More KPCS Rambling

Here I go critiquing The Kevin Pollak Chat Show again. This must be a testament to just how good the show is even this early on because I keep finding myself wanting to write about it. Much like other shows I've enjoyed over the years like Lost, Heroes, X-Files, and Star Trek. It's also more fun to dissect something that can withstand scrutiny, than something that's far too easy to insult. So again, what follows is not meant to be a put down. Quite the contrary.

Even so, I keep watching this thing and wishing I could squirt Kevin Pollak with a spray bottle, like people do when they're trying to train cats not to climb on the drapes. This never works by the way. The cat will do what it damn pleases after the spray bottle carrier leaves the room. Likewise, Kevin Pollak will do things as he damn well pleases but I'd get satisfaction in spraying him anyway.

Why would I want to spray him? Well firstly, he calls the show Kevin Pollak's Chat Show. Alright. That's fine. It's his show. He's the host. His name should be on the bill. Alright.

Secondly, he repeatedly says this is NOT his show, even though he's on it. This is his audience's show, and he goes on and on, every week, at length, citing examples of ways he's going out of his way, out of the kindness of his heart, to make KEVIN POLLAK'S chat show, your show.

Thirdly, he then monopolizes the interviews, going to the response from viewers as an afterthought towards the end of the hour, or sometimes only after having exhausted everything he personally wanted to ask his guest.

Fourthly, when he asks his guests questions, he often finds a way to use this question as an opportunity to take his own life experience as an example, so that he gets to answer his own question, posed to his interviewee, as if he were also simultaneously interviewing himself, and asking himself all the questions he wished everyone from Johnny Carson to Carson Daly would ask him.

Did you just get a headache reading all that? Cuz I just got a headache typing it all out. What a mind fuck this show is. Pollak's a talented guy! He's good at what he does and he's also good at this new schtick too, but let's face it, he's no Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose doesn't answer his own questions. He sets his ego aside before the cameras roll and focuses on his guest. I'm not saying Pollak should BE Rose. Far from it. In fact I can tell as I've mentioned before that Pollak seems to be picking and choosing from past interview shows and using what he's seen work before, borrowing most prominently from Charlie Rose cuz let's face it, the man's the best in the history of the business when it comes to interviewing.

Let me try to pull up an example of what I mean. What follows is an exchange from Kevin Pollak's interview with Josh Malina from Sports Night and West Wing and all kindsa great shit.

Josh Malina: I often say when Allison Janney and I worked together? That's five Emmy awards right there.

Kevin Pollak: There ya go.

Josh Malina: In fairness, all of them hers!

Kevin Pollak: [laughs]

Josh Malina: But between us! Five Emmys! ..incredibly great actors, and uh incredibly nice workplace..

Kevin Pollak: but also to step up to the plate in a situation.. uhm, where i mean, I - I felt like, which I've joked about many times in my act, "Where's Waldo" in the cast of A Few Good Men cuz I'm surrounded by deep ball hitters. I was the only one in the lead cast that the audience was thinking who's this guy? Everyone else - ridiculously famous.

Josh Malina: That's true.

Kevin Pollak: [surprisingly does not do a double take here] And I imagine stepping into a show like [WEST WING] that's been a huuge monstrous hit for two years ..is similar - and the next experience I had which was shocking was how everyone treated me like an equal - an ABSOLUTE equal. There's no pecking order ..and I don't know if that's what your experience was-

Josh Malina: Absolutely was.

Kevin Pollak: Was?

Josh Malina: Yeah. The first read through? Which already the fact that they did read throughs was like uh, was just such a- cuz things are so busy half the time that there was no time for a read through-

Kevin Pollak: Right.

Josh Malina: -But they really took the time to read it and let Aaron hear it and it was like a big party atmosphere and John Spenser may he rest in peace came up to me and said "Oh I loved your work on Sports Night" and I thought THAT'S a classy guy!

Kevin Pollak: Yeah yeah yeah...

Now don't get me wrong. Pollak is very interested in his guests, but he's also very interested in himself. Often in a way that seems rather humble and self-effacing but I can't tell if he's just doing that to hide narcisism or if he seriously needs someone to inflate his ego now and then cuz he honestly doesn't realize how much he kicks ass. He talks as if by the time A Few Good Men happened he was nobody. He'd already been in L.A. Story, Willow, and he was very well known for his standup routine. Kevin Pollak had been a name long before Usual Suspects. He was already on the map. Maybe he wasn't Jack Nicholson but come on.. Even Jack Nicholson isn't really Jack Nicholson.

So Pollak really needs to realize he already rocks, and to quit trying to prove it to himself. Then he'd be better suited to sit there, as someone who rocks, and show the world that the person he is interviewing really rocks too, and here's why. What I'm hoping is that as the series progresses and Pollak gets the question answering out of his system and grows bored of tooting his own horn, that he settles into this new role. He does obviously enjoy illuminating the people that appear before him, otherwise he couldn't sit still that long. It should really be more about a prince holding court than about a prince pretenting to be a pauper pretending to be a prince.

We know you're a prince. Quit trying to be pauper for a day. You're not fooling anybody.

Of course, I say all this, and if he actually took any of this seriously, then he'd get a big head and be entirely obnoxious on camera asking guests to kiss his ring and aren't they so thrilled to be in his presence because he knows he is so awesome?

...maybe it's best to leave well enough alone.

David Carradine Found Hanged in Bangkok Hotel Room

[Added June 6th: Okay let's just forget this entire article. You can read it if you want, but nobody knows what the fuck happened to Carradine and really we shouldn't give a shit. He lived a great life, gave the world some memorable moments on the little and big screen, was loved by family, friends, complete strangers, probably did his share of bad shit but who gives a crap? How he died will no doubt become as much a mystery to people as are parts of his life. I'm ashamed and embarrassed that I looked at his death and my first knee-jerk reaction was to think of myself - but I have said this before and will no doubt say it again - the mourning process is not for the dead. It's for the living. I find it a very irrational act, and until my father passed away about a decade ago now, making death entirely and painfully real to me, I used to find other people mourning to be sometimes laughable and other times disgusting. There are some people on this planet who are offended when you use profanity or appear in public naked. They react with disdain and dismay and try to look away or they make a scene about how horrible that is and that one should be more respectful of others and not be so impolite. That's how I used to feel in regards to people mourning. They're wearing their emotions out like they just regurgitated their intestines and put them on display. Really I used to find it that revolting and could only laugh at the absurdity. Then my father passed away, and I understood why we have to express those emotions and put them on display and share them with others who feel as bad as we do that we'll never know that person in our lives anymore. It's a wholly selfish act and I still find something offensive about it, but just as with all things that offend somebody, they're a part of human nature and we should not shirk from it. So here I leave myself and my pathetic selfish process of mourning for a complete stranger here for anyone who dares to see. Here I also hope to leave it behind and move on to something less maudlin and morbid. I only hope I can.]

[Added June 5th: What follows is a bunch of pretentious, self-centered shit. Tread lightly be you afeared of insensitivity in the face of tragedy. I'd remove it if it weren't for the fact that after a night of sleep, glancing over what I'd wrote, I find it endlessly funny to laugh at myself, at my own expense. Besides someone recently accused me of censoring my YouTube videos and I'm like "what? I don't edit my YouTube videos enough." Really. They suck. So anyway, don't take the following remotely seriously, cuz I don't. In fact, stop taking any of my shit seriously, cuz I don't. Even when I do, I don't really. I'm a toon. Really.

Also as a disclaimer, I wrote the following before the prevailing theory became that Carradine accidently killed himself masterbating while experiencing auto-erotic asphyxiation. Which I must admit pisses me off even more. Did he never hear of having a spotter? You don't do it by yourself inside a closet that's fucking stupid. You have someone there who can tell when you start turning blue. I mean really. Don't they teach these things in school? Oh that's right they don't. Why? Because puritannical fundamentalist conservatives would rather censor the proliferation of information so people kill themselves not knowing how to do it, as opposed to making sure everyone is properly educated on how to safely commit sinful acts that make the baby Jesus cry.]

...

I should stop there. Three little dots. There really aren't words. This is stupid.

...

I got a lot of shit to say but I - I should really not.

...

I mean, I don't know the man.

...

I should really stop right here.

...

I call myself a survivor. I never actually tied the cord around my neck. I never actually stuck the barrel of the gun in my mouth. I never actually put the razor to my wrist, but I did learn that you cut long ways down the arm cuz otherwise the doctor is gonna laugh at you and I knew that when I was gonna do it, I wanted it to be clean. I wanted there to be no turning back. I wanted it to be painless and fast and final. I didn't wanna wake up in a hospital room twelve hours later only to find after having failed everything else in my life that I couldn't even fucking DIE right.

...

I was seventeen.

...

It was over a girl. Fucking stupid, right?

...

No. What woulda been stupid was if I'd a done it.

...

And believe me. That wasn't the last time I considered it. However, I came to a point where I realized that was cheating. It was a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and how dare I look at the entirety of the universe that gave me life and tell it I'd had enough. That I wasn't thankful. That I didn't have to clean the plate placed before me on the table of Life.

...

So suicide is not an option for me any longer. I closed that door, padlocked it, put a chair up against the knob and surrounded it with barbed wire fences and attack dogs and then I built a brick wall around the building inside which that door stood. Then I demolished the city block where that building stood. Then I quarantined that city, seceeded that state from the union and nuked that country. Cuz when you kill yourself, you are a failure. Everything else up until your death is success, even what you perceive to be failure. Cuz you learn something from those failures. Usually you learn not to do it that way again. However, you learn nothing from killing yourself. You're just dead.

...

Carradine? CAINE? BILL!?

...

How? Surely, that man was smarter than me. Surely he understood better than me what the universe has to offer and how rare and precious this gift of life is and you should take what's given you and even if you're just existing even if you're just watching cars rust you're doing more than feeding worms.

...

Maybe it was an accident.

...

Maybe he was in a lot of pain.

...

