Poetry at 160kbps

I just realized that the lyrics to Cake’s “Short Skirt Long Jacket” are actually pretty good poetry:

EXPIRED POETIC LICENSE

I want a girl with a mind like a diamond
I want a girl who knows what's best
I want a girl with shoes that cut
And eyes that burn like cigarettes

I want a girl with the right allocations
Who's fast and thorough
And sharp as a tack
She's playing with her jewelry
She's putting up her hair
She's touring the facility
And picking up slack

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnng jacket......

I want a girl who gets up early
I want a girl who stays up late
I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity
Who uses a machete to cut through red tape
With fingernails that shine like justice
And a voice that is dark like tinted glass

She is fast and thorough
And sharp as a tack
She's touring the facility
And picking up slack

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnnng.... lonnng jacket

I want a girl with a smooth liquidation
I want a girl with good dividends
At Citibank we will meet accidentally
We'll start to talk when she borrows my pen

She wants a car with a cup-holder arm rest
She wants a car that will get her there
She's changing her name from Kitty to Karen
She's trading her MG for a white Chrysler La Baron

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnnggggggggg jacket

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

TOXIC SLUDGE CONTAINER

A few days ago I received a nice gift from my friends Stuart Sharpe and Shayna Sharpe at Regional Reps: a coffee mug.

Now before you conclude that devoting a blog post to somebody giving me a promotional mug is a waste of precious Internet resources, let me explain. (By the way, it is predicted that the Internet will be swallowed by the sun in a mere 2 million years. Consider yourself warned.)

First, the mug was sent via U.S. mail in a box with no packing material whatsoever, and yet it arrived unscathed. I have sent indestructible lead weights via U.S. mail, with bubble-wrap, peanuts and boxes within boxes, and they still managed to break in transit.

Second, the mug could not have been more timely: my old “I Heart Tony Hayward” mug inexplicably developed a leak about three and a half months ago.

Final Destination

The other day, during one of my all-too-frequent work breaks, it suddenly became absolutely necessary for me to learn what Phoebe Cates was up to these days.

BOYZ 2 MEN

Boys of all ages remember only one thing about Ms. Cates: her classic turn as Linda Barrett in the cult classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a performance which turned many a boy into a man, if you catch my drift. But after a string of forgettable follow-up roles, she pretty much dropped out of sight.

But, as it turns out, Ms. Cates may be out of sight, but not out of site: she lives on in hyperspace at www.bluetreeny.com, a New York City Boutique, and has a comfy life with 16-year hubby Kevin Kline.

Those who are accustomed to your correspondent’s drunken-sailor essay construction will not be surprised that this piece has relatively little to do with Phoebe Cates herself. Rather, it has to do with an entire class of people each of whom is, in the words of Mr. Shakespeare, “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”

Another example is my friend Richard Beymer, he of West Side Story and Twin Peaks fame, who is living a quiet life on a farm in Iowa, making small documentary films for his own amusement featuring the sort of characters who attach themselves to low-wattage ex-personalities. (Kato Kaelin would be the breakout star of that sort.)

Poor Richard doesn’t even have a website, but he does have a MySpace page, which speaks volumes in itself. I mean, seriously, who has a MySpace page? MySpace these days is like the shopping mall whose anchor stores are the Department of Transportation and the U.S. Army Recruiting Station.

Which brings me to the real point of this story: there is a vast class of ex-stars who don’t even qualify for bottom-of-the-barrel reality shows on bottom-of-the-barrel cable networks. When they were casting “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here,” I am pretty sure the names Phoebe Cates or Richard Beymer – or Kato Kaelin, for that matter – never came up.

Sure, these people probably have fulfilling lives and are happy in their anonymity, but they’re not doing anything for you or me. And, having plunked down my five bucks for a ticket to Fast Times or West Side Story, I don’t consider the debt to be discharged.

So I am launching a cable channel for the Cateses, Beymers and Kaelins of the world. I’m calling it The Last Chance Channel, and it’s strictly for the back alleys of Beverly Hills. Relative luminaries like Stephen Baldwin, Pauly Shore and The Situation are too big for this room.

