Off-Topic

2011-11-28T11:54:00.001-05:00

I'M STILL ALIVE, but if you're interested in my off-topic commentary, you're better off following my @TheBillWalsh account on Twitter.

2009-04-26T10:53:00.003-04:00

MY WIFE AND I always joke about how the D.C. area goes straight from winter to summer, shivering to smoldering, 40 to 90. I created this ultra-scientific graph to prove the point this year. As you can see, spring was ... Friday.

2009-04-21T14:31:00.002-04:00

HERE'S A PHILOSOPHY I can get behind. "The first duty of everybody in life is to realize that they're a piece of shit."

This should be required viewing for parents.

2009-02-25T02:27:00.002-05:00

YOU WATCH "Intervention," right? You want a Jeff vanVonderen T-shirt, right? Well, here's your chance!

2008-08-26T13:53:00.003-04:00

WHITE TRASH CUISINE: Kraft Dinner and tuna sauce.

First and last in a series -- because I'm now a man of wealth and taste and all -- but this dish is so good I will never renounce it.

It must have been a back-of-the-box recipe at some point, but I've never heard of it outside my family. My mom made it all the time when my brothers and I were growing up, and I'm continuing the tradition.

Get the recipe here.

2008-07-30T22:14:00.006-04:00

Ask Jim Kunstler

Ask Jim Kunstler is a periodic advice feature with James Howard Kunstler, the author of Clusterfuck Nation and "The Long Emergency."

Dear Mr. Kunstler,
I was recently laid off from my minimum-wage job as a greeter at Wal-Mart, and I cannot make the monthly payment on my 1993 Ford Mustang. Do you think things will take a turn for the better soon?
-- John, Peoria, Ill.

Dear John,
Frankly, I don't want that version of America to survive -- the America of chain stores, and muscle cars, and grown men obsessed with video games, drugs, and pornography, and women decorated like cannibals, and the vast, crushing purposelessness of it all.

2008-07-24T12:12:00.000-04:00

REINVENTING THE PARKING METER! In theory, this is a great idea. In the old days, as we all know, every car was the same size and every man, woman and child wore one of those Good Humor-truck-driver clinky-clinky change-maker thingies on his or her belt. Today, nobody can find two nickels to rub together but we all carry around dozens of credit cards.

So, quite logically, we now have meters that take either cash or credit cards and print out dashboard receipts to allow free-form parking (a block might accommodate 20 Smart cars or three Hummers). So far, so good.

Anyone tried to use one of them? I have, in Washington and Miami Beach and New Orleans and New York, and guess what: They never work. The interface is impossibly complicated, but even once you get past that ... they never work, at least not with plastic. No matter what credit card I slide in, no matter in what city, whatever meter I choose is UNABLE TO READ CARD. The last time this happened, at 72nd Street and Broadway in New York, I then tried to use quarters and the coin slot was jammed.

This can't be happening only to me. Can it?

2008-02-17T10:20:00.003-05:00

IF YOU STILL haven't read "Revolutionary Road," hurry up, before they go and ruin it.

2007-11-09T17:32:00.000-05:00

THE WEB IS WHERE THE HEART IS. AZCentral.com, the Arizona Republic's Web site, inadvertently illustrates the perils of dynamically generated text-link advertising in an article on historic hotels.

2007-11-06T14:53:00.000-05:00

'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS! Well, not really, but during the Redskins-Jets game Sunday I noticed this image and immediately thought, "Clement Moore! 'A Visit From St. Nicholas'!" I paused the DVR and grabbed my camera to capture it, and later I rewound to show it to Jacqueline. Just to make sure I'm not a moron, I did a Web search for Clement Moore's name and confirmed that I was right. Many references also included his middle name, and as I walked back to the TV I thought, "It's a shame there's nobody on the team named ..."

And there he was, on the right of the screen -- out of order, but still -- a player named Clarke. I was sure he was in the pics I took earlier, but my cropping was a little too good. So this would be an even better entry, but I'm a moron.

2007-10-29T10:34:00.000-04:00

DON'T WANT TO LOSE BIG? DON'T BE A BIG LOSER. Once again I'm hearing the jockosphere bellyaching about "running up the score." This time the issue was the New England Patriots' decision to go for a first down (and a touchdown) at first-and-goal late in their rout of the Washington Redskins.

Apparently Redskins Coach Joe Gibbs was Not Happy. Patriots Coach Bill Belichick: "What do you want us to do, kick a field goal?" Exactly. I'm not privy to the he-man code by which every Bud-swilling La-Z-Boy jockey instinctively knows precisely at what point a winning team is supposed to stop trying to play the game to avoid hurting the other guys' feelings, but if actually trying to score points is an insult, I think piling up an automatic and meaningless three points would clearly be a bigger insult than trying for the more difficult six or seven while risking coming away with zero.

As I've said before, plenty of little girls playing 12-and-under tennis lose 6-0, 6-0 with more dignity than the "Don't rub it in" losers of men's team sports. And I bet Houston wished it had "run up the score" against Notre Dame in the 1979 Cottom Bowl.

No, Bill, they didn't want you to kick a field goal. They wanted your team to punt from their team's 4-yard line. Or maybe just forfeit, to let one of the other teams win for a change, you big undefeated bullies.

2007-10-22T13:06:00.000-04:00

FUN *AND* EDUCATIONAL: For today's homework, read the sometimes wise, always cranky rants of Jim Kunstler in the voice of Stewie from "Family Guy."

2007-10-11T13:45:00.000-04:00

NOW, LOOK HERE, Po-Siam, 3807 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria, Va. 22305:

You write "DRUNKEN NOODLES" and I'll take care of the wiseacre translation.

(And if lettuce is outlawed, only outlaws will have lettuce.)

2007-09-27T02:51:00.000-04:00

I'M NOT SURE how I would have grown up without Mad magazine. (Click on the cartoon to find out the answer to my previous question.)

2007-09-14T14:56:00.001-04:00

IT ISN'T QUITE a Googlenope, but darn close, so I thought I'd put the question out there: Can anyone, outside my family, identify the source of the delightful phrase "gay, black, Jewish-Italian commie rapist with a sinus condition"?

2007-08-04T00:13:00.000-04:00

COMPLIMENTARY DRIVER-EDUCATION LESSON: If you're turning right, unless signs or markings direct otherwise, you do so from the right lane.

This is easily understandable (if not always followed) advice if you're on a road with more than one traffic lane in the direction in which you're driving, but sometimes it's more subtle. Sometimes you are morally obligated to create a right lane where there is no right lane.

Take a look, for example, at Figure 1. The red car is turning right from a road in which there is only one travel lane but there is a lane devoted to parallel parking. The parking stops well before the intersection, and therefore the driver of the red car, by ignoring this de facto right-turn lane, is turning right from the left lane. The green car is forced to wait for no reason.

Figure 2 illustrates the proper positioning. It's the correct solution not because the law requires it, but rather because the driver of the red car is not the only freaking person in the world.

Thanks for listening.

Figure 1: Inconsiderate Dumb-Ass Driver Waiting to Make a Right Turn

Figure 2: Upstanding Citizen Waiting to Make a Right Turn

2007-08-03T17:30:00.001-04:00

IT'S OFFICIAL: I'm an Assburger. (I scored 33.)