Maybe there's tens of millions of variables I have no capacity to fathom. Maybe his death was completely sound and logical and he gets a free pass, because of who he is.

...

I really shoulda never started this.

...

It wasn't like the man couldn't get work. I have heard horror stories about famous people in their prime who grew old, penniless, friendless, and forgotten in some old folks home. Carradine was not wasting away his senior citizenship pining for the fjords. The man was filming on location when it happened. Bangkok, Thailand! He was still courted by producers and casting directors and stars and he could still pick and choose his projects. Seventy-two years young, as they say. Maybe there are some lives that are better than the one he lived, but out of around seven billion people living today, I'd be hard pressed to count those living better off than him on my fingers and toes.

...

But then it's all subjective. I mean I doubt Oprah Winfrey could just jet to Bangkok Thailand if she wants because as rich as she is, she's still got contractual obligations. She's kinda rooted to her spot, so long as she's producing her show and running her company. Carradine, however, was a free spirit. Nothing really tied him down if he didn't want it tying him down. If she thinks about it, I bet Oprah Winfrey would find herself easily admiring David Carradine's life. It's all subjective.

...

I really should not hit the Publish Post button. I really should just shut the fuck up and let the man die in peace. Maybe he did have his own obligations tying him down. Shit I couldn't possibly know. Shit that would make me scream and curl up in a fetal position if it were in my life. Maybe his demons were ten thousand times worse than mine, which would be easy to do cuz my demons are all tiny.

...

I mean I can't walk a mile in that man's shoes. I can't know what happened or how or why. I can't judge. I can't ...damn!

...

If he DID.

...

IF he did.

...

If HE did...

...

I was born into a world in which we were going to the Moon. Now, forty years later, I'm living in a world in which a man like that could come to the conclusion that suicide is a choice.

...

David Carradine looked at the entirety of this universe and stared it straight in the face, after over seventy years of success and failure and love and loss and ups and downs and ins and outs and pains and gains and he looked at what the entirety of the universe had served him on his plate and he ate full well of that provided, but then with a few bites still left on his plate, he pushed the plate away from him, stood from the table, and told the universe he was full.

...

Is this what I'm to take from this? That there's a point when you get to say you're done? Seventy-two years is a long time. Maybe he was right to call it quits? You don't have to clean your plate, is that the lesson he's leaving behind? Well hell, why don't we all just put on palm flower lifeclocks and die when we're thirty?

...

Maybe David Carradine is right. Maybe we should all get to choose when and how we die.

...

Why live to portray Bill? Wasn't Caine enough? Why not quit forty years ago if life has no value? Why didn't he stop before his hair went grey? Or before walking started getting a little tougher than it used to be? Why didn't he stop living the first time he realized he couldn't do stunt work the way he used to? Why not quit when he realized things didn't taste as good as they once did? Why not give up at the first sign of inconvenience?

...

Maybe he had recieved news from a doctor or other source that he had cancer or AIDS or otherwise only had a few months to live and they weren't going to be pleasant months from his prediction, and he decided to just end it now while he still had the capability in himself physically to opt to do it himself. While he still had the faculties about him to take fate into his own hands.

...

How did he know there wasn't another wonderful experience just around the corner? Why stop where he did? What difference does it make? How could a man with Carradine's life look at what was immediately before him and go, "It don't get better than this. I better stop now."

...

I used to think Kevorkian had the right idea. If you are facing a life debilitating disease that doesn't kill you, but just makes you wish you were dead, you should have the right to decide how and when you die. I thought I still think that.

...

This though. This came out of left field for me. I don't know if I believe that anymore. I don't know if I ever really believed it. Analytically it makes sense. Why suffer just to cling to a little more life? Just to maybe get to see another sunset? But in pain?

...

I shouldn't have even started. I don't know what the fuck I'm sayin'. I don't know the guy. I got no place - FUCK! CARRADINE! FUCKING CARRADINE!?? HIM!?? OF ALL PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET? DAVID CARRADINE KILLS HIMSELF? FUCK!

...

I don't even know him. It's not like he's the first celebrity to die. It's not like he's the first man to kill himself. It's not like I have any leg to stand on in judging a man loved all over the planet for doing what he loved to do. Heck, I'm even superimposing my opinions in that last sentence. Maybe he didn't love what he did. Maybe he was indifferent to where life put him. I have no way of knowing.

...

But if Carradine can put two and two together and get five.

...

I just can't wrap my mind around this.

...

Fuck.

...

May whatever you believed in bless you and keep you, man.

...

The Larry King Game

Yes another entry about Kevin Pollak's Chat Show

What? Am I obsessing? Is this stalking? I never can tell. I'm trying to get through all of Kevin Pollak's Chat Show shows before he makes people pay to see them (which by the way would be very bad form KP but it's up to you how you learn that) (ed note: Adam Carolla makes a fucking point. The bastard. A dollar dime a download's not out of the question but if everything I accessed online started doing that I'd get nickeled and dimed off the 'net in a matter of weeks) and notice how I talk to Mr. Pollak in parentheses as if he'll ever read this webpage, oh I slay me. And the 'KP' as if we're old friends. Nice touch. (ed note: "This hour brought to you by Brand X" very good idea Pollak - back to 1950s radio but w/o the sponsors telling creative talent what to do) Anyway, Pollak's got a good thing going and needs people to drum up support about it and get the word out and this is my own personal very small way of doing that. All three of you that actually read this thing, if there's still three of you, go check out Kevin's show. Tell him Zach sent you. He'll be like, "hubbazawhubba?"

It's the summer. Lost won't be back until next year. Heroes won't be back until this fall, and I don't know if I'll be following it next season cuz damn it's jumped the shark a few times hasn't it? True Blood hasn't started yet. Dollhouse is coming back this fall but Miracle Laurie won't return my tweets cuz let's face it, I'm a little creepy. But not quite as creepy as Larry King, which is a segue I believe into today's ramble.

THE LARRY KING GAME

First off, thanks to Jamie Fox who (as Kevin tells it) basically invented this game for Kevin and he's running with it cuz it's crazy ass fun. As Kevin Pollak has said repeatedly on his show, Larry King the man is a walking fossil. It's only a matter of time before something in Larry King's brain short-circuits, and he says something on the air that his own shrink shouldn't ever know, and about which all his ex-wives are still in therapy. It's comin'. Meanwhile we can pass the time by sharing one another what we think it's gonna be like when Larry King finally goes senile on the air and refers to the guy behind the camera as his momma.

Here's the rules to The Larry King Game:

1. You must do a bad Larry King impression. It's no fair if you can actually do a good Larry King impression cuz it ruins it for the rest of us. Try to suck at it as hard as you can. That way we all can participate.
   
2. Reveal something about yourself as Larry King on the air that no one should really know because lets' face it he's 107.
3. Then go to the phones and it helps if the name of the city is funny.

Kevin Pollak has suggested alcohol to lubricate your wits prior to participating. What you wanna do is capture your gem of Larryness on video, put it on the Web (YouTube's probably your best bet) and then send the link to contact@kevinpollakschatshow.com don't send the video by email cuz you'll probably piss him off. Don't piss him off. If you do piss him off, don't tell him I sent you.

Now what follows are my notes. I was thinking of doing this. I haven't done it yet. My reasons/excuses include the following:

1. I can't find a pair of suspenders and even though I wanna do a bad Larry King impression, I can't even call my impression of Larry King good enough to classify as bad, so I need the suspenders so people will notice I'm doing Larry King and not the voice of my Troll puppet - cuz essentially it's the same voice. NOT MY FAULT. I drove around today looking for suspenders and stores don't carry them. I think Larry has his imported from the 19th century.
2. My video camera is a piece of shit. I bought it at a Fry's Electronics and I think it had been returned at least once before so it was on discount on top of on sale, and I can't afford to get something better. Kevin Pollak threatens to beat up his NASA crew whenever the videos they play get a little choppy on his show, so if I submitted something with my current set up, Pollak would drive to Dallas from Santa Monica for the sole reason of spitting on me and throwing his hat in my face.
3. I have a lot of material. I don't mean to say that as if I'm boasting. I'm not. I came up with a number of possible ideas for the Larry King game, but which combination of things I should do or say, I'm not all that clear about yet. I've written a lot of them. I can't possibly use them all, and can't decide which bit's the best one, or if any of them are funny. I have a sinking suspicion none of them are, which brings me to my next bit.

HERE'S THE BREAKDOWN...

What follows are bits and pieces that theoretically can be put together in any random order and you'll have yourself an ideal above satisfactory passing abysmal script with which to accomplish The Larry King Game. I'm breaking this mother down to a science. Feel free to suggest your own in the comments. Feel free to take whatever you want. I don't know if I'm doing this or not but by the time I put all this together I'm hoping to come up with something even better. And if not, at least this made an amusing piece of shit blog entry. Pick any one from each of the following lists, read it out loud to yourself in a Larry King voice and tell me what you think.

• Hi, I'm Larry King.
• This is Larry King.
  
• You're watching The Larry King Show, and I'm your host.. Larry King.
• Welcome back from the break we were just talking about ecodisaster and Paris Hilton's latest sexual drug-crazed escapades and how they may be related.
• Before we get to our next guest, Milktoast Jesse Ventura...
  
• (or don't introduce yourself. He doesn't always do that)

This Is Larry King...

• ...if he didn't know where to buy suspenders.
• ...if he didn't talk like he'd swallowed a frog.
• ...if he didn't get laid all the time.
• ...if he weren't jewish.
• ...if he had a few less ex-wives.
• ...if he had a vagina van dyke piece of crap beard around his mouth.
• ...if he were fifty pounds heavier. (OK 100! I'm telling you! It's the camera!)
  

Clean Revelations

• Ginkgo Biloba is a sham. It's modern day snake oil and I have made hundreds of thousands of dollars off the sheer utter stupidity of my audience, but I'm totally confident that this microphone isn't on and we're still at commercial, and you didn't just hear me say that.
  
• I got one word for you. It's not even just a word. It's a name. Charo... I know you know what I know you mean.
  
