Michael Grant: February 2006

February 28, 2006

Toilet paper job

On Sunday, driving to the store, I saw a house in my neighborhood had been toilet-papered.

Well, not the house. The yard. Trees, hedges, shrubs, fence. It’s how we did it in the old days. I had not seen a toilet paper job in so long, I wondered if they did it any more.

But then, they probably don’t do it as much in California as they do in Texas. It is probably as regular an event in Texas as it was 50 years ago, when not more than a couple of weekends went by before one of the girls had her yard TPed.

In those days, it was always a girl. Usually, the girl had dumped on a boy, who got even with the TP snow job on the yard. It could also happen just because a girl was popular, and the TP was a tribute, maybe genuine or maybe grudging. But the result was the same. The girl’s parents had to clean it up.

There were some huge yards in my home town, and I saw toilet paper jobs that were as awesome as some of the Christmas extravaganzas that Texans like to create in their yards. And that’s when you got your toilet paper at Safeway. What could a few kids do today with one or two 24-roll Price Club packs?

The job I saw on Sunday wasn’t bad. There were nice bunting effects on the hedges and multiple streamers in a couple of trees. But the trees were small. Overall, the job lacked the Texas grandeur that I remember, because the trees were too small. Strong-armed Texas high school football players could launch a roll that would clear the top of a 70-foot oak, and 10 or 12 such launches created quite an effect. I saw nothing like that on Sunday.

Still, it would be a job for the dad to clean up, and I felt for him. It was the first toilet paper job I had ever seen, when my first thought was for the dad. I was never around, in the Texas days, when the dad would come out for the paper and discover the visit. I’m sure it was the daughter who got grounded, which now seems hardly fair.

It may not, in this case, have been a dad at all. That was only my snap reaction. It may not have even been a girl. This job may have been something between adults, teed off at each other about this thing or that, and the TP was one adult’s way of letting his frustrations be known. Juvenile, maybe, but more civil than a fistfight. What if the Shiites and Sunnis toilet-papered mosques, instead of blowing them up?

So I don’t know the “back story,” as they say nowadays, about this TP job. But I drove by again yesterday, to see if homeowners in this day and age know about toilet paper and rain. Rain was in the forecast, and I was happy to see the toilet paper was all taken down. It rained hard, last night and this morning. You get rain on a good toilet paper job, and the stuff is in the trees to stay.

Posted by Michael Grant at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 27, 2006

News about the moon

The things you learn in the 57th grade.

Last week I learned that the moon rotates. Well, it doesn’t actually rotate, but it appears to.

We can see the moon from our bedroom window when it rises late in the southeast sky, which it was doing last week. I was watching it about 2 a.m., a white crescent pointed down at the dark horizon. The crescent was “on its back” enough to form a cup that would hold water. I am told it is good luck, seeing a crescent moon that will hold water.

It occurred to me that the moon was pointing me toward the sun. With a little geometry, I could draw a line through the crescent’s median, and that line would take me straight to the sun. (Hey, it’s better than worrying about taxes). Doing so, I reckoned that the sun was way on the other side of the earth, somewhere over Italy, maybe.

Of course the reality was that the sun was in its usual position, 93 million-odd miles away in space, and that was the location to which the moon was pointing. I visualized earth, moon and sun in their space relationships. I saw the sun as relatively stationary. I know it was moving through space in two or three directions, at unimaginable galactic velocities, but from my bedroom in San Diego County, I figured I could think of it as practically stationary for the next four hours.

But the earth was moving. We were rotating, west to east, at a speed that would spin us into position for dawn and sunrise around 6:15. Thinking this, I looked at the moon again. The crescent was pointed at a severe angle down toward the ground. If the crescent pointed toward the sun, then by 6:15, the crescent would be pointing not down, but east, not because the moon was rotating, but because we were.

At that point, my thinking locked up. It didn’t seem reasonable to me that the crescent moon could rotate, in such a way that I could actually watch it happening. It seemed to give me too much power, too much knowledge of the intimacy of the sun-moon relationship. For a minute, I thought about staying awake, to watch and verify.

But I didn’t. At 5:30, we woke up, fed puppies and kitties, made coffee, and then went outside for glider time. It was a few minutes after 6, still easily dark enough to see the crescent moon. Naturally its position had shifted higher and toward the west. But the crescent had also rotated. The cup would not hold water. It was pointing not down, but toward the eastern horizon, where the sun was set to appear. Between 2 and 6, the moon had spun in the sky. In all my time on the planet, all those nights and mornings watching the moon, the idea of such a phenomenon had never crossed my mind, and I wondered: how many other people know about this?