To anyone who’s ever Googled the likes of Ms. Cates, Mssrs. Beymer, Kaelin, or the countless other one- or two-hit wonders who barely qualify for a “Where Are They Now?” feature in your Sunday-paper magazine, this channel’s for you. Call or write your local cable or satellite company and insist they make room for The Last Chance Channel.

William Katt and Judge Reinhold will owe you big-time.

Geek Wars

The battle between Google ("Don't Be Evil") and Apple (headed by Dr. Evil) is getting interesting. The latest salvo is Google's announcement that they are opening their own music store later this year. This, of course, is a shot across Apple's bow.

THANK ME LATER

(In the open-source spirit of Google, I have a suggested logo for their new service. I would never dare this with Apple, because I know they would dispatch armed militia to my home to seize the artwork and haul my ass off to jail.)

The question is, Which of these two will prevail in the long run?

My answer: Google.

TRUST ME, I’M A DOCTOR

Apple's viability is completely wrapped up in its ability to continue to innovate. While I'm sure there are many bright people working at Apple, the real brand is Steve Jobs.

Exhibit A: Look what happened at the COMDEX or Macworld or whatever it was during the time that Steve was dealing with his health issues. Not only did the company fail to introduce a cool new product, but the anonymous guy who did the non-introducing was both regrettable and forgettable.

Meanwhile, quick—name Google's CEO. Even if you can, who cares? Google is gobbling up the best and brightest, giving them a lot of freedom to innovate, and they're not afraid to throw stuff against the wall to see what sticks.

I fear for Apple's future when Mr. Jobs is no longer running the show. I have no such fears with Google. The only question is, Will Google turn evil?

Passing Culture

I just got the latest brochure from what passes for culture in Orange County, the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, and things have definitely taken a turn for the worse.

HOLDING ON TO YESTERDAY

The upcoming season comprises a combination of acts that appeal to old people, acts you'd expect to find in dinky, dingy lounges in downtown Las Vegas, and acts for really old people.

To wit: They have a bunch of "An Evening With…" events, featuring burn-outs from the Sixties and Seventies, and then they have their "Nostalgia Series."

The good news is, there are plenty of seats available for the latter, because everyone who gives a crap is dead.

Sports Central

I don't know much about sports, but evidently something significant happened this week involving something called "the Lakers."

WATCHERS

As nearly as I can figure, "the Lakers" consist of a man named Phil Jackson and someone named "Kobe." There are two people who show up to watch "the Lakers" do whatever they do—Spike Lee and Jack Nicholson. The rest of us watch Spike Lee and Jack Nicholson watching "the Lakers."

As to what "the Lakers" actually do, I gather from their press conferences that they apologize. A lot. Since they engage in some sort of competition, I'm guessing that they go out onto "the court" and try to out-apologize their opposition.

So, apparently on Wednesday night they won some sort of apologizing tournament, because about a billion people showed up to celebrate their victory—and they must have used up all their apologies to win the tournament, because there was none left for the post-event press conference.

Modern Marvel

I have had this gizmo for about six months, and every time I use it, it amazes and amuses me.

Space program? Cures for dire diseases? The Sham-Wow? All pale when compared to the coolest device ever:

A Very Different Night, Indeed

I was doing some research on Easter the other day, because saying "Happy Easter" seemed kind of odd. The guy was crucified, after all, so saying “Happy Easter” is kind of like saying "Happy Daniel Pearl Day" three days after—well, never mind.

As a non-practicing Christian—which, incidentally, is exactly the same as a practicing Christian minus one service a week and one randomly-selected observance per year, and maybe less alcohol—I was curious about what the big deal was.

I found the answer easily enough—if I could pull a stunt like that, we’d all be saying “Happy Mitcheller”—but then I got curious about Easter’s Semitic counterpart, Passover, a much more colorful and interesting event, even though it always seems to involve Manischewitz (rivaled only by Two-Buck Chuck as the Worst. Wine. Ever.).