• I look at the USA Today Crossword Puzzle solely to see if my name is used as an answer. Five down five letters Blank King Show starts with an L. I never appear anymore. Tim Parker is a boogerhead.
• I go down the stairs alone or in pairs.
  
• I think Kate can do better than Jack.
• Sex and the City was great until that Mannequin chick got old and had cancer. What a buzzkill.
  
• Jon Stewart scares the ever lovin' crap outta me. He's singlehandedly taken down Crossfire! What hope have I got? I'm never booking him again. Unless he really wants me to. *gulp!*
• My suspenders will self-destruct in five seconds. (stare into camera silent for five seconds) Fooled you!
  
• I'm having another heart attack right this very moment but I've taken so much viagra, you can't tell. I can though. It hurts.
  
• If it weren't for me there would be no CNN. There. I said it. You may kiss my ring.
  
• Ashton Kutcher is a punk!
• I'm driving under the influence of NASCAR!
  
• You are the pope of all you survey. Please melt the davenport for autumn when albacore is in season. Genuflect me. I am allergic to melting timepieces.
  
• On Thanksgiving I like to go down to the Macy's Parade and blow up the balloons.. because I'm full of hot air.
• Thank God that The Golden Girls live on forever in reruns. Hey! How come my show isn't in syndication anywhere? I wanna live on forever.
  
• I hate you. I hate all of you. I don't know why you pobuckers even watch my show because I despise every single one of your beady eyes lookin' at me every night. The only reason why I still do this show is for my ego which cannot be satiated, and also so I can afford all the divorce settlements.
• Why the hell did they cancel My Name Is Earl? I was watching that!
  
• I'm hot for teacher.
  
• When you lie about your age, the terrorists win. (ed note: he actually said this on his show)
  
• Jerry Springer is a saint!
• Benjamin Sisko was the greatest Star Trek captain of all time. Scott Bakula runs a close second.
  
• I think Kate can do better than Jon, but she'll have to dump the other eight, cuz no other man's gonna have her now. She's ruined if she leaves him. What's she thinking?
  
• My underwear is itchy.
• Bald Britney Spears made me reach for my viagra. She was hot!
  
• I found out what happened to all the virginities women have lost since the Dawn of Man - they're behind Neil Diamond's couch.
  
• I've been silently passing gas nonstop since 1967.
• I lost my virginity at the age of thirteen to a vacuum cleaner.. got it back though.
• When I want fast relief, I reach for a broom handle.
• I think Kate can do better than Petruchio.
  

Blue Revelations

• Chuck Norris can kiss my ass! He can't do all that stuff!
  
• I say nuke'em from orbit! Make'em glass! Let's kill the bastards!
• Cow dung tastes great with tobasco sauce. Everything tastes great with tobasco sauce.
  
• Rachel Maddows shifts my nads into third.
  
• Neil Patrick Harris shifts my nads into third.
  
• A stiff breeze shifts my nads into third.
  
• Marijuana is the greatest thing on the planet I've had since my second ex-wife's left breast in my mouth.
  
• I have to have golden showers explained to me. Daily. Just cuz.
• My shit don't stink. If my shit did stink, it'd smell like lilacs.
• ..I once fucked a hippopatamus. Why? Cuz I'm fucking Larry King that's why. And I got a big dick! Kevin Pollak is jealous of my big dick! My dick is tan and leathery, multi-purposed and as versatile as a set of expensive luggage. Women love to pack my big fat dick!
• ..when at the publid urinal I like to turn and 'accidentally' pee on the shoes of strangers. Why? Cuz I'm Larry King, I'm older than you, and I can get away with it. What you gonna do?
• I fucked Pia Zadora. I had her right on this desk. Would you believe she once went to charm school? Me either.
• My nipples are rock hard right now in anticipation of our next guest, and I've spooged in my corduroys. I wouldn't lie to you.
  

Blatantly Stolen Revelations

• I'm on top of the world looking down on creation, and the only explanation I can find is the love that I found ever since you been around. Your love's put me at the top of the world.
  
• I'm afraid of Virginia Wolff
  
• I'd like to say I miss all of my ex-wives. I really miss them a lot. I'd take a good swing, but I'd still miss them. They always seem to duck out the way just in time. (Bob Nelson Falls, Idaho-- hello!)
• Have you ever seen a grown man naked?
  
• Do you ever watch films about gladiators?
  
• If I said you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?
  
• I am no longer infected.
  
• I'm a little teapot short and stout. This is my handle. This is my spout.
• I'm Larry King and you're not. Our top story tonight. Julio Francisco Franco is still dead. Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow! (Chevy Chase Maryland, you're on!)
  
• I'm Larry King, but you can call me Ishmael.
• Soylent green is made of people. Green people.
  

Silly City Name, Random State

• WallaWalla, Washington
• Battle Creek, Michigan
• Kansas City, Missouri
• Salem, Massachusets,
• Waco, Texas
• Albatross, Mississippi
• Hoobastank, Oklahoma
• Peonmia, Illinois
• Whoozyerdaddy, Delaware
• Ollie Ollie Oxen Free, Pennsylvania
• Saint Cherdadeeztalkshow, Arizona
• Barcolounger, South Carolina
• rideUPmycrotch, Kentucky
• iwaswunDERingwhenYEWdask, Alaska
• Yersoakinginit, Montana
• Winnipeg, Canada
• Nairobi, Kenya
• Rio de Janero, Brazil
• Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
• Antares Nebula
• Fourth Star On The Right And Straight On Till Morning
• Europa, Jupiter

Go to the Phones

• Hello.
• Hello?
• Hello!
• What's your question?
• You're on!
• Hi!
• How's it going?
• What's your dysfunction?
• Whaddaya want?
• How's it hanging?
• You owe me five bucks.
• Say something.
• I'm not gonna live much longer and you're killin' me with your silence.
  
• My car is double parked.
• Quit stalking me.
• Let's go to the phones!
• Yes!
• I'm incontinent!
• Go!

And the winner is..!

This is Larry King, if he were fifty pounds heavier, and a gentile, and had less ex-wives. Welcome back from the break! We were just talking about whether or not it does grow back. I have to have golden showers explained to me. Daily. Just cuz. Europa, Jupiter. What's your question?

INTERVISION! with Kevin Pollak

"This is your show. It just has my name on it."

Boy this is embarrassing, huh? Let's just start with this bit of dirty laundry hanging on the clothesline, shall we? Full disclosure. That's not my motto, but it is when it serves my needs, or makes me laugh. Here we go. This is my stupidity off Twitter. Imagine between "ten hours" and "three minutes" a night of sleeping in after a workweek of very little sleep and too much not sleeping.

• ZachsMind @kevinpollack: "INTERVISION Give it a test drive See how you feel" 1st I laughed then I'm like omigod hes serious Now I just don't know about 11 hours ago
• ZachsMind @kevinpollack seen Felicia Day interview. Enjoyable. Unsolicited constructive critique avail. upon req. Will sleep on "InterVision." about 10 hours ago
• ZachsMind Dammit! I misspelled @kevinpollak last night. Twice. I blame a week of self-induced sleep deprivation. I'm awake now. Let's try this again. 3 minutes ago
• ZachsMind @kevinpollak: "INTERVISION Give it a test drive See how you feel" 1st I laughed, then I'm like omigod hes serious. Now I just don't know. 2 minutes ago
• ZachsMind @kevinpollak saw Felicia Day interview. Enjoyable. Unsolicited constructive critique avail. upon req. Will sleep on "InterVision." less than a minute ago

Okay, so the point of that is this. I'm about to launch into some unsolicited constructive criticism about Kevin Pollak's Chat Show which he will of course never see but I'm okay with that. Talk on Twitter is sometimes a two way street and sometimes one-sided. Some people can't tell the difference but I like to think I can. If you're talking to someone who is as much an unknown as you, you got a good chance to get a response. If you are telling @KirstieAlley to turn off her capslock? You'll be lucky if she responds by not sending you a tweet personally, but actually typing like the rest of us for a couple tweets BEFORE SHE STARTS YELLING AGAIN AT WHOEVER MIGHT BE READING HER FOR NO REASON AT ALL! I'd be okay if Pollak DID see it, but deep down I know he won't. So I ain't writing this for him, I'm writing it for me. I'm the Harry Knowles of Web Content. Well, not really, but if Justine Ezarik can call herself The Internet, I can call myself the Harry Knowles of Web Content. Dammit.

• ZachsMind @levarburton said, "There is no love like fan love.." http://bit.ly/rMl8H Uh. 4chan love maybe. Don't think you were meant to see that Sir.

On second thought, maybe it's best if Kevin Pollak never sees this.

So why am I doing this if I do not anticipate my input ever being considered on Kevin Pollak's Chat Show, even though he says repeatedly that he wants input from his viewers in order to improve his show? Well I just don't believe in shit like that. I used to. Back when I still voted in elections, which wasn't too long ago. I don't do that anymore. I need something now and then to talk about on my "blog." This topic interests me. So there you go. This is the difference between making web content that might actually be successful and making web content that keeps one from going crazy and wearing tinfoil hats with potato salad inside them. Idle hands may not be the devil's workshop but they're what caused Britney Spears to go bald awhile back, if you catch my drift.

Why am I doing this? I need something to put on my Blog, which you are reading now. And let me be clear I have NEVER been satisfied with the word "blog." I come from The Old Days back in 1997 when we used to call them Online Diaries. I was a diarist. I still am a diarist. No one calls me that. Well, actually I'm not a diarist anymore because I don't really write about my personal life. That was a phase I went through over a decade ago now, when I was getting a divorce and my Dad passed away and a psychiatrist told me I was going through a midlife crisis twenty or thirty years before most people do. I went to him because I suffered from depression. His answer? "Dude, if you weren't depressed with your life, THEN I'd think there was something wrong with you!" So I got all better. My life's incredibly boring now and I don't talk about it online if I can help it - or unless it's funny.

