Going out in public is always awkward for the 19 Minutes staff. Aside from the bad hair issues, Flagstaff is a small enough and literate enough place that a public radio person is bound to be recognized now and then. And the pseudo-celebrity thing is not generally a bad scene -- it amuses me and causes my wife to roll her eyes. But the awkward part (again, aside from the bad hair and the occasions where listeners catch me buying Froot Loops) comes when people tell me how much they love public radio and how they never watch any TV. "In fact", they always say, "I don't even own a TV."
I'm always puzzled as to how to react -- whether I should say, "Yeah, it's a wasteland out there. Those six hours I watched yesterday were horrible," or perhaps, "You bet -- but Grover is much less interesting on radio."
In any case, hopefully some of these folks are reading the blog today, so I can enrich their lives by filling them in on what's currently wrong with television -- or at least what was wrong as I channel surfed myself to sleep early this morning.
We start with the Weather Channel, which the 19 Minutes staff will confess to once having an addiction to -- an addiction, however, far in the past. It's verging on monsoon season here in the southwest. As has been noted in this space before, it's way too hot, but the afternoons have just about started their regular season dumps of rain. So, TV viewers in this region might be tempted to switch over to TWC to learn whether it'll rain in the next several days. What TV viewers got was a report from someone named "P. Allen Smith" about how we can conserve gas whilst using our lawn mowers. A little later on was a program called "Storm Stories", which would have been terrific, if I was trying to find out if it was going to rain four years ago in Italy. A network called "The Weather Channel" should, by law, be required to broadcast the weather.
(On a interesting note, the Storm Stories website is currently running an online poll, asking how many nights a week site visitors watch the show. "Zero nights" has a commanding lead.)
ESPN (or ESPN2, or ESPN Classic) was showing: Poker. Perhaps this is a semantics debate, but the definition of "sports" ought to include "any activity for which instant slow-motion replay is an effective way of recapping what's just happened." Instant slow-motion replay of a pasty guy lowering his sunglasses an eighth of an inch only prolongs the agony of watching televised poker.
QVC was hawking a "solid air freshener". They were demonstrating its effectiveness by having the presenter smell a variety of air fresheners right there in the TV studio. If they really wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness of an air freshener on TV, they would have placed the product in the QVC men's room and showed the presenter's expression as they sent him in.
NBC's Today Show (okay, we're flashing forward to later this morning) featured an interview conducted by Katie Couric about eating disorders among adult women. Couric and the people being interviewed seemed to agree that one problem was the unrealistic depictions of the female body type portrayed on programs such as "Desperate Housewives". Katie Couric conducted the interview wearing a short skirt and three-inch heels.
And lastly, we have the ABC Family Channel, which purports to provide family-friendly fare in a sea of cable networks featuring sex, violence, and people eating grubs. Last night's broadcast featured a promo for a ABC Family original program called "Wildfire", for which the tag line is "Strangers. Secrets. Seductions." and which concluded with the warning, "Viewer Discretion Advised".
Of course, you could probably say that about everything on TV.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Monday, July 18, 2005
News Release Headline of the Day
A breaking news bulletin from the Community Alliance Against Family Abuse:
Help End Domestic Abuse While RelaxingInteresting. As a news person, I hadn't heard that domestic abuse while relaxing was a major issue. About the only abuse I can inflict while relaxing is on the "Previous Channel" button on the remote...
Leading, following and getting out of the way
Here in 19 Minutes World Media Headquarters, I've never been entirely comfortable with describing my Leadership Philosophy. I'm actually the News Director here, but it's a job I ascended to from the ranks of Reporter, and so I had never gone through any kind of management training to that point. I had plenty of thoughts about what I wanted the news department to look like, but my only guiding management principle was to "create the kind of news department where I'd want to work". Unfortunately, the news department was staffed with two other people who were about to quit their jobs, so for a while, it had to be the kind of news department where I'd want to work... since I was the only one working there.
So it was with some interest that I opened the mail at 19 Minutes HQ this afternoon to find "Ready, Set, Lead: The Resource Guide for News Managers" a friendly, Thomas Paine-sized booklet (okay, "Common Sense"-sized -- I have no idea how big Thomas Paine was) put out by the friendly people at the Radio-TV News Directors Foundation.
My first thought was, "Great -- something for me to read on the plane when I leave for vacation this weekend." But, as I've noted in an earlier posting that I can't seem to put my finger on at the moment, I've never really identified with the subculture of air travelers who insist on wading through weighty tomes on Leadership the second the plane takes off, and then bark unpleasant cell phone orders at subordinates the second the plane touches down. My office walls include one Olympic Curling poster, one Grand Canyon Music Festival Poster, one autographed Alison Brown poster, and exactly zero posters with pictures of Mt. Rushmore and pithy quotes about Leadership.
The booklet does feature some useful suggestions about Resolving Conflicts (the standard 19 Minutes method is to sigh heavily and run my hands through my hair, which amazingly is not one of the lessons in RTNDF's book); Soliciting Feedback (their suggestions include "Be specific", which I guess is more useful than just asking a reporter "What was the deal with that story?); and Time Management, which recommends taking inventory of long discussions where little is accomplished, a scenario the 19 Minutes staff likes to call "Wednesday".
I'm up to 14+ years in radio at this point, which means the RTNDF booklet also makes for some interesting comparisons for the right way to do things versus the way some previous bosses have done them (a group that includes one previous boss whose method of showing displeasure was to slam the back-end of a ball-point pen into the on-air console so hard that after a couple of years, the desk was covered with circular and semi-circular gouges that made it look like the surface of an extremely small, rectangular asteroid.
So "Ready, Set, Lead" is actually a pretty interesting read, and I might use the flight out East to brush up on my managerial style. But in the end, I suspect I'll stick with my curling poster.
So it was with some interest that I opened the mail at 19 Minutes HQ this afternoon to find "Ready, Set, Lead: The Resource Guide for News Managers" a friendly, Thomas Paine-sized booklet (okay, "Common Sense"-sized -- I have no idea how big Thomas Paine was) put out by the friendly people at the Radio-TV News Directors Foundation.
My first thought was, "Great -- something for me to read on the plane when I leave for vacation this weekend." But, as I've noted in an earlier posting that I can't seem to put my finger on at the moment, I've never really identified with the subculture of air travelers who insist on wading through weighty tomes on Leadership the second the plane takes off, and then bark unpleasant cell phone orders at subordinates the second the plane touches down. My office walls include one Olympic Curling poster, one Grand Canyon Music Festival Poster, one autographed Alison Brown poster, and exactly zero posters with pictures of Mt. Rushmore and pithy quotes about Leadership.
The booklet does feature some useful suggestions about Resolving Conflicts (the standard 19 Minutes method is to sigh heavily and run my hands through my hair, which amazingly is not one of the lessons in RTNDF's book); Soliciting Feedback (their suggestions include "Be specific", which I guess is more useful than just asking a reporter "What was the deal with that story?); and Time Management, which recommends taking inventory of long discussions where little is accomplished, a scenario the 19 Minutes staff likes to call "Wednesday".
I'm up to 14+ years in radio at this point, which means the RTNDF booklet also makes for some interesting comparisons for the right way to do things versus the way some previous bosses have done them (a group that includes one previous boss whose method of showing displeasure was to slam the back-end of a ball-point pen into the on-air console so hard that after a couple of years, the desk was covered with circular and semi-circular gouges that made it look like the surface of an extremely small, rectangular asteroid.
So "Ready, Set, Lead" is actually a pretty interesting read, and I might use the flight out East to brush up on my managerial style. But in the end, I suspect I'll stick with my curling poster.
Friday, July 15, 2005
I get press releases, Vol. 18: "Life" imitates "art"
First, as you probably gathered, William Rehnquist only resigned from the Parallel Supreme Court in the parallel universe. And therefore, by sheer accident, my piece on the Arizona Doctor Crunch (which is a trend and not a new cereal from Kellogg's) actually ran as scheduled on NPR's Day to Day. The audio can be found here, and later of course at the Pulitzer Prize website (where it'll be found under the category "Best Marginally Interesting Radio Piece Under Three-and-a-half Minutes").
Meanwhile, the 19 Minutes staff this week flashed back to the evil phenomenon of back-to-school sales in early July, the point being there's nothing more demoralizing than being an 14-year old with a seemingly infinite vacation ahead of you, only to be confronted with great prices on graphing calculators when you go to the mall. (Oh yeah? What mall do you go to?)
Well, just to prove they can be as much of a party pooper as the next guy, the PR industry deposited this news release in the 19 Minutes inbox:
Of course, as a Certified Guy, any clothes that still fit and have most of their major seams intact are fair game for my current wardrobe. I do still have (and occasionally wear) a few sweatshirts that date back at least to the late '80s, including one that originally belonged to my college roommate's sister, and which was won in a bet in 1988. (Foolishly, he thought I couldn't win an entire game of Trivial Pursuit in the last 20 minutes of an episode of "M*A*S*H". I think it was that episode where Hawkeye and Trapper play a prank on Major Burns...)
I'm wearing a shirt today known around the 19 Minutes household as my "Lucky Baseball Interview Shirt".
It doesn't date back nearly as far as much of my sweatshirt collection, but as I've worn in on roughly every interesting reporting assignment in the past five years, it's being held together largely by dried deodorant stains. Of course, as has been noted in this space before, in northern Arizona, you're actually viewed with some suspicion if your clothes appear too pressed.
Some years ago, as I was preparing to move to eastern Iowa, a friend with Iowa experience described Cedar Rapids as "the kind of place where people dress up to go to Red Lobster." Flagstaff, Arizona, then, is the kind of place where people wear baseball caps to weddings. Amazingly, neither city's chamber of commerce has adopted either of these as official slogans.
So the pressure is on to replace the Lucky Baseball Interview Shirt. I'm resisting, though, since I'm still expecting to grow.
Meanwhile, the 19 Minutes staff this week flashed back to the evil phenomenon of back-to-school sales in early July, the point being there's nothing more demoralizing than being an 14-year old with a seemingly infinite vacation ahead of you, only to be confronted with great prices on graphing calculators when you go to the mall. (Oh yeah? What mall do you go to?)
Well, just to prove they can be as much of a party pooper as the next guy, the PR industry deposited this news release in the 19 Minutes inbox:
HOW TO SAVE ON BACK TO SCHOOL COSTSin which we learn the following interesting piece of information:
...a 2004 National Retail Federation (NRF) survey conducted by BIGresearch anticipated that in total, families with school-aged children estimate spending $14.79 billion sending elementary through high school students back to school.and the following less interesting piece of information:
When preparing a back-to-school budget, start by taking a thorough inventory of what you already have and then develop a budget for what you still need.and the following revolutionary piece of advice about buying back-to-school clothes:
Avoid being tempted to purchase a year's worth of clothing at one time, as children are expected to grow.I, personally, expected to grow as well, though by the time I turned 16, I learned not to get my hopes up. Fortunately, that also means my back-to-school clothes from my junior year of high school still fit. If only I had kept that in mind back in the summer of 1985, I could have purchased clothes for the next 20 years.
Of course, as a Certified Guy, any clothes that still fit and have most of their major seams intact are fair game for my current wardrobe. I do still have (and occasionally wear) a few sweatshirts that date back at least to the late '80s, including one that originally belonged to my college roommate's sister, and which was won in a bet in 1988. (Foolishly, he thought I couldn't win an entire game of Trivial Pursuit in the last 20 minutes of an episode of "M*A*S*H". I think it was that episode where Hawkeye and Trapper play a prank on Major Burns...)
I'm wearing a shirt today known around the 19 Minutes household as my "Lucky Baseball Interview Shirt".
It doesn't date back nearly as far as much of my sweatshirt collection, but as I've worn in on roughly every interesting reporting assignment in the past five years, it's being held together largely by dried deodorant stains. Of course, as has been noted in this space before, in northern Arizona, you're actually viewed with some suspicion if your clothes appear too pressed. Some years ago, as I was preparing to move to eastern Iowa, a friend with Iowa experience described Cedar Rapids as "the kind of place where people dress up to go to Red Lobster." Flagstaff, Arizona, then, is the kind of place where people wear baseball caps to weddings. Amazingly, neither city's chamber of commerce has adopted either of these as official slogans.
So the pressure is on to replace the Lucky Baseball Interview Shirt. I'm resisting, though, since I'm still expecting to grow.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
They call me Spruce?
The 19 Minutes staff has been scrambling the last couple of days to get a piece ready for the airwaves. Those of you with access to NPR's midday show, Day to Day, can catch a report about the doctor shortage in the southwest on tomorrow's show. Or so they tell me. Of course, William Rehnquist will probably resign from the Supreme Court tomorrow, which will put "Doctor Shortage" on the "Stories that Might Conceivably Air Someday" shelf.
Meanwhile, it's ridiculously hot in 19 Minutesland. And lest you think I'm just whining again about my unairconditioned car, my unairconditioned house, and my unairconditioned office (yeah, you're probably right, I am whining), consider that the temperature hit 92 yesterday, which in Phoenix terms is a pleasant March afternoon, but is only 5 degrees cooler than the all-time Flagstaff record for any day.
The key member of the 19 Minutes staff, though, decided to be proactive. For the first time in roughly 5 years, I bought a Squirt soda. Refreshing and grapefruit-like.
I was pleased with this purchase until I read the ingredient label, which of course features "Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin". I'm not normally frightened of odd additives in soda. It's not like Dr Pepper (which at times forms a majority of the liquid coursing through my veins) is an organic food.
But "Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin" seemed dangerously close to the scariest soda I've ever tried -- a concoction called "Spruce Beer" purchased at a drug store in Salaberry de Valleyfield, Quebec, on an equally hot afternoon. The label looked similar to Sprite. The color of the soda looked like Sprite. It was in the soda case next to 7-UP. I thought, "Maybe the name just doesn't translate well from French."