2007-07-07T12:52:00.000-04:00

THE WEB SITE for the "Simpsons" movie has a pretty good avatar creator.

2007-06-29T02:12:00.000-04:00

I'VE NEVER ASKED my niece or my nephew to write a pop song. But if I did, I imagine it would go something like this:

"OK, let's write a song."

"No!"

"Oh, come on. It'll be fun!"

"Um, all right, Uncle Bill."

"Now, what's the first line? What do you want the song to be about?"

"I dunno."

"Just think of something -- anything."

"Um, everybody gonna dance tonight."

"Good! Now we need another line."

"Um, everybody gonna feel all right."

"Keep going!"

"Everybody gonna dance around tonight."

"Good!"

"Everybody gonna jump and shout. Everybody's gonna sing it out. Everybody's gonna dance around tonight." Who knew Elizabeth and A.J. were as talented as one of the greatest songwriters who has ever lived?

If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, what's singing about dancing? OK, OK, it's sort of the essence of rock 'n' roll, but perhaps Sir Paul could do it with more skill than a 3- or 4- or 5-year-old when he's 64? And a song about dancing is one thing, but dancing around? Dancing around is what you do when you have to go pee real bad. Now, that's something my nephew and niece would know about.

Back when I wasn't old, John Doe and Exene Cervenka weighed in on appropriate subjects for songwriters:

It's about time, it's about space
It's about some people in a strange place
Woody Guthrie sang about B-E-E-T-S, not B-E-A-T-S
I must not think bad thoughts

2007-05-28T18:29:00.000-04:00

THERE WERE CLUES. Dogfighting? I don't know much about Michael Vick, but people who pay attention to football could have seen this coming if they'd paid a little more attention.

*

"Whether he was playing or not, we came out and played hard. He didn't really do anything when he was in there. We wanted to let them know they were going to be in a dogfight from the start."
-- Virginia Tech defensive end Jamaal Green on the Hokies' largely Vick-less 2000 loss to Miami (Richmond Times Dispatch, Nov. 5, 2000).

*

"We know it is going to be a dogfight and a hostile environment and the thing we have to do is go out and concentrate and focus and execute."
-- Michael Vick, before a 2003 game at Green Bay (San Diego Union Tribune, Jan. 2, 2003).

*

"Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb are very similar quarterbacks, so it really should be a dogfight."
-- Carol Costello, CNN, Jan. 10, 2003.

*

"Coming into this game, we knew it would be a dogfight and we knew stopping [Vick] would be a real challenge."
-- Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Levon Kirkland after a 2003 game against Atlanta (Wilmington News Journal, Jan. 12, 2003).

*

DOGFIGHT: NFC SOUTH COULD BE TOUGHEST DIVISION
-- Winston-Salem Journal, Sept. 4, 2003, in a preview focusing on an injured Vick.

*

"Well, we're in a fight, we're in a dogfight."
-- Jim Mora, coach of Vick's Falcons, on the remainder of the 2005 season (Associated Press, Dec. 13, 2005).

*

"Both NFC South teams are on the skids: The Saints have dropped two in a row, and the Falcons have lost three consecutive games. The division is a dogfight between three teams."
-- The San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 24, 2006, previewing a Falcons-Saints game.

2007-05-16T22:30:00.000-04:00

ALBERTA, LA BELLE PROVINCE . . .

So, I'm booking trains and hotels for a glorious summer jaunt to Montreal and Quebec City
-- a vacation that will re-create my Frenglish pod's 1976 outing (yes, "Frenglish pod." Don't ask.).

Our lodging choice for Quebec City, based on something in between a glance at and a study of TripAdvisor.com, is the Hotel Champlain in Vieux Quebec (the old city). TripAdvisor offers a price-comparison feature that calls up Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity and such, and based on that I started booking the room through Travelocity.

I was about to hit the final confirmation button when a little detail in the hotel's address stopped me:

Hotel Champlain
115 rue Ste-Anne
Vieux Quebec, AB G1R3X6

Now, I've studied Canadian postal abbreviations a fair amount (don't get me started on the demise of the lovely PQ), and I know that AB is the prairie province of Alberta. Nevada's geometry writ large. No place for a Frenglish pod. Based on the other context clues, not the least of which is Rue Ste-Anne, I was 99 percent sure that the hotel is in PQ (pardonnez-moi -- QC), and that indeed there is no burg of Vieux Quebec in Alberta, but then again Michigan has its Frankenmuth and California has its Solvang and I wanted that extra percentage point, so I wrote to Travelocity.

I'm 99 percent sure this is just an error on your site, but I made a reservation at the Hotel Champlain in Quebec City, but then at some point it starts being identified as being in Vieux Quebec, AB, which would mean the very different province of Alberta. It *is* QC, right?

Later in the afternoon, the reply came:

Thank you for writing to Travelocity.

We reviewed your reservation with the trip id xxxxxxxx and see that the hotel reservation you have booked is located in Vieux Quebec, AB . and not QC.

To modify or cancel the reservation, we request you to contact our customer service center at the toll free number 888-872-8356 and one of our agent will certainly help you with the same.

Your cooperation and patience are appreciated.

By "reviewed," I assume they mean "glanced at," and so I called that toll-free number and got a very nice young man who essentially repeated that sort of boilerplate several times until I finally convinced him he didn't understand the issue I was raising. He then put me on hold so long that I was eventually cut off. (Travelocity's hold recording, by the way, isn't Muzak or "Your business is important to us," but rather a longish series of conversations in which an annoying male voice and an annoying female voice take turns playing the doofus role in solving various travel-booking conundrums. I was assured several times that there's normally no need to cancel a car-rental reservation if it turns out you don't want the car.)

While on hold, I also wrote back:

There's just no way this hotel is in Alberta. Despite the AB, your site also says:

>In the center of old Quebec with views of Chateau Frontenac, Hotel
>Champlain is approximately half a mile from St. Paul Street and the
>old port and 10 miles Quebec Airport. Rue du Tresor, Chateau Frontenac/
>Terrace Dufferin, and the Notre Dame Cathedral are roughly 200 meters
>from the hotel. The parliament buildings are half a mile away and the
>cruise terminal is a mile away.

Le Chateau Frontenac is a prominent landmark in Quebec City, which is in Quebec, not Alberta. Everything else about this hotel, including countless other Web sites, points to QC. I believe this is simply an error on the site.

The man on the phone did give me a phone number for the hotel, so I called it. "Bonjour, Hotel Champlain?" Ah, oui. Madame found my story tres amusant.

And then another reply from Travelocity:

Thank you for writing to Travelocity.

Please note per the details the address saved is as stated below.

Hotel Champlain
115 rue Ste-Anne
Vieux Quebec, AB G1R3X6

Bill, if this is the hotel you are looking for we request you to write back to call our 24 hour customer care number and our agent will guide you further.

Le Champlain Hotel
115 Rue Sainte-Anne, Quebec City, Quebec G1R 3X6, Canada

We appreciate the apportunity to serve your travel needs.

I have no idea what all that means, but I'm pretty sure I have a good reporting candidate for the Pasadena Star-News.