I fancied myself a journaller for a time, not to be confused with journalist, which is actually a word... I digress. I'm not a blogger, or a bloggist. This is not a blog, but that's what the kids call it nowadays and so I'm stuck with that. Lewis Black won't ever look at what I do here solely because he thinks the word blog sounds like a medical issue that requires minor surgery. I had an umbilical hernia back in March and let me tell you - THAT was a blog! It hurt too! ...I digressed again, didn't I? Where were we? Oh! Kevin Pollak! And RIGHT THERE! I almost added a C again, and that's after several hours of sleep. Why do I keep wanting to put a C before the K there? I don't know what's wrong with my fingers today. Which reminds me. Felicia Day? Sweetheart? Apple of my eye? Queen of my Internets? When someone asks you "two fingers or touch type?" they are not talking about sexual excapades. Let's try "chicken pecking at the keyboard or do you actually know how to type?" I actually know how to type. Last time I checked it was 77wpm so when I add a C to a Pollak, it happens faster than I can think.

Kevin Pollak has a problem similar to my problem with the word "blog." He wants everyone to use the word "Intervision" instead of the phrase "Web TV." I understand. Everyone would like to be the one to coin a phrase. However, one cannot explode onto the scene as a celebrity years after the scene has already been and change the name. ...Well. You CAN. I don't recommend it. Kevin Pollak asked everyone watching his show to consider Intervision..

"INTERVISION! Give it a test drive. See how you feel."

I slept on it. I don't like it. I'm driving it around. Trying to use it in every day online talk. I feel like a douche saying it and I'll tell you why. Television's abbreviation is TV. So that means InterVision's abbreviation must be IV. IV is short for intravenous. It's also the roman numeral four. It's also a girls name (Ivy). IV is already busy enough. It doesn't need InterVision to come along and make its life harder. InterVision also reminds me of IntelliVision, which was a short-lived gaming platform that got beat out by the Atari 2600 which, in hindsight I can't understand how that happened. Did I just show off my geek chops cuz I know all that? Anyway, InterVision hurts my head. I'm still trying to slosh it around in my mouth though. Maybe the aftertaste won't make me gag. Like expensive white wine - the kind that doesn't come out of a box. I like the kind that comes out of a box. Ironically that kind doesn't make me gag.

Kevin Pollak doesn't like the phrase Web Content. Why I'm not sure. As of this writing I've only so far experienced his interview with Felicia Day, and his introduction to his first episode, which may or may not still be online when you read this. I want to see the LeVar Burton interview but I also want to type this, so I'm torn. I'll finish the Burton interview after I'm done here. Pollak is bravely venturing into what is to him uncharted territory. The fact many of us have been wallowing in it for some time is not important to him, because he's not here with us. He's over there with him. He's like someone who can't swim wading into a public swimming pool for the first time, and we are trying not to look directly at him while we snicker - only the problem is he WANTS us to look directly at him. He has a CHAT show, for crying out loud! So his discomfort and embarrassment at venturing into this new medium is part of the charm of his show, only sometimes not quite in the way he intends it to be. His show is what he wants it to be, but what we see is not what he wants it to be. That's the beauty of *ahem* ...InterVision.

For example when he talks to his "people" off camera, it's amusing but not how he thinks. He's comparing it to Regis Philbin having a "Gelman" to boss around. I compare it more to Marie Antoinette asking for a cleaner guilotine. I mean when I make my little "show" and post it to YouTube, my "people" off camera consist of a puppet and another puppet. And the occasional cockroach. Point of fact I've written the puppets out of my on camera fiascos because the general public sees a puppet and expects the show to be cute and kid-friendly which is precisely what I was trying to avoid. So I dropped the puppets from my act. I don't HAVE any people. Point of fact I don't have an act, but that's not why I'm doing it.

So right there, when Kevin Pollak is self-conscious because he's "not ready" for a live show and the people who work for him are not getting him ready fast enough to satisfy him? ...That's so cute.

"And for the fifth time, We're Not Ready."

All this means he's not ready, or perhaps he's too ready. Perhaps while simultaneously criticizing mainstream media and Hollywood marketing with his rapier sharp tongue, he's also too spoiled in the baggage and trappings of that world to realize that when you're making Professional Web Content for The InterVision, YOU DON'T NEED ALL THAT SHIT. Hell, The Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show was made in a residential backyard on a budget of duct tape and thrift store visits. By the way, when Felicia Day mentioned The Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show to Kevin Pollak and he looked back at her like he was doing a William Shatner doubletake? That was telling. Not only does Kevin Pollak need to set his ass down in a chair and watch every seizure-inducing episode of Kim Evey's (okay AND Greg Benson's) awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping little series, he needs to beg her to be on an episode. He needs to EXPERIENCE what it's like to be a part of that, as Ron Jeremy and Wil Wheaton and Adam Arkin have experienced it. THEN he will know. THEN he will have been baptised in the sanctity of all this silliness. Failing that, he has a long way to go.

Another problem I'm having with his show is the shizophrenic nature of it. They're learning as they go. We're all learning as we go. That's not the problem. I'm trying to figure out if Kevin Pollak is trying to be Kevin Pollak, or if his impersonation skills are bleeding into his efforts to be a talk show host.

First off, the black backdrop and the table. You're on the Internet. Why not put a greenscreen behind you and then use all that technology off camera to put the interview wherever the hell you want? Even if you want the interview to be a black backdrop with a table, using greenscreen allows you to start there and then go elsewhere when the mood strikes. The decision to go with a black backdrop and a table is not thinking "INTERVISION." It's boob toob thinking, and last I checked we were in the 21st century.

This screams Charlie Rose to me. Whether on purpose or accidentally, Kevin Pollak is channeling a little Charlie Rose and I don't even know if he knows how to impersonate Charlie Rose. I think perhaps this is financially motivated. Of all the talk show backdrops that have worked in the history of video, Charlie Rose's set is the most ideal. It doesn't draw attention to itself. It's cheap. It brings eye focus to the interviewer and the interviewee ...and the table. That's all you want! However, it screams to me that Pollak doesn't have his own look and his own vision here. He's going with what works for others. I can also see a little Tom Snyder in the setup and in Pollak's delivery. Snyder was always ingratiating himself to his audience and it was lovable. He was also trying to prove he was on the cutting edge of technology and then he would describe the airwaves and broadcast signal as if he were a beatnik poet. I can see a little Bill Maher slipping into Pollak's presentation, especially in the format of the opening bits where he introduces himself. There's also some Larry King in the friendly yet immediate nature of the interview. The five tweets thing reminds me too much of Craig Kilborn's Five Questions, and I see a lot of Kilborn's greatest tragic mistake in his interview skills which Pollak needs to watch: narcisism. Kilborn always made his interviews about him. Compare that to Jon Stewart, who makes the interviews he does about both himself and his interviewee of the moment. That's a very subtle but very powerful difference. Why? Because Kilborn is now "Craig who?" And Stewart is not. That's why.

"Hit me with it. I'll throw in a little Shatner."

Some things he's doing right? Well I don't know if this is right but I think I like it. Pollak's on the wrong side of the screen. He's on the left. Left to right. Not ALL, but many interview shows put the interviewer on the right side of the screen, looking right to left at the subject. Why? I don't know why. There's probably marketing gurus who could go into detail, but if the subject of the interview is on the right side of the screen, this means the interview subject is looking right to left at the interviewer. From the perspective of a viewer, this means the interviewer is comfortable and the interviewee is not. Unless the viewer has spent a lifetime reading farsi, which as I understand it is written right to left on the printed page.

In the western hemisphere at least, left to right is comfortable for the viewer, and therefore when they see that its ..comforting. Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Charlie Rose, Ellen DeGeneres, Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Craig Kilborn, Jimmy Kimmel across the board you'll see the interviewer on the right. However, Bill Moyers? Not always on the right. Oprah Winfrey? Not always on the right. And if you wanna break new ground and stand out and be something different? Kevin Pollak's on the right track here. I think. Or he may just unnecessarily be making it appear to the audience that his interviews are tougher than they should be, because it feels like the interviewee has to struggle with the interview when really s/he is just sitting there not struggling. It's all a mind thing. Very unconscious.

Also, if you put Kevin Pollak's name on something, you want Kevin Pollak. So he can't NOT be who he is. I wanna see his impressions, but I understand this is a CHAT show. His impressions are not why we're here, but they are. It's great when he slips a little in here and there. That's fun. It's spice tho. Too much of that distracts from the interviewee. However, too little and the audience is disappointed. He's managed thus far (to my satisfaction but it's early yet) to match that delicate balance. That's commendable.

The actual interview with Felicia Day kind of spun my mind around a bit, which could be the intent. I know her story already. Picking Felicia Day's interview to watch first wasn't random. Of those Pollak has interviewed thus far, she was my first choice (LeVar Burton a close second). In hindsight, I should be picking the interview subjects I DON'T know, and perhaps there's a wealth of questions and answers to mine in the fact I am looking at Pollak's list of interviews and going for the familar (Day. Burton. Perry.) when I should be seeking unfamiliar territory (Mallick. Gallo. Brewster.) with which to expand my knowledge and horizons.

"It's not your daddy's show! That's right! I can look right down the barrel, baby!"

I'm a geek. I adore Felicia Day. She's MY Queen of the Internet for the moment and has been since The Guild (ijustine eat your heart out). However, Pollak had her entire life story in front of him and seemed a little, dare I say, intimidated? She has already been where he's now venturing to go. So to go back to the pool metaphor, he's standing there on the steps in the kiddie section wearing boxer shorts and armband floaties, and Day pops her head out from the deep end with a mermaid fish tail flapping playfully behind her telling him the water's fine! Dive in!

His questions attempted to stay on topic, with the playful left turn at Alberquerque's Cat Sanctuary. That was fun. However when he got into the meat of her message, he seemed a little distracted by all the goody - like a kid in a candy store. What to talk about first? This girl has generated twenty million hits over a few years. He's still in the thousands and he's thirsty for more but fears drowning - which is entirely possible. Producing a show like his, or hers, takes thousand of little decisions that have to be made and you have to make those decisions and stick to 'em and you fret and fume and worry. There's one little decision that can't be made inhouse because I think the answer for the people making it might be no, cuz they're not gonna want this, and Pollak's not gonna want this, but Pollak shouldn't be the only member of The Pollak Chat Show who is miked.