It smelled like a forest. It tasted like a forest. I set it down. I came back to it 20 minutes later. I let my wife try it. Still, spruce-y.
It's just a darn good thing the same doesn't hold true for Birch Beer. The verdict is still out on whetherBald Cypress Beer is good stuff.
Meanwhile, it's ridiculously hot in 19 Minutesland. And lest you think I'm just whining again about my unairconditioned car, my unairconditioned house, and my unairconditioned office (yeah, you're probably right, I am whining), consider that the temperature hit 92 yesterday, which in Phoenix terms is a pleasant March afternoon, but is only 5 degrees cooler than the all-time Flagstaff record for any day.
The key member of the 19 Minutes staff, though, decided to be proactive. For the first time in roughly 5 years, I bought a Squirt soda. Refreshing and grapefruit-like.
I was pleased with this purchase until I read the ingredient label, which of course features "Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin". I'm not normally frightened of odd additives in soda. It's not like Dr Pepper (which at times forms a majority of the liquid coursing through my veins) is an organic food.
But "Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin" seemed dangerously close to the scariest soda I've ever tried -- a concoction called "Spruce Beer" purchased at a drug store in Salaberry de Valleyfield, Quebec, on an equally hot afternoon. The label looked similar to Sprite. The color of the soda looked like Sprite. It was in the soda case next to 7-UP. I thought, "Maybe the name just doesn't translate well from French."
It smelled like a forest. It tasted like a forest. I set it down. I came back to it 20 minutes later. I let my wife try it. Still, spruce-y.
It's just a darn good thing the same doesn't hold true for Birch Beer. The verdict is still out on whetherBald Cypress Beer is good stuff.
Monday, July 11, 2005
No more brown-bagging it
Trips to the Retailing Big Two (Target, Wal-Mart) here in 19 Minutesland over the weekend brought back some evil summer childhood memories. You know, one minute, you're enjoying summer vacation, making hard choices between watching the 2 pm Bugs Bunny broadcast or making a peanut butter and mustard sandwich; and the next minute, you're at People's Drug Store (buying mustard?), where you see the sign:
Even today the reason for this depressing news, doled out well before America's students really need it boils down to a conspiracy between the school systems and the drug stores (the Educational-Apothecarial Complex) to impart one of life's hard lessons early on our young people: Life is just the time between doing things you don't want to do. (Between tetanus shots, for example.)
Now, from a school system just to the south of 19 Minutes World Media Headquarters, comes the news that one more joy of school is being stripped from students: the joy of decorating book covers. We are pleased to report that this has nothing to do with banning books, or drawings on book covers, or even banning ball-point pens. It seems that the high school in Vail, Arizona is doing away with textbooks altogether.
Instead of doodling pictures, phone numbers, graffiti, answers to tests, initials-plus-other-initials etc., on their brown paper book covers, students there will now apparently be forced to type their creative and yet juvenile musings directly into laptop computers. And even though the high-tech, screensaver version of "LK+GF" (initals typed at random to avoid potential libel issues) looks cool, it lacks the grass roots earnestness of the handwritten version with the heart around it, especially after the previous set of initials has been crossed out on an adjacent section of book cover.
So my charge to the leaders of the Vail, Arizona, school system -- don't bow to the pressure of the lap-top briefcase industry. Provide your students with what they really need -- lap-top cases made of brown paper.
Back to School Savings!!as though you really needed to buy a protractor six weeks before school started, in case you wanted to practice with it in advance of throwing it in your desk and forgetting about it for the next nine months.
Even today the reason for this depressing news, doled out well before America's students really need it boils down to a conspiracy between the school systems and the drug stores (the Educational-Apothecarial Complex) to impart one of life's hard lessons early on our young people: Life is just the time between doing things you don't want to do. (Between tetanus shots, for example.)
Now, from a school system just to the south of 19 Minutes World Media Headquarters, comes the news that one more joy of school is being stripped from students: the joy of decorating book covers. We are pleased to report that this has nothing to do with banning books, or drawings on book covers, or even banning ball-point pens. It seems that the high school in Vail, Arizona is doing away with textbooks altogether.
Instead of doodling pictures, phone numbers, graffiti, answers to tests, initials-plus-other-initials etc., on their brown paper book covers, students there will now apparently be forced to type their creative and yet juvenile musings directly into laptop computers. And even though the high-tech, screensaver version of "LK+GF" (initals typed at random to avoid potential libel issues) looks cool, it lacks the grass roots earnestness of the handwritten version with the heart around it, especially after the previous set of initials has been crossed out on an adjacent section of book cover.
So my charge to the leaders of the Vail, Arizona, school system -- don't bow to the pressure of the lap-top briefcase industry. Provide your students with what they really need -- lap-top cases made of brown paper.
Friday, July 08, 2005
Olympic committee not entirely off-base
The International Olympic Committee has dropped baseball and softball from the Summer Games, beginning with the newly announced London games in 2012. As both a baseball pervert and supporter of women's sports, you'd imagine the 19 Minutes Management Team would be annoyed by this news. We're not.
Olympic baseball is, well, boring. There are plenty of decent players on plenty of decent teams. But Olympic team sports like baseball have several things going against them:
- There are too many people on each team to make for compelling stories of the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. I mean, it's easy to remember Paula Radcliffe's breakdown in the women's marathon in Athens, but who remembers the wild pitch committed by the pitcher for the Netherlands that gave up a crucial run to the Cuban team in the 4th inning of the second game of the preliminary round? Certainly not me, since I just made that example up.
- The best players from around the world (except maybe Cuba) are already playing in the United States. The Arizona Diamondbacks-Cincinnati Reds series this weekend could just as easily be an Olympic Games, only with better food and cheaper souvenirs. In contrast, there are still plenty of top-notch ice hockey players playing in other countries, so Olympic hockey retains some interest.
- It's not weird enough. Watching a relatively good baseball game between teams of people no one's heard of doesn't have the same cache as watching team handball, or field hockey, or water polo. Was the South Korea-Denmark women's team handball game a good one? Who knows? It sure was surreal to watch at 3:00 am, though.
Women's softball is a tougher call. But the boring factor, again, comes into play. Intellectually (yeah, that's what this blog is all about), it's impressive that world-class softball pitchers are good enough to throw shutout after shutout after shutout after shutout. From a viewer's standpoint, there are only so many 3-0 games you can watch before you start seeking out team handball.
[Pause as we shift back to the first person singular]
I'm also not much of a fan of televised college baseball, even though I played college baseball, and would have probably wet my pants at the prospect of being televised. Actually, I played at the Division III college level, and the viewers probably would have wet their pants at the quality of play on their screens.
My college debut as a pitcher (the extremely small pitcher pictured is me)
included giving up a hard ground ball to the third baseman, who promptly dropped the ball, kicked it, and then had to scramble to pick it up. He would have been charged with an error, except the batter had fallen down after hitting the ball, and so he was easily thrown out at first base.
It'd be okay if that sort of thing was limited to the Division III game -- the beer league of college athletics. But there was at least one NCAA playoff game I saw that featured 8 (count 'em, eight) errors by one team, bringing to mind the circumstances surrounding a home run my brother once hit in pee wee baseball that was facilitated by something like six wild throws around the field.
For those of you in the TV industry, though, while college baseball might not make terrific sports TV, pee wee baseball would make an excellent idea for a reality series.
Olympic baseball is, well, boring. There are plenty of decent players on plenty of decent teams. But Olympic team sports like baseball have several things going against them:
- There are too many people on each team to make for compelling stories of the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. I mean, it's easy to remember Paula Radcliffe's breakdown in the women's marathon in Athens, but who remembers the wild pitch committed by the pitcher for the Netherlands that gave up a crucial run to the Cuban team in the 4th inning of the second game of the preliminary round? Certainly not me, since I just made that example up.
- The best players from around the world (except maybe Cuba) are already playing in the United States. The Arizona Diamondbacks-Cincinnati Reds series this weekend could just as easily be an Olympic Games, only with better food and cheaper souvenirs. In contrast, there are still plenty of top-notch ice hockey players playing in other countries, so Olympic hockey retains some interest.
- It's not weird enough. Watching a relatively good baseball game between teams of people no one's heard of doesn't have the same cache as watching team handball, or field hockey, or water polo. Was the South Korea-Denmark women's team handball game a good one? Who knows? It sure was surreal to watch at 3:00 am, though.
Women's softball is a tougher call. But the boring factor, again, comes into play. Intellectually (yeah, that's what this blog is all about), it's impressive that world-class softball pitchers are good enough to throw shutout after shutout after shutout after shutout. From a viewer's standpoint, there are only so many 3-0 games you can watch before you start seeking out team handball.
[Pause as we shift back to the first person singular]
I'm also not much of a fan of televised college baseball, even though I played college baseball, and would have probably wet my pants at the prospect of being televised. Actually, I played at the Division III college level, and the viewers probably would have wet their pants at the quality of play on their screens.
My college debut as a pitcher (the extremely small pitcher pictured is me)
included giving up a hard ground ball to the third baseman, who promptly dropped the ball, kicked it, and then had to scramble to pick it up. He would have been charged with an error, except the batter had fallen down after hitting the ball, and so he was easily thrown out at first base.It'd be okay if that sort of thing was limited to the Division III game -- the beer league of college athletics. But there was at least one NCAA playoff game I saw that featured 8 (count 'em, eight) errors by one team, bringing to mind the circumstances surrounding a home run my brother once hit in pee wee baseball that was facilitated by something like six wild throws around the field.
For those of you in the TV industry, though, while college baseball might not make terrific sports TV, pee wee baseball would make an excellent idea for a reality series.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
On the bubble
Blogging in 19 Minutesland gets a back seat today, as we prepare to launch a new call-in program on our local airwaves. "928" (the area code for northern Arizona, as it happens) debuts at 6:00 pm Arizona time (9:00 pm Eastern). We'll be talking about the crazy housing market, which has featured a 19.5% jump in home prices in this fair state since last year.
Should you have any interest, it'll be streamed here. Or here for you iTunes users.
Actually, it'll be streamed in those places, even if you're not interested.
Should you have any interest, it'll be streamed here. Or here for you iTunes users.
Actually, it'll be streamed in those places, even if you're not interested.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
A three-week news cycle
So, the Tour de France is on, meaning Americans are once again feeding our national passion for cycle racing. Er, rather, our annual three-week passion for cycle racing. Aside from bicycle messengers, bright neon spandex cycling outfits are still mercifully rare on the streets around most American cities. But in the environs around 19 Minutes World Media Headquarters, spandex cycling outfits are as common as SUVs with "Protect the Environment" license plates. Nothing against cycling -- it's swell exercise and it's nicer to the environment than driving a Hummer.
But aside from bicycle messengers and people actively involved in a bicycle race, there are precious few legitimate excuses for wearing those spandex outfits. The casual cyclist doesn't have the physique to pull it off. Recent statistics that I just invented indicate drivers distracted by unfortunately-clad bicyclists are the leading cause of traffic accidents during the weeks the Tour de France is televised.
The other group that routinely wears these clothes is the hardcore cycling fanatics. They're "in training" for their next race, their weekend 100-mile outing, etc. So let me ask you this -- if you're trying to build up your stamina and get the maximum exercise out of your ride, why aren't you wearing something that provides more wind resistance, not less? You'd think the really serious cyclist would wear a parka, or float a sail over his or her bike.
It's a phenomenon you rarely see in other sports. Here on the university campus that hosts the 19 Minutes HQ, it's common to see people throwing a baseball around a grassy field. It's much less common to see them wearing a baseball jersey, baseball pants, stirrups and spikes. I shoot baskets pretty regularly at my local health club, but do it without wearing basketball shorts or a tank top. (Although it dawns on me that would put me at a competitive advantage in future one-on-one games, since my opponents would likely be on the floor in convulsive fits of laughter.)
So let me float a theory. These outfits are a billboard. A billboard that says: "HEY! I'M A BICYCLIST! While you're trying to eat your Egg McMuffin while talking on your cell phone and changing your CD on your commute to work, I'm engaging in a healthy, environmentally friendly activity!"
And that's fine. Though perhaps it's a point that can be made without the spandex.
But aside from bicycle messengers and people actively involved in a bicycle race, there are precious few legitimate excuses for wearing those spandex outfits. The casual cyclist doesn't have the physique to pull it off. Recent statistics that I just invented indicate drivers distracted by unfortunately-clad bicyclists are the leading cause of traffic accidents during the weeks the Tour de France is televised.
The other group that routinely wears these clothes is the hardcore cycling fanatics. They're "in training" for their next race, their weekend 100-mile outing, etc. So let me ask you this -- if you're trying to build up your stamina and get the maximum exercise out of your ride, why aren't you wearing something that provides more wind resistance, not less? You'd think the really serious cyclist would wear a parka, or float a sail over his or her bike.
It's a phenomenon you rarely see in other sports. Here on the university campus that hosts the 19 Minutes HQ, it's common to see people throwing a baseball around a grassy field. It's much less common to see them wearing a baseball jersey, baseball pants, stirrups and spikes. I shoot baskets pretty regularly at my local health club, but do it without wearing basketball shorts or a tank top. (Although it dawns on me that would put me at a competitive advantage in future one-on-one games, since my opponents would likely be on the floor in convulsive fits of laughter.)
So let me float a theory. These outfits are a billboard. A billboard that says: "HEY! I'M A BICYCLIST! While you're trying to eat your Egg McMuffin while talking on your cell phone and changing your CD on your commute to work, I'm engaging in a healthy, environmentally friendly activity!"
And that's fine. Though perhaps it's a point that can be made without the spandex.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Huisentruit, continued
An addendum to Friday night's posting on missing Mason City, Iowa, anchorwoman Jodi Huisentruit. I was under the mistaken impression the audio from my original NPR story was still available on the NPR website. It's not.
After going through my personal archives, the audio is now available here.