As it turns out, the most scholarly research on the subject of Passover is at chabad.org, involving somebody named "Mr. Matzah." (Or maybe Mr. Matzah was an hallucination brought on by too much Manischewitz—although it can be argued that (a) there's no such thing as too much Manischewitz or (b) any Manischewitz is too much Manischewitz.)

JEWISH EASTER BUNNY

But wait! I have pictorial evidence that Mr. Matzah exists. He’s obviously another holiday icon wannabe designed to scare the crap out of young children: "Eat up all your bitter herbs or Mr. Matzah will pay you a Midnight visit ..." (It turns out that Mr. Matzah has a lot in common with Catholic priests.)

Anyway, פסח שמח to all, and to all a good night.

Call me sometime. Sunday is good; we're not doing anything.

The Salad Solution

The label on something I picked up the other day said …

TRADER JOE’S  CHICKEN SALAD

48% FEWER CALORIES, 90% LESS FAT
THAN TRADER JOE’S CHICKEN SALAD

See for yourself:

 

I was understandably curious about a foodstuff that claims to have 48% fewer calories and 90% less fat than itself. So I opened the package, whereupon it went into an infinite feedback loop and sucked all the calories and fat out of everything in the kitchen.

I now weigh 42 pounds.

I wonder if Kirstie Alley knows about this.

Good Times with Don Vito

For Halloween a radio forum website – the terrific Radio Sales Cafe - asked its members to recount their scariest sales experiences. That, plus a promo for The Sopranos I saw that evening, reminded me of the following:

For me the scariest experiences involved working with, er, connected businesses in a certain suburban market. (If you've seen any of the Godfather movies, you know what - and where - I mean.)

By the way, in that market, you either worked with such businesses or - do I haveta paintcha pitchure?

There was this one night club, a dinky little dive, that for some inexplicable reason booked all the top talent of the day. (Their tour schedule would be like, Las Vegas ... New York ...dinky dive ... Miami ...)

MY PAL SAL

The owner was a guy we'll call Vinny (not his real name; he had a kid that made Sonny Corleone look like an alter boy, and I don't want any trouble). Anyway, Vinnie was a great guy. Always wanted to give me a little extra sump'n sump'n for my superior service (like I'm going to give him anything but). Like a car. ("Don't worry about those holes; they'll buff right out.")

But then, I guess because he was such a great guy, all his vendors always gave him a little extra sump'n sump'n, too.

Then there was Sal (same deal, except he had a daughter, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Sonny Corleone). Sal was away a lot on "vacation." Upstate. Anyway, in between his “vacations” I spent many an entertaining hour at his estate, where he threw the Best. Parties. Ever. (The entertainment, inexplicably, was the same crowd that played the aforementioned dinky dive.)

Later I found out Sal was the tutti-frutti-di-tutti-capi or whatever it’s called - I don't have my copy of The Godfather handy) of the area branch of the Family. Good thing he liked me.

Good times then. Scary now.

The Hole Truth

These days it's fashionable to make a clean breast of things. At last count, 102 U.S. Senators have admitted to extramarital, and often extra-weird, dalliances. (For those of you who are keeping score, 96 Senators revealed affairs with members of the opposite sex, two with the same sex, one with somebody or something in a dark broom closet, and one didn't ask and wasn't told.)

For those of you who are paying attention, the big story is that there are actually two more Senators than previously thought - and that's after Pluto was downgraded to debris - which may explain why the Democrats are having such a hard time getting anything done. (We'd be better off if Harry Reid were downgraded to debris, but that is another story.)

But I digress; only a grand master digresser digresses before he establishes from what he's digressing, so kudos to me for that.

The point is, in the spirit of the times, I am going to come clean, too.

Have I slept with members of my late-night TV show staff?

Have I bolted from my wife, eight kids and reality show?

Have I enjoyed illicit encounters in the men's room at the Boise airport?

No, no, and hell no.

I am addicted to bagels.

"Well," you might say, "There are worse things than being addicted to bagels."