2007-04-12T14:08:00.001-04:00

YOU MIGHT EXPECT me to be in the "Lies, lies, lies!" camp in the whole David Sedaris imbroglio, but I'm afraid I can't work up Jack Shafer-size outrage.

I've never considered the memoir to be a subcategory of nonfiction. I had no idea anybody really believed that all those things really happened to Sedaris, or Augusten Burroughs, exactly the way they told the stories. I loved "The Glass Castle" and have no doubts about Jeannette Walls's integrity, but I assumed her fantastic life story was maybe 81 percent true. I agree that James Frey went too far, but I remain surprised at the extent of the public reaction.

I wouldn't trust myself to give you an accurate quote from a conversation I had three hours ago, let alone three decades ago. And yet memoirs, autobiographies, biographies and history books are full of quotes. So it should be obvious that a memoir, and even an autobiography, is at least partially made up. Are the two genres identical in their balance between nonfiction and fiction, and different only in scope? Sometimes. There's memoir and then there's memoir. Arthur Ashe published three memoirs -- one a diary of a season on the tennis tour, one a look at his off-the-court life, and a third looking back from the perspective of his final years. I know he must have gotten some things wrong, but I trust there was no deliberate exaggeration.

What Sedaris and Burroughs do falls into another side of the memoir category -- it's a genre without a name, but you know it when you see it. I've done a little of it myself. Exaggeration, hyperbole and even fabrication don't count as deception when you present them in such a way that nobody of sound mind would believe what they're hearing or reading in the first place. The difference between deception and the Sedaris genre is the difference between "Veteran actor John Goodman now weighs 2,000 pounds, The Washington Post has learned" and "Have you seen John Goodman lately? He must weigh a ton!"

2007-03-27T01:52:00.000-04:00

WHO ARE THE PEOPLE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD? Well, I'm guessing maybe George Costanza. Why else would I be staring every day at a car once owned by Jon Voight?

2007-03-23T13:56:00.000-04:00

MORE FUN WITH MANAGED CARE. Two Saturdays ago Jacqueline and I flew home from a vacation to Phoenix and Las Vegas, a vacation that started with her being sick and ended with my being very sick (I came down with something the second we landed in Las Vegas, so there was a lot of me staying in bed while she lost money -- very "Lost in America").

As the plane descended, my eustachian tubes did that thing they do when planes descend -- that thing that a lot of people have trouble with but which I can always clear up simply by starting to yawn. Well, I yawned, and my ears stayed blocked. And stayed blocked. And stayed blocked. I did some research and found that you're supposed to get help if the blockage persists for more than two hours, and so I called my doctor's office first thing Monday the 12th, and I got a same-day appointment. She gave me drugs for the head cold that she thought would fix the ears as well, and she told me to come back in a week if things were still stopped up.

The cold symptoms went away this week, but the ears stayed blocked, and so I called for another appointment yesterday. My doctor was booked up, but the office squeezed me in with another doctor. He prescribed steroids (steroids that leave a yucky taste in my mouth but which I hope will help my tennis rise to Mariano Puerta-Guillermo Canas heights) and referred me to an otolaryngologist. I muttered the usual "What about my insurance?" question and he told me to check the coverage and call right back. Ask for him and he'll get a referral faxed over. (Ask for him? You can do that?)

Well, the ENT doctor does indeed take my insurance, and I was able to get an appointment for next Thursday. I called my primary-care physician's office and asked for the doctor who told me to ask for him, but they said he was seeing patients. So I left a message.

This morning I was awakened by a phone call from a woman asking how I wanted that referral delivered. I told her about the doctor's plan to fax the referral to the specialist, and she seemed puzzled. (Wasn't he supposed to take care of this?) "Do you have the specialist's fax nubmer?" Um, no, the faxing part wasn't my idea. I told her the doctor probably knew it, but she still seemed puzzled. All right, then, mail it to me. Whatever.

This afternoon at 1:25 I was in the shower and heard the phone ring. When I got out, there was a very snotty message from the referral guy saying he had no idea why I wanted this referral and asking me to call him back. (If he didn't know the reason, how did he know I needed the referral?) I called back immediately and got a recording saying the office was closed until 1:30 for lunch.

At 1:31 I got through and was told the referral coordinator had gone home for the day. But, but, but ...?

The receptionist offered to help me, and so I tried to contain my exasperation as I explained the whole affair.

"Do you have the specialist's fax number?"

2006-11-23T23:52:00.000-05:00

BOXING WAS MY LIFE for what seems like forever, but what actually was more like the mid- to late '70s, mainly 1975 and 1976. For the most part this just meant I was a huge fan. At one point I was so huge a fan that I could pretty much type out a top-100 ranking for each of the 12 weight classes that existed at the time -- and did, during "free type" time in junior-high typing class.

But it also went so far that I did some boxing myself. Or at least I -- and my brother Terence -- trained and sparred and hit the bag. I even climbed into the ring in an actual amateur competition, one that included future world champions. You can see how that turned out here (that's me in the green shirt, after a few seconds of my brothers goofing around):

2006-11-16T23:12:00.000-05:00

SPEEDING COPS, to me, are like gay homophobes: I have no problem with your your doing these things, just don't go condemning other people for doing the same thing.

2006-09-26T23:25:00.000-04:00

A TV MEME: I picked this up from Poppy Z. Brite.

The instructions are simple: bold the shows you've watched at least three complete episodes of, underline the shows you've never seen, italicize a show if you're certain you've seen every episode of it, put a + after the title if you have/had a particular fondness for it, and put an X after the title if you have a particular hatred for it or would never watch it under any circumstances.

You can add up to three shows to the list, but keep them in alphabetical order (yeah, I know -- whoever started this doesn't know how to alphabetize). If you add a series, mark it with an asterisk.