I'd just like to point out my verbal delivery has gotten somewhat better in the intervening 10 years. Or at least I no longer sound as though I've just been given a general anaesthetic. But the story is still pretty interesting, I hope.
After going through my personal archives, the audio is now available here.
I'd just like to point out my verbal delivery has gotten somewhat better in the intervening 10 years. Or at least I no longer sound as though I've just been given a general anaesthetic. But the story is still pretty interesting, I hope.
Monday, July 04, 2005
This just in
The 19 Minutes staff, with a day off from Public Radioland, watched some of NBC's Today show this morning. And if I understand correctly from the top news stories presented today, art experts in Great Britain have been able to detect a mysterious painting by Leonardo Da Vinci behind another Da Vinci painting hanging at the National Gallery in London. And, as the Today show reported, that detective work not only shows that Da Vinci was apparently planning a painting of the Christ child, but his hidden work also reveals the whereabouts of missing Alabama teen Natalie Holloway in Aruba, and sketches out the results of the Deep Impact mission to Comet Tempel 1. Cryptologists are hurrying to the scene, hoping to learn whether the discovered masterpiece also yields clues as to the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa, the makers of Stonehenge, or the secret behind the phantom tag in the 2004 American League Division Series.
We're just back from the Flagstaff Fourth of July parade, the first-ever parade for our one-year old. Sylvi was interested in the floats, the fire engines, the dogs, Smokey Bear -- but seemed most impressed by a golf cart with one balloon attached.
It was also our first time at the local Fourth of July parade, which I give favorable reviews, if only for the blissful lack of Shriners on miniature motorcycles. There was also a strange absence of marching bands, save for one entry from the Flagstaff High School band.
My wife would really like to be in a parade some year. I've ridden in a few July 4th parades, back in the days I worked in commercial radio. Commercial stations have an easier time at parades, since they tend to already have pick-up trucks with call letters on the side. The one that stands out, for no particular reason except that I can remember it, was in the bustling metropolis of Calmar, Iowa. We actually did a live broadcast from the bed of the pickup, which had to be timed just right, since I seem to remember the parade route extended maybe a half-mile.
And at least in the media, there's a chance some of the people lining the parade route have heard of you, and might even wave. The most awkward part of parades -- today's Flagstaff parade included -- is the half-dozen "floats" which are nothing more than vans from area businesses ("Look, Sylvi! Wave at the people from the computer repair shop!"). Not that they don't provide a service to the community, but it's perhaps on a slightly different scale than, say, the fire department.
The largest entry (or smallest, depending on how you look at it) in the Flagstaff parade was the local youth soccer association, which was represented by probably 15 teams of miniature soccer players. Since Sylvi's already a shoo-in for the US Women's Soccer team in the 2024 Summer Olympics, it was good to see girls' teams well-represented. Though the team leading the way leads me to wonder whether girls' sports still have a way to go -- somehow, it just seems unlikely that a team called the "Strawberry Shortcakes" strikes fear into the hearts of the competition.
We're just back from the Flagstaff Fourth of July parade, the first-ever parade for our one-year old. Sylvi was interested in the floats, the fire engines, the dogs, Smokey Bear -- but seemed most impressed by a golf cart with one balloon attached.
It was also our first time at the local Fourth of July parade, which I give favorable reviews, if only for the blissful lack of Shriners on miniature motorcycles. There was also a strange absence of marching bands, save for one entry from the Flagstaff High School band.
My wife would really like to be in a parade some year. I've ridden in a few July 4th parades, back in the days I worked in commercial radio. Commercial stations have an easier time at parades, since they tend to already have pick-up trucks with call letters on the side. The one that stands out, for no particular reason except that I can remember it, was in the bustling metropolis of Calmar, Iowa. We actually did a live broadcast from the bed of the pickup, which had to be timed just right, since I seem to remember the parade route extended maybe a half-mile.
And at least in the media, there's a chance some of the people lining the parade route have heard of you, and might even wave. The most awkward part of parades -- today's Flagstaff parade included -- is the half-dozen "floats" which are nothing more than vans from area businesses ("Look, Sylvi! Wave at the people from the computer repair shop!"). Not that they don't provide a service to the community, but it's perhaps on a slightly different scale than, say, the fire department.
The largest entry (or smallest, depending on how you look at it) in the Flagstaff parade was the local youth soccer association, which was represented by probably 15 teams of miniature soccer players. Since Sylvi's already a shoo-in for the US Women's Soccer team in the 2024 Summer Olympics, it was good to see girls' teams well-represented. Though the team leading the way leads me to wonder whether girls' sports still have a way to go -- somehow, it just seems unlikely that a team called the "Strawberry Shortcakes" strikes fear into the hearts of the competition.
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Searching for Jodi
ABC’s 20/20 tonight repackaged a piece they first ran five years ago, on the disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit, a morning anchorwoman in Mason City, Iowa. This week marked the 10th anniversary of her disappearance on the way to work one otherwise unremarkable morning. Mason City, and KIMT-TV is part of an odd media market. It’s the CBS affiliate. The ABC station is in Austin, Minnesota, and the NBC affiliate is in Rochester, Minnesota.
Ten years ago, I was a reporter at Minnesota Public Radio in Rochester. The Huisentruit story was the first piece I ever produced for National Public Radio. I’ve done probably 30 since then and hundreds of local stories, and it’s still the only story I’ve ever done that still gives me chills.
I met Jodi Huisentruit a couple of times, though not actually when I was working in Rochester. We traded contact information on sources when I worked down the road from Mason City, in Decorah, Iowa. If I remember correctly, she had moved up to Mason City from Cedar Rapids about the same time I moved up from Cedar Rapids, because I also remember watching her there. The 20/20 story included a piece of tape of Jodi Huisentruit reporting in front of a farm park in Decorah. My first story in Decorah was about that farm.
The 20/20 piece – like most of the national coverage of the case – got the story both right and wrong. To portray it as a small town’s loss of innocence oversimplifies it. I had a tussle with my editor over just that point. He wanted to hear that people were locking their doors, looking over their shoulders, and worrying that life in Mason City would never be the same. My reporting told me that only the last point was really on target. I was 26 and it was my first NPR piece, so I lost the argument. In fact, this is how my story ended:
And as someone who’s worked in the media in small cities in Iowa and Minnesota and New York and Arizona, that’s why the goose bumps still come. Rochester, Minnesota – more than anywhere else I’ve worked – was filled with bright reporters from every media, who all genuinely enjoyed hanging out together. Maybe it was because, at the time, we all wanted to be somewhere else, but it was remarkable that so many people from TV, radio, and print welcomed each other’s company at settings besides press conferences.
I interviewed a few of the women I knew in TV for the NPR piece I did ten years ago. And the vulnerability they were suddenly struck with in late June 1995 hangs with me today. It’s a depressing fact of media life that women in the broadcast media are subject to far more of the crap that comes with celebrity than men. It was the reporters who were looking over their shoulders.
Which is not to say that men are immune. My first paying job in radio was a one-night a week stint as the overnight DJ at a radio station in Cedar Rapids. I was to go on Thursday night at 11:00 pm. I trained in with the guy that did the overnight shift on Wednesday evening. His last piece of advice came at 5:30 the next morning. “People will call and offer to stop by and bring you food,” he said. “Whatever you do, don’t let them in.” The first food offer came the next night.
It’s probably worth noting at this point that 10 years later, Jodi Huisentruit’s disappearance has yet to be solved. The Mason City Police Department is still actively investigating the case. They’re at (641) 421-3636.
Ten years ago, I was a reporter at Minnesota Public Radio in Rochester. The Huisentruit story was the first piece I ever produced for National Public Radio. I’ve done probably 30 since then and hundreds of local stories, and it’s still the only story I’ve ever done that still gives me chills.
I met Jodi Huisentruit a couple of times, though not actually when I was working in Rochester. We traded contact information on sources when I worked down the road from Mason City, in Decorah, Iowa. If I remember correctly, she had moved up to Mason City from Cedar Rapids about the same time I moved up from Cedar Rapids, because I also remember watching her there. The 20/20 story included a piece of tape of Jodi Huisentruit reporting in front of a farm park in Decorah. My first story in Decorah was about that farm.
The 20/20 piece – like most of the national coverage of the case – got the story both right and wrong. To portray it as a small town’s loss of innocence oversimplifies it. I had a tussle with my editor over just that point. He wanted to hear that people were locking their doors, looking over their shoulders, and worrying that life in Mason City would never be the same. My reporting told me that only the last point was really on target. I was 26 and it was my first NPR piece, so I lost the argument. In fact, this is how my story ended:
Investigators have called off the searches of nearby farmland in the Winnebago River. They're now focusing on who Huisentruit may have seen or spoken with in the days before her apparent abduction, but police, community members, and reporters, all say that no matter how the case ends, Mason City will be changed. Front doors will be locked, people will look over their shoulders, and the early morning news will feel just a bit different. For National Public Radio, this is Mitch Teich reporting from Rochester, Minnesota.The point was that most people in Mason City were no more worried that Jodi’s fate would happen to them than people in New York would have been if Dan Rather was kidnapped off the street. The likelihood was (and still is) that Jodi Huisentruit met with foul play because she was a celebrity in a place that had few celebrities. In Mason City, and Rochester, and Flagstaff, Arizona, you can run into the local news anchor at Perkins. And that intimacy is both what makes living in places like Mason City special, and makes the disappearance of someone people know from television – and from the laundromat – all that much more difficult to take.
And as someone who’s worked in the media in small cities in Iowa and Minnesota and New York and Arizona, that’s why the goose bumps still come. Rochester, Minnesota – more than anywhere else I’ve worked – was filled with bright reporters from every media, who all genuinely enjoyed hanging out together. Maybe it was because, at the time, we all wanted to be somewhere else, but it was remarkable that so many people from TV, radio, and print welcomed each other’s company at settings besides press conferences.
I interviewed a few of the women I knew in TV for the NPR piece I did ten years ago. And the vulnerability they were suddenly struck with in late June 1995 hangs with me today. It’s a depressing fact of media life that women in the broadcast media are subject to far more of the crap that comes with celebrity than men. It was the reporters who were looking over their shoulders.
Which is not to say that men are immune. My first paying job in radio was a one-night a week stint as the overnight DJ at a radio station in Cedar Rapids. I was to go on Thursday night at 11:00 pm. I trained in with the guy that did the overnight shift on Wednesday evening. His last piece of advice came at 5:30 the next morning. “People will call and offer to stop by and bring you food,” he said. “Whatever you do, don’t let them in.” The first food offer came the next night.
It’s probably worth noting at this point that 10 years later, Jodi Huisentruit’s disappearance has yet to be solved. The Mason City Police Department is still actively investigating the case. They’re at (641) 421-3636.
Friday, July 01, 2005
Playing me for a fool
Another month, another 47,000 stories on local TV news about fireworks safety this 4th of July. Here in Arizona, the stories are extra entertaining, because in addition to the typical warnings about fireworks and brushfires, there are also annual cautions against shooting one's pistol in the air to celebrate.
The 19 Minutes staff has memories of a different sort of recreation from years past. They're (sort of) the subject of our July "Last Laughs" column in Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine:
With a one-year old at home, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about “play” in recent days. Of course, for Sylvi, “playing” still consists of sticking inappropriate things in her mouth. In fact, the trick to keeping her from eating things is to pretend that adults love to eat them. The downside is that I have to consume things I wouldn’t normally include in my dinner plans, such as magazines, extension cords, and house plants.
But it won’t be long before she’s walking, and then running, and then perhaps throwing things and running after them. And then she’ll collect some friends and want to do some of her walking and running and throwing things with those friends.
The playing paradigm has changed since we were kids. In those days, station wagons were the size of small African republics, and the highlight of a typical elementary school day was talking your teacher into playing a film backwards through a projector. (Backwards! So that the smoke would appear to go... back down into the smokestack! Hilarious!) And when summer came along, you awaited the phone call from Darryl Feldman down the street, asking if you wanted to “play”, an activity that sometimes involved the throwing of Nerf-style items at improvised targets, or riding scooters around an unfinished basement in such a way that they left tire tracks on the floor.
My wife’s experience left out even the phone call. In her small Minnesota town, she simply looked out the window to see if her friend down the street was out in his tire swing.
Today, of course, she’d never get the chance. For starters, tires are all most likely emblazoned with a statement reading: “WARNING: THIS TIRE IS NOT MEANT AS A SWINGING DEVICE. FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY. IF PREGNANT OR BREAST-FEEDING, CONSULT A PHYSICIAN.”
But more to the point, “playing” has changed. Children today engage in something called “play dates”, sometimes scheduled two or three weeks in advance, as though the children were the First Lady. But such scheduling is apparently necessary, since these kids have to wedge their play amidst micro soccer practice, midget hockey, pee wee baseball, extremely little piano lessons, and buying tires.
And for a play date, I can only imagine parents have set up strict agendas:
[An update from the 19 Minutes staff: The name "Human Hang Gliders" is sticking in Mitch's brain for some reason, but he may be confusing it with a deranged, fourth-grade playground game.]
So as Sylvi gets older, we’re going to see to it that she has plenty of aimless play time. If she wants to take up soccer, great. If she wants to build a fort out of old Barry White LPs, that’ll be okay, too. Hopefully, she’ll figure out that crayons are for drawing, not for eating.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go check on dinner – I think the extension cord is almost done marinating.
The 19 Minutes staff has memories of a different sort of recreation from years past. They're (sort of) the subject of our July "Last Laughs" column in Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine:
With a one-year old at home, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about “play” in recent days. Of course, for Sylvi, “playing” still consists of sticking inappropriate things in her mouth. In fact, the trick to keeping her from eating things is to pretend that adults love to eat them. The downside is that I have to consume things I wouldn’t normally include in my dinner plans, such as magazines, extension cords, and house plants.
But it won’t be long before she’s walking, and then running, and then perhaps throwing things and running after them. And then she’ll collect some friends and want to do some of her walking and running and throwing things with those friends.