To which I would respond, "Yeah - being addicted to WASP bagels."

MORE THAN SCHMEAR

During the years I spent in New York, I enjoyed the finest bagels that city could offer, from Daniels to Zabar's and everything in between (including H&H and my personal favorite, Murray's).

But while in the deli-starved wasteland of Iowa, I discovered one of the best bagel shops ever. In Iowa City, Iowa. A place called Bruegger’s, the flagship of a chain started by a WASP from upstate New York who found himself attending Grinnell College in Iowa. A guy named Nordahl Brue, if you must know – a name that veritably pegs the WASP-O-Meter.

God knows why a guy from upstate New York would brave the trek to Iowa. I know lots of reasons not to, starting with weather and culture, unless they have a shorter tractor-pull season in upstate New York.

Anyway, it was in Iowa that I first developed my bagel addiction, buying dozens and dozens of the little doorstops, freezing them and enjoying them toasted.

At this point any self-respecting bagel nosher will cry “Foul!” (or, more likely, “WASP!”) because any self-respecting bagel nosher knows that it is heresy to toast a bagel, much less a frozen one.

I plead guilty with an explanation, your honor. When I lived in Iowa, the nearest Bruegger’s was over an hour way – or, as we Southern Californians say, “just down the block.” Rather than braving the elements – and you don’t know elements until you’ve lived in Iowa – I resorted to a once-a-week fresh bagel (with schmear, thank you very much) and a week of toasted frozen ones.

WORKING MODEL

But I discovered a secret weapon that hopefully will save me from nosh Purgatory (or, as Dante would put it, “The second bagel of Hell”): the Cuisinart CPT-180 toaster, which has settings for both “Defrost” and “Bagel.” And unlike many Cuisinart products, this one is not a steaming pile of bat excrement in the shape of an appliance.

So now, although we live a mere stone’s throw from the neighborhood Bruegger’s, the once-a-week dozen-plus-one-with-schmear habit persists, thanks to our trusty CPT-180.

Self-respecting bagel noshers are even more pissed, I’m sure. But for them I have a simple response:

I’m a WASP. So sue me.

Vene, Vici, Via

As most of the civilized world – which recently imposed a Time Out on the U.S. Congress, but that is another story – is aware, the venerable but vulnerable Starbucks chain has unveiled the latest brainstorm from its Seattle brain trust.

A microwave oven that doesn’t ooze odors that harsh the caffeine mellow?

An espresso machine that rocks an Americano in record time?

Bathrooms that clean themselves after an ex-Smith Barney rep leaves his makeshift home for the day?

No, no, and Hell no. It’s instant coffee.

WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS, AGAIN?

The Starbucks people are understandably defensive about Via, as it is called – or in marketing parlance, “a solution in search of a problem.” But I never for a moment thought they needed to be. Even before I participated in their little taste test, I trusted that the product would live up to the hype. And it does.

I guessed correctly which was the instant, not because I could tell, but because it was prepared stronger, which I rightly assumed to be a strategy for throwing us off.

This is the same strategy Starbucks is using in announcing the opening of its so-called stealth stores – Starbucks cafes without Starbuck branding. They assume, probably rightly in this age of Sarah Palin and John Boehner, that we’ll forget they even mentioned it.

Let’s hope the D.O.D. doesn’t get wind of this, or they’ll string Christmas lights on all their stealth bombers.

Anyway, the Starbucks people are proud of developing an instant coffee that tastes – and, at a dollar a serving, is relatively priced – like the real thing. The Starbucks of instant coffees, if you will.

Did anybody do market research on this? Did they discover a huge Folgers Crystals contingent who wanted to pay four times as much? Or a Starbucks regular who wanted a Folgers experience?

Methinks instead of creating the instant coffee of Starbucks, they’ve ended up with the Starbucks of instant coffees. Time will tell.