24
3rd Rock from the Sun
7th Heaven
Adam-12
Aeon Flux X
A.L.F
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alias
Alice
All in the Family +
Allo Allo
American Dad
American Idol
America's Next Top Model
Angel
Are You Being Served?
Arrested Development +
As Time Goes By
Babylon 5 X
Babylon 5: Crusade X
Battlestar Galactica (the old one) X
Battlestar Galactica (the new one) X
Baywatch
Beauty & the Beast
Beavis & Butthead +
The Ben Stiller Show
Beverly Hills 90210
Bewitched
Bonanza
Bones
Bosom Buddies
Boston Legal
Boy Meets World
Brady Bunch
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Bug Juice
Chappelle's Show
Charlie's Angels
Charmed
Cheers
China Beach
Columbo
Commander in Chief
Cops
Coupling
Cowboy Bebop
Crossing Jordan
CSI
CSI: Miami
CSI: NY
*Cupid +
Curb Your Enthusiasm +
Dallas
Deadwood
Deal Or No Deal
Degrassi: The Next Generation
Designing Women
Desperate Housewives
Dharma & Greg
Diff'rent Strokes
Doctor Who (new Who)
Doctor Who (series 1-26)
Dragnet (Jack Webb/Harry Morgan version) +
Dragon Ball Z
Due South
Dungeons and Dragons X
Dynasty
Earth 2
The Electric Company
Emergency!
Entourage
ER
Everwood
Everybody Loves Raymond
Facts of Life
Falcon Crest
Family Guy
Family Ties
Fantasy Island (Ricardo Montalban version)
Farscape
Fawlty Towers
Felicity
Firefly
Flamingo Road
Forensic Files
Frasier +
Friends +
Full House
Futurama
Get Smart
Gilligan's Island +
Gilmore Girls
Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. +
Green Wing
Grey's Anatomy
Growing Pains
Gunsmoke
Happy Days
Head of the Class
Hercules
Highlander
Hill Street Blues
Hogan's Heroes +
Home Improvement
Homicide: Life on the Street
Honeymooners +
House +
How I Met Your Mother +
I Dream of Jeannie
I Love Lucy
Invader Zim
Invasion
Inside the NBA
Iron Chef (Japan)
Iron Chef (USA)
Ironside
JAG
Jackass
Jeopardy
Joey
John Doe
Justice League [including Unlimited]
Kath and Kim
Knight Rider
Knots Landing
La Femme Nikita
LA Law
Laugh-In
Laverne and Shirley
Law & Order +
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Law & Order: SVU
Little House on the Prairie
Lizzie McGuire
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
Lost
Lost in Space
Love, American Style
MASH
MacGyver
Magnum P.I.
Malcolm in the Middle
Married With Children
Melrose Place +
Miami Vice
Millennium
Mission Impossible
Monk
Moonlighting
Mork & Mindy
Mr. Show with Bob and David +
Murphy Brown
My Family
My Favorite Martian (cartoon version)
My Life as a Dog
My Mother the Car
My So-Called Life +
Mythbusters
My Three Sons
My Two Dads
Mysterious Cities of Gold
NCIS
Night Court
Nip/Tuck
Northern Exposure
Numbers
One Step Beyond +
One Tree Hill
Oz
Parker Lewis Can't Lose +
Perfect Strangers
Perry Mason
Picket Fences
Pirates of Darkwater
Pokemon
Power Rangers
Prison Break
Profiler
Project Runway
Psyche
Quantum Leap
Queer As Folk (US)
Queer as Folk (British)
Queer Eye For The Straight Guy
ReGenesis
*Relativity +
Remington Steele
Rescue Me
Road Rules
Rome
Roseanne
Roswell
Samurai Jack
Sanford & Son
Saved by the Bell
Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Scooby-Doo Where Are You?
Scrubs
Seinfeld +
Sex and the City
Six Feet Under
Sliders
Slings and Arrows
Smallville
Small Wonder
Soap
So Weird
South Park
Spaced
Spongebob Squarepants
Sports Night
Square Pegs +
St. Elsewhere
Star Trek
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Enterprise
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate SG-1
Superman
Supernatural
Surface
Survivor +
Taxi
Teen Titans
Teletubbies
That Girl
That 70's Show
That's So Raven
The 4400
The Addams Family
The Andy Griffith Show
The A-Team
The Avengers
*The Amazing Race +
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Bionic Woman
*The Bob Newhart Show +
The Book of Daniel
The Colbert Report
The Cosby Show
The Daily Show +
The Dead Zone
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Flintstones
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Golden Girls
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
The Jetsons
The L Word
The Love Boat
The Mary Tyler Moore Show +
The Mighty Boosh
The Monkees
The Munsters
The O.C.
The Office (UK)
The Office (US)
The Pretender
The Prisoner
The Real World +
The Shield
The Simpsons +
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Sopranos +
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody
The Twilight Zone +
The Waltons
The West Wing
The Wonder Years
The X-Files
Third Watch
Thirtysomething
Three's Company
Top Gear
Twin Peaks
Twitch City
Two and a Half Men
Upstairs, Downstairs
Ugly Betty
Ultraviolet
Veronica Mars
Vicar of Dibley
Weeds
Wings
What Not To Wear (US)
What Not To Wear (UK)
Whose Line is it Anyway? (US)
Whose Line is it Anyway? (UK)
Witchblade
Will & Grace
Wonderfalls
Wonder Woman
Xena: Warrior Princess
Young Hercules

2006-06-02T01:59:00.000-04:00

READ the New Yorker's review of the movie "The Da Vinci Code." (It's also pretty much a review of the book.) Never mind whether you've seen the movie or read the book or would even consider doing so. Just trust me.

2006-05-20T00:00:00.000-04:00

JUST WHEN MY FLICKR ADDICTION was getting out of hand (I am the founder of photo pools on Howard Johnson's and assassination sites), I found another -- similar -- online organization-and-community toy (thanks, Dave):

LibraryThing allows you to catalog your book collection (input the barest of title and author info and it snatches the rest from Amazon and other sources) and share it with the world. Do it, now!

Me on Flickr.

Me (and Jacqueline) on LibraryThing.

2006-05-04T11:37:00.000-04:00

WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE HORRIFIED that most young Americans can't find Iraq on a map. Could you find Iraq on an unlabeled map? I think I could, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. "Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans aged 18-24" could do it, the National Geographic Society reports. Thirty or 40 percent sounds pretty impressive to me.

I'd be horrified if people couldn't find the Middle East, and I'm horrified that more than a third couldn't find Louisiana. I'm even concerned that only about half could find India. But Iraq as opposed to Iran or Saudi Arabia? Afghanistan vs. Pakistan? That strikes me as studying-for-a-test stuff, not everybody-knows-that stuff.

"I'm not sure how important it is that young adults can find Afghanistan on a map. But ... that is symptomatic of the bigger issue, and that's not having a sense that things around the world really matter that much," said John Fahey, president of the National Geographic Society.

That, I can agree with. And I'd like to see whether the reporters and editors who dutifully cranked out those alarmist leads and headlines know the whole freakin' globe like the backs of their hands.

2006-04-18T02:22:00.000-04:00

AN EIGHT-MILE WALK marked our Easter Sunday, and hereby I propose that it become a tradition. At least when the weather is that nice.

As I said to Jacqueline at some point on the Memorial Bridge, we are very fortunate to live in a place where a random however-many-mile walk just happens to put us on a path that tourists pay thousands to get to. I wish I had brought my camera: We walked by the House office buildings and then the Capitol and the Botanical Garden, and then the Mall and the Smithsonian museums, and then the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial and the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial and the aforementioned bridge, which leads to Arlington National Cemetery. Along the way there are views of the White House and the Ellipse and the Washington National Cathedral and the Old Post Office Pavilion, etc., etc.

Instead of doubling back, we decided to walk along the Potomac on the Virginia side back to the 14th Street Bridge -- the only not-so-scenic portion of the walk. That route took us past the Navy and Marine Corps Memorial and the Lady Bird Johnson gardens to the Jefferson Memorial and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the Holocaust Museum and then along the southern edge of the Mall, where you get the departments of Agriculture and Energy, and Health and Human Services on one side and a different view of the Smithsonian museums on the other. And one flowering tree and tulip garden after another. Back in the ho-hum residential neighborhood, we have to settle for glorious Victorian and Federal row houses.

I'm happy, but I'm a little bit sore.

2006-04-14T14:19:00.000-04:00

YOU HAVE QUESTIONS? I HAVE ANSWERS.

Q: Bill, do you have the world's greatest Wall Street Journal delivery person?