What makes Pollak's show intriguing to me isn't his guests or him, but in the process for which he's placed himself. Pollak's self-consciousness when he realizes LeVar Burton's been sitting off camera for ten minutes and no one has thought to mike him yet. THAT is for me, priceless entertainment that money can't buy and you're never gonna see on David Frikkin Letterman.

Granted, a real interview show SHOULD be about the interview. However, let's face it. Pollak has an ego bigger than Cleveland. This is NOT going to be about a great interviewer. It's going to be a meeting of minds. Pollak's a great magnificent subject in his own right. Are you kidding me? The man's got an idbm page as long as my arm! Get out! I've half a mind to say this web series should be about people like Day and Wil Wheaton and myself going on his show so we can sit there for an hour and ASK HIM QUESTIONS. No. This ain't Charlie Rose. Nor should it be.

"I'll do this into my camera... Literally, MY camera."

Pollak's distractions with the nuts and bolts of making the show as the show is happening - I'm finding that just as - if not more - interesting. Pollak wants the show to be professional. He wants it to be able to compete with mainstream, so he wants it like mainstream and yet better. However the truth of the matter is what makes a show off the mainstream better than mainstream is that it is decidedly not mainstream and you have to embrace that.

His people shouldn't be his people. They should be our people: a part of the show. When he cuts to them, they should be able to turn their mike on and respond. If this is really more than just Kevin Pollak's chat show, then we should hear the "little people" making him look big. So he stops looking like Marie Antoinette asking for a cleaner guilotine.

No man is an island. Pollak, a man who has made a living being other people for laughs, should know that better than anybody.

. . .

Oh. And one more thing? I'm adding this at the bottom after having seen Kevin Pollak interview Mr. LeVar Burton. He AGREES with me! In the very first interview of this series, when Pollak was forced to admit several times "we're not ready" Mr. Burton in the amazing and prolific and poetic way that only he can illuminate so uniquely, underlined the importance of the people behind the scenes scrambling to put together Mr. Pollak's show not just because he's their boss but because they're his friends and they love the stuffings out of him - even though he probably pisses them off on a daily basis.

What really makes this show fun, is the stuff we ain't seeing! The stuff they are trying to hide from the camera is precisely what separates InterVision from the unevolved apes that have run TeleVision into the ground. We don't want Reality TV. We want Real TV. That's what InterVision has the potential to become.

Lost S1E7 "The Moth" in light of S5

"I'm a bloody rock god!"

For those foolish enough to read this without having first seen Lost up to the fifth season finale? You deserve to be spoiled. I'm talking about season one in light of knowledge of season five, so it's impossible for me to write about the one without spoiling the other. if you need a spoiler warning I got news for ya, you're already too late. Just sayin'.

@LOST_WFTB over at Twitter has started a kinda ongoing marathon of reviewing all the previous episodes of Lost during this nine month long hiatus. Others are doing similar things. I'm trying to participate where I can cuz it's fun. Tonight I watched "The Moth" with a lot of other people in the TwitterVerse. We all turn our DVDs and online views at ABC.COM (or elsewhere) at the same time and comment in Twitter as we view it. Silly fun but whatchagonna do? @ASHATL had a question in light of all this that @LOST_WFTB highlighted over at his blog. Here's what she said as @LOST_WFTB reported it:

One of the purposes of #WFTB is to see if our perspective of past episodes change w our understanding of happens on Season 5. Have you seen anything on these past episodes that allude to that?
Also, the producers said that they always knew where the story was going. Now that we are #WFTB do you agree with that or do you feel that they are trying to piece/tie the story together.

I'll tackle the second question first, because doing so should also answer the first. Any good writer knows how the story is ending before they begin it with an audience, just as any good comedian knows his punchline and has it in his sights before he starts to tell the joke. You stand at Point A, and aim for Point B. Everything in between is the journey. However, the punchline is NOT the story. The punchline's when it's over.

The journey is the story.

So when in some seasons it looks like they're wallowing in between milestones? They're not wallowing. They're telling the story. The writers are enjoying the bed they've made for themselves. Unfortunately, we're always like a jockey trying to make the horse go faster. We want to know how it ends. The writers are not interested in how it ends, cuz they already know. They wanna wallow in the journey. Cuz for them that's what's fun.

If what I just said made no sense to you, I strongly recommend watching the movie The Aristocrats. Not the Disney movie about cats. I mean the film where a bunch of stand up comics tell the same raunchy joke over and over. It's not for the faint of heart, easily offended, or anyone under the age of consent. However, at its heart, the movie is about the craft of telling a story. You know the punchline. It's not about the punchline. Telling any joke is about how you get to the punchline. Once you get to the punchline, it's all over. So if you're enjoying how the story is going, you really don't wanna know how it ends, but you think you wanna know how it ends because that's the release after all the ups and downs and ins and outs and oohs and ahhs of the story itself.

John Locke: "What do you suppose is in that cocoon, Charlie?"
Charlie Pace: "I don't know. A butterfly?"
John Locke: "No no. It's much more beautiful than that. That's a moth cocoon. It's ironic. Butterflies get all the attention, but moths spin silk! They're stronger. Faster."
Charlie Pace: "That's wonderful but-"

Now we just got done watching S1E7 "The Moth" for the LOST_WFTB project. In that episode, Locke tells Charlie about how a moth has to fight to get out of its cocoon, and it's that struggle which makes it strong enough to survive outside the cocoon. If you help it get out, you might think you're doing it a favor, but you're not.

@Nyakototo pointed out that in dream interpretation, white moths are seen as a symbol of death. To be more specific, it means a terrible sickness, and that you might blame others for it when it's your sickness to own up to. Coincidentally that's a good metaphor for Charlie, considering his drug usage. Now, did the writers of The Moth do that intentionally? Or is that coincidental? We don't know. On the surface it appears they were just talking about metamorphosis, but I remember thinking back when this episode first aired how curious it is that they didn't use the caterpillar and butterfly to convey this - because that's almost always what a writer does when they want to use this metaphor, especially if it's for TV or film or some visual medium. Why? Because butterflies look prettier than moths. So it seems somehow significant that the writers opted to use a white moth instead of a multicolored butterfly, and they don't focus on showing us the moth's previous incarnation. We are introduced to it already in the cocoon. Again, that's significant.

At one point in "The Moth," we literally see Charlie follow the moth to safety. A symbol of death and disease bringing Charlie from the dark death of the caves into the light of the jungle. We are treated to a scene where Charlie literally crawls out of the Earth. The powerful image of his hand breaking through the ground is ominous now, given that we know he eventually dies by drowning, after using that same hand to give Desmond a clue, and help him on his journey. So in effect, Charlie becomes Desmond's moth. He becomes what Desmond uses to find Penny - his shaft of light in the jungle.

Did the writers plan all this, or is it just happy coincidental happenstance? It's hard to tell. We know they know their EndGame. We don't know just how many place markers they've set for themselves along the way. However, after watching "The Moth," I have firm reason to believe the writers knew Charlie's character was expendable this early in the storytelling. They knew they were eventually going to kill Charlie off. They just maybe didn't know exactly when or how.

Now the reverse of the scenes about the Moth is Locke. He's the one telling the story of the moth to Charlie. The moral of this story is very telling, considering what we now know about Locke's own journey. Locke tells Charlie that he could use his knife to help the moth inside the cocoon. He could carefully pry the cocoon open and help the moth go free, but it's the struggle inside the cocoon that allows the moth to strengthen its tiny muscles. Helping the moth out of the cocoon would spoil the moth, and so it wouldn't become strong enough to survive its encounters with its environment once it leaves the safety of the cocoon.

This mirrors a similar statement that Locke makes to Sawyer in season five. They witness a shaft of light in the jungle, and Locke makes a point to have the group with him avoid that and go around it. Later Locke reveals he knew what we the audience knew: that shaft happened the night Locke lost Boone and he turned to the Hatch and asked it what it wanted from him. Now, he coulda gone over there and warned himself about all the bad stuff about to happen to him. However, that would have spoiled him. He tells Sawyer he needed all that pain to make him what he was now. So metaphorically, Locke IS the Moth! Coincidentally, Locke had knocked out Sayid as he tried to triangulate where the signal was coming from, and later on he started blowing up stuff and generally causing all kinds of trouble - killing Naomi, stuff like that. He IS a sickness of a sort. He IS death. And we learn that after The Life And Death of Jeremy Bentham, Locke literally BECOMES DEATH! He still lives, and yet he is dead.

When you take all this in, and then look at the very last scene at the end of "The Moth" between Charlie and Locke, it makes that final moment all the more ominous. We now have reason to believe that Locke died when his father threw him out that eight story window. Jacob brought him back to life. So ever since then, Locke's been living on borrowed time, and he's unwittingly had Jacob to thank. He thought he was his own man, but something else was perhaps already subtly guiding him. This something became more prominent on the Island. When Locke first encounters the Monster in Walkabout, I think Locke was 'converted' in a way similar to how Danielle's peers were changed after their trip inside the bowels of the temple. Locke has never been on the side of the Losties. He's always been on the side of The Island.

So when Charlie is looking up at the moth as it flies up into the night and disappears, and then Locke looks at Charlie looking at the Moth? I had a smile on my face five years ago.

I'm not smiling now.

Comedy Kill or Die

I've kinda talked about this before but I found myself re-examining the topic, as Digg is reviewing the topic. Again. This never seems to die. People are always wanting to make top ten lists and bottom ten lists and it's annoying because there is no such thing. There are personal lists and even they change the second you get them down on paper. So by the time anyone publishes a bottom ten or top ten it's already out of date and obsolete. So why bother? So people like you and me can bitch about them and then make our own lists so we can flip off the other guy with it.