In the meantime, I’ve brewed up a plan – see how I did that, choosing from among all available lame idioms the most predictable of all? Comedy gold, my brothers and sisters – to bring the Seattle bean-brains to their knees:

When you take the Via taste test, you are given a coupon for a free cup of coffee. During the three days of the campaign, if I visit all 6500 Starbucks outlets in the U.S., I’ll be able to rack up enough free beverages to enjoy a cup a day until the year 2028.

But there are three minor details to work out:

1. I’ll have to hit 181 stores an hour, which means each taste test has to last just under 20 seconds, not counting travel time.
2. Second, the coupons expire at the end of the year, so I’ll have to enjoy – or perhaps a better word is endure – 72 cups of coffee a day.
3. The fine print on the coupon says “one per store per day,” so I have to redeem the coupons at four different stores every hour, 18 hours a day.

The good news is, If I can nail #1, #3 is a piece of cake.

But the only guy in the world who can help, won’t: Santa Claus isn’t returning my calls.

High Time

It’s been two weeks since I reported the acquisition of my Keurig single-cup coffee maker, or as we like to call it, The Second Coming of Dr. Kevorkian.

My prediction of burning through all 72 included so-called K-cups (insert your own breast joke here) in two weeks has not come true. Although there have been days when I’ve enjoyed several large beverages made with two units, there have been other days when …

• I was in a coma and able neither to push the “Brew” button myself, nor communicate those instructions to loved ones. (Not that it would matter: my spousal loved one is not sympathetic to the cause, applying to it words best reserved for particularly bad days at military installations; and my canine loved one has trouble following even the simplest of commands, so the process of preparing a cuppa may well be beyond her capabilities, awesome as they are. Especially since, like most of us, she ignores the manual and tries to figure it out for herself.)
  
• I was engaged in Plan Via, about which I write in another hilarious posting.
  
• I crashed so completely from the previous day’s overindulgence that nothing could move me to action. (Although this was not fully tested: Angelina Jolie did not appear on my doorstep, tearful and vulnerable after being dumped by Brad and the kids.)

But I soldier on, getting in at least three cups a day, leaving me in a more less permanent state of buzziness. In the process, I have discovered some useful things:

• The neighborhood kids do stop screaming – from 2:00 to 2:07 am.
  
• It is easy to make shaken beverages if you don’t have a blender.
  
• It is not that hard to mimic the symptoms of St. Vitus’ Dance.
  
• Adding a spare room all by yourself takes no time at all.

Trouble Brewing

It's nearing the end of the year, bringing with it the annual family pile-up of birthdays, anniversary and a little thing we Christians like to call Go Broke for Jesus.

Over the several hundred years Sharon and I have been together - or, counting only this incarnation, forty - we have boiled our gift-giving down to a no-surprises-left policy; unless and until we park one of those bow-topped luxury cars in the driveway, we play it low-key and open.

This year, the score is this: Sharon gets a Mac and an HDTV/DVD combo; I get a single-serve coffee-maker. And therein lies the story.

POWER SOURCE

The aforementioned coffee-maker, a Keurig from Costco, if you must know, makes it waaaaaaaaaaay too easy to overindulge in a substance best consumed in moderation.

Heretofore there were natural impediments to breaking the caffeine piggy-bank: either you had to put on actual clothes and make the arduous 0.10-mile trek to one of about a dozen neighborhood Starbuckses, or you had to indulge in the time-consuming ritual of grinding and brewing a cuppa at home.

No more. With this miraculous machine, you simply pop in a little plastic gizmo, push a button, and in about a minute you enjoy a nearly-perfect cup of coffee.

Since I tend to be a very late-adopter, it's likely you've had one of these units for years, and the awe and wonder I describe is analogous to my discovering how amazing it is to have opposable thumbs. But this is my show, so work with me.

The particular model I got from Costco comes with a grand total of 72 of the little coffee pods, which smokes the 12 that come with the unit elsewhere. This seems like a great value, until you realize that you actually only want three of the 72: a decaf coffee, a hot chocolate and an herbal tea. The other 69 pods contain various varieties of caffeine-laden beverages, the consumption of just one of which can cause me to perform unbelievable feats of strength and stupidity.