A: Funny you should ask. The short answer is "no." For part of the long answer, check out a shot from the edition I received today:

2006-04-12T13:44:00.000-04:00

A FEW LINES that I found amusing:

"But does anyone in the sophisticated, elite, U.S. media care? Naw, not a story. But the Red Sox trade a relief pitcher and the pee is running down their legs."
-- Peter Bodo on tennis's Davis Cup

"It’s not mostaciolli, but we can’t quite say why."
-- James Lileks on penne pasta

"Hey Lileks, remember that part of 'The Gallery of Regrettable Food,' when you showed that pot roast and said it looked gross? That was awesome."
-- "DenL913" at Fark.com on James Lileks

2006-04-11T13:20:00.000-04:00

I GET THREE phone calls a year. And two of them beep in on the Call Waiting while I'm on the first one.

2006-03-10T10:45:00.000-05:00

FOR THE RECORD, I tried the flat-front pants. I know, I know, that's what we guys are supposed to be wearing nowadays, despite GQ's previous proclamations that pleats are so much more fashionable and flattering. Flat-fronts would have looked fine on me in my bantamweight days, but, well, now they induce a serious case of Grandpa Lap. Huge, vast, uninterrupted Grandpa Lap. Not nice. In general I'm pretty sanguine about the cyclical nature of fashion -- the narrow lapels and ties and then the medium lapels and ties and then the wide lapels and ties and the the medium lapels and ties and then the narrow lapels and ties again, lather, rinse, repeat -- but yesterday in the fitting room I couldn't help but liken the whole thing to the idea that truth-serum-level honesty was THE ONLY DEFENSIBLE CHOICE in the Clinton White House while being DANGEROUS TO ALL THINGS AMERICAN in the Bush White House. Or vice versa.

So, um, I'm sticking with my pleats. The whole pants-shopping thing, by the way, was an outgrowth of some shirt shopping. Now that I have some wrinkle-resistant, no-iron shirts -- among the greatest inventions ever -- I had to see whether the thusly labeled trousers were just as worthwile. We'll see. In the meantime, try the shirts. Lands' End, despite the mixed review in the Wall Street Journal.

The other thing I realized in the fitting room -- and it's not exactly unrelated -- is that I'm Old. The Macy's (Macy's!) in very, very suburban Arlington, Va., was playing this music. I don't even know the genres anymore, so I can't tell you whether it was "house" or "trance" or "electronica" or "House, M.D.," but it was a girl repeating some vaguely foreign-language-sounding four or five syllables over and over and over and over and over and over again. It was not nice. Then again, I'm the guy who's complaining to the Safeway (Safeway!) manager about the way-too-loud alt/rap/reggae station the very, very suburban Arlington, Va., store chooses to pipe in.

Among the evil chain stores, however, the worst for piped-in music is Sports Authority. The choices aren't as bizarre as the very, very suburban Macy's and Safeway's locations a few miles north, but the insipid crap is so damn loud that you'd have to conclude the motive was to drive customers out of the store, not make them linger and spend.

2006-03-08T21:04:00.000-05:00

GET TICKETS MUCH? The car making a Pittsburgh left in front of me to get on the freeway this afternoon was a Corvette -- a red Corvette -- with a Virginia vanity plate reading something along the lines of 0-200MPH.

2006-02-15T00:51:00.000-05:00

AM I MISSING OUT on some faboo sexual thrill by stopping behind the line I'm supposed to stop behind when I pull up to a stop sign or a red light?

I'm all about the jackrabbit start. I've been known to go into race mode when I know about tight traffic-signal timing. But when I'm forced to stop, I just don't see the point of stopping in the middle of the damn crosswalk -- certainly not when walkers are crossing, but even when it's 3 a.m. and I'm the only one for blocks and blocks who's not asleep.

Everyone else in the world apparently disagrees. They'll be damned if somebody tells them where to stop. They're like the bane of my tennis existence -- the 99.9 percent of players who consider the baseline merely a starting point for negotiations on where the feet should go during the serve.

Way to stick it to The Man, ass-wipes.

2006-02-12T15:16:00.000-05:00

IF YOU'RE relatively young and able-bodied and it wasn't The Blizzard of '96, the hardest part about shoveling snow is finding your shovel and making the commitment to get bundled up and go outside.

Once you're there, why in the world wouldn't you shovel the sidewalk in front of your immediate neighbors as well as your own house, if not the whole damn block?

I know, I know, it's hardly an obvious mandate, and I'm not usually Mr. Bake Cakes for the Elderly, but this is one of those issues on which my essential disdain for humanity dovetails with a very George Costanza-Larry David sense of micro-etiquette.

And I just shoveled the whole damn block. So there.

2006-01-30T11:52:00.000-05:00

A "FEMALE AC-TOR" . . .

Jacqueline tends to watch the award shows, and I happened to be watching when it came time for us all to roll our eyes at yet another exposure of the hideously overexposed Dakota Fanning. But then she started to speak, and -- I have to hand it to her. She spoke, as opposed to reading cue cards, and she did so much, much more articulately than any of the adult ac-tors.

2006-01-27T00:31:00.000-05:00

NOT THAT I should admit going to Subway, but ...

Do all the customers have to treat the "toppings" process as though they
just won big on "Wheel of Fortune"?

"Uh, mayonnaise ... lettuce ... tomatoes ... onions ... mustard, green
peppers, oregano, hot peppers, yellow peppers, parmesan cheese,
olives, pickles, spinach ..."

Would you like the rest on account, or in Spicy Southwest Chipotle Sauce?

2006-01-05T01:47:00.000-05:00

WE DIDN'T HAVE a real Christmas tree this year. Between the deaths in the family and the bathroom renovation, the energy just wasn't there. But, lo and behold, we do have three discarded Christmas trees piled in front of our house!

You see, we are the lucky custodians of the Magic Garbage Tree. Not to compare the neighbors to hygienically questionable household pets or anything, but, like dogs looking for a place to piss, our neighbors look for a tree to set their trash next to, and we have a tree out front. It's really quite amazing -- at one point last year, neighbors carried yard waste from three doors down to put it in front of our house instead of in front of theirs.

This is separate from the issue of the dog walkers who gift our trash bins with their mutts' droppings. That might be OK if the trash collectors actually collected the trash in the bins, but, no, they collect only the gift-wrapped trash -- and the dog shit is never gift-wrapped. So the dog owners may, maybe, think they're doing something good when they throw the crap into a receptacle, but no. They're just throwing it in my lap. Same with the 7-Eleven, Subway and Burger King patrons.

2006-01-04T00:55:00.000-05:00

I RECEIVED A FEW huge DVD box sets for my Very Atheist Christmas (yes, I believe -- in Santa! Chew on that, Bill O'Reilly!). In one of them, one little disc is defective. I knew how this story was going to end, of course, but the discs themselves cost, what, a nickel to produce? And so I tracked down an e-mail address and a phone number for Sony Home Entertainment, the maker of said box set.

Sony didn't reply to either of my two e-mails, and so I went looking for a telephone number. Eventually I found one, and -- miracle of miracles -- one of the voice-mail options involved defective DVDs. That's where my luck ran out: The recording named two titles for which Sony was offering specific action, and then it said that for any other DVD I had to return it to the store.