First off, I can't stand web "articles" that consist of ten pictures and brief descriptions passed off as lists. It's blatant they just want us to activate ten times as many banner ads that we don't look at so they can wring money out of obtuse advertising agencies. Here we have the ten worst comedians ever and it's a bullshit list. Let's take them on one at a time.

Sinbad is too bland to be on either a best or worst list. He's the most 'below average' comedian. There are many comedians worse than him, and many more better. He doesn't even deserve an honorable mention in the worst category. He's meh. I would say he's vanilla, but people might accuse me of being racist. There's just no way to say that joke without the accusation.

Larry the Cable Guy is not a comedian. He's a character actor performing a monologue in an accent. Therefore he doesn't even qualify to be on this list. More talented than he lets on, Daniel "Lawrence" Whitney found a niche and milked it for all it was worth. Good for him. I hope he saved up some money for the rest of his life because his career ended about six months before he noticed.

Jay Leno does nothing for me, but objectively speaking the guy's ratings have been consistently better than David Letterman's for over a decade. He appeals to a younger crowd. I'm happy for him. Did he sell out? Of course! All these bozos sold out. I'd sell out too if people would buy me. Leno's not the best but he's not the worst. Like Sinbad, he's mediocre at best, and inoffensive at his worst.

Andrew Dice Clay... yeah. Okay. I can't defend this guy and I've tried. He's bad. He's bad if he's playing a role and only pretending to be racist, and he's bad if he actually is racist. He's bad no matter what. He doesn't make me laugh. He makes me wince. If I were making a bottom ten I'd probably include this guy, but it wouldn't be with any malice or venom. I find him rather sad, actually.

Gallagher is, was, and always shall be among the greatest prop comics ever in the history of comedy. The combination of prop slapstick with intelligent wit set the bar for all others who dare venture into a genre of comedy often considered only slightly more professional than bad puns and dirty limericks. While not the best comedian ever, he's definitely in my Top Hundred. Probably around the late sixites and early seventies, which is somehow appropriate.

Carrot Top... In a previous post I cited Scott Thompson as not the worst or best but as the absolute middle of the line. All other comedians ever in the history of anything should be measured as whether or not they are better or worse than Mr. Thompson. Sinbad is slightly better. Jay Leno is slightly worse. See how this works? Thompson does make me laugh, just not very often. Most of his punchlines are either obvious or forced. From an objective standpoint and a critical eye, his act still needed work at the height of his popularity. Fame came prematurely for him, and he never truly recovered. I haven't seen him work recently. I can only hope he got his delivery and timing down, because he often leaned on the visual of his prop for the joke, but rarely coincided well with his patter. I can only hope Las Vegas treats him well, but I fear on his tombstone will be the words, "needs improvement."

Dane Cook has been accused of stealing material, and the evidence is pretty impressive, but not wholly convincing. For me it's more about how a joke is told as opposed to who is telling it. Cook is, like Carrot Top, someone who was still learning the ropes when he suddenly found international stardom. Sounds to me what's really going on is Dane Cook's made some enemies on the way up and they're more than happy to beat him up on his way down. The guy who wrote this list wanted to diss Dane Cook (and Carlos Mencia who I'll get to in a minute), and the best way to do that is make a worst list and then throw in eight random other names to which most people might agree. They just want to sully the name of Dane Cook so people who don't know him will automatically assume him bad before they even hear him. It's called media manipulation. It's called propaganda. It's called sour grapes. On his own merits, Cook is below Thompson but above Sinbad because Sinbad's safe while Cook is not. Cook's got a good delivery. His timing's alright. Admittedly though, if he's stealing material, you'd think he'd steal better material.

Gilbert Gottfried being on this list is totally unacceptable. The man's ahead of his time. He has left audiences in stitches. He can roast fellow comedians like no other Jew I've ever seen. His original material is surreal and intelligent. His delivery, while acidic and at times chalkboard-scratch annoying, is totally spot-on accurate. He knows exactly what his voice and mannerisms are doing to his audience and he loves it. His impersonation of Andrew Dice Clay is gut splitting hilarious. If you've never seen it, it's really a treat. He can improvise and he can throw down prepared material. He's a consummate master and a professional at the craft. Again, definitely in my top hundred, though not in my top ten. Despite that, I respect this artist highly for his craft and admire him greatly. Anyone who says he's one of the worst comedians ever has no idea what comedy is, and has no right making such a list, then passing it off as authentic.

Dennis Miller was, at his height, a comedic genius. His tragic flaw has been his insistence on insulting his audience by not paying attention to it - or perhaps by paying too much. He'd purposefully inject into his routine obscure references that he knew most if not all of his audience would fail to get. This is like an artist painting in ultraviolet and being surprised when only bugs admire the work. If he was unaware that his audience hadn't read, seen, heard, or done all the things to which Dennis Miller referred, then he was ignorant to his audience and this is often the Kiss of Death for lesser mortals when on stage. You're supposed to tell jokes that your listeners will get - so they think you're funny and they laugh and that's what makes you a comedian. If he was aware, then he's always been an arrogant prick and the hell with him. Still, that doesn't make him one of the worst comedians ever in the history of anything.

Carlos Mencia may be a comedic thief. He may be racist. He may be horrible. He may beat his wife and yell at his kids. Maybe he screws donkeys and participates in lethal injections at Death Row. Maybe he pees on the homeless. Maybe he's got Satan on speed dial. Maybe he skullfucks orphans. I don't know. For me, when looking at a list like this, there's only one Cardinal Sin that makes you qualify for this list: not being funny. I can't recall Carlos Mencia ever making me laugh. At least Dane Cook has, on rare occasion, made me literally laugh out loud. Carlos Mencia reminds me of a crazy person on a street corner half dressed complaining that someone overcharged him on dry cleaning. How does one respond to such people? You turn away and walk briskly and Don't. Look. Back.

So what is my bottom ten list? Or my top ten? I don't have one. I try to make such lists for myself now and then, and I reserve the right to try again in the future, but it's a fruitless endeavor. It's silly. It can't be done. So I hope someday efforts like this on digg will get buried.

Lost Season Six Episode One

This is not spoilage, silly. It's speculation. So you get no spoiler warning. If you need spoiler warnings, please turn off your computer and stick your head in a toilet and flush. Thanks.

Season six picks up exactly where season five left us. Juliet falls into hole, finds bomb, pounds on it with rock. Then, what everyone thinks is a nuclear explosion turns out to be just another time hop - this time into the present. However, in the present, there's no hole. The Swan station imploded when Desmond hit the switch. Juliet's wounded body finds itself trapped under all that rubble, buried alive.

Meanwhile, above ground, the same thing has happened to all the Losties, but they don't realize it immediately. Slowly they come to realize they have been returned to their original timeline but not moved in space. It dawns on Sawyer last, because bless him, he's not that bright. However, we see a realization on his face and then he rushes to the side entrance of what was The Swan to try to find a way to get Juliet out of there.

Juliet's wounds turn out to be serious but nothing Jack couldn't fix, provided Jack was okay. However, the realization that Faraday's plan didn't work has become the straw that broke the camel's back in Jack's head. He goes mildly catatonic, unable to comprehend what went wrong, but that now he feels the deaths of all but a fraction of the Oceanic 815 survivors are somehow his fault, because he wasn't able to turn back time. Kate slaps him hard and has one of her speeches, but it doesn't help. Jack's mentally Gone Fishin'. So it is left to the others to try and help Juliet before she dies of her injuries.

Meanwhile, back at the shadow of the statue, Ben and UnLocke emerge from within to announce that they have killed Jacob and everyone is to follow Ben, as Ben has already dutifully bowed to UnLocke. He demands that everyone, one at a time, express their loyalty, starting with Richard. However, when Richard is called out, it is discovered that he, Alana, and the dead body of Locke are now missing. UnLocke demands Ben lead an expedition into the jungle to hunt Richard down and get Locke's dead body back immediately. Ben does as he says.

Richard, Alana, & a couple of her people are hurriedly rushing to the underground temple catacombs with Locke's dead body in tow, in a desperate attempt to have the spirit of Jacob placed into the body of John Locke. The flashbacks are all of Richard's arrival on the Island (he was First Mate on the Black Rock crew), how Essau and Jacob compete for Richard's fealty, Essau takes the Black Rock & landlocks it when he loses to Jacob, and Jacob shows Richard how to use the Temple to heal people and what that entails.

At end of the episode, as UnLocke (spirit of Essau pretending to be Locke) has Ben lead the expedition, hot on the heels of Richard & Alana, they attempt to reincarnate Jacob using Locke's body as the sacrifice. However, something goes wrong, and when Locke is animated, it's not Locke and it's not Jacob, but someone rather disoriented and confused and alarmed. When Essau enters the room to encounter it, he freaks out and runs away screaming into the night jungle. When Richard asks the rejuvenated John Locke who he is, Terry O'Quinn busts out a mean awesome Manchester accent he's been practicing for five years: "Why, I'm Charlie Pace! Who the bloody hell are you, mate?"

USA Toduh

I picked up a copy of USA Today today. Yes, on rare occasions I actually buy a newspaper. Try not to faint. I try very hard not to go into detail about my worklife cuz that's not what my blog's about, but suffice to say I'm currently not in a position where I have access to Internet news in the morning as I prefer, so I must resort to more traditional methods. ..Okay so I like the crossword puzzle.

They say print is dead; that newspapers are Dead Man Walking. Rumors of their demise have been greatly exagerated. Alright, slightly exagerated. However, perhaps their time has come. Perhaps like three week's worth of garbage still accumulating in the kitchen, it's time to drag it out to the curb and let City Sanitation take care of the rest.

I read Marc Thiessen's The Eye of the Storm this Wednesday morning, May 20th 2009. Catchy title. Very original. Never heard that one before! Page 11A. In my youth, a piece like Marc Thiessen's The Eye of the Storm would be notated as an edtiorial. This portion of the newspaper would have at the top of the page "Editorials" which to my Dad meant "here there be insane crazy people failing to convince you they are not crazy insane - watch your step." Pages like this are to be properly labelled as such, for the same reason polluted swimming holes teeming with purple algae and ameobae the size of golfballs have signs around them saying "no lifeguard on duty swim at your own risk."