Posted by Michael Grant at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 20, 2006

Sunday night sunset in San Diego.

Posted by Michael Grant at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Chili, beans and flexibility

I love good chili, and I love good pinto beans (“red beans,” my grandmother called them).

But until Saturday, I had never put them together in the same pot for a very good and simple rationale. Chili is great, and red beans are great, but when you put them together, each loses something to the other. You can’t combine uniques. Blend black with white, you get gray.

I have, however, been in an experimenting mood lately. It goes with getting married. I think that must be true of getting married at any age. No matter how deep your love or eternal your vows, at the breakfast table the first morning in your new home, you look across the table and see a complete stranger. Adjustments begin, and continue, and routinely press hard against what you believed were lifelong principles.

So I decided to make chili with beans, to demonstrate to Karen that I possess flexibility.

I was curious, too. I have had my share of homemade chili with beans in it, and every time, the proud chef had made chili into which he or she had dumped a couple of cans of kidney beans, with foreseeable results. Never had I tried chili into which raw beans had been cooked.

So I got my three pounds of chili grind (half beef, half pork), onions, chiles, etc, and half a pound of dried pinto beans. I soaked the beans overnight and into morning made the chili, to which I added the soaked beans just at the beginning of the simmering period.

The result? Gray. Ordinarily, I’ll fix a pound of dried pinto beans with half a pound of diced bacon, a diced onion softened in the drippings over high heat until a brown glaze forms in the bottom of the pot, some leftover coffee to deglaze the pot, then beans added with water barely to cover. The result? Unique. That was the flavor that lost itself to the chili, and took away some of the chili’s flavor.

I had thought by actually simmering the beans in the chili that the beans would pick up the chili-ness. Wrong. Beans are beans, canned or cooked, as surely as hamburger is hamburger. My wife tasted it, said it was bland. You have to understand that Karen is from the California-Missouri school of chili cooks. I need to get her a bowl of mild from The Texas Chili Parlor in Austin before she understands what heat is.

So if she said my chili was bland, she knew what she was talking about.

“It’s the beans,” I said.

“Not the beans,” she said. “I will make you a great bowl of chili that has beans in it.”

“Kidney beans,” I ventured.

“Kidney beans,” she confirmed. “I’ve made it for you already. Remember?”

“I remember. Sort of a ragout. A very tasty ragout.”

She will make it, and it will be good. But I am done with the effort myself. Principle met beans, and principle stands firm.

Posted by Michael Grant at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 18, 2006

Rain! (Well, a little)

Posted by Michael Grant at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 17, 2006

A pretty good newsroom story

I am in a group of old newspapermen whose careers date back to the 1950s, and in a few cases the 1940s.

We have collected some impressive newsroom stories in those decades that are fun to swap. This week, however, we are eyeshade-green with envy of a young reporter, Kathryn Garcia, who by her photo may be all of 25 years old.

Garcia is the reporter at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times who, Sunday morning, was in the newsroom, hadn’t even had her coffee yet, when the phone rang on the city desk. She answered, and found herself listening to some woman from Kenedy County, 60 miles south of Corpus, talking about the vice-president shooting a man.

All of us in the business have drawn Sunday morning duty, answering the phone, checking the wires, or these days, the Web, for stories the Sunday ACE (assistant city editor) may want to “localize” later, when the evening crew comes in around 2.

That may be what she was doing when the phone rang. Part of the story I can piece together. The caller asked: “Is Jaime Powell there?” “No,” Garcia would have said, “I believe she is in Austin today.”

“Well,” said the caller, “this is Katharine Armstrong, down at the Armstrong Ranch. I’ve been trying to reach Jaime since 8 this morning. . . .”

People around Corpus, especially the media, know the Armstrongs and the Armstrong Ranch the way people around Dallas know the Ewings and Southfork. It made sense to Garcia that Katharine Armstrong may have some reason to talk to Powell, who is the Caller’s political reporter and had written about the Armstrongs before.

“I can give you her cellphone,” Garcia said. “Oh, that would be great,” Armstrong said. But when Armstrong called, Powell didn’t answer. Powell later said her cell was in its charger. Armstrong called the city desk again and Garcia answered.