I left a message anyway, explaining that I was doing them a favor (why replace a dozen DVDs and all the packaging and all the souvenir tchotchkes when you could make things good for a nickel and the price of a stamp?) and asking that they please return my call even if the answer was no. Well, miracle of miracles, they did return my call, but the answer was still no.

"We don't even have the individual discs," the nice man said.

I stopped myself from reciting the "Five Easy Pieces" scene, but I did mention the title. (Distributor: Sony!)

I'm not about to make a gift-giver feel bad about not saving the receipt, and so I guess I'll box up my discs and tchotchkes and become one of those people I hate and march into a random retail establishment and lie about their selling me a defective product.

2005-12-23T14:26:00.000-05:00

OK, WE GOT IT -- ONCE A YEAR, AND AT THIS TIME EACH YEAR. I like the Beach Boys' Christmas songs and all, but they are obsessed with the timing and frequency of the holiday.

2005-12-23T01:42:00.000-05:00

TWO MISTAKES. Not a good day. I was already hurried and harried when I found out as I was leaving for work that one of the two books I slated for resale in The Great Bookshelf Reorganization of 12/20/05 had found a buyer at Amazon Marketplace. But I'm a good guy, and the buyer requested "expedited" shipping, and so I thought maybe I could get the thing in the mail in some semblance of a Christmas timetable.

First I tried printing U.S. Postal Service labels from the quasi-governmental agency's Web site, but the book I sold is heavy, and to ship the thing in my own packaging is prohibitively expensive compared with shipping it in a flat-rate Priority Mail box (and I'm not that good a guy). I thought about walking the three blocks from work to the awful 14th Street post office, but on the way in I found an unlikely parking space in the 1400 block of K Street. Excellent!

Here, I admit, is the point where my expectations became unrealistic. You'd think that a post office would be the best place to find flat-rate Priority Mail boxes. You'd be wrong. (Yes, I know it's the week before Christmas. But so, I presume, does the U.S. Postal Service.)

Heading in to work, I discovered that I did something I almost never do, and I hate doing -- I forgot my identification badge. So I apologetically sign in, and the guard asks for ID. I hand over my driver's license, and then he asks: "What's your last name?" Uh . . . the one that's on the card I just handed you?

"Williams?"

Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

2005-12-17T01:22:00.000-05:00

TONIGHT'S TRUISM: If you think being gay is a "choice," you are by definition bisexual -- and you must think everyone else is also bisexual.

Think about it.

2005-12-15T14:07:00.000-05:00

DUBIOUS ACHIEVEMENT. After Eugene McCarthy died, it briefly crossed my mind that the young and the stupid (and especially the young and stupid) might confuse this Sen. McCarthy with that Sen. McCarthy.

A day or two later, I'm looking through the new Esquire and I see some letters to the editor referring to an illustration that accompanied an article in the previous issue on "Good Night, and Good Luck," the George Clooney movie about Edward R. Murrow and that Sen. McCarthy.

Yep -- a major publication managed to depict the portly, oily, balding, despicable Tailgunner Joe as the trim, dapper, white-haired Clean Gene.

2005-12-13T00:41:00.000-05:00

WARNING: OF INTEREST ONLY TO LONGTIME D.C.-AREA RESIDENTS.

I knew Cool "Disco" Dan. (Well, I saw his work.)
Cool "Disco" Dan was a friend of mine. (Well, I bought a T-shirt.)
Mr. Dorf, you are no Cool "Disco" Dan.

2005-12-09T14:57:00.000-05:00

MANY YEARS AGO I had an Epson Stylus printer. Boy, was that output beautiful -- sharpness and color straight from God. But I had to switch back to an old reliable Hewlett-Packard model, because the Epson had a balky, horribly designed, gravity-dependent paper feed. The HP feed was mechanical, logical and sweet.

For some reason HP changed its feed strategy, and now most models (or at least most models I could find) have scrapped the old "paper tray" concept in favor of a single tray for both input and output. It's hard to tell whether a sheet of paper is coming or going, and -- as with the Epson -- you can't put much paper in there at all. The in/out ambiguity also results in a situation very similar to the Epson's in the initial paper-catch. It looks like trouble, and finally, today, it proved to be trouble.

Here, in part, is how my "help" session went . . .

Dennis
Welcome to HP Total Care for All-in-One products. My name is Dennis. How may I assist you today?

Bill Walsh
Suddenly my paper feed is becoming very finicky. It says it's out of paper when there's a small stack loaded properly. It says it's out of paper when there's a large stack loaded properly. It says it's out of paper when it has actually accepted the paper.

Dennis
Bill, I understand the issue is with paper feed.

Dennis
Since how long have you been experiencing this issue with your All-in-One?

Bill Walsh
Just now. Fifteen minutes ago. I haven't used the thing all that much, but it has been fine before.

Dennis
Okay, let us troubleshoot the issue with the All-in-One printer.

Dennis
Let us power cycle the All-in-One printer.

Denn is
Please follow the steps below to power cycle your all-in-one: 1. Verify that the unit is switched on. Unplug the all-in-one from power and disconnect the connection port. 2. Wait 30 seconds. 3. Plug in the power only. 4. Repeat steps 1-3 two more times. 5. On the third time after plugging the unit into power, reconnect the connection port from the all-in-one to your computer

Dennis
Let me know when you are done with the steps.

Bill Walsh
Thanks for your help. I'll jot that down and try it sometime when I have a week off work.

2005-12-08T15:24:00.000-05:00

ALL OF A SUDDEN I feel like even more of an out-of-touch old fart than usual. Did I miss the mass briefing on all matters Narnia and Brokeback?

In other news, I tried to give that "Kanye" person a chance -- at least I didn't fast-forward through the musical act for once when he was on "SNL." Can someone explain to me what the appeal is there? He doesn't actually sing. Or rap. Or use catchy music. The listening experience seems rather like sitting next to a relatively subdued crazy person mumbling to himself on the subway. (Or did he not realize he was the musical guest on "SNL"? Maybe that was it -- he just had a really bad monologue writer.)

2005-12-06T23:18:00.000-05:00

IN THE NEWSROOM toward the end of my shift Friday night, I heard one of the Metro people talking about a big fire at the Leisure World retirement community in Silver Spring. Hmm, I thought, my uncle Joe and aunt Clara just moved there -- the way you might make a mental note that you have a friend in a city where there was just a triple homicide or where a winning Powerball ticket was sold.

I even thought of calling over there -- I knew that my version of the Post-It notes that my brother Kenny passed around when we were up in Pottsville for my father's funeral, with the phone number and the Leisure World Boulevard address and apartment number, was atop the pile of I-must-get-to-this-soon stuff on my desk at home. But I didn't call (I'm horrible about that sort of thing), and I went home secure in the knowledge that early reports indicated no injuries.

If I knew there had been a fatality when my brother Terence's e-mail arrived after 1 a.m., I hadn't known for long. You guessed it: Nine thousand people at Leisure World, and the one fatality is my uncle. The one who moved to Leisure World because his family, quite logically, didn't think it was safe for him and Clara, with their limited mobility, to stay in their house in Pennsylvania. The one who I had just seen at my father's funeral, who had always argued good-naturedly with Dad about who would be the last surviving member of their big family. The one who had barely spent any time in the Leisure World apartment because he was with his wife, who was hospitalized with cancer.

