a rare injection of quality music last night. Years upon years of mediocrity on the SNL stage culminated in the ultimate exposure last month, when Ashlee Simpson's lip synch debacle lifted the veil on her card-carrying membership to Club Fraud. U2 was precisely what SNL needed. And maybe U2 is what "the people" needed.

My U2-indifferent friends consider me a U2 apologist, and I guess that's true, except that I don't believe they need one. You either get them or you don't, I suppose. I always did, way back in 7th grade when I first heard "I Will Follow". MTV was brand new then. You know, back when it was a music channel. Back when it was watchable. I remember the moment the same way older folks remember where they were when JFK was assassinated.

I pulled the dial of the old RCA, gave it a good turn to the right, picked up the big brown box with the beige numbers, and pressed 32. I think it was 32 then, wasn't it? Rings a bell. They were in between videos and I went into the kitchen to fetch some after-school eats. As I struggled with the stubborn wrapper of my graham crackers, those one-of-a-kind chords started chiming. I turned to the set and thought, "what's this?" I couldn't take my ears off of it.

It's 22 years later (!), and they just played I Will Follow again as an encore for SNL. The quality and performance of most SNL musical guests usually range from bad to utterly horrid. (I can't count the number of flash-in-the-pan hip hop acts they've hosted that all produce the same uncomfortable tension as the audience tactfully complies with the flashing APPLAUSE sign...if you ever find the re-run of Cypress Hill playing "Insane in the Membrane", you'll know what I'm talking about.)

Last night, U2 had everyone in the crowd ecstatic like I've never seen an SNL crowd. The SNL staff was, too...which I know I've never seen before. Some of them appeared to be in tears. Simply put, U2 impacts people the way few bands can, or ever have. It's Beatles-level minus the hysteria. In short, it was just really, really good to see.

Their new record is an instant classic. Or at least it sounds like it to me. There are some absolutely beautiful songs on this record. And it's one of those albums that's solid from start to finish—no lulls, no disappointments. And it grows on you like...like...a better simile than this. Really. It does and then it does some more. (It's not out yet, but you can listen to it free at u2.com.)

These guys are in their forties now, and they're still out-writing the music world. You might not dig 'em, but my ears feel awfully lucky.

Labels: tunes

I've heard before about how shortwave radio buffs often stumble on strangeness, but I didn't know that it's actually illegal in some countries to listen to the many eerie random number broadcasts that occupy the nether regions of the radio spectrum. Check this out, and listen to the old Soviet "buzzer" on page 2. It's still going, 25 years and counting. Cree-pee, man. Cree-pee.

Flipping through the channels the other night, I heard some idiot celebrity whose name I forget say that Saddam had been "minding his own business". Let's grade that opinion, shall we? Foolish, naïve, and fortunately, irrelevant. Appropriately enough, the next morning, this small item was added to his resumé. Minding his own business, all right.

Condoleeza Rice would be a national hero in the minds of a vast, practically complete majority in this country...if she wasn't the appointee of a Republican. Particularly a Republican named Bush. Instead, she's a national hero only to anyone who has read her life story, her record, and her impressive talents and credentials. If you don't like Condi Rice, check yourself.

The media is often hard on those who deserve better, and easy on those who deserve much, much worse. Case in point: Britney has released a...a...(I can do this, I know I can do this)...she's releasing a..."greatest hits" album. Many things can be said about this, but I won't let the ire well up. In the voice of Obi Wan, move along...

Another Atlantis was found recently, this time in the Mediterranean. Last year, an underwater city was found off the coast of India. Three years ago, a massive underwater city was discovered off the coast of Cuba. Then of course there's Biminy, and a slew of others. It's not surprising that this one is getting more press than the others, even though they—particularly the find off of Cuba—are far more impressive archaeological sites. This one wouldn't require as much re-writing of conventional wisdom. It wouldn't discredit as many Ph.D. theses. It doesn't threaten academia as much.

I just saw a commercial for ABC's upcoming "32nd Annual American Music Awards". This year, the shitlist includes Clay Aiken, Jessica Simpson, Billy Idol, Kenny G, Teena Marie, Rod Stewart, and Usher. In the voice and words of Comic Book guy, could they be any more irrelevant? With a group like this and a label ostensibly describing the "best in American music", it's no wonder everyone hates us.

According to a recent study, taking vitamin E supplements after the age of 40 can help keep you healthy longer. According to another recent study, taking vitamin E supplements after the age of 40 is more likely to kill you sooner than you'd likely die otherwise.

I find it hard to tolerate the over-simplification and over-categorization of our lives and personalities by impossible-to-prove psychological theories like this. Hey, I sleep in every one of those positions, randomly and intermittently. I guess that makes me a shy, reserved yet social and gregarious paranoid who listens well. In a word, PFFFFFT.

Have you seen the latest Nike commercial? You know, the latest attempt to convince the world—and themselves—that LeBron James is the next Michael Jordan. Achtung, Nike: We can conclude that from watching him play. You don't neeeeed all this whizbang to sell the world on this kid. He does it all himself.