“Yes, hello again. Sorry you couldn’t reach Jaime. Is there some way I can help you?”

At this point the fact-based reconstruction ends, and all old newsmen and women enter war story heaven. All of us have received at least one call like this, but not nearly so good. We can’t resist fantasizing it is not Garcia, but us, talking to this caller who says she is the well-known Katharine Armstrong.

“Well, I have a story for you, that I believe you will want.”

“Okayyyyy . . . What is the story about?”

“Well, we had a terrible accident here at the ranch last night. The vice-president and some of us were hunting quail, and he shot one of the other hunters.”

“Who shot one of the other hunters?”

“The vice-president. He wasn’t killed or anything; in fact he’s there in the hospital in Corpus. It was about 5:30, and Harry – Harry Whittington, the lawyer from Austin – do you know him?”

“No, I don’t believe so . . . “

“Well, Jaime has interviewed him many times. So Harry had dropped a couple of quail – it was a double! And . . . “

“A double? Sorry, I’m not a hunter.” Garcia is starting to do other stuff - sorting through press releases, etc. - as she talks. She also makes a note to herself - she is the Caller's health reporter - about telephones and loneliness.

“Well, a double is when you drop two birds with two shots. So when Harry came back up, the vice president didn’t see him. A bird flushed to his right, and the vice president pivoted and fired.”

“What do you mean, the vice president . . .”

“Well, the vice president. Of the United States.”

“You are talking about the vice president of the United States? Dick Cheney? Shot someone?”

“Yes. I’m sorry; I should have said – “

“Could you hold on for a minute, please?”

Garcia has already started scrolling the Associated Press, and now is looking at CNN. Nothing. She glances at the wall clock: 11:10 a.m., Sunday.

“When did you say this happened?”

“About 5:30 last night.”

“And it was Dick Cheney, the vice president of the United States?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Would you please tell Angela we both have better things to do?”

Angela is the education writer at the McAllen Monitor, Kathryn’s former roommate at UT Austin, and a real imp who three months ago had a friend call Kathryn at the Caller and say he was from the Coast Guard and a tsunami was bearing down on Corpus.

But of course it wasn’t Angela, it really was Dick Cheney, and the story Kathryn Garcia is retelling 50 years from now to old green-with-envy newsmen will forever be better than this one.

Posted by Michael Grant at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 16, 2006

How the MSM really works

Any analysis or critique of the media must begin with the following reality:

The media did not invent or create the definitions and values of news.

People created those definitions and values, over tens, or hundreds, of thousands of years. With the rise of communications technology, beginning with alphabets and paper roughly 3,500 years ago, the media simply took those values and turned them into a business that brought news to people who otherwise could not obtain it for themselves.

News is defined as something that changes, or threatens to change, things. From ancient humans to present events, humans react to such changes with no prompting by the media at all. Every day, all over the planet, humans encounter change – a volcanic eruption (change), a rumbling volcano (threat to change), a crash of cars or trains or planes, a fire breaking out in a house or building, an act of heroism, a kidnapping, a good deed – and, instantly recognizing it as news, run to the nearest telephone and call the newspaper.

Those human recognitions and reactions to changes in things – and also a threat of changes to things – were going on thousands of years before the first newspaper was ever published. In time they became categorized into news types, or values. There was conflict, progress, disaster, consequence, prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest, novelty, sex, and sensational.

These are exactly the same values which humans recognize and react to today, whether they are experienced first-hand or received in a media report. Ancient humans also conceived the famous 5 W’s: Who, What, When, Where, Why. As they experienced and reacted to the world around them, they learned that someone – the Who – was involved, and that something happened – the What – and it happened just now – the When – and right here – the Where. Those details were generally apparent, even to the ancients. More mysterious, many times, was the Why. Human curiosity made them wonder, when some event happened, why it happened. Remember the famous scene in “2001, A Space Odyssey,” when the ape-men make the connection between bone and weapon.

All modern humans, including journalists, walk around with these values and the 5 W’s on board. The non-journalists react to them in the ages-old ways; the journalists learn to use them as tools. They are granted that proxy by the non-journalists, to use in gathering news for the masses. It is vital to understand that, in an age when interest groups left and right have learned to defend themselves by finding fault with the media.

The Cheney shooting incident in Texas provides a good example.