Joe was a lot of fun, always ready with a story about boxing (of which his knowledge was encyclopedic) or his law career or his military career. We'll miss him.

The Pottsville paper published a nice obituary.

2005-12-01T11:40:00.000-05:00

I HAVE BEEN MEANING to write about my prodigious recent reading spree (that Philip Roth miscue notwithstanding), and last night's "D'oh!" moment provides as good an excuse as any.

I'll get to last night, but let me start with two novels by Richard Ford, "The Sportswriter" and its sequel, "Independence Day." I'm told the sequel was the only novel ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. I read Ford and I can't help but observe that he packs a couple of years' worth of "Man, I'd better write that down!" observations into every paragraph. You know how you'll occasionally hear an ad boasting that it took an ungodly number of pounds of, say, tomatoes to make one can of, say, tomato sauce? Well, my someday-I'll-write-that-novel journal of cogent observations would work out to maybe a sentence or two of Richard Ford.

And just when I was feeling that depressed about ever writing something other than a usage scold, I belatedly discovered John Updike. The idea of Updike as somebody worth reading, frankly, had never really occurred to me until recently. I considered him not quite on the Grisham level, but along those lines. All that success, all those sequels. But for some reason I got a yen for relatively recent fiction this year, and his name came up. I just started "Rabbit, Run," and I just have to say this: I have nothing to say that's worth saying. Take everything I said about Ford and multiply by 10. It took Updike to really make me think about a depressing truth for writers: Every great line makes the job of future writers that much more difficult. This is a different kind of greatness from, say, greatness in sports. If Federer conjures a new way to put away a forehand and I somehow duplicate that, I can claim a tiny slice of greatness. But if Updike describes a chalkboard as "a milky black" and I duplicate that, I'm a thief.

The other Updike line that stays with me is about how all women look like brides in their slips. Wow.

But it wasn't until last night, when I read a relatively mediocre "Rabbit" line about water dripping off a swimming woman in "grape-bunches," that it occurred to me: Nicholson Baker! Years ago, after I fell in love with "The Mezzanine," I read all the Baker I could get my hands on, including "U & I," Baker's unabashed valentine to Updike. The grape-bunches reference (mainly the hyphen) screamed Baker. I had made a halfhearted attempt to get into Updike after reading that book, but I had shunned the "Rabbit" series and was never particularly drawn in. Still, I can't believe the Baker book hadn't occurred to me earlier as I "discovered" Updike.

In quite a different vein, I loved Julie Powell's "Julie and Julia," a Queens secretary's account of her quest to cook all the recipes in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in the space of a year. It's a well-written and entertaining book, but even more notable is the story behind the story -- perhaps the greatest success story in the short history of blogging. Powell's "Julie/Julia Project" Web site propelled her from a dead-end job to a well-compensated writer's life.

Another good one on the memoir side: "Made in Detroit," an account of growing up white in a city where almost all the white people fled long ago. I was one of the suburbanites, but I found a lot of familiar ground -- and there's plenty in the book even if you have no Detroit connection.

I believe I've mentioned these two before, but the greatness of Richard Yates's novel "Revolutionary Road" and Jeannette Walls's memoir "The Glass Castle" bears repeating.

Just so you don't think I fall in love with everything I read, a strong "eh" for "How to Cook Your Daughter," Jessica Hendra's memoir alleging sexual abuse by her semi-famous father, Tony Hendra.

2005-11-28T02:45:00.000-05:00

KATE MOSS deserves all this shit, right? I mean, who ever heard of a celebrity using cocaine?

2005-11-25T22:54:00.000-05:00

I HAVEN'T SAID much about this season of "The Amazing Race," but I will make one prediction:

The finish line will be the grave of Dale Earnhardt.

2005-11-18T16:48:00.000-05:00

I'M AS HAPPY as anyone that O.J. and Baretta are financially ruined, but it's just fucking batshit ridiculous that you can sue somebody in civil court for murder.

2005-11-02T14:10:00.000-05:00

I WAS AT a Barnes & Noble today looking for, among other things, "Portnoy's Complaint." The store had every other Philip Roth novel but not that one, and I asked an employee to double-check.

And then watched as she typed on her terminal "port noise complaint."

Ah, yes, the tragic hero, driven mad by the bellowing tugboats ...

2005-10-28T10:50:00.000-04:00

LOW CULTURE, HIGH CULTURE: CBS's "How I Met Your Mother" started strong and just keeps getting better.

Meanwhile, Time magazine's 100 best English-language novels since 1923 struck me as a nice list, mostly because of the inclusion of the obscure but remarkable "Revolutionary Road" and the Pottsville, Pa.-centric "Appointment in Samarra." The presence of some of my other favorites, such as "The Sun Also Rises," "The Catcher in the Rye," "Catch-22" and "Lord of the Flies," was more predictable.

Mark my words: Someday I'll read all them there books. But first I'll catch up on my TiVo backlog.

2005-10-17T13:58:00.000-04:00

Dad and me in '63.

THE OBITUARY is sort of on-topic.

2005-10-12T12:09:00.000-04:00

FUN WITH FLICKR. There you can browse photos of our recent trip to Michigan or explore my thoughts on bathroom design or learn all about my life.

2005-08-15T17:08:00.000-04:00

MY WIFE'S labor of love becomes front-page news!

Jacqueline contributed to Dana Hedgpeth's Post article, provided the information for a huge map and contributed several photos, both inside and on Page One.

Oh, and then there was the chat.

2005-08-03T17:14:00.000-04:00

ANARCHY ON THE ROAD. Gradually and then suddenly, traffic rules just aren't be observed anymore. Not by the drivers, not by the pedestrians. Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's happening at a different pace in other areas, but Washington, D.C., from a driver's perspective, is now essentially part of Italy.

2005-07-26T11:39:00.000-04:00

"IGNITION SEQUENCE START" was plenty of chatter for me. Is anybody else annoyed by the use of the liftoff countdown on recent space missions as a platform for sloganizing? Is Buzz Lightyear doing this color commentary? "Liftoff! We have liftoff for space shuttle Discovery, beginning America's new journey to the moon, Mars and beyond. Brought to you by Sunny Delight. Sunny D: Unleash the power of the sun!"

2005-07-25T23:38:00.000-04:00

THE BEST AD ON TV? I couldn't agree more about "Tiny House." Don't like the cavemen ones so much, though.

2005-07-15T03:37:00.000-04:00

LIFE-CHANGING KITCHEN DISCOVERIES:

The leave-one-end-intact method of chopping onions, which I learned from "America's Test Kitchen." Maybe I'm just imagining things, but it appears to solve the crying problem as well as improving the dicing result.

Setting up coffee the night before. I don't mean fiddling with the stupid timer, which requires a prediction about wakey-wakey time (we night-shifters have the luxury of varying that quite a bit). No, I just mean grinding the beans and filling the water reservoir so that the push of one button is all that is required in the morning. The speed and design of my coffee maker (I'm currently using a Hamilton Beach BrewStation, which dispenses directly into the cup and skips the carafe middleman) mean I can pour myself a cup less than a minute after I hit that button.