But I feel duty-bound to take advantage of the value - especially since there are less fortunate souls in remote parts of the world who went for the twelve-pack and are thus 60 pods short.

So, after unpacking, cleaning and setting up the unit, I brewed my first cup of coffee - a tasty Newman's Own Organic Fair Trade blend. It was so easy to do that I had downed the entire portion before realizing how much caffeine it contained. That, coupled with the Thai tea I had at lunch and the free sample of Red Bull they gave me outside Trader Joe's, gave me enough energy to power a small country.

Now, several days later, as I work through the K-cups that came with my coffee-maker, I feel like Julie Powell, who cooked all of Julia Child's recipes in a year. But at the rate I'm going, it'll take me less than two weeks to exhaust my stash.

At this point I feel good. Invincible, even. I'm negotiating with California Edison to hook myself up to the grid; my contributions will make me wealthy enough to afford a constant stream of caffeination. After a few more weeks of convenient joy-joy beverages, I will be the grid.

Where Were You Last Monday?

Probably sampling Leno’s “new” show, along with 17 million of your closest friends.

I have to admit that my respect for Leno has grown over the years, as a result of seeing his show live … seeing his very different standup routine (he doesn’t work blue, but he’s edgier) … and seeing his consistent, consummate professionalism.

I like and watch Letterman, but I respect Leno.

That said, I found his new format to be surprisingly low key. I expected more show-biz razzle, but instead saw the video equivalent of comfort food. Nothing was knocked out of the park, but Leno’s relaxed amiability wears well.

Interestingly, his opening monolog, which ran about 13 minutes on his 11:35 show, clocked in at only ten – an interesting choice, given that his routine tests well and that his 10 o’clock show is billed as a comedy hour.

The set is suitably cool, but these days it’s hard to be visually distinctive. The simple two-chair setup is fine for his one-on-one interviews, but it smells a little of a “we don’t need no stinking desk” denial.

Bottom line: I’m not above checking in from time to time when CBS is running a repeat of a weak episode of Criminal Crime Scene Numbers Investigation, but Leno is unlikely to be a prime-time habit.

Mind Reading?

Some time ago I discovered the joys of RSS feeds. For those of you who have been in a coma since 2000, an "RSS feed" is when you subscribe to a "blog" and new "posts" to that "blog" are automatically delivered to you via a "reader."

PRESIDENT WHO?

(Actually, if you have been in a coma since 2000, we have a lot of catching up to do. A lot. First, there was this presidential election ...)

Anyway, since my objective in life is to be All Google, All the Time (I can't wait for "Google Mortgage" - I mean really, I can't), I use the Google Reader to gather all my blog posts.

Something about being able to subscribe to any blog I want is addictive. I started with good, safe stuff like Time, CNN and the New York Times. But I'd read or hear or see something by somebody and, naturally, I'd Google them to see if they had a blog.

And the answer an overwhelming amount of time was Yes. And subscribing is so easy - just one fateful click. So now I subscribe to about 50 blogs, spanning nations, writing styles and political persuasions. "Daily Kos"? Come on in. George F. Will? Right this way. Wackjobs from the extremes of the Left and Right? Gotcha covered. "Failed TV Pilots of the Eighties"? Click.

The problem is, managing all these posts is worse than having a pet grizzly bear. Except the bear is easier to take care of.

If you don't show up on a regular basis to read and delete the constant spewing, it just mounts up. After a while - about 12 hours, actually - you lose complete control of the situation. After a thousand of the little bastards crowd onto your list, even Google throws up its virtual hands and stops counting.

Something about "You have 1,000+ Unread Posts" is a little off-putting. There's a part of me that wants to scrap everything and start over. But there's another part of me that reminds me that I subscribed to all those sons of bitches, and I'm duty-bound to read them all.

So my Delete Finger - yes, that one - poises precariously above its eponymous computer key, and after the traditional battle of wills between the angels on my shoulders (remember, that one was once an angel, too), one of the angels wins - which one depends on your point of view - and the Moving Finger deletes.