Marc Thiessen's The Eye of the Storm opens with facts, dates, quotes, and well-intentioned serious jargon, but he sneaks in opinions as if they were facts. I know this, because that's what I do on my own blog and on my videos. I can get away with this, because I'm not being published in a national newspaper. I'm not pretending to be a journalist. Unlike some people, and I don't want to point fingers because that's so uncouth, but Marc Thiessen is one of them. His piece opens, and I quote:

Last week, Sen. Diane Feinstein rose to defend Nancy Pelosi, explaining why the House speaker didn't object to waterboarding when she was told about it seven years ago: "I don't want to make an apology for anybody," Feinstein said, "but in 2002 it wasn't 2006, '07, '08, or '09. It was right after 9/11, and there were in fact discussions about a second wave of attacks."

Feinstein says she doesn't want to make an apology for anybody, and then she goes right on ahead and apologizes for Nancy Pelosi. I do not fault Marc for this. He's just reporting the facts, because he's pretending to be a reporter on what's pretending to not be an editorial page.

Marc Thiessen then argues a case that actions caused by our government in the months and years after Nine Eleven should be seen in context and not challenged; that today, we all think the danger has passed but it hasn't, because Marc Thiessen believes we are in "The Eye Of The Storm." Marc Thiessen then goes on to cite many examples on the public record of attempted terrorist attacks thwarted or pre-emptedly stricken, by the CIA. For example, in 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told Jose Padilla to blow up some high rise apartment buildings in the US. Padilla was arrested in Chicago's O'Hare Airport, before he committed these heinous crimes. What they arrested him for, is curiously omitted from Marc Thiessen's sound reporting efforts. In 2006, an Al-Qaeda cell was broken up before it could successfully carry out its reported plan to take planes from Europe and crash them into Heathrow airport, and buildings in the London Financial District. Why they were grounded for what they didn't do yet is unclear. Perhaps they thought too loud.

These and other events were stopped by the CIA and other law enforcement entities in the US and abroad working together in solidarity against the Evil-Doers. It was a heady time in which the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys always had moustaches they could twirl. Of course we should allow the Non-Evil Doers carte blanche on the freedoms of mankind, because they are so well intentioned, and wouldn't hurt anybody, unless they thought about hurting anybody.

Marc Thiessen thinks these events should be looked at with rose colored glasses, in light of all the nightmarish horrors that kept us up at night on September Twelfth. Questionable acts by our own government were done for the sake of National Security, and they should not be challenged. They were done for Mom and apple pie. They were protecting our freedoms so I have the right to type these words I type now, without the fear of enemies blowing up my favorite convenience store. The fact I now have fears of my own government subjecting me to waterboarding and ass pyramids for writing these very words is merely caustic irony, and can be medicated with moderate amounts of American brand beer. Marc Thiessen says today is different. After Nine Eleven, we have worries and concerns we didn't have before. However, because the CIA has done its job, We the People have become complacent. We no longer fear.

Today, it is taken for granted. The men and women of the CIA responsible for this achievement are victims of their own success.

After the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, they were vilified for their failure to connect the dots and stop al-Qaeda from carrying out its plans. Now they are vilified for doing what was necessary to connect the dots and stop the next 9/11. They are called torturers. Their achievements are questioned. And we are debating whether they ought to be put on trial or hauled before truth commissions for their efforts. They are not torturers. They are heroes. They don't deserve subpoenas. They deserve medals.

I got a message for Mr. Thiessen. This perception that things changed on Nine Eleven? That's all it is. It's not real. What had been abstract for a very long time became concrete in the eyes of Americans, but elsewhere on the planet, it had been very real for a very long time. We joined a club that day, of countries who had been victimized by gooberheads and chowderbrains.

Notice I'm not describing the gooberheads and chowderbrains by any cultural or religious or economic stigma. I'm describing them as goober heads and chowder brains. It makes no difference what you believe or what other people think you're worth. If you have chowder for brains, you're stupid. If your head gets stuck under seats in movie theaters, I don't care what name you use for your god.

If you kill and maim in your god's name, you're a chowderbrain. You're a gooberhead. The phrase "Intelligent Design" is poorly worded. It's not intelligent. If you dismiss the evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution because it doesn't coincide with your precious book, I am not going to mince words with you: you are stupid. The lines are not drawn between Muslim and Jew and Christian, but between those who use their grey matter intelligently, and those who do not.

Guess what! There were discussions of terrorist attacks long before Nine Eleven. Condi Rice read them at least as late as August of that year. We knew an attack was imminent. We just didn't know where or when. Such threats have existed long before Nine Eleven. When I was a kid back in the 1970s, we made jokes about terrorists hijacking planes and wanting to go to Disneyland. They were printed in Mad magazine. I think the terrorists were Libyan or Cuban back then but the basic premise was the same. Since before the Cold War - since before the Revolutionary War - the US has had enemies both foreign and domestic to contend with. Nine Eleven was the first time bloodshed occurred on the main land at a scale rivaling the Civil War, and we didn't do it to ourselves.

Marc Thiessen believes we are in the eye of a storm. He is wrong. We are not. It's much more complicated. However, to improve upon his metaphor, We The People are metaphorically under constantly changing weather patterns. Some of us respond to this by watching the metaphorical equivalent of the Weather Channel ALL day, as if watching it happening will help us prevent it. Thiessen wants the CIA to make sure it is always sunny, when at best our government should be more like an umbrella.

If I wake up tomorrow dead, because some gooberheads and chowderbrains blew up my great home state of Texas, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to read the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and that plaque at Lady Liberty's feet and I want you to uphold them. I ask you to defend those words because they are what have made this country great, up until recent decades when our country has stopped being as great as perhaps it once was, because we stopped upholding those words.

I ask you not to uphold those words for just some Americans, or all Americans, or anyone with whom you happen to agree. I ask you to please uphold those words for all men and women regardless of race, creed, color, gender, place of origin, current whereabouts, sexual orientation, preference in music, or whether or not they agree with what's in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and that plaque at Lady Liberty's feet. I want you to promise me that if I die because of terrorism, you will uphold these words and extend them to the very people who killed me. Why? Because the Bush administration didn't uphold these words. The Obama administration is not upholding these words. Nancy Pelosi, when she was told about waterboarding and she didn't do a doubletake and spit out her dentures, she didn't uphold these words. She bowed to overwhelming pressures when it was her JOB not to. NONE of our civil servants are upholding these words, and it's not the words that protect us but our vigilance and dedication to them. That is what protects us, or rather would protect us, if someone was actually doing that and no one is. Our civil servants are not upholding the very words that give them jobs. So if the Lone Star State explodes in a glorious fireball because gooberheads and chowderbrains took my inalienable rights, I ask you please to not take theirs. Turnabout is NOT fair play. It's cheating. We're better than them.

Inalienable rights mean just that. Life, Liberty, and Happiness for everybody; not just the people you don't mind having in your backyard. If we don't do this, if we don't continue to uphold those words as a beacon of justice and equality to the rest of the world, it's not that the terrorists win. Screw the terrorists. They're gooberheads and chowderbrains. They can't win.

If we don't do this, We The People lose, and we have only ourselves to blame.

the NOT lost ARG

Okay so what's the big deal? Why am I bothering these guys? It's the principle of the thing. There's no policing on the Web when it comes to ARGs cuz there's no organization with any legitimate clout that'd bother to enforce anything, and there's no laws against playing ARGs nor should there be, but it's easy for the unenlightened and gullible to be taken in unless someone goes around and blows the whistle. Granted, the guys behind this thing could be completely innocuous and well-intentioned. However, they could also be fiendishly clever and selfishly arrogant.

We have no way of knowing. So many are assuming it's the real thing until proven otherwise, when everyone on the Internet should be thinking precisely the opposite way - take as a given something is not what it claims to be unless you can get confirmation.

What am I talking about? Well last night in Twitter I happened upon some other Tweeple talking about "#TheLostARG" of 2009 which pretends to be the sequel to 2006's The Lost Experience and other less impressive Official attempts by people behind the television series Lost to bring the excitement and storytelling of the series out beyond the confines of conventional television. I was a big fan of The Lost Experience. I even started a petition to get TLE's own Rachel Blake (aka Jamie Silberhartz) a special guest appearance on the TV series itself. Of course, that never beared fruit but you can't hate a guy for trying.

So now there's a handful of Twitter accounts involving people posting Tweets that seem cryptic and vaguely referential to the tv series and a lot of other Tweeple are gobbling this up, presuming without investigating further that this is the new Lost ARG (Alternative Reality Game in case you didn't know). I posted the following to a self-titled "Lost ARG Blog" voicing my dissention to the idea of people "taking sides" or accepting candidacy for a bunch of boys who cried wolf:

PLEASE prove me wrong! I WANT to eat crow on this. The only remote proof I've seen is the youtube account, and that can be faked or hacked. Faked would mean someone inside YouTube itself mighta helped. Not out of the question. Hacked is more likely. They had three years to guess the password.

This is of course an ARG of some sort. People are working up puzzles for others to solve. Theree is NOTHING wrong with that and I applaud it. Perhaps this started as a grass roots thing with a half dozen or so friends and has taken on a life of its own.

I take umbrage w/the fact these guys are passing themselves off as THE LOST ARG when there's no concrete evidence supporting it. Using the Lost trademark w/o any proof is bad form. We have heard nothing from Bad Robot, Hi-ReS!, ABC, Channel 4 in the UK, and of course Lindeloff and Cuse are completely silent. If this were an actual Official Lost ARG, there would be no question. We'd know by now. These guys are using the brand without permission, because otherwise they wouldn't hide the fact. Their silence proves their guilt. There's no pleading the fifth in ARGs.