Imagine people experiencing that event first-hand, millions of people in galleries watching the action below, as Dick Cheney and company flush quail. The millions are there, of course, because Cheney is there. He is famous (the “prominence” value). If it were half a dozen ordinary people, no one would care.

Now the star, Cheney, raises, aims, fires. He hits a fellow hunter 30 yards away. All in the same instant, the galleries witness 1) something changed, 2) four of the five W’s, and 3) eight of the 12 news values. Immediately they react, to the news story breaking in front of them. They gasp or shout. They watch Cheney run to the victim and as he kneels they feel a threat of more change: is he alive? Dead? Once they know he is alive, they wonder: will he die later?

No one can say. For now, at least, he is alive. But there is one more W: Why? Why did this happen? Any one of the hunters, knowing the codes and rules of bird shooting, could give the answer, but the galleries don’t want it from them. They want it from the one they came to see, the star, who now has shot someone. What is going through the mind of the Vice President of the United States, an experienced hunter, at that moment?

If he turns to address the galleries, that is the end of the story. There will be stories with follow-up information, that the people, filing out of the galleries, will want to know, concerning the victim’s condition, etc., but it will all be information about that story.

Since the millions can’t come to the news, the news must go to the millions. If it had – had Cheney addressed the millions via the media on Saturday night and Sunday morning – it would have been the end of a small human interest and prominence story, except for some follow-up information. But he chose not to do that.

At the instant of that decision, a second story was born, a story many times bigger than the first story. The media did not decide it was a bigger story. The news definitions, values and W’s – all the province of the people – whirled and clicked, at the instant of decision, into new and stronger positions, particularly in the areas of conflict, prominence, What and Why. People wanted to know why the vice president let the second story happen, and what that decision might have had to do with the details of the first story. As always, it became the media's job to provide the public with that information.

Then the new Why strengthened the What: what really happened, to make him duck the first story? Thus into conflict crept doubt, one of the most powerful and insidious forms of conflict. It gave his enemies ammunition, his friends discomfort, and the entertainers jokes. Then came claims of arrogance, drunkenness, swift-boating and decaying partisan support, all of them swelling the “threat” definition of news to front-page strength.

The second story, with all that mass, will be much harder to stop than the first story. But stopping it starts at the same place as stopping the first story. The star had to talk to the people. He had to talk to them through the media, which brings us back to the beginning: the reality is, the media did not invent or create any of the definitions and values that made these stories stories.

As always, the interest groups left and right have their own opinions, which they are obligated to publish (see David Brooks’ brilliant essay in the Thursday, Feb. 16, New York Times). Among these is to blame the mainstream media (the “MSM,” the blogsters call it) for various excesses, including creating the story itself. The media has many excesses with which it must deal, but creating the story isn’t one of them, and it is vital that people reject the blogsters’ notions that it is. It is vital that people (including Dick Cheney, apparently) learn how the mainstream news media works, who it works for, and why.

Posted by Michael Grant at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 15, 2006

What to do with Cheney

The buzz in Washington today, according to The Washington Post, has ranking White House officials pressing Dick Cheney to go public and acknowledge, even apologize, for so royally screwing up the way he handled the Texas shooting accident last weekend.

Assuming President Bush has any authority over Mr. Cheney, there is only one appropriate action the president can take: make the son of a bitch go on Oprah.

Posted by Michael Grant at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 14, 2006

The gang can't shoot straight

One thing we do know about the Cheney shooting incident on Texas ranchland last weekend: Dick Cheney did the wrong thing.

The right thing would have been to act like the Vice President of the United States of America and report the incident immediately to the White House press office, then let them distribute the news and report subsequent events, such as condition reports on the victim Whittington and quotes from the Armstrong family and other authorities involved.

And that’s all we need to know. In the hours between the incident and the release of the story by the White House, any number of thoughts, ideas or strategies about handling the situation may have gone through Mr. Cheney’s head. But none of that matters, at least to me, because none of that thinking included me.

And so I feel shut out. Again. Damn it, I want to cheer my leaders. I want them to be heroes. Instead they do the wrong thing, every time it seems, then turn their backs on me and fly away.

This shooting thing reminds me of President Bush, that first Wednesday in September, flying above the Gulf Coast in Air Force One. By then, three days late, even he was aware that this hurricane was “the big one,” and that the devastation below was already becoming a landmark in American history.