The playing paradigm has changed since we were kids. In those days, station wagons were the size of small African republics, and the highlight of a typical elementary school day was talking your teacher into playing a film backwards through a projector. (Backwards! So that the smoke would appear to go... back down into the smokestack! Hilarious!) And when summer came along, you awaited the phone call from Darryl Feldman down the street, asking if you wanted to “play”, an activity that sometimes involved the throwing of Nerf-style items at improvised targets, or riding scooters around an unfinished basement in such a way that they left tire tracks on the floor.
My wife’s experience left out even the phone call. In her small Minnesota town, she simply looked out the window to see if her friend down the street was out in his tire swing.
Today, of course, she’d never get the chance. For starters, tires are all most likely emblazoned with a statement reading: “WARNING: THIS TIRE IS NOT MEANT AS A SWINGING DEVICE. FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY. IF PREGNANT OR BREAST-FEEDING, CONSULT A PHYSICIAN.”
But more to the point, “playing” has changed. Children today engage in something called “play dates”, sometimes scheduled two or three weeks in advance, as though the children were the First Lady. But such scheduling is apparently necessary, since these kids have to wedge their play amidst micro soccer practice, midget hockey, pee wee baseball, extremely little piano lessons, and buying tires.
And for a play date, I can only imagine parents have set up strict agendas:
2:30 Get out crayons and construction paperThe closest I came to this regimented play concept in my own childhood was the (drinking) straw football league administered by Kenny Che, which consisted of six teams, each with its own schedule and logo. I remember his team was called the Hermit Crabs. I have no idea what my team was.
2:35 Assign coloring subjects (“Farm”, “Airport”)
2:37 Argue over difference between Blue-Green and Green-Blue crayons
2:40 Put crayons away after demise of Green-Blue crayon
[An update from the 19 Minutes staff: The name "Human Hang Gliders" is sticking in Mitch's brain for some reason, but he may be confusing it with a deranged, fourth-grade playground game.]
So as Sylvi gets older, we’re going to see to it that she has plenty of aimless play time. If she wants to take up soccer, great. If she wants to build a fort out of old Barry White LPs, that’ll be okay, too. Hopefully, she’ll figure out that crayons are for drawing, not for eating.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go check on dinner – I think the extension cord is almost done marinating.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
At least I was upwind
Be glad you're not a reporter.
Or be glad you're not me, anyway. On assignment today. At the Grand Canyon. One of the wonders of the natural world. Millions of years of the Colorado River carving out a breathtaking mile-deep gorge in northern Arizona.
I'm working on a story on the maintenance backlog that's slowly being cleared up. The Park Service plans to renovate and expand the restrooms at scenic Yavapai Point this fall.
My job today?
Lurk outside the current restroom building and interview tourists. Here is the transcript of a typical interview:
Or be glad you're not me, anyway. On assignment today. At the Grand Canyon. One of the wonders of the natural world. Millions of years of the Colorado River carving out a breathtaking mile-deep gorge in northern Arizona.
I'm working on a story on the maintenance backlog that's slowly being cleared up. The Park Service plans to renovate and expand the restrooms at scenic Yavapai Point this fall.
My job today?
Lurk outside the current restroom building and interview tourists. Here is the transcript of a typical interview:
Me: "So, tell me about your experience with the restrooms at Grand Canyon National Park today..."Worst of all, no one had a negative thing to say about the Yavapai Point restrooms.
Tourist: [sound of retreating footsteps]
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
I get press releases, Volume 17: For people whose vacation plans call for getting killed
We've been watching a lot of the Travel Channel over the past few days at the 19 Minutes home office. I don't often find myself on Channel 56, because the programmers at the Travel Channel seem to think competitive poker is somehow a travel issue. Until recently, the only reason to stop on the surf between Iron Chef (Ch. 53) and Australian Rules Football (Ch. 58) was America's perkiest TV host, Samantha Brown, who somehow manages to gush over the spa treatment at the Greenbrier Resort without sounding like the most obnoxious human being in history. In fact, she's pretty likable.
But the addition of Michael Palin's "Himalaya" series has me, if nothing else, checking the TV listings. As with Palin's previous travelogues, such as "Full Circle" and "Pole to Pole", the episodes are filled with snappy narration, good humor, and an unparalleled window into places most of us only wistfully dream of visiting.
What it's lacking is this important piece of travel advice, which arrived in press release form at 19 Minutes World Media Headquarters:
Here at 19 Minutes HQ, we're already envisioning an idea for our next entrepreneurial infomercial: The millions of dollars that can be made by opening travel insurance kiosks at nursing home bus stops.
But the addition of Michael Palin's "Himalaya" series has me, if nothing else, checking the TV listings. As with Palin's previous travelogues, such as "Full Circle" and "Pole to Pole", the episodes are filled with snappy narration, good humor, and an unparalleled window into places most of us only wistfully dream of visiting.
What it's lacking is this important piece of travel advice, which arrived in press release form at 19 Minutes World Media Headquarters:
squaremouth.com: It's Not When You Die, It's Where You Die!Oh boy oh boy oh boy... here come the 3 Swell Ways to Die on Vacation!
ST. PETE BEACH, Fla., June 28, 2005 -- Technically, for travel insurance, when you die matters also; however, as long as you die after you purchase your policy and before you return from your vacation, it's very definitely where you die that's going to make the difference.
[19 Minutes: Technically, it's always nice to start your press release with a complete sentence also; however, squaremouth.com definitely hasn't hired an English major to write its press releases.]
Of course, we're not dealing with the most pleasant of subjects here, but this tip is for the kids' benefit! My job is to try to educate the traveler to allow them to get the most out of their travel insurance policy, even if it's not them that's going to get it. [19 Minutes: Please welcome today's guest press release writer, former Vice President Dan Quayle!]
Where you die is going to make all the difference to the amount payable. This coverage is usually split into three areas starting with least risk/highest payout.
Air Flight Accident AD&DThis can lead to only one conclusion, which the Squaremouth folks are only too happy to offer up. Or, as they'd write, "which the Squaremouth folks is only to happy to offer up":
AD&D means accidental death and dismemberment. This allows for a payment if you happen to die or lose a couple of limbs as a result of a flight accident. Despite what you may hear on the news, this is always the lowest risk for an insurer, hence they pay the most for this benefit, up to $1,000,000 per person.
The next step down is ...
Common Carrier
This coverage pays in the event of death or dismemberment while you are traveling on any form of public transport. It is a much lower payment as the risk to the insurer is greater, usually $50,000 per person.
The third death benefit you will find on travel insurance policies is ...
Accidental Death (duration of trip)
This means the insurer will pay if you die or suffer loss of limbs during your vacation. This coverage is of course the highest risk and lowest payment, usually in the region of $10,000 to $50,000 per person.
So if you are about to shuffle off your mortal coil while walking down the high street in Grand Cayman, and you have enough strength left, struggle on to a passing bus with your last breath - your kids will thank you for it!Squaremouth.com, which, surprise(!), is a travel insurance broker, doesn't specify whether your next-of-kin should also sue the driver of the passing bus, but you can imagine they'd probably recommend it.
Here at 19 Minutes HQ, we're already envisioning an idea for our next entrepreneurial infomercial: The millions of dollars that can be made by opening travel insurance kiosks at nursing home bus stops.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Above the news fray
I try not to give my colleagues in the TV news world too hard a time just because they seriously care about whether Dayton residents feel the system of justice in Aruba is fair. They're already cursed by the fact that half the viewers are paying closer attention to what they're wearing, or their new hair style than the substance of what they're saying. And that often results in ridiculous displays, like the bizarre Today Show debate between Matt Lauer and Tom Cruise about ritalin, just so viewers actually pay some attention.
But in Public Radioland, where our reporters lovingly craft sound-rich feature stories often over the course of several weeks, we do cringe when we're lumped in with our TV brethren who consider a story that runs a minute-and-a-half to be an in-depth feature. We especially cringe when we're out on assignment and our interview subject asks, "Am I going to be on live TV?", as though we're carrying both an invisible video camera and an invisible satellite uplink with which to transmit it to the viewers of the world.
I've actually done some TV news work, blissfully without ever having to appear on camera. The first 19 Minutes headquarters was located in a pretty remote northeast Iowa locale. But news happened there regularly enough that the closest ABC affiliate, rather than have someone drive two hours to shoot video of a car crash aftermath, or a news conference at the Winneshiek County Extension Service, they supplied me with a video camera, microphone, and tripod. In fact, I would often cover the same events for an area newspaper, which meant that I could actually attend a news conference as my own media conglomerate.
The oddest part of this arrangement was actually getting the tape down to the TV station. The video camera, etc., was enough of a capital outlay that they weren't about to outfit my office with a satellite uplink, so the typical high-tech method of getting material to the mother ship involved dropping the tape off at the bus station. That meant that news could only happen until 11:00 -- when the bus left. On the off-chance that there was news that happened after 11:00 am, the only option was for the station to fly its news helicopter up to pick up the tape, which goes to show how in-demand a news helicopter was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1993. (That arrangement actually came to a temporary halt late that year when the station's helicopter pilot was summarily fired after being arrested for breaking into a bar to steal a neon beer sign. But I digress.)
That use of a helicopter, though, was at least more related to gathering actual news than the typical use we see in 19 Minutesland. We're currently in the three month annual period when helicopters consistently show their value in Arizona. The scope and intensity of wildfires is best (or, most safely) captured from the air.
The rest of the year, this is the typical helicopter-based story in Arizona:
Here in Public Radioland, we're -- as always -- snobbishly superior, not bothering with such pedestrian pursuits as riding in helicopters. Except when one of our sources offers us a ride in a helicopter. Then it's pretty cool.
But in Public Radioland, where our reporters lovingly craft sound-rich feature stories often over the course of several weeks, we do cringe when we're lumped in with our TV brethren who consider a story that runs a minute-and-a-half to be an in-depth feature. We especially cringe when we're out on assignment and our interview subject asks, "Am I going to be on live TV?", as though we're carrying both an invisible video camera and an invisible satellite uplink with which to transmit it to the viewers of the world.
I've actually done some TV news work, blissfully without ever having to appear on camera. The first 19 Minutes headquarters was located in a pretty remote northeast Iowa locale. But news happened there regularly enough that the closest ABC affiliate, rather than have someone drive two hours to shoot video of a car crash aftermath, or a news conference at the Winneshiek County Extension Service, they supplied me with a video camera, microphone, and tripod. In fact, I would often cover the same events for an area newspaper, which meant that I could actually attend a news conference as my own media conglomerate.
The oddest part of this arrangement was actually getting the tape down to the TV station. The video camera, etc., was enough of a capital outlay that they weren't about to outfit my office with a satellite uplink, so the typical high-tech method of getting material to the mother ship involved dropping the tape off at the bus station. That meant that news could only happen until 11:00 -- when the bus left. On the off-chance that there was news that happened after 11:00 am, the only option was for the station to fly its news helicopter up to pick up the tape, which goes to show how in-demand a news helicopter was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1993. (That arrangement actually came to a temporary halt late that year when the station's helicopter pilot was summarily fired after being arrested for breaking into a bar to steal a neon beer sign. But I digress.)
That use of a helicopter, though, was at least more related to gathering actual news than the typical use we see in 19 Minutesland. We're currently in the three month annual period when helicopters consistently show their value in Arizona. The scope and intensity of wildfires is best (or, most safely) captured from the air.
The rest of the year, this is the typical helicopter-based story in Arizona:
ANCHOR: ...we're going to go live now to a developing story in Chandler, where we're just received word of another near-drowning. Let's go live now to News Copter 24.God only knows what the stations spend to put a chopper in the air to beam down pictures of an empty swimming pool. Or how much they spend to provide us with aerial views of cars that have smashed into utility poles, which provide us the valuable public service of knowing what a '98 Civic looks like from above when its smashed into a utility pole. Back in Iowa, when it wasn't picking up videotapes, the news helicopter I worked with mainly got aerial views of fires in grain silos, which did a nice job of conveying how dangerous it was to be in a helicopter near a fire in a grain silo.
NEWS COPTER 24: Well, as you can see, all is quiet now at this backyard swimming pool, but a few short hours ago, this was the scene of an all-to-familiar occurance here in the Valley...
Here in Public Radioland, we're -- as always -- snobbishly superior, not bothering with such pedestrian pursuits as riding in helicopters. Except when one of our sources offers us a ride in a helicopter. Then it's pretty cool.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Foreign substances
The 19 Minutes staff is once again confined to the classical music studio here in public radioland, filling in for three hours of "Cappricio Italien", "Pictures at an Exhibition", and "Goldberg Variations".
Feedback on these little jaunts into the classical music world has been pretty sparse, which is good. The classical music connoiseurs tend to be a little more, shall we say, anal about pronunciation than your average light rock listener. Mispronounce the name "Nicolo Paganini" (call him "Freddy Paganini", for example) and incur the wrath that is otherwise comatose classical music listeners. Screw up the name "Gino Vanelli" and the dental office listener goes back to her copy of "Us". (Okay, it's been a while since I pulled a DJ shift at a lite rock station.)
In fact, the only feedback I've gotten was from an appreciative listener -- who was glad I knew how to pronounce "linguini a la Bolognese" in an underwriting credit. I don't know, maybe our other announcers have been saying "linguini a la Bol-OG-knees" or something. Or perhaps they've been calling it "Freddy."
[Feedback update: The classical fans are apparently not all comatose this morning. A touching phone call from a very nice listener just came in, thanking us for the rousing version of Tchaikovsky's "Cappricio Italien", which brought her out of a funk this morning. I told her I'd be happy to take credit for it, but it was really the work of the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein.]
There are most likely some classical music announcers who spend the entire 15-20 minutes' duration of a piece of music thinking of what they'll say next. I'm not one of those announcers. (My "Cappricio Italien" back-announce: "The Cappricio Italien" by Tchaikovsky. A rousing piece of music, and a terrific opportunity to roll my "r's". Expect partly cloudy skies today...")