If they wanted to play with Egyptian hieroglyphs and Morse code and constellations, they didn't have to use the word LOST. They coulda called it anything else. It's bad enough we're not getting anything official from Bad Robot on this for this last season. To see a fanwanking facsimile trying to pass itself off as something professional and official? It's an insult to our intelligence and I'm appalled so many are going along with it.

Please prove me wrong. I WANT to eat crow on this. We need formal confirmation from Bad Robot, or they need to change the name of their little game and stop passing themselves off as THE Lost ARG when they're clearly not.

"So what?" You say. So these guys are posing as a real ARG when they're just fans having fun.? Why make a big deal out of it? You're right, I'd be an idiot to rain on their parade and steal their thunder, IF in fact they're totally harmless. I'm 100% it if they're totally harmless, provided they stop calling themselves THE LOST ARG when they're clearly not.

What if they're not harmless? What if they say they're harmless, but somewhere down the road they introduce a website and tell visitors that if they want to learn more about The Secrets of the Island, they have to fill out a form that gives the people behind this faux ARG personal information? There's already talk of people trying to figure out passwords for accounts. Were this an official project, that kinda thing would be off limits. You never reveal your password to strangers. That's standard protocol online, yet so many people think such standards don't apply to them. There's always exceptions to such rules, and online predators take advantage of such misinformation.

If they're just asking for names and Twitter passwords, that's relatively tame. No permanent damage. What if they ask for addresses? phone numbers? email account passwords? Social security numbers? Credit card information? Okay, maybe you're smart enough to not give them anything like that, but not everyone is as smart as you. Some people would go for it, and a phreak only needs one bank account to wipe clean, and then they've made a profit on the resources it took them to put the whole scam together in the first place.

I am under no illusions that people will listen to me. Most of them won't. I'm a voice crying in the wilderness. I have no power or resources nor have I any way to stop these guys, but if just one person listens to me and thinks twice before they give personal information somewhere down the way, then maybe I've made some small difference.

Deaf Radio

I dedicate this blog post to a guy named Mike Shannon for no other reason than because people like him and George Gimarc and people who update Wikipedia about radio stuff and guys who actually love radio more than I do have taken the time to capture the history of it for posterity, so when someone like me wants to write about radio, I got places I can go to check my own memory and pretend to remember more than I do. Recently in my car I've found myself listening to the radio again. I guess I'm too lazy to change out the CD in the car. Isn't that pathetic? So when I have the radio on in the car it usually starts on the NPR station even though I haven't donated to them in over a decade. I haven't had a decent job in over a decade. I'm barely paying my bills. I can't afford to pay theirs, too.

Having a short attention span (I know the politically correct term nowadays is Attention Deficit Disorder but screw that), I found myself crawling up the radio dial. I say "dial" as if it still is a dial. It's not. Radio has become digital. I push buttons now. I understand how old the phrase "radio dial" makes me look and I don't care beyond my surreptitious amusement to type about it for about thirty seconds okay I'm done let's move on where was I? Many years ago there was a radio station here in Dallas called "93.3 The Zone." No one remembers it cuz no one listened to it. The Zone briefly turned into "The Merge" and that's when I first started listening to it. I liked it, so naturally the Media Gods deemed it Too Cool To Live and destroyed it just as I was getting into the habit of listening to it. One reason why I enjoyed The Merge was that at the time, it was one of the few radio stations in the air that was attempting, however feebly, to play and support local Texas music by local north Texas bands. Predominantly this support was relegated to Sunday nights when most people weren't listening, but I figured it was a start and back then this idea of supporting local music actually mattered to me. I believed in supporting local music and independent film. I now don't believe in supporting much of anything, since everything I support tends to not make it big. I'm a curse. I decided years ago the best thing I could do if I loved something was to stay as far away from it as possible and enjoy it from a safe distance. I cite Kristy Kruger for example. She seems to be doing very well for herself. At one time I fancied myself someone who could figure out a way to help her jump start her career, but being completely incompetent and unable to network and totally devoid of ideas was not the best place to start in that arena. When I stopped trying to ingratiate myself to her, coincidentally her career went from local to regional to national to international. I adore her from a very safe distance now - like how safe Mars is from Chernobyl. This seems to be working for her. I'm very proud.

So I started listening to The Merge and it tanked. Everything I touch dies. The Merge died and was replaced by "93.3 The Bone" because someone in their infinite wisdom thought since people weren't listening to a vague radio name like Merge, they'll surely listen to something more concrete like a dog chewtoy. Needless to say I stopped listening to The Bone as soon as it stopped being The Merge. I take it as a personal insult when a radio station decides to change its identity while I'm enjoying it. Maybe I shouldn't be so sensitive. However, true to form, the second I stopped listening to the station, it became popular. The Bone enjoyed its existence on 93.3 from 2002 to 2009. It never got fantastic numbers but it seemed to manage to hold its own. One of the things 93.3 was doing right was that it had local talent. One of the things it wasn't doing right was that it wasn't playing local talent a lot of local people wanted to listen to, which eventually led to its demise.

Recently I happened upon 93.3. It was still one of the preset buttons on my dashboard. This indicates how rarely I change the preset buttons on my car. It also may indicate how long it's been since I listened to the radio. I mean, I have a CD player. I listen to my CDs mostly. Imagine my surprise to learn that what was once The Bone is now "FM 93.3 Quality Rock" and the morning show consists of a group of guys based out of Atlanta Georgia who call themselves "The Regular Guys." I shit you not. Quality Rock. Regular Guys. I suppose they also have Generic traffic reports and Store Brand sports & weather.

This is what conventional radio has been reduced to: a radio format that is designed to be as politically correct and unobtrusive as possible, to the point where the soul has been completely wrung out of it. At one time there were radio personalities that people remembered because they stood for something. Maybe they stood for shit, but it was something. I'm not talking about shock jock Howard Stern, although in his own way he was continuing the tradition. Since radio first became a place where music could be presented to an audience, there have been people in the business who were willing to take risks and present new sounds to the world that tuned in. Whether it was the big band sound of Glenn Miller, or that daring brash young man named Elvis Costello, there were men and women on the cutting edge of sound. They'd go out there and listen to what artists had to offer, and they'd bring back stuff that was original and hungry and thought provoking and challenging and fun.

Then top 40 came along and though no one knew it yet, we were witnessing the beginning of the end, and it's been a long time coming. Also recently here in Texas someone with money and influence has taken the radio station 97.1 frequency and tried to bring back a ghost.

"97.1 The Eagle" was a staple of north Texas radio for decades. As a teenager I remember it being one of those stations that everyone listened to, even if you didn't really like the music played. Personally I liked it cuz it's where I could hear Doctor Demento, but local church pressure caused the station to drop his show, and I don't recall being a big fan of The Eagle much after that, but I had a silent respect for it. In the late 90s and early 00s, between Howard Stern's morning show and Kramer & Twitch at night, let's just say Clear Channel's lawyers had their hands full.

Clear Channel had purchased The Eagle years before as it had aquired pretty much all its stations, without giving a damn about the people listening. CC realized around this time that The Eagle & The Edge were sort of vying for the same audience. However, both stations were owned by CC so why was it competing with itself? In some suit and tie's remarkable knuckle dragging move, a decision was made to pull the plug on the controversial Eagle and replace it with an adult contemporary format called "Sunny 97.1" that played "the best of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and today." This was later replaced by a spanish format station.

Earlier this year, the ghost was resurrected. The Eagle soars once more over the airwaves of north Texas. However, what was once a teeming cauldron of over-active disc jockeys each with a chip on their shoulder and an annoying attitude? Now we got robot jocks. They think we can't tell the difference, and consciously maybe we can't.

Not long ago Texas was subjected to Jack FM which I understand is popular here and in many radio markets across the world. Jack is all voice tracking, and its slogan is "we play what we want." So basically the format is telling the audience, to its face, that it doesn't know what it wants to listen to and even if it did Jack doesn't care. No requests. Jack's gonna play what he's programmed to play and if you don't like it, change the channel. Jack has a playlist of roughly a thousand songs, easily twice as many as its competition in most cases. However, it's still a glamorized automated playlist that's not determined by a deejay. It's determined by committee. It's soulless, and after the novelty wears off, it can't compete with my CD collection.

People owning radio stations still prefer a robot deejay to the alternative. This is safer: they surely wouldn't want actual human beings on the air that might accidently make a joke about domestic terrorism, or demean women as sex objects, or say the word "booger" during drive time. It's a ghost with no soul. The soul in conventional radio has been removed - exorcised by lawyers and politicians and special interest groups.

You think that's bad? Look at Radio Sass. This is the new direction of radio. "Through time compression, you get the memorable heart of each song, with an average length of aproximately two minutes with NO self indulgent guitar solos, NO long intros, NO repetition of choruses again and again. Radio returns to the snappy song length of the 1960s." Then they wonder why we listen to our CDs? Are they so dense?

Maybe we can't consciously tell, but unconsciously we can sense that there's nothing under the sheet. With "Quality Rock" they are actually trying to create a radio station that is as bland as our CD collection - no personality. Just sound. What they don't understand is that we each turn to our CDs not because we are easily offended, but that we each are offended in different ways, and we want our entertainment to appeal to our sensibilities, whatever they may be. Making radio more generic isn't going to bring us back. It only reminds us why we listen to our own music collection instead. When I listen to my music, I am my own deejay, program director, and everything. How did radio ever compete with that?

People who own radio think they're listening to their audiences. Millions of dollars are poured into focus groups and surveys and research and all kinds of stuff. The end result makes McDonalds' Fillet O Fish almost palatable by comparison. For all its attempts to listen to what its listeners want to hear, radio has been tone deaf for decades, and it never listens to anything about itself that it doesn't want to hear, which nowadays is pretty much everything.

Maybe a request line that actually answers requests and doesn't just thank you for calling, would be a start. However, why would I bother calling a request line, when my favorite CD is ..oh yeah right. I'm too lazy to change the CD out in my car. Guess I'll have to start exercising and reach across to swap them out, because almost a decade later, the radio dial is as much a lobotomized wasteland as it was when I stopped listening to The Bone, and The Real Eagle was put to pasture.