It was a moment in time that screamed for leadership, must have screamed at the president: “Here is a golden opportunity for leadership! Seize it!” But he did not hear. He flew on to Washington and left the golden opportunity – for him, and for all of us in the country – behind. If he had commanded the pilot, “Get this thing on the ground at Baton Rouge,” we would be living in a different country today.

Last Saturday, it was Dick Cheney, pulling the trigger on a bird, a human being, and an opportunity to connect with his country. Of the three, he only hit one. He ran to his wounded hunting companion and, kneeling over him, was looking the right thing right in the eyes. Did it occur to him? I have no way of knowing, but I am inclined to doubt it. He didn’t hear the right thing screaming at him, “Seize it!’ any more than President Bush could hear opportunity screaming on Air Force One.

If he had, he would have seen to it that his injured friend had proper attention, then gotten on his cellphone, right there in the field. Did he call the president? I am inclined to think so. Did he call Karl Rove? I am very inclined to think so. Did he call the White House press office? No, and that is the call that matters. From him – the Vice President of the United States of America, and not some ranch owner – the country would have received the straight word about what happened, how it happened, and a quote or two from Cheney expressing regret.

If the White House had gotten that story onto the Sunday evening news and into Monday morning’s paper, we would be living in a different – well, slightly different, anyway – world today. That’s the same thing I said after the president’s neglect of Katrina leadership. But the world remains the same: my world, and their world. Are they even aware of the potential of such a thing as our world?

I am not inclined to think so. Cheney had a golden opportunity to share with me a moment of genuine camaraderie. Instead he chose to fly away, which is another slap in the face for people like me, and that is the real story here. Will anybody in this administration ever recognize the opportunity to do the right thing? Can’t anybody here shoot straight?

Posted by Michael Grant at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 13, 2006

Mutagens and me

Since I got the news about mutagens, I have read diet and health stories the same way I read the sports news.

It was sometime in the 1980s that the health research community reported that fried meats could cause cancer, because of “mutagens” created when the raw meat hit the hot skillet.

By the 1980s, I had eaten enough fried meats to acquire a load of mutagens that would kill me several times over, if not the population of my hometown. So I stopped worrying about health news and its regular findings about things that might be killing me. It was curiously liberating, and also provided a health benefit. There were so many health news reports about carcinogens that I had been worrying myself to death. I believed it highly possible that worrying oneself to death might be, in fact, carcinogenic, which was something altogether different to worry about.

So I had been worrying myself to death about worrying myself to death about all the things that might be killing me. No more. Mutagens changed my outlook, and I went happily forward with death perched on my shoulder, waiting for its next bite of porkchop.

It has been more than 20 years now that I have been free of health news carcinogens. Last week I read the news that the health research community now believes that a low-fat diet probably does nothing to prevent heart disease or cancer. I read the anguished quotes from citizens who had jumped on that bandwagon a decade ago and have nothing to show for it but tongues that feel and taste like cardboard and nightmare dreams about blue milk on non-fat granola.

“Wait til next year,” I said, taking another bite out of a perfectly grilled kielbasa and cheddar sandwich on sourdough. The health news providers now say it is not low fat, but the kind of fat, that will head off heart disease and cancer. It reminds me of the health news about tomatoes. Regular intakes of canned tomatoes, especially the Italian, Roma, kind, were shown to help prevent prostate cancer in men. The news arrived about a year after my surgery to remove prostate cancer. Reading it, I scratched my scar and tried to calculate how many boxcar loads of canned tomatoes I had consumed in my lifetime, especially the Italian, Roma, kind.

Roma tomato news, and low-fat news, and carbohydrate news, are no different than baseball news from spring training camps. “This is our year,” all that news says. By October, the news has become, “Wait til next year.” It has to be hard on that percentage of the population, the men and women, who are determined to wake up in perfect health on the day they die. On that day, the health news people will publish evidence that worrying yourself to death about all the things that will help you live forever is, in fact, carcinogenic.

Posted by Michael Grant at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Not sunrise, but moonrise

Twice a year, in February and October, the full moon rises and the sun sets at the approximate same time. It happened last night. Both are beautiful, but you can't watch both. You have to choose. It is the only absolute proof of what my grandmother used to say: "Boy, you can't have everything."

Posted by Michael Grant at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 09, 2006

Sex wasted on the young

In many ways, sex is wasted on the young, and not only the young, but the young and dim-witted.