Maybe it's not what Omar (a terrorist name, BTW) Khayyam had in mind, but if he were writing today, here's what he'd say:

The moving finger types, and having typt,
Endlessly rewrites; nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
But your Delete key washes the whole damn thing out.

Actually, for all we know, that is what he wrote, but his translator - a British guy named Fitzgerald, who, since he lived in the late 1800s and was, well, British, wouldn't know a computer if it bit him on the ass - got it wrong. And who's got the time to learn whatever-the-hell terrorist language Mr. Khayyam used?

So the daily - or should I say, hourly - battle for my mind and heart continues. To stay on top of it all, I would have to give up my day job. If I had one. (Wherefore art thou, Google Mortgage?)

My only consolation is that maybe, somewhere, I'm clogging up someone else's reader with this posting. But judging from the number of people subscribing to my blog - Hi, Mom, and a big shout-out to the other person - it's small consolation indeed.

Stalking Mr. Stein

If you were to ask 100 humor essayists about their influences, 78.5 of them would include Time magazine/L.A. Times columnist Joel Stein.

For those who are unfamiliar with statistics, that breaks down to

• 78 Stein fans
• 21 not Stein fans
• 1 schizophrenic

Anyway, without copping to anything that might later bite me on the ass - like, oh, starting a war - I will admit that I follow Mr. Stein's work somewhat regularly. (It's not my fault they keep delivering Time week after week. Well, actually it is, but I get it primarily for the serious stuff; Joel just happens to be in there.)

Anyway, I have observed that even a guy Time and the L.A. Times think is funny doesn't exactly bat 1,000. In fact, some of his columns are downright unfunny.

Evidently Time is aware of this, too, because they sometimes dispatch our boy Joel to beer tastings in Denver - the big-time equivalent of covering the River City Fun Run.

Nonetheless, I will have to admit that Mr. Stein still has a leg up on the likes of me. In fact, the following statistical breakdown illustrates our relative positions in the humor universe:

(The circles are not to scale, by the way; if mine were in correct proportion you'd need an electron microscope to see it.)

One telling difference between an experienced national talent like Mr. Stein and a struggling wannabe like - well, you know - is that he'd have a snappy ending to this essay. Which I do not.

But then again, nobody's sending me to any beer tastings.

Thinking Energy

With all the hoopla surrounding the energy crisis, with all of us trying to be Al Gore - the thinner, beardless version, not the bloated, sequin-suited Las Vegas version - there is one area that we've overlooked ... an area that promises to reduce global warming, our dependence on fossil fuels and our penchant for watching things like "Are You Smarter than America's Top Model?"

NOT AL GORE, BUT PRETTY CLOSE

It's time we targeted thought energy.

It used to be that calling someone "bright" was a compliment. But, as anyone who stoically reads Mother Earth News by the faint light of a CFL bulb knows, bright = bad.

On the other hand, it used to be that calling someone a "dim bulb" was not a compliment. But, as anyone who has a personal wind farm knows, dim = good.

(Speaking of wind farms, remember when "breaking wind" was a bad thing? Now that we have the technology to harness it, it has become instantly PC - if a little inconvenient, especially in elevators.)

It used to be that taking a dim view of something or someone was indicative of disapproval. But now we know that keeping all your views dim saves precious energy.

The phrase "on second thought" used to precede well-reasoned reconsideration, but nowadays it's as bad as flushing the toilet more than once a week.

What about all those bright people who just can't help themselves? We could introduce "thinking offset credits" so energy-profligate brainiacs can buy their way out of the green doghouse. (The credits from Silicon Valley alone could run a major city for a millennium.)

In fact, anything we can do to reduce thinking in general is good for the environment. (Which makes George W. Bush the most energy-saving president ever. Who knew?)

On second thought, maybe more of us should watch things like "Are You Smarter than America's Top Model?" I can't think of a better way to eliminate thinking altogether.

Author's Postscript: The energy footprint of this article is zero. Absolutely no thought went into it.