So while the music's on, the rest of us have the opportunity to catch up on the latest important developments in Korean baseball -- most sigificantly, the ruling by Koream baseball officials that players will no longer be able to store cabbage in their baseball caps. During games, anyway.
This development comes after a pitcher named Park Myung-hwan (nickname: "Coleslaw Myung-hwan") reportedly stashed frozen cabbage under his cap, presumably to keep cool, as he pitched for the Doosan Bears (actual team motto: "Hustle Doo!!"). The cabbage was discovered after Myung-hwan's cap fell off several times in the nationally televised game.
He was allowed to continue wearing the unusual cooling toupee for the rest of the game, since the Korean league's rules do not specifically address the wearing of leafy vegetables under one's baseball cap. But that is bound to change, as South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports:
On the other hand, as American fans are grousing about ticket prices, player salaries, steroids, and the like, it's nice to see that at least one Korean team is living up to the promise it makes to fans on its website:
[And now, this late update: The BBC is now reporting that Korean players may still play ball with cabbage in their caps, provided they have a note from their doctor.]
Feedback on these little jaunts into the classical music world has been pretty sparse, which is good. The classical music connoiseurs tend to be a little more, shall we say, anal about pronunciation than your average light rock listener. Mispronounce the name "Nicolo Paganini" (call him "Freddy Paganini", for example) and incur the wrath that is otherwise comatose classical music listeners. Screw up the name "Gino Vanelli" and the dental office listener goes back to her copy of "Us". (Okay, it's been a while since I pulled a DJ shift at a lite rock station.)
In fact, the only feedback I've gotten was from an appreciative listener -- who was glad I knew how to pronounce "linguini a la Bolognese" in an underwriting credit. I don't know, maybe our other announcers have been saying "linguini a la Bol-OG-knees" or something. Or perhaps they've been calling it "Freddy."
[Feedback update: The classical fans are apparently not all comatose this morning. A touching phone call from a very nice listener just came in, thanking us for the rousing version of Tchaikovsky's "Cappricio Italien", which brought her out of a funk this morning. I told her I'd be happy to take credit for it, but it was really the work of the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein.]
There are most likely some classical music announcers who spend the entire 15-20 minutes' duration of a piece of music thinking of what they'll say next. I'm not one of those announcers. (My "Cappricio Italien" back-announce: "The Cappricio Italien" by Tchaikovsky. A rousing piece of music, and a terrific opportunity to roll my "r's". Expect partly cloudy skies today...")
So while the music's on, the rest of us have the opportunity to catch up on the latest important developments in Korean baseball -- most sigificantly, the ruling by Koream baseball officials that players will no longer be able to store cabbage in their baseball caps. During games, anyway.
This development comes after a pitcher named Park Myung-hwan (nickname: "Coleslaw Myung-hwan") reportedly stashed frozen cabbage under his cap, presumably to keep cool, as he pitched for the Doosan Bears (actual team motto: "Hustle Doo!!"). The cabbage was discovered after Myung-hwan's cap fell off several times in the nationally televised game.
He was allowed to continue wearing the unusual cooling toupee for the rest of the game, since the Korean league's rules do not specifically address the wearing of leafy vegetables under one's baseball cap. But that is bound to change, as South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports:
"What will we do if another team argues that because the cabbage leaf fell just as the pitcher was pitching, the batter got confused?" league rules committee chair Heo Koo-youn said.Koo-youn does not say whether he thinks the batter would confuse the cabbage with the baseball, or whether the batter's confusion would come from trying to figure out whether it's cabbage, romaine lettuce, or bok choi falling from the pitcher's cap.
On the other hand, as American fans are grousing about ticket prices, player salaries, steroids, and the like, it's nice to see that at least one Korean team is living up to the promise it makes to fans on its website:
Now we Doosan Bears will show our fighting spirit on the green and win the victory. We promise to reward our fans with joy and excitement more than you expect.Hard to argue with that. Especially since their fighting spirit itself seems to be green.
[And now, this late update: The BBC is now reporting that Korean players may still play ball with cabbage in their caps, provided they have a note from their doctor.]
Thursday, June 23, 2005
The World-Famous Non-Flammable Flammable Drinking Happy Bird
Highlights from the 19 Minutes desk: It's non-flammable, except when it's on fire
Today we introduce a new feature from the 19 Minutes World Media Headquarters, opening a window onto the morass that is Mitch's desk. Leading off this feature is the box from one of those birds that dips its beak into your water glass. Notice the use of the term "your" -- the well-crafted warning on this box has been enough to dissuade the 19 Minutes staff from trying to actually use the Drinking Happy Bird. (Click on the picture for the larger, more legible version.)
Also, the bird's slogan appears to have been borrowed from Boris Yeltsin's last campaign.
Tune in for our next installment, as we check out how many 1/64th full boxes of mints are in the upper right drawer of the 19 Minutes desk.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Bert-watching
A disturbing observation has been creeping into the consciousness of the 19 Minutes staff over the past few weeks, and it reared its ugly head again last night while we viewed the video spectacular that is "Elmopalooza". Sesame Street will do that to you.
Sesame Street actually came into the world the same year as the 19 Minutes staff - 1969. Those 36 years have also seen the evolution of the "Buddy Movie" or "Buddy TV show" genre. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the "Lethal Weapon" movies. Chandler and Joey on "Friends". Oscar Madison and Felix Unger on "The Odd Couple" (and yes, we'll stipulate the play and the movie pre-date Sesame Street). Han Solo and Chewbacca.
They're all Bert and Ernie.
They all feature one relatively straight-laced, uptight, nervous guy, and one laid-back, devil-may-care, throw-caution-to-the-wind dude.
And as a midly humorous guy, I've always basically identified with Ernie. I've stuck a banana in my ear. I can even do the Ernie laugh.
But, as I said, a disturbing observation has crept into my consciousness.
I'm Bert.
Back to "Elmopalooza". Late in the show, the Sesame Street gang is trying to extricate a pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart from behind the stuck door to his dressing room. The task falls to Oscar. (The grouch.) Oscar announces that he can do it -- if one of them has some pepper. Bert produces a pepper shaker, and as every looks at him strangely, says: What, like none of you carry your own seasonings?
Felix Unger would say that. Chandler Bing would say that. I, unfortunately, would say that.
I don't actually carry my own pepper around, but I've been known to bring my driver's license with me to the hotel pool, because you never know when you'll need some identification. (And I still remember my the number on my Iowa driver's license, which, of course, ceased to exist in 1994.) And frankly, I'd want to know why Ernie had that banana in his ear.
But I'm okay with it. I have no mono-brow, so I'm not physically Bert. Bert is the more sarcastic of the two, which gels with my whole raison d'etre. And I'm at least a bit Ernie-like, as I definitely prefer ducks to pigeons.
Actually, as I check my Blogger profile, I'm reminded of something.
I'm Kermit.
Never mind.
Sesame Street actually came into the world the same year as the 19 Minutes staff - 1969. Those 36 years have also seen the evolution of the "Buddy Movie" or "Buddy TV show" genre. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the "Lethal Weapon" movies. Chandler and Joey on "Friends". Oscar Madison and Felix Unger on "The Odd Couple" (and yes, we'll stipulate the play and the movie pre-date Sesame Street). Han Solo and Chewbacca.
They're all Bert and Ernie.
They all feature one relatively straight-laced, uptight, nervous guy, and one laid-back, devil-may-care, throw-caution-to-the-wind dude.
And as a midly humorous guy, I've always basically identified with Ernie. I've stuck a banana in my ear. I can even do the Ernie laugh.
But, as I said, a disturbing observation has crept into my consciousness.
I'm Bert.
Back to "Elmopalooza". Late in the show, the Sesame Street gang is trying to extricate a pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart from behind the stuck door to his dressing room. The task falls to Oscar. (The grouch.) Oscar announces that he can do it -- if one of them has some pepper. Bert produces a pepper shaker, and as every looks at him strangely, says: What, like none of you carry your own seasonings?
Felix Unger would say that. Chandler Bing would say that. I, unfortunately, would say that.
I don't actually carry my own pepper around, but I've been known to bring my driver's license with me to the hotel pool, because you never know when you'll need some identification. (And I still remember my the number on my Iowa driver's license, which, of course, ceased to exist in 1994.) And frankly, I'd want to know why Ernie had that banana in his ear.
But I'm okay with it. I have no mono-brow, so I'm not physically Bert. Bert is the more sarcastic of the two, which gels with my whole raison d'etre. And I'm at least a bit Ernie-like, as I definitely prefer ducks to pigeons.
Actually, as I check my Blogger profile, I'm reminded of something.
I'm Kermit.
Never mind.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Room for one more cable channel
I have a brilliant idea for a new cable network. Like C-SPAN, it could be funded by America's cable companies, or perhaps CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC could all go in on it. Like so many sure-fire ideas, this came as a flash of brilliance, as I staggered through 25 minutes on the elliptical machine at the gym.
Four televisions in front of me - one showing the College World Series (ESPN), one a Depeche Mode video (the in-house entertainment channel, which is often enough to discourage me from working out at all), and two (CNN and NBC) were showing the press conference announcing the successful search for the missing Utah boy scout.
After 15 minutes of this, CNN was still labeling it "Developing News". Of course, by this point, there was nothing developing about it. It was over. In fact, there were only three developments to the story at all: Scout gets lost, people start searching, scout gets found. The end.
By the time NBC had returned to the developing news on "Days of Our Lives", CNN had found perhaps the ultimate segue -- an interview with Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT), that allowed them to go from the non-missing scout ("Senator Bennett, you've been to these mountains before. Can you describe how difficult it would be to conduct a search...") to Bennett's proposal to revamp Social Security.
So back to my idea. It's another 24-hour news channel. We could call it the "Missing White People News Channel". Or, better still, "Television Milk Carton". Today's programming (and tomorrow's, and the next day's, most likely) could feature more analysis on the non-missing scout from experts ranging from the rest of Utah's Congressional delegation to ex-boy scout Steve Garvey. We'd break away for updates on the search for the missing teen in Aruba, checking in with a panel of experts (Sen. Bill Frist, Dennis Miller, Diane Sawyer) who can decry the sorry state of security in backwater Carribean nations.
There would also be hourly breaks for weather forecast-style national round-ups of missing white people, whose stories are poignant, but don't tug at the heart strings the way a missing boy scout, or a missing soon-to-be-bride does.
Television Milk Carton would be a certain ratings smash. There would be heartwarming and heartbreaking developments. Best of all, with constant analysis and post-game, the stories never have to end. Remember when John Wayne's grandson disappeared? Neither did I, until I ran a Lexis-Nexis search for "missing" and "search" that went back 15 years. TMC could recap those dramatic two days in February 1992, when Anthony Wayne disappeared shortly after moving to California from Idaho. We could relive the gripping announcement from the boy's aunt, who told the Chicago Sun-Times that "she didn't know details of the boy's disappearance. She said he turned up in the Los Angeles area."
Best of all, people would feel connected to the searches for these photogenic white people. And they'd feel like part of the rescue effort, running the search in, say, a living room in Akron, or an airport bar in Binghamton.
Best of all? No messy segues to news like Social Security reform.
Four televisions in front of me - one showing the College World Series (ESPN), one a Depeche Mode video (the in-house entertainment channel, which is often enough to discourage me from working out at all), and two (CNN and NBC) were showing the press conference announcing the successful search for the missing Utah boy scout.
After 15 minutes of this, CNN was still labeling it "Developing News". Of course, by this point, there was nothing developing about it. It was over. In fact, there were only three developments to the story at all: Scout gets lost, people start searching, scout gets found. The end.
By the time NBC had returned to the developing news on "Days of Our Lives", CNN had found perhaps the ultimate segue -- an interview with Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT), that allowed them to go from the non-missing scout ("Senator Bennett, you've been to these mountains before. Can you describe how difficult it would be to conduct a search...") to Bennett's proposal to revamp Social Security.
So back to my idea. It's another 24-hour news channel. We could call it the "Missing White People News Channel". Or, better still, "Television Milk Carton". Today's programming (and tomorrow's, and the next day's, most likely) could feature more analysis on the non-missing scout from experts ranging from the rest of Utah's Congressional delegation to ex-boy scout Steve Garvey. We'd break away for updates on the search for the missing teen in Aruba, checking in with a panel of experts (Sen. Bill Frist, Dennis Miller, Diane Sawyer) who can decry the sorry state of security in backwater Carribean nations.
There would also be hourly breaks for weather forecast-style national round-ups of missing white people, whose stories are poignant, but don't tug at the heart strings the way a missing boy scout, or a missing soon-to-be-bride does.
Television Milk Carton would be a certain ratings smash. There would be heartwarming and heartbreaking developments. Best of all, with constant analysis and post-game, the stories never have to end. Remember when John Wayne's grandson disappeared? Neither did I, until I ran a Lexis-Nexis search for "missing" and "search" that went back 15 years. TMC could recap those dramatic two days in February 1992, when Anthony Wayne disappeared shortly after moving to California from Idaho. We could relive the gripping announcement from the boy's aunt, who told the Chicago Sun-Times that "she didn't know details of the boy's disappearance. She said he turned up in the Los Angeles area."
Best of all, people would feel connected to the searches for these photogenic white people. And they'd feel like part of the rescue effort, running the search in, say, a living room in Akron, or an airport bar in Binghamton.
Best of all? No messy segues to news like Social Security reform.