Well, at least they appear dim-witted. One Super Bowl commercial featured a big-haired sexy waitress, a geek teenager, and a pizza whose cheese-filled ends you could pull off and pop directly into your mouth. Yes, it was a totally stupid concept, and that is central to the issue here. Most television commercials are aimed at males 18-34 years old, and whether they employ sex or not, they leave the impression that the males and females in the commercials are barely smart enough to hear thunder and see lightning. I refer you to the kid for whom ordering take-out is just too much, so he consults his “Dashboard Jack” who says, “Tacos.” “How many?” the kid says. “Thirty,” says Dashboard Jack.

We might grieve for humanity until we remember the kid is an actor, and a good enough actor to land a spot in a national Jack-in-the-Box commercial. I would guess he actually has pretty good intellectual chops, a decent incentive level, and could play Hamlet if you asked him to.

He might also feel a twinge of conscience at partaking in a pitch that talks down to a broad demographic in order to connect with the small percentage of legitimate dimwits who are always a feature of any demographic group. But most of those kids are smart. They understand that (most) dimwit television commercials are satire; satire done with a paint roller, perhaps, but satire nonetheless.

And they like sex. Of the roughly 250 million Americans over age 15, probably 90 percent like sex, and 50 percent will admit it. Those figures are way above the maximums the media knows it needs to use sex to sell products. In television, for example, if a show gets a Nielsen rating of 10, and 3 percent of that audience responds to a commercial (actually buys the product), then everyone gets rich. Television is truly a vivid demonstration of the power of small numbers.

In the sex-fueled commercial, the targets still look moronic and the sex objects are portrayed as bimbos (female) or hunks (male). The sex objects, like any demographic group, will include its small percentage of true nitwits (Paris Hilton), but most of them, interviewed in person, may be above-ordinary in intellect and incentives. Same for the targets. They are, after all, all trained professionals.

But what about the total viewing audience? Of an audience of 20 million (the equivalent of a prime time Nielsen rating of 10) seeing the commercial, perhaps 5 percent (1 million viewers) are certifiable nitwits. That means television, talking down to reach the nitwits, has bypassed the interests of 19 million people. Is that good business? Well, yes, so long as the commercial achieves a 3 percent response.

But as an intelligent, mature man who likes sex, I cry out to the moguls: you can use sex to sell things to ME. All that sex, wasted on the YOUNG. Media stories this week, both print and television, have told about the “Valet Girls” now working outside trendy establishments in Los Angeles. Not young, athletic men in vests, but attractive young women in little black dresses, will park your car. There is cultural-based debate about the future of the idea. A Los Angeles columnist, Joel Stein, said maybe in L.A., but not in the middle of the country, where people “aren’t interested in beautiful women”. Excuse me, as a middle-of-the-country native, if I ask Joel Stein what planet he is from. My wife, additionally, who is gorgeous (and sexy) (and smart) lived for a decade in the middle of the country and received two or three proposals of marriage daily.

In the stories, the Valet Girls, all twenty-somethings, come off as bimbos, but that is only the usual commercial stereotyping. We don’t know anything about them, until we talk to them. And, again, the effort is wasted on the young. Certainly, I would think it interesting to watch long legs in a black skirt open my car door, but I would ask her the same question I ask every beautiful young twenty-something that I encounter in the trades: “Are you still in school?” Eighty percent of them are. Some of them have been my students. Another 10 percent have graduated but are doing this trick while they look for a job commensurate with their degrees.

I want an older woman. In my mind’s eye, I am assembling an outline of an hour-long television program that would be impractical now (expense per viewer) but will become possible in the looming Web-based world, where expense per viewer may be only 10 percent of what it is now. The program would provide depth to current events, the same way MSNBC’s “Countdown” follows up the “Evening News,” and it would be informed and intellectual, but looser and more collegial than the Lehrer product. And it would have sex. I say sex, but what I really mean is sensuality, which lets the players keep the game going as long as they want to.

Such programs already employ sex to attract males. Pay attention to the beautiful women, both hosts and guests, on network and cable news, and keep a count of the leg shots on the “Today” show alone. Does Katie Couric really have more shoes than Imelda Marcos? But I’m not talking about Katie Couric or Elizabeth Vargas (ho hum) or (eek!) Rita Cosby. I want Susan Sarandon in a gray business suit, white blouse, red cloud of hair, hem two inches above the knee, black nylons and black business pumps, casually engaging guests and correspondents in the events of the day. I guarantee she could sell me a Carl’s Jr. Breakfast Burger.