This latest sneaker campaign is for the "Air Zoom Generation II", which I can guarantee doesn't enable anyone to jump any higher than the model pushed on the populace eight years ago. It's just more ugly, gratuitously engineered footwear. They pushed some spongy fluff closer to the arch and called it a revolution.

Anwyway, this ad has LeBron in a square room ("The Chamber of Fear"—gimme a break) with a ball and a basket and six chorus-ready kung-fu types spinning nunchucks, following the lead of a forward-standing character who says "you have no game". Then LeBron tosses an easy 3 pointer and gives them the standard "what was that then?" look. Then they stupidly have the main nunchucker appear amazed by his statement shot. Then, of course, just as you would expect, the room and everything in it transforms into a cartoon with smoke-puffing dragons watching LeBron dribble and look into the camera with cartoonish self-importantance. Then it ends. It's never funny, never interesting, and never effective at anything in particular.

Is this ad supposed to mean something? Is this supposed to confuse the basketball masses to the point where they assume it must mean something they don't understand? That's my best guess, because i can't believe that a team of advertising "creatives" concluded that it was well conceived and well-executed. Or maybe I can believe it. It would certainly be consistent with the vast majority of other commercials out there. It's "inspired" by a 1973 Bruce Lee film that nobody saw and nobody will recognize. Quite effective strategy.

He's supposed to be a super hero in a world of Nike's creation. Each "episode" in this ad campaign is presented as a unique film, a new challenge for the super hero who saves the day with a swish. Who's impressed? Anyone motivated to run out and buy the latest XR4Ti shoe? Yea, I know. But thousands will be. But this is not to credit the ad men. Anything would do. They didn't need to hire the actors, assemble a stage, "craft" an ill-conceived cartoon world, hire artists and animators, etc. They could have just had LeBron standing in a basketball court, talking about his new sneakers and why he likes them. I am 100% certain that this would be more effective, and it would certainly be a cheaper job. But Nike doesn't know how to keep their products in perspective. They have to deify every client, and elevate every product beyond its actual impact. They don't know how to let their stars shine with their own light.

In a word, this latest Nike foray into idol making is lame. I'd like to know which agency was hired to put it together. I'd like to know which Nike exec approved it. I'd like to know what their rationale was, if there was one. How can so many people in a trillion dollar industry be so clueless...how can creative quality be so rare in a field that's supposed to be about showcasing quality? It's not just this commercial—that's just an example. You see them all the time but you've stopped thinking about them. We gloss over bad ads because they're so commonplace. We talk about good ads because they're rare. Shouldn't the reverse be true?

I was just checking out some of my usage statistics for thingy.org. Every now and then it's interesting to see where the "hits" are coming from, and how many there are. My stats program also allows me to track search criteria. If a user enters "Whatever the hell" in Google, Yahoo, or just about any other search engine, and then clicks a matching link to Thingy, the search string is recorded for all posterity. I've noticed there are a few strange ones that I can't figure out.

But first, the obvious ones. These are also the most common. For example, thirty-three searches on "thingy" led to this joint. Then there were a few on my name and a couple 91 Argyle-related queries. The rest are pretty interesting. Some of them illustrate the effectiveness of search engines, such as:

• paige davis ass (That lead them here)
• slogan for a-1 steak sauce (That lead them here)
• st. bonaventure francis hall haunted (That lead them here)
• boxing tanya harding (That lead them here)

While others are just plain bizarre:

• guestbook of putzi (Who...?)
• sahara ground makeup (Wha...?)
• rodolpho arruda (Who...?)

It's also interesting to see the various countries represented in the viewer logs. For example, in September, there were 121 page views from Poland. I have one friend in Poland. I'm sure he represents the vast majority, if not the entire lot, of that score. Thanks, Ty. Then there are 100 some-odd page views from "US Educational". (The app lumps together any referrer from a .edu domain.) Many visitors from Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, UK, Taiwan, Brazil, and France. It would be nice to put names to faces, people. See the "post a comment" link.

The most interesting source has appeared in every month's logs. This is a Thingy regular...from the Seychelles islands, that paradisiacal archipelago off the coast of Madagascar, smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean. There are probably more spear fishermen there than there are laptops. Whoever you are, I'd love to learn more about your oh-so-sunny home and its people....

But first, something about politics: When this race between a phony and a tool is over, it'll be interesting to see how the most visible supporters of the "loser" will respond. I hope there isn't a cultural rift, but this is precisely the kind of election that can do just that. Reconciliation is every bit as critical to a successful democracy as equal rights in the process.

Oh, and if you're a tormented undecider, the Presidential Guidester might help.

As if you didn't already know, Americans are getting bigger and fatter. But you might not have known that humans can be, and have been, much smaller. Indonesian Hobbits. Interesting.

After reading this, I don't know whether to say Cooool or oh, shit.... You?

Labels: politics