Monday, June 20, 2005
The Sylvi Learning Center
The 19 Minutes staff puts out a regular e-mail update to keep fans of 1-year old Sylvi abreast of important events in her life, such as her first steps (still pending), her first word ("Daddy", which I'll grant you is a little unfair to the person who stays home with her most days), and eating eggs (fried). The one-year update went out last week, and someone suggested I add it to the blog. We'll do that, because this will save us from having to come up with all-new material. Some of it will look a little recycled, and still more of it will look a little uninteresting, but here it is. I will, however, add a few items just to spice it up for those of you who are loyal subscribers to both publications:
Good evening Sylvi fans and innocent bystanders…
June 9th is proving to be an annual medical care day around the Teich household. This year, the 9th fell four days after Sylvi endured her first fun-filled stomach flu. That night, she demonstrated her command of sharing by thoughtfully passing the stomach bug on to both her parents – within a few hours of each other.
Now, flash back to last June 9th: Mitch and Gretchen finish putting together their to-that-point-hypothetical Diaper Champ and head out for a spontaneous trip to Dairy Queen, to satiate a pregnancy-driven desire for a banana shake. The chocolate ice cream machine is out of order, so Mitch is still muttering when they get home – at least until they get one step inside the door, at which point Gretchen’s water breaks, meaning the chocolate ice cream issue no longer seems quite as important, or at least not for a few days.
Since that fateful return home from DQ, the following events have taken place:
Mitch runs around in unproductive little circles when he can’t think of what to pack for the hospital.
Gretchen commences labor, which lasts for 20 hours, and results in a 3-minute delivery.
Despite the 3-minute delivery, Mitch and Gretchen opt to name their daughter Sylvi, rather than “FedEx”.
Sylvi, born 5 weeks early, spends 12 days in the Special Care Nursery at Flagstaff Medical Center, where – among other things – she learns to eat, takes her first sponge bath, has her first experience with suppositories, and then is hastily given her second sponge bath.
She comes home June 22nd, but still must use an oxygen tank, thanks to Flagstaff’s 7,000 foot elevation. The large green oxygen tank becomes a key part of the living room décor over the next six weeks, showing up in all the fashionable home decorating magazines and inspiring the television program “Extreme Makeover: Large Oblong Medical Equipment Edition”. After Sylvi is freed of the need to use supplemental oxygen, Mitch and Gretchen keep the tank in the living room for several more weeks, in case they need the extra air themselves after changing too many diapers.
Sylvi learns to roll over from front to back by the time she’s three months old. This is a good thing, except that it’s another two months before she can figure out how to flip back to the other side.
Around this time she develops the strange bald spot on the back of her head, meaning her hair pattern is exactly the opposite of her dad's.
She also becomes a big fan of the classic hit by the Tokens, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, which she demonstrates by listening to it 43 million times, beating out her number two favorite, “Little Red Caboose”, by 26,000 plays.
Her #3 favorite song is a Finnish pop tune called "Villiviini", whose name translates to "Wild Vine/Virginia Creeper" (really) and features the following actual lyrics, which have thoughtfully been translated into English:
November marks a Very Sylvi Thanksgiving in Colorado, which comes after a Very Long Car Ride. Sylvi actually does pretty well, thanks to 23,000 playings of “Free to Be You and Me” for her and 74 bags of Funyuns for her dad.
Tragically, the Big Green Oxygen Tank has long been returned to Dan the Oxygen Man, or Sylvi could have decorated it for the holidays. But she has a swell Chanukmas, anyway, building up her stockpiles of blocks, stuffed animals, and clothes with built-in feet.
Sylvi’s first winter features a snowdrift roughly 12 times taller than her. She has trouble walking through the snow, but mostly because she hasn’t started walking yet.
She starts on “solid” foods such as carrots and squash in winter, turning her nose a festive orange, matching her dad’s Funyun-yellow ears.
To get ready for her trip to Tucson in March, Sylvi takes swimming lessons.
Naturally, the temperature never climbs above 60 in Tucson. But her parents take plenty of pictures, just in case “BabyTalk” magazine decides to publish a swimsuit issue.
BabyTalk doesn't call, but "Sports Illustrated" inquires about Sylvi's availability in 2027, triggering Mitch's weekly rant about the lack of respect given to women's sports. He calms down when it's pointed out Sylvi could appear in SI after winning her Olympic medals.
Crawling becomes a major part of Sylvi’s life in the spring, meaning back problems become a major part of her mom and dad’s life. Home child-proofing commences, a task made more difficult by the fact that all the local stores sell baby-proofing supplies apparently made for homes in Flagstaff, Bulgaria, because they appear to bear no relation to the childproofing issues we're dealing with.
Sylvi adds more foods to her repertoire, though does her best never to like the same food two days in a row, just to keep her mom guessing.
Sylvi meets her little friend Maja in May, and Maja promptly teaches Sylvi how to get to all the areas of the house that haven’t been baby-proofed yet.
Most recently, Sylvi celebrates her first birthday in a joint party a week early with her friend Phoebe. They celebrate with pumpkin cupcakes, which Sylvi -- for inexplicable reasons – has no interest in eating. This is especially interesting, considering she’s more than happy to try tasting the suds from her bubble bath.
It’s also probably just as well, because Sylvi comes down with the aforementioned (remember that first paragraph?) stomach flu a day later.
The upside to the stomach flu is that it clears her mind *and* her digestive system, as she – within a day – figures out how to wave on command, signal that she’s “soooo big”, identify people’s noses, and clap her hands. Her parents, hoping *they’ll* get a little smarter, try the stomach flu on for size four days later. It doesn’t work. In fact, judging from the fact they decided to eat cheeseburgers the next day, they may have gotten a little dumber.
She attends the Special Care Nursery Alumni picnic, where she meets up with the nurse dubbed “The Suppository Lady” (known as "Sarah" to the rest of the human population). Surprisingly, Sylvi immediately reaches out to hug her. Best of all, her diaper stays clean and no sponge bath is necessary.
Sarah is redubbed "The Necklace Lady" thanks to a pendant that occupies all of Sylvi's mental energy for 15 or 20 minutes.
Sylvi has her one-year check-up, and is given clearance to eat whatever she wants. In the two days since, she’s tried pizza (thumbs up), strawberries (a big affirmative), and peanut butter (an excellent hair treatment).
Books go from being a food source to being actual reading material. "Doggies", by Sandra Boynton, hits the top of the Sylvi Book Club, gathering an amazing 725 consecutive readings. In one sitting.
In her first year, she’s gone from 4 lbs., 10 oz. and 17 inches long, to 17 lbs., 10 oz., and 27 ¼ inches tall. She’s changed from a cute little wad of a baby to a cute little girl. And she’s gone from objecting to having her nose vacuumed out to, well, still objecting to having her nose vacuumed out.
The initial e-mail concluded with some vaguely mushy stuff, so we'll just edit it short.
Good evening Sylvi fans and innocent bystanders…
June 9th is proving to be an annual medical care day around the Teich household. This year, the 9th fell four days after Sylvi endured her first fun-filled stomach flu. That night, she demonstrated her command of sharing by thoughtfully passing the stomach bug on to both her parents – within a few hours of each other.
Now, flash back to last June 9th: Mitch and Gretchen finish putting together their to-that-point-hypothetical Diaper Champ and head out for a spontaneous trip to Dairy Queen, to satiate a pregnancy-driven desire for a banana shake. The chocolate ice cream machine is out of order, so Mitch is still muttering when they get home – at least until they get one step inside the door, at which point Gretchen’s water breaks, meaning the chocolate ice cream issue no longer seems quite as important, or at least not for a few days.
Since that fateful return home from DQ, the following events have taken place:
Mitch runs around in unproductive little circles when he can’t think of what to pack for the hospital.
Gretchen commences labor, which lasts for 20 hours, and results in a 3-minute delivery.
Despite the 3-minute delivery, Mitch and Gretchen opt to name their daughter Sylvi, rather than “FedEx”.
Sylvi, born 5 weeks early, spends 12 days in the Special Care Nursery at Flagstaff Medical Center, where – among other things – she learns to eat, takes her first sponge bath, has her first experience with suppositories, and then is hastily given her second sponge bath.
She comes home June 22nd, but still must use an oxygen tank, thanks to Flagstaff’s 7,000 foot elevation. The large green oxygen tank becomes a key part of the living room décor over the next six weeks, showing up in all the fashionable home decorating magazines and inspiring the television program “Extreme Makeover: Large Oblong Medical Equipment Edition”. After Sylvi is freed of the need to use supplemental oxygen, Mitch and Gretchen keep the tank in the living room for several more weeks, in case they need the extra air themselves after changing too many diapers.
Sylvi learns to roll over from front to back by the time she’s three months old. This is a good thing, except that it’s another two months before she can figure out how to flip back to the other side.
Around this time she develops the strange bald spot on the back of her head, meaning her hair pattern is exactly the opposite of her dad's.
She also becomes a big fan of the classic hit by the Tokens, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, which she demonstrates by listening to it 43 million times, beating out her number two favorite, “Little Red Caboose”, by 26,000 plays.
Her #3 favorite song is a Finnish pop tune called "Villiviini", whose name translates to "Wild Vine/Virginia Creeper" (really) and features the following actual lyrics, which have thoughtfully been translated into English:
Wild vine on the wall is one meter higherSylvi takes her first airplane trips – to and from the Washington, DC area. In what is taken for a positive sign, she is not barred from flying Southwest Airlines again. In an unrelated development, Southwest bookings between Phoenix and Baltimore drop 98 percent. She attends her first wedding, which she enjoys quite a bit, and her first pre-wedding dinner, which she likes, uh, less. She also visits her first museum, which she likes even less than her first pre-wedding dinner.
Wild vine on the wall is one meter higher
I have been a long time away from home
And I can't find the switch in the kitchen
November marks a Very Sylvi Thanksgiving in Colorado, which comes after a Very Long Car Ride. Sylvi actually does pretty well, thanks to 23,000 playings of “Free to Be You and Me” for her and 74 bags of Funyuns for her dad.
Tragically, the Big Green Oxygen Tank has long been returned to Dan the Oxygen Man, or Sylvi could have decorated it for the holidays. But she has a swell Chanukmas, anyway, building up her stockpiles of blocks, stuffed animals, and clothes with built-in feet.
Sylvi’s first winter features a snowdrift roughly 12 times taller than her. She has trouble walking through the snow, but mostly because she hasn’t started walking yet.
She starts on “solid” foods such as carrots and squash in winter, turning her nose a festive orange, matching her dad’s Funyun-yellow ears.
To get ready for her trip to Tucson in March, Sylvi takes swimming lessons.
Naturally, the temperature never climbs above 60 in Tucson. But her parents take plenty of pictures, just in case “BabyTalk” magazine decides to publish a swimsuit issue.
BabyTalk doesn't call, but "Sports Illustrated" inquires about Sylvi's availability in 2027, triggering Mitch's weekly rant about the lack of respect given to women's sports. He calms down when it's pointed out Sylvi could appear in SI after winning her Olympic medals.
Crawling becomes a major part of Sylvi’s life in the spring, meaning back problems become a major part of her mom and dad’s life. Home child-proofing commences, a task made more difficult by the fact that all the local stores sell baby-proofing supplies apparently made for homes in Flagstaff, Bulgaria, because they appear to bear no relation to the childproofing issues we're dealing with.
Sylvi adds more foods to her repertoire, though does her best never to like the same food two days in a row, just to keep her mom guessing.
Sylvi meets her little friend Maja in May, and Maja promptly teaches Sylvi how to get to all the areas of the house that haven’t been baby-proofed yet.
Most recently, Sylvi celebrates her first birthday in a joint party a week early with her friend Phoebe. They celebrate with pumpkin cupcakes, which Sylvi -- for inexplicable reasons – has no interest in eating. This is especially interesting, considering she’s more than happy to try tasting the suds from her bubble bath.
It’s also probably just as well, because Sylvi comes down with the aforementioned (remember that first paragraph?) stomach flu a day later.
The upside to the stomach flu is that it clears her mind *and* her digestive system, as she – within a day – figures out how to wave on command, signal that she’s “soooo big”, identify people’s noses, and clap her hands. Her parents, hoping *they’ll* get a little smarter, try the stomach flu on for size four days later. It doesn’t work. In fact, judging from the fact they decided to eat cheeseburgers the next day, they may have gotten a little dumber.
She attends the Special Care Nursery Alumni picnic, where she meets up with the nurse dubbed “The Suppository Lady” (known as "Sarah" to the rest of the human population). Surprisingly, Sylvi immediately reaches out to hug her. Best of all, her diaper stays clean and no sponge bath is necessary.
Sarah is redubbed "The Necklace Lady" thanks to a pendant that occupies all of Sylvi's mental energy for 15 or 20 minutes.
Sylvi has her one-year check-up, and is given clearance to eat whatever she wants. In the two days since, she’s tried pizza (thumbs up), strawberries (a big affirmative), and peanut butter (an excellent hair treatment).
Books go from being a food source to being actual reading material. "Doggies", by Sandra Boynton, hits the top of the Sylvi Book Club, gathering an amazing 725 consecutive readings. In one sitting.
In her first year, she’s gone from 4 lbs., 10 oz. and 17 inches long, to 17 lbs., 10 oz., and 27 ¼ inches tall. She’s changed from a cute little wad of a baby to a cute little girl. And she’s gone from objecting to having her nose vacuumed out to, well, still objecting to having her nose vacuumed out.
The initial e-mail concluded with some vaguely mushy stuff, so we'll just edit it short.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Getting carded this June 19th
I probably don’t need to tell you that tomorrow is Father’s Day. Or, perhaps I do need to tell you. Perhaps you’re so engrossed in other things, such as the International BMX championship they’re currently showing on Fox Sports Net, or the 475th airing of “Twister” on TNT, that Father’s Day has snuck up on you, and only now, with precious few hours remaining, are you finally aware that, yes, tomorrow is Father’s Day. You’re welcome.
This will be my second Official Father’s Day as a dad. But last year at this time, my daughter was still – at 8 days old -- in the Special Care Nursery, where the card selection basically sucks. Also, she was learning how to eat. So last year doesn’t really count from a celebration standpoint.