Posted by Michael Grant at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 07, 2006

Sun-drenched Southern California

You may have noticed that the sunrise vistas from the first of the year all have the sun in them. No two alike, all of them pretty, and nice inspiration at the start of the day, but frankly we are looking forward to the morning when rain is slicing down sideways and cooling and nurturing our very parched Southern California landscape.

Posted by Michael Grant at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 06, 2006

Super Sunday

Pretty good Super Bowl.

Chili dogs for lunch. Then “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” was on. I half-watched it and finished the rest of The New York Times. Next up was “Father of the Bride,” but I fell asleep for a half-hour. When I woke up, it was three and I switched to the game.

Aaron Neville and Aretha Franklin did a great version of the National Anthem. Usually the Anthem resists all the gimmicky arrangements, but this one flew.

The takeoff on Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” was truly inspired and one of the most original (original? football? pre-game show?) two minutes I have ever seen on television. It may have had the Budweiser demographic scratching their heads, which made it better.

The game started. My prediction was Pittsburgh 31, Seattle 30. But they played the first quarter like teams asked to play championship football in the first week of February after two weeks off. I hoped it would get better.

I had the French doors, which face west, open to the weather. There was a breeze, and a background overcast, and then a cool fog settled in. I pulled on a sweatshirt and snuggled in with a bowl of popcorn, in football weather in my living room, and watched the second quarter. (Roethlisberger definitely scored.)

At the half I went to check email and when I came back the Stones were just starting it up. I hoped the third quarter wasn’t going to look like two football teams asked to play championship football in February after two weeks off and a 45-minute halftime. But then I didn’t care, because the Stones were really good. When I was at Stanford in the 1960s, the band went out on strike (don’t ask), leaving the Saturday game without a halftime performance. Somebody arranged for Vince Guaraldi (“Cast Your Fate to the Wind”) to give an on-the-field halftime concert. It was the first halftime I didn’t want to end. Yesterday’s was the second.

I missed most of the second half. Karen (she had been watching Oprah DVDs in the back) and I went outside for a little glider time that stretched into an hour. When we came back, two minutes were left and Pittsburgh was leading, 21-10. The game ended, there was a quick post-game show, and ABC, as if it couldn’t wait for the game to end, cut to “Grey’s Anatomy,” which it had been teasing every 90 seconds since the kickoff. I hope the “Code Black” thing worked out. We were having dinner and watching “She Done Him Wrong,” with Mae West and an adolescent Cary Grant. Then we went to bed. Pretty good Super Bowl.

Posted by Michael Grant at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 05, 2006

Sunrise of the day

Super Bowl prediction: Pittsburgh 31, Seattle 30

Posted by Michael Grant at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 02, 2006

Rock and roll quiz answers

If you were looking in Voice of San Diego this morning for the answers to last week’s rock and roll quiz, they aren’t there for some reason.

So you can read them here. I didn’t hear it, but I understand the morning crew at KGB went through the quiz one morning last week. I hope it aroused interest among the younger demographic, whose readership the Voice seeks. You young people, show it to your folks. They will have fun with it. And tell them to read the Voice.

As he was motoratin’ over the hill, who did he see? He saw Maybelline in a Coupe de Ville.

What is it that Long Tall Sally’s got? Everything that Uncle John need, oh, baby.

How you call your lover boy? Oh, Lover Boy. And if he doesn’t answer? Oh, Lover Boy. And if he still doesn’t answer? C’mere, Lover Boy!

What’ll be the day? That’ll be the day.

What ain’t there no cure for? The summertime blues.

How many candles make a lovely sight? Sixteen candles.

Ain’t what a shame? You broke my heart when you said let’s part.

What does she do when she does the Ooby Dooby? She wiggles to the left, she wiggles to the right, she does the Ooby Dooby with all of her might.

Who’s sorry now? Whose heart is aching for breaking each vow? He’s sorry now. Her heart is aching. She’s glad that he’s sorry now.

Who calls the English teacher Daddio? Charlie Brown.

Why did Little Susie fall asleep? The movie wasn’t so hot. It didn’t have much of a plot.

How black were the eyes of Felina? Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina

You know he can be found where? Sittin’ home all alone.