Does Not Compute

The other day I was in the dentist's office passing time with the receptionist (who is also Mrs. Dr.) while waiting for my quarterly encounter with the King of Pain ... which is like having tea with Marie Antoinette while awaiting - well, you get the idea.

Anyway, Mrs. Dr. - let's call her "Susan" - was telling me that she is completely computer-free and always has been. She keeps all of Dr. Jekyll's appointments in a thing called a "book" using a thing called a "pencil" - which she says is better than a "pen" because (I'm translating here) the delete function works better.

"With my Day-Timer, I never have to worry about a computer losing my appointments," Susan declared proudly.

THE GOOD DR.

At the time, paralyzed as I was by a well-placed sense of impending doom, a snappy comeback eluded me. But later - isn't that always the way? - I got to thinking about what she said. "Yes, but have you ever lost your Day-Timer?" I would have said. (I would have sneered, but the Dr. might have heard it and attacked my plaque all the more vigorously.)

I would have continued, "Furthermore" - I never use "furthermore" when I'm talking, unless it's an imaginary conversation, of which I seem to have a lot these days - "I have two backups for my appointment software - my Treo and another hard drive - so I'm totally covered." (I would have said this with great smugness, but I think the good Dr. has a pneumatic chainsaw which he reserves for especially difficult, er, extractions.)

To test my hypothesis, I dug out my old Day-Timer. (I don't know for sure how old it is, but one of the entries is, "Watch 'Dance Fever' tonight - that Denny Terio is cool city.") I abandoned Outlook (that would be my computer calendar, Susan) and kept my appointments in the Day-Timer.

Since the Day-Timer does not have an automatic backup function (that I know of), at the end of the day I copied all the entries onto a yellow pad, representing my hard-drive backup. And then I made a third copy into one of those little spiral notebooks, which is approximately the same size as my Treo (not to mention that it handles phone calls about as well).

That little exercise took about an hour, which really cut into my drinking. (As MADD would say, "Don't drink and back up your Day-Timer appointments." They'd say that, if only they could find a bumper sticker big enough.)

Then, to approximate a computer crash, I set my Day-Timer on fire. And then I put the yellow pad in the trash compactor. (Actually, the most fun of this entire project was making a list of ways to destroy the appointments. Cool city, indeed.)

With my original and first-backup appointment books well and truly trashed, I turned to the spiral notebook. It turns out that the third backup didn't cut into my drinking quite enough. Most of the entries were in an illegible scrawl; the readable ones were cryptic at best: "Lunch with youknowwho" and "Pick up the whatsits" were especially disturbing.

The next time I see Susan - too soon, alas - I can triumphantly announce the results of my little experiment and declare the winner of the paper-vs.-computer competition.

I'll have to call Susan to find out when that is, though. Last night my laptop crashed, my backup drive got corrupted and I dropped my Treo in the toilet.

Microsoft to the Rescue

Okay, I admit it. I subscribe to Kim Komando's Cool Site of the Day. But I read it just for the articles, never for those fetching photos of Kimmie in Hawaii. Honest. Besides, she's married. To Barry. Who is a total tool. Kimmie deserves better.

COOL SIGHT

But I digress. Today's Cool Site was get.live.com, Microsoft's latest attempt to control my life. Once they figured out people were blogging without their permission or even involvement, and they couldn't buy the reigning blog site, Blogger - which, to make things worse, was bought by their nemesis, Google, the Don't Be Evil Empire - they published this "helper" software, a product of their busy Tits on a Bull Division.

With Windows Live, you can write and preview blog posts offline! (Shhhhhhhhhhh ... you can do this without their software, but keep it to yourself, or risk having Windows Vista crash your computer. Oh, right, it does that anyway - for some other undocumented sin, no doubt.)

Here's the best part: By using Windows Live, you can more easily share with Microsoft your Blogger login information, which enables them more easily to bring their nemesis, the Don't Be Evil Empire, to its knees.

Just for fun - and because I'm a total geek - I am writing this entry using Windows Live, which is like breaking into Pravda and using their presses to print anti-Putin rants.

Viva la Revolucion!