This year, however, I fully expect my daughter to fall into the same Classic Father’s Day Ritual that I engage in with my dad to this very day – never finding an appropriate Father’s Day card.
Apparently, the people who write greeting cards have dads stuck in a 1956 holding pattern. You have your fishing cards, your golfing cards, your ‘working on the car’ cards, your ‘working with power tools’ cards, and your drinking beer cards. The only nods to the 21st century are computer-themed cards and fart-related cards. (I’m not saying people didn’t fart in 1956, only that they exhibited some modicum of civilization by not mentioning it on greeting cards.)
And it’s not that my dad doesn’t engage in any of these activities – he does own his share of power tools (I remember a ‘router’ phase from my childhood) and he did used to change the oil on his ’72 BMW, a car that he sold when I was, oh, 14. And he spends plenty of time on the computer. I’m just not sure I would define him by any of these things to the extent that I’d design a greeting card for him along these themes.
I especially wouldn’t design a greeting card for me along any of these themes. To make an appropriate ‘car repair’ greeting card for me, you’d have to limit it to my ability, years ago, to switch my one working car battery between my two cars. A golfing Father’s Day card would feature the golf bag I used when I was on the golf team in high school – a bag that had no shoulder strap. This invariably led to at least one incident each round when all the clubs spilled forward and ended up on the ground in a marvelously cacaphonous clatter. I’ve done a few around-the-house fix-up chores, but I don’t think “fixing a broken toilet part with a paper clip” is necessarily what the Hallmark folks have in mind. (Though a MacGyver line of greeting cards might just be a hot seller.)
We’ll pass on discussing my relationship to the “fart card” genre for now.
It’s probably too late to help my daughter with her card shopping for this Father’s Day. But perhaps the people at Hallmark, American Greetings, and the rest will pay some heed and take the following suggestions for next year’s Father’s Day cards:
This will be my second Official Father’s Day as a dad. But last year at this time, my daughter was still – at 8 days old -- in the Special Care Nursery, where the card selection basically sucks. Also, she was learning how to eat. So last year doesn’t really count from a celebration standpoint.
This year, however, I fully expect my daughter to fall into the same Classic Father’s Day Ritual that I engage in with my dad to this very day – never finding an appropriate Father’s Day card.
Apparently, the people who write greeting cards have dads stuck in a 1956 holding pattern. You have your fishing cards, your golfing cards, your ‘working on the car’ cards, your ‘working with power tools’ cards, and your drinking beer cards. The only nods to the 21st century are computer-themed cards and fart-related cards. (I’m not saying people didn’t fart in 1956, only that they exhibited some modicum of civilization by not mentioning it on greeting cards.)
And it’s not that my dad doesn’t engage in any of these activities – he does own his share of power tools (I remember a ‘router’ phase from my childhood) and he did used to change the oil on his ’72 BMW, a car that he sold when I was, oh, 14. And he spends plenty of time on the computer. I’m just not sure I would define him by any of these things to the extent that I’d design a greeting card for him along these themes.
I especially wouldn’t design a greeting card for me along any of these themes. To make an appropriate ‘car repair’ greeting card for me, you’d have to limit it to my ability, years ago, to switch my one working car battery between my two cars. A golfing Father’s Day card would feature the golf bag I used when I was on the golf team in high school – a bag that had no shoulder strap. This invariably led to at least one incident each round when all the clubs spilled forward and ended up on the ground in a marvelously cacaphonous clatter. I’ve done a few around-the-house fix-up chores, but I don’t think “fixing a broken toilet part with a paper clip” is necessarily what the Hallmark folks have in mind. (Though a MacGyver line of greeting cards might just be a hot seller.)
We’ll pass on discussing my relationship to the “fart card” genre for now.
It’s probably too late to help my daughter with her card shopping for this Father’s Day. But perhaps the people at Hallmark, American Greetings, and the rest will pay some heed and take the following suggestions for next year’s Father’s Day cards:
· The “sitting on the couch reading the New Yorker” cardand, of course, the
· The “diagnosing your engine trouble by remembering old Car Talk episodes” card
· The “forgetting whether the laundry detergent coupons are filed under ‘cleaning supplies’ or ‘home/paper’” card
· The “screaming epithets at the @#&%! New York Yankees on TV” card (well, that one might already exist in New England)
· The “not sure how to change the propane tank on the barbeque grill” card
· The “programming the pizza place number into the cell phone” card
· The “identifying reruns of The Andy Griffith Show within the first 30 seconds” card (a close relative of the “identifying reruns of Friends within the first 30 seconds” Mother’s Day card and the “identifying episodes of Bob the Builder within the first 30 seconds” 4-year old’s birthday card)
· The “understanding how to program your VCR” card
· The “not understanding how to program your VCR” card
· “Happy Father’s Day through Blogging” cardAnd this doesn’t even begin to touch on the tie selection out there.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Music you've never heard, part 2
I got cajoled into-- er, volunteered last weekend to help a public radio program that's not even broadcast here in 19 Minutesland. Which is how I found myself at the Flagstaff Folk Festival last Saturday, still recovering from a bout of the stomach flu, not altogether convinced I wanted to sit through the performance by the Sankofa Strings that I was tasked to record. That attitude changed about 25 seconds into their set.
The group was billed as coming from the tradition of Black string bands, a tradition I wasn't familiar with -- for good reason, as it turns out. The tradition has all but died out since the 1950s. Even in the 1920s and '30s, while the tradition was still alive and healthy, few people outside the African-American community were familiar with it, because much of its music was being passed off as being by white bands. Until last week, there was apparently only one traditional black string band performing in the United States.
The Sankofa Strings makes two. The group started practicing together on June 7th. The Flagstaff performance was their first-ever gig. You'll note I said it took me 25 seconds to get hooked. That's about how long it took band member Dom Flemons to introduce the group at the start of the first song. At the end of the half-hour set, the audience, wedged into a room that was taller than it was wide, burst into a sustained standing ovation. Most, if not all, the people in attendance also had no idea this was Sankofa Strings' first concert.
For the first time in years, I found myself pouncing at the end of a concert to proffer an interview request. And in the studio the next morning, they were just as infectious as they were on stage. In an interview that lasted longer than their Saturday concert (since edited to a more radio-friendly length), the three group members articulately made the case for why the black string tradition should be more than just a novelty.
In a media environment with sensible priorities, the Sankofa Strings would get the attention they deserve. They'll play two more concerts in northern Arizona this weekend, including a Sunday show as part of a "Juneteenth" celebration at Arcosanti.
Monday, the media (probably including the 19 Minutes staff, too) will go back to the important work of breaking down the impending Cruise-Holmes nuptuals. Except, apparently, NBC, which is still stuck on the "Runaway Bride" story.
So in the meantime, check out the interview with Sankofa Strings.
The group was billed as coming from the tradition of Black string bands, a tradition I wasn't familiar with -- for good reason, as it turns out. The tradition has all but died out since the 1950s. Even in the 1920s and '30s, while the tradition was still alive and healthy, few people outside the African-American community were familiar with it, because much of its music was being passed off as being by white bands. Until last week, there was apparently only one traditional black string band performing in the United States.
The Sankofa Strings makes two. The group started practicing together on June 7th. The Flagstaff performance was their first-ever gig. You'll note I said it took me 25 seconds to get hooked. That's about how long it took band member Dom Flemons to introduce the group at the start of the first song. At the end of the half-hour set, the audience, wedged into a room that was taller than it was wide, burst into a sustained standing ovation. Most, if not all, the people in attendance also had no idea this was Sankofa Strings' first concert.
For the first time in years, I found myself pouncing at the end of a concert to proffer an interview request. And in the studio the next morning, they were just as infectious as they were on stage. In an interview that lasted longer than their Saturday concert (since edited to a more radio-friendly length), the three group members articulately made the case for why the black string tradition should be more than just a novelty.
In a media environment with sensible priorities, the Sankofa Strings would get the attention they deserve. They'll play two more concerts in northern Arizona this weekend, including a Sunday show as part of a "Juneteenth" celebration at Arcosanti.
Monday, the media (probably including the 19 Minutes staff, too) will go back to the important work of breaking down the impending Cruise-Holmes nuptuals. Except, apparently, NBC, which is still stuck on the "Runaway Bride" story.
So in the meantime, check out the interview with Sankofa Strings.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Music you've never heard, part 1
At the risk of actually writing something useful, we've done a couple of noteworthy interviews with musicians in the 19 Minutes Arts Center in the past week. You've probably not heard of either of them. Until now, I suppose:
Nolan McKelvey is a good guy. His website lists something like 30 recordings he's played on, but he's still sheepish when it comes to talking about his music. He's especially sheepish about discussing the couple of love songs that show up on his latest album, "After the Roses".
To interview him is to open a window into the life of lesser-known, but talented musicians around the world -- scheduling the interview around his day job, discussing a touring schedule that's prolific but not exactly what you'd call "geographically diverse", and talking about the realistic expectations of a solid local band.
But mostly, in this latest interview, McKelvey and drummer Andrew Lawher have some engaging things to say about songwriting and playing music. They're not about to play an extended nationwide tour, nor is XM demanding more copies of their CD so the archived interview is a good place to check them out.
There's another band worth checking out -- one which might soon see itself in the national spotlight, but the interview doesn't run until tomorrow morning, so we'll save it for then. (This is what we call a "forward promote" in the radio biz.)
Nolan McKelvey is a good guy. His website lists something like 30 recordings he's played on, but he's still sheepish when it comes to talking about his music. He's especially sheepish about discussing the couple of love songs that show up on his latest album, "After the Roses".
To interview him is to open a window into the life of lesser-known, but talented musicians around the world -- scheduling the interview around his day job, discussing a touring schedule that's prolific but not exactly what you'd call "geographically diverse", and talking about the realistic expectations of a solid local band.
But mostly, in this latest interview, McKelvey and drummer Andrew Lawher have some engaging things to say about songwriting and playing music. They're not about to play an extended nationwide tour, nor is XM demanding more copies of their CD so the archived interview is a good place to check them out.
There's another band worth checking out -- one which might soon see itself in the national spotlight, but the interview doesn't run until tomorrow morning, so we'll save it for then. (This is what we call a "forward promote" in the radio biz.)
Now, the "Duh Report"...
Last word on the Michael Jackson trial (for not having paid any attention to it until Monday, I sure am getting a lot of material from its aftermath).
Our system of jurisprudence sure is confusing. Thank goodness we have televised legal analysts to straighten things out for us.
They've been giving the jurors a lot of airtime for summing up the behind-the-scenes sentiment:
Huh.
Our system of jurisprudence sure is confusing. Thank goodness we have televised legal analysts to straighten things out for us.
They've been giving the jurors a lot of airtime for summing up the behind-the-scenes sentiment:
Jurors say prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jackson was guilty, and that's why he was allowed to return home.Really? So what we're saying here is that the prosecution failed to prove that Jackson was guilty, so the jurors decided he was... not guilty. So would it follow that had the prosecutors proven that Jackson was guilty, then the jury would have found him... guilty?
Huh.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Because you were wondering
Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.
Perhaps someday I'll figure out exactly what this means. But it seemed like all the cool kids were doing it, so I'd better stay current.
Of course, all the old comments seem to have disappeared, which is kind of a bummer. Feel free to go back through the last five months' worth of postings and revisit your thoughts. I'll wait.
Perhaps someday I'll figure out exactly what this means. But it seemed like all the cool kids were doing it, so I'd better stay current.
Of course, all the old comments seem to have disappeared, which is kind of a bummer. Feel free to go back through the last five months' worth of postings and revisit your thoughts. I'll wait.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
I get press releases, Volume 16: Um, Michael what's-his-name, Michael, uh, Jackson. Wasn't he in court? What ever happened with him?
All things considered, it took a suprisingly long time for the first Michael Jackson-related press release to hit the 19 Minutes World Media Headquarters following yesterday's verdict. In fact, it was 7:10 this morning before the first such release simpered its way into our inbox, a fact I can only attribute to blatant disregard of public radio by PR firms when it comes to important developments in the entertainment industry. (Except for reissues of obscure jazz releases. Then they're all over public radio...]
We here in 19 Minutesland had been watching the Michael Jackson trial with rapt attention, or at least the last 20 minutes of the trial, while the “King of Pop” made his way back to the courthouse in that motorcade that looked suspiciously OJ-like, televised by the circling helicopters, accompanied by banal observations from commentators who must have once had ideals about the field they were going into.
(It was nice, however, to see the whole Jackson family turn out for the verdict. Here in the newsroom, we engaged in an informal [no wagering] "Spot the Jackson" contest. We believe we spotted them all -- Janet, Tito, LaToya, Jesse, Reggie, Shoeless Joe, Keith, Alan, Glenda, and Andrew. Let me know if we missed anyone.)
But our interest here fell way short of the real interest as reflected in this news release illustrating what passes for a sidebar to the Michael Jackson story:
Yeah, "Thriller" was a smash hit, and a pretty good album. Not my favorite, really, but it's tough to leave it off the list of best albums of the 1980s. But it's not like the lyrics to "The Girl is Mine" are anymore significant than "Jesse's Girl" by Rick Springfield. Nor do they speak to anyone in the kind of intimate way that a songs like Springsteen's "Thunder Road", "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls, or even "Hip-Hug Her" by Booker T and the M.G.'s can. (Yeah, okay, "Hip-Hug Her" is an instrumental. My point exactly.)
On the other hand, the fact that it took the Not Guilty verdict to cause Michael Jackson music sales to shoot through the roof also raises some questions -- namely, what goes through the minds of a person who bases his music buying decisions on the California legal system? ["Say! I guess he's innocent! I guess I can't put off that "Off The Wall" purchase any longer! Honey, grab my MasterCard..."] And why would people wait for an innocent verdict to buy Michael Jackson CDs, but keep buying James Brown records, regardless of his legal status? And what about Snoop Dogg? (I don't really know anything about Snoop Dogg, but I thought he deserved a mention here.) And, most importantly, when will they convict all the American Idol contestants?