Who told Tchaikovsky the news? Beethoven.

They furnished off an apartment with a two-room Roebuck sale. With what did they cram the coolerator? TV dinners and ginger ale.

What can you do in lieu of stepping on my blue suede shoes? You can burn my house, steal my car, drink my liquor from an old fruit jar.

What can stop the Duke of Earl? Nothing can stop the Duke of Earl.

Well, did he ever return? No, he never returned, and his fate is still unlearned.

If you want to know if he loves you so, is it in his eyes? No, it’s in his kiss.

When do your heartaches begin? When you find your sweetheart in the arms of a friend.

Well bless my soul, what’s wrong with me? I’m itchin’ like a cat on a fuzzy tree. I’m in love. I’m all shook up.

Why do I walk the line? Because you’re mine.

What did he really want to send her? An orchid of some kind. But what could he actually send her, with all that he had in his jeans at the time? A rose and a Baby Ruth.

You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

Where do fools rush in? Where angels fear to tread.

Whose barn? What barn? His barn. Jerry Lee Lewis’s barn.

What do chantilly lace and a pretty face do? Make the world go round.

Who is dancing to the Jailhouse Rock? Everybody in the whole cellblock

He never ever learned to read and write so well, but how does he play the guitar? Just like ringing a bell.

Oh, please, Diana, stay where? Stay by me, Diana.

Why is a party doll all he wants? To be with him when he’s feeling wild. To be ever-loving true and fair, to run her fingers through his hair.

Who used to play around with hearts that hastened to his call? Poor Little Fool.

Gotta be what kind of music, if you want to dance with me? Rock and roll music.

Posted by Michael Grant at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

February 01, 2006

Two States of the Union

Your ordinary average person can look pretty good at the podium when he has edited his speech 24 times and had three days to practice it in his own private theater before an audience of coaches and background experts.

That’s how President Bush looked on Tuesday night. Pretty good. He stumbled slightly after the Democratic side of the aisle stood and cheered when he said, “Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security.” It did not appear to be a response he (or his speechwriters or advisors) foresaw. When the opposition cheering stopped, he appeared to lose composure. His voice lost its measured, even modulation, and he stumbled over a word in his next sentence. He wagged his finger (in anger?) at the Democratic side.

Then he called for a bipartisan Congressional committee to study Social Security solutions, a suggestion that all must applaude, and did. He settled down. For the rest of the night, he looked pretty good. Give the president a script, a couple of days to rehearse, and any response other than hostile, and he is going to look pretty good.

But events in this world are not scripted, or re-written 24 times, or available for two-day rehearsals. President Bush does not appear equipped to deal with that. His tortured responses even to impromptu questions from citizens (“Sir, have you seen ‘Brokeback Mountain?”) or media are painful to see. His responses to actual breaking events can be embarrassing. Two images stand out. He was sitting on a stool in a classroom, talking to schoolchildren, when an advisor appeared and whispered in his ear news about the planes hitting the WTC towers. He was obviously stunned, which was natural. But it was not natural, as the President of the United States, to let some minutes pass before he quit the stool. It suggested a frozen man, needing someone to tell him what to do.

The second image is of the president in Air Force One, looking out the window at the Katrina devastation, whose pitiful aftermath in New Orleans was already becoming known. The flyover done, he flew on to Washington. This was an image of a president being presented a once-in-a-lifetime leadership opportunity. If he had responded to it, had radioed the pilot: “Get this thing on the ground at Baton Rouge as fast as you can,” we would be living in a different country today. But he didn’t. He flew on. He came back a couple of days later, a short visit that will be long remembered specifically for eight words: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

It set up an aftermath in which his political opponents savaged him and his administration for their woeful response to a true national disaster. Worse, his political base became rattled by the Brownie quote and what it said about the president in whose trust they had placed their entire agenda. Then he nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and his constituency was pushed into open rebellion.

All of these events in real time suggested the performance of a below-average person. Since the world is more a series of real-time events, than a succession of State of the Union speeches, the president’s performance Tuesday night left an impression of what it takes to make an average, or below-average president look pretty good. The rest of the time: don’t expect too much. Tuesday night, of his “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” the president said: “If there are people inside our country who are talking with Al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.” No way, based on performances, could the real-time president accomplish that. He may as well go ahead and get the warrants. It will take two days, and it will make him look pretty good.

Posted by Michael Grant at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Michael Grant

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