But I have to say I'm relieved at the Jackson verdict. If nothing, it spared us all the specter of the weirdest cover of "Folsom Prison Blues" ever recorded.
[An update: Meanwhile, the Achenblog has some interesting and potentially more amusingly inflammatory things to say about the Jackson case...]
We here in 19 Minutesland had been watching the Michael Jackson trial with rapt attention, or at least the last 20 minutes of the trial, while the “King of Pop” made his way back to the courthouse in that motorcade that looked suspiciously OJ-like, televised by the circling helicopters, accompanied by banal observations from commentators who must have once had ideals about the field they were going into.
(It was nice, however, to see the whole Jackson family turn out for the verdict. Here in the newsroom, we engaged in an informal [no wagering] "Spot the Jackson" contest. We believe we spotted them all -- Janet, Tito, LaToya, Jesse, Reggie, Shoeless Joe, Keith, Alan, Glenda, and Andrew. Let me know if we missed anyone.)
But our interest here fell way short of the real interest as reflected in this news release illustrating what passes for a sidebar to the Michael Jackson story:
The verdict is in and Michael Jackson, dubbed the “King of Pop,” has been found not guilty on all charges. As word of Jackson’s acquittal quickly spread, support for the legendary pop star and nostalgia for his work began surfacing on Amazon.com almost immediately.I'm just not sure I get the Michael Jackson cult of personality. I mean, even if you can get past the Charles Foster Kane's Xanadu-on-acid nature of the whole Neverland Ranch business, what exactly is it about the guy's personality that inspired the numbers of people to show up outside the courthouse and the ranch to show support?
Supporters of Jackson are stocking their catalogues with hits and rarities from his recording career. A quick glance at Amazon.com's Movers & Shakers for Music (www.amazon.com/movers-and-shakers) illustrates the intense customer demand for Jackson’s work as fans celebrate yesterday’s history-making news.
MUSIC BY MICHAEL JACKSON
Just hours after news of the verdict broke, Michael Jackson albums were already taking over Amazon’s “Movers & Shakers” list for Music, holding four of the top five spots on Tuesday morning.
The Michael Jackson verdict propelled Off the Wall (remastered 2001 bonus edition), onto Amazon.com’s "Movers & Shakers" list for Music hours after the news broke. Currently, the sales rank of Off The Wall has jumped 2,975 percent, from No. 4,060 to No. 132 on Amazon.com's Music Top Sellers list, making it No. 2 on Amazon.com's "Movers & Shakers" list for Music.
Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection has seen a 2,830 percent increase in sales rank from No. 7,883 to No. 269 on Amazon.com’s Top Sellers list for Music. The album is No. 3 on Amazon.com’s “Movers & Shakers” list of Music
Thriller (remastered 2001 bonus edition) spiked from No. 1,504 to No. 89 on Amazon.com’s Top Sellers list for Music, an overnight increase of 1,589 percent in sales rank. It is No. 4 on Amazon.com's "Movers & Shakers" list for Music.
Yeah, "Thriller" was a smash hit, and a pretty good album. Not my favorite, really, but it's tough to leave it off the list of best albums of the 1980s. But it's not like the lyrics to "The Girl is Mine" are anymore significant than "Jesse's Girl" by Rick Springfield. Nor do they speak to anyone in the kind of intimate way that a songs like Springsteen's "Thunder Road", "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls, or even "Hip-Hug Her" by Booker T and the M.G.'s can. (Yeah, okay, "Hip-Hug Her" is an instrumental. My point exactly.)
On the other hand, the fact that it took the Not Guilty verdict to cause Michael Jackson music sales to shoot through the roof also raises some questions -- namely, what goes through the minds of a person who bases his music buying decisions on the California legal system? ["Say! I guess he's innocent! I guess I can't put off that "Off The Wall" purchase any longer! Honey, grab my MasterCard..."] And why would people wait for an innocent verdict to buy Michael Jackson CDs, but keep buying James Brown records, regardless of his legal status? And what about Snoop Dogg? (I don't really know anything about Snoop Dogg, but I thought he deserved a mention here.) And, most importantly, when will they convict all the American Idol contestants?
But I have to say I'm relieved at the Jackson verdict. If nothing, it spared us all the specter of the weirdest cover of "Folsom Prison Blues" ever recorded.
[An update: Meanwhile, the Achenblog has some interesting and potentially more amusingly inflammatory things to say about the Jackson case...]
Monday, June 13, 2005
I get press releases, Volume 15: Checking up on Mitch
I'm sure most long-time readers of this feature are probably wondering the same thing as the 19 Minutes staff: In the months since we learned about how to combat dry skin on your next Antarctic swim, what has Risë Jill Miller been up to?
Since we missed her at the Pulitzer ceremony, it took until the latest audio news release wound up in the 19 Minutes Inbox to find out:
I actually had a physical exam recently, by which I mean February. Of 2004. I call that "recently", because I had skipped my previous annual check-up. And the previous one. And the 13 before that, as well. I felt a little sheepish about mentioning that fact when I finally went in for a check-up, until my doctor thought for a moment and determined that it had been something like six years since his last physical.
And I'd submit to you that most guys are probably on the 5-to-10 year plan, and that we probably could stand to go more often. But for most of us, our not-going-to-the-doctor thing has as much (or as little) to do with erectile dysfunction as it does with the NHL lockout, or the value of Treasury bills.
Basically, we're wimps.
I, personally, am a hypochonriacal wimp. I've been one as long as I can remember, but it really took hold in my Anatomy and Physiology class in 10th grade, when I discovered an odd lump on the right side of my upper back, which led to several hours of panicking, until it turned out to have been my shoulder blade. (On the other hand, I can still tell you the actual term for the shoulder blade is the "scapula", which means the class wasn't a complete waste of time.)
I've had more maladies than I can count (Why can't I count that high? Maybe it's a brain disease...), affecting most of my major organs. In college, I'd read an article about a famous person's tragic demise, and start to mimic the symptoms I read about, until I'd find out that the person's symptoms were actually a result of the treatment for the disease, rather than the disease itself.
About 12 years ago, I was sure I was slowly developing a rare metabolic disorder as my hair wound up in my shower drain faster than on the top of my head. This, despite the fact that roughly every male in my extended family has, well, a similar malady. (Huh. I wonder what it could be. Certainly, it couldn't be...BALDNESS!!!)
And to this day, while I'm better about it, the hypochondria has never quite gone away. Last week, my wife and I both were slammed with the stomach flu. Despite the fact that we each got it within hours of each other, and that my symptoms were not only exactly the same as hers, but the same as our friends who had the same illness earlier in the week, and the same as our one-year old's, the little hypochondriac's voice in my head piped up: "You know, your stomach was pretty acidy before you actually got sick. Maybe it's an ulcer..."
But fortunately for me, I'm a parent. And parenting means caring more about your child than yourself. Which is why I'll compile a laundry list of symptoms to ask the pediatrician about. (No Mitch, I don't think you're suffering from colic... )
Since we missed her at the Pulitzer ceremony, it took until the latest audio news release wound up in the 19 Minutes Inbox to find out:
MEN: TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR HEALTH DURING MEN'S HEALTH WEEK!Sounds like a pretty solid topic so far. One that might even be worth an actual news story. Good thing they buried the lead, or this might not be entertaining at all:
Transcript:
Risë: WOULD YOU DRIVE YOUR CAR WITH A FLAT TIRE? I'M RISË JILL MILLER.
MOST MEN TAKE BETTER CARE OF THEIR CARS THAN THEIR BODIES. WHY DO SO MANY MEN FAIL TO GET REGULAR CHECKUPS?
Doctor Mulhall: "Men who are lost don't like asking for directions, and the same applies to their bodies. Many men don't feel comfortable raising health-related questions or concerns with their doctors."
DR. JOHN P. MULHALL OF THE WEILL MEDICAL COLLEGE OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.
Doctor Mulhall: "30 million men in America are affected by erectile dysfunction, or ED, but sexual health is a topic many men do not feel comfortable talking about. What they don't realize is that ED may be a sign of more serious problems like diabetes, heart disease, or depression!"
SOMETIMES THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE FOR MEN IS STARTING THE CONVERSATION.
Doctor Mulhall: "Millions of men have already gotten treatment for ED. For tips on talking with your doctor, or to find an ED-expert in your area, visit sexual health doctors dot com." [Mitch's note: Dr. Mulhall is a pretty quotable guy, it seems...]
GET IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT AND TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH DURING NATIONAL MEN'S HEALTH WEEK, JUNE 13-19. CALL YOUR DOCTOR OR VISIT SEXUAL HEALTH DOCTORS DOT COM.
I actually had a physical exam recently, by which I mean February. Of 2004. I call that "recently", because I had skipped my previous annual check-up. And the previous one. And the 13 before that, as well. I felt a little sheepish about mentioning that fact when I finally went in for a check-up, until my doctor thought for a moment and determined that it had been something like six years since his last physical.
And I'd submit to you that most guys are probably on the 5-to-10 year plan, and that we probably could stand to go more often. But for most of us, our not-going-to-the-doctor thing has as much (or as little) to do with erectile dysfunction as it does with the NHL lockout, or the value of Treasury bills.
Basically, we're wimps.
I, personally, am a hypochonriacal wimp. I've been one as long as I can remember, but it really took hold in my Anatomy and Physiology class in 10th grade, when I discovered an odd lump on the right side of my upper back, which led to several hours of panicking, until it turned out to have been my shoulder blade. (On the other hand, I can still tell you the actual term for the shoulder blade is the "scapula", which means the class wasn't a complete waste of time.)
I've had more maladies than I can count (Why can't I count that high? Maybe it's a brain disease...), affecting most of my major organs. In college, I'd read an article about a famous person's tragic demise, and start to mimic the symptoms I read about, until I'd find out that the person's symptoms were actually a result of the treatment for the disease, rather than the disease itself.
About 12 years ago, I was sure I was slowly developing a rare metabolic disorder as my hair wound up in my shower drain faster than on the top of my head. This, despite the fact that roughly every male in my extended family has, well, a similar malady. (Huh. I wonder what it could be. Certainly, it couldn't be...BALDNESS!!!)
And to this day, while I'm better about it, the hypochondria has never quite gone away. Last week, my wife and I both were slammed with the stomach flu. Despite the fact that we each got it within hours of each other, and that my symptoms were not only exactly the same as hers, but the same as our friends who had the same illness earlier in the week, and the same as our one-year old's, the little hypochondriac's voice in my head piped up: "You know, your stomach was pretty acidy before you actually got sick. Maybe it's an ulcer..."
But fortunately for me, I'm a parent. And parenting means caring more about your child than yourself. Which is why I'll compile a laundry list of symptoms to ask the pediatrician about. (No Mitch, I don't think you're suffering from colic... )
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Why not Yilida?
The age of exploration is not yet through. The 19 Minutes staff was just tasked with changing the battery in a "meteor storm", a terrifically pointless and yet thrilling LED-style toy that so mesmerizes my daughter that it earned the term "distract-o-matic" for its usefulness on a flight from Austin to Phoenix some months ago.
Anyway, until moments ago, it still had the factory installed batteries inside, which, upon their removal, yielded the following useful piece of information:
There's also a Yilida Dried Flowers Company, Ltd. on whose website we learn that "Spring is now peeping into the window of my room."
And, of course, there's HeBei YiLiDa Metal Wire Mesh Company, Ltd., which is located in AnPing County, "which has the reputation of 'Town of the Wire Nettings'," a distinction it recently captured from Mason City, Iowa, which is now been relegated to the reputation of "Northern Iowa Town of the Wire Nettings".
[A subsequent Googling of AnPing County does reveal a staggering number of wire mesh companies, even more than Cerro Gordo County, Iowa.]
Most relevantly, there also exists a Yilida Electronics Company, which tragically, does not purport to make AA batteries, but does boast that "Based on the policy of 'Quality First, Customer Utmost, No unqualified products', we are repetitiously titled as the Contract Honored and Credible Enterprise, being popular among all walls of life."
Unfortunately, their business profile notes the company's annual sales range is "Blow US$1 Million".
I, personally, could blow a million bucks and not find a map listing "Yilida", because what it is not, is a country. Or a city. Or a province. Or a perfecture.
But those meteor storms are cool toys, no matter what your wall of life.
Anyway, until moments ago, it still had the factory installed batteries inside, which, upon their removal, yielded the following useful piece of information:
Made in YilidaTo save you the trouble, the 19 Minutes Crack Research Department (motto: "Small but inquisitive") immediately Googled Yilida, and discovered that the Zhejiang Yilida Ventilator Company, Ltd. is, in fact, "one of the largest manufacturers of air conditioning ventilators in China today". It also has a very catchy theme song, which one can hear on their website.
There's also a Yilida Dried Flowers Company, Ltd. on whose website we learn that "Spring is now peeping into the window of my room."
And, of course, there's HeBei YiLiDa Metal Wire Mesh Company, Ltd., which is located in AnPing County, "which has the reputation of 'Town of the Wire Nettings'," a distinction it recently captured from Mason City, Iowa, which is now been relegated to the reputation of "Northern Iowa Town of the Wire Nettings".
[A subsequent Googling of AnPing County does reveal a staggering number of wire mesh companies, even more than Cerro Gordo County, Iowa.]
Most relevantly, there also exists a Yilida Electronics Company, which tragically, does not purport to make AA batteries, but does boast that "Based on the policy of 'Quality First, Customer Utmost, No unqualified products', we are repetitiously titled as the Contract Honored and Credible Enterprise, being popular among all walls of life."
Unfortunately, their business profile notes the company's annual sales range is "Blow US$1 Million".
I, personally, could blow a million bucks and not find a map listing "Yilida", because what it is not, is a country. Or a city. Or a province. Or a perfecture.
But those meteor storms are cool toys, no matter what your wall of life.
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