Honorable mention: The garbage bowl. Yes, the Rachael Ray garbage bowl. The idea makes no sense at first glance -- why not just throw things directly into the garbage? -- but few kitchens have refuse facilities mere inches from the cutting board, and at the same height. Yes, the Racher is often annoying ("Mmmmmmm!" ... "E-V-O-O" ... "Just water, please" ... "Tip: 38 cents"), but that idea is genius, and her ruthless critics need to calm down a little. Even if there were something wrong with small boobies, which there isn't, that isn't a suitable topic for public criticism, especially of someone you've never met. (I'll admit, though, that some of the cruel stuff on that site is pretty funny.) I'll report back on whether Rachael's love for the santoku knife is justified, once mine arrives.

2005-07-01T03:00:00.000-04:00

A TECHNICAL QUESTION from the Idealistic Idiot:

OK, you know how some programmer somewhere had to write code specifying that when (not "if," sadly) your browser crashes, you get that little prompt telling you that your browser crashed and asking you whether you want to report it for investigation?

Well, instead of writing that, why not write code that reloads the last page loaded?

We can put a man on the moon (and load the damn page in the first place), but we can't do something as simple as that?

2005-06-25T10:52:00.000-04:00

CELL PHONES lead to bad driving? I'm stunned. (Attention, D.C.: It's not about the hands.)

2005-06-10T01:59:00.000-04:00

THE ACCIDENTAL VEGETARIAN. I've liked vegetables more than the average carnivore. Broccoli, asparagus (of course), lima beans -- even brussels sprouts, but only after I learned what they tasted like when not overcooked. Cauliflower and beets, in particular, speak to me. When my friends and I rented a hotel (OK, motel) room on college-graduation night, in fact, the most passionate happening was an argument over the merits of beets (me, pro-. I can understand visceral aversion to the green vegetables, but beets are practically candy).

Still, when I cook I generally cook one thing at a time. Two, if steak frites counts as two. And vegetables aren't usually main-dish recipes. So my eating-at-home diet tends to consist largely of pasta or meat, period. (Sure, pasta is vegetarian, but, well ...) And, frankly, I've always tended to look askance at vegetarianism. Well, I don't know if my body was trying to tell me something or what, but for the past couple of weeks that one thing I've cooked (in our new kitchen) has tended to be vegetarian -- not just as in no meat (again, my years of cappellini with Ragu sauce would qualify there), but as in actual vegetables.

Let's see, there was the eggplant-tomato-onion-garlic-mushroom-cheese casserole. Spaghetti squash with tomato sauce. Cauliflower with garlic, olive oil and parmesan cheese. Cauliflower with Indian spices. Cauliflower and peas with Dubliner/parmesan cheese sauce. Eggplant parmesan. Roasted beets. Grilled portobello mushrooms and broiled tomatoes. That's all for now, but it's a big veggie world. I'm looking to re-create and retool some of the red-lentil recipes I came up with when I went on a big red-lentil cook as part of a misguided low-fat regime several years back.

I'm not elevating this to a fetish. I had crabs the other day, and beef fajitas the day before that. In Las Vegas I'll be all about the meat. If you invite me to Morton's, I'll be at Morton's. But I figure that I might as well make up for lost time as long as this kind of cooking remains appealing to me. I feel healthier already.

2005-06-07T23:38:00.000-04:00

WHAT'S ALL THIS about a Tabasco penalty? This is an outrage! If I want my food a little spicy, I shouldn't have the government trying to fine me!

2005-06-05T23:52:00.000-04:00

I'M NOT ONE for preachy causes, and my charity record consists largely of voting for members of the Tax-and-Spend Party, but here's an easy thing that most all of us can do to save lives:

Be an organ donor.

Jacqueline and I were fortunate enough this weekend to be invited to a casual but somewhat star-studded (Carl Lewis, Christine Brennan) awareness-raising event put together by our neighbor Jeff Marx, and, I must say, my awareness was raised. A dozen or so people who otherwise might have been saved die each day in this country because of a shortage of donor organs. Jeff's sister, Wendy, saw both sides of the coin. A liver transplant saved her life in 1989, but she wasn't as fortunate when the new liver failed 14 years later.

So, please, check that little box. And talk to your family members and friends about doing the same.

An aside: You'd think I would have had a decent chance, as a piece of management scum at the Washington Post, of being the most accomplished journalist on my block. Or at least within a two-house radius. But no. Jeffrey Marx, our two-doors-down neighbor, got a bachelor's degree of journalism in 1984, as I did. Two years later I was doing pretty well, running the Phoenix Gazette's metro desk while more important people slept and on the cusp of becoming a founding member of one of the first large-scale conversions to computer-assisted page layout in American newspapering.

Jeff, meanwhile, was, uh, winning the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. At 23, he was the youngest winner of that award. He exposed rampant corruption in the University of Kentucky basketball program. He and his writing partner beat out the Dallas Morning News duo that blew the lid off Henry Lee Lucas's story.

But at least I'm the most accomplished author within sight of my front porch? Well, no. Jeff has written four books -- one was about Wendy's struggle, two were with Carl Lewis, and his most recent, "Season of Life," is a bestseller.

Meanwhile, three doors down, next door to Jeff, Emery Battis, our block's top Shakespearean actor, turned 90 and got his picture in the Post with Sandra Day O'Connor.

Oh, and another Capitol Hill friend, Jonathan Ernst, a freelance photographer who's the brother of Jacqueline's good friend Heidi, turned up today in the Washington Post Magazine as the photographer and author of the cover story.

I feel so lame. But, aside from my bum pancreas, I'm offering up my organs if anyone needs 'em.

2005-05-31T13:58:00.000-04:00

THE McDLT LOOK. I've noticed that a significant number of young people in the year-round shorts-and-flip-flops young-person uniform bundle up above the waist while they're wearing practically nothing below the waist. They wear long sleeves, jackets, hats (hell -- parkas and earmuffs wouldn't surprise me), as though they were knee deep in a Jacuzzi in the Arctic.

Some people always seem to be hot and others always seem to be cold, but do we now have a hot-side-hot, cold-side-cold generation?

2005-05-18T14:54:00.000-04:00

GEE, THANKS.

Did I hear that Travelocity ad correctly?

When you book with Travelocity and encounter any problem with your booking ...

My trip will be free? One night will be free? I'll be credited a lousy hundred bucks?

... we'll work with our partners to make it right.

Amazing! Who could expect more?

2005-05-17T01:34:00.000-04:00

SPORTS NOTES. If you get a chance to see the lightweight-championship unification fight between Jose Luis Castillo and Diego Corrales, don't pass it up.

I won't spoil the result (Google the names if you like), but I will say that it made the Thrilla in Manilla look like the Snoozefest in Budapest. It was the first fight I've ever seen that made scenes from the "Rocky" movies seem plausible.

AND, MOVING FROM BOXING TO TABLE TENNIS, if you get a chance to see Matthew Syed wield the sponged paddle, don't pass that up either.

Modern table tennis on TV is typically pretty boring, after maybe five minutes of initial novelty. Most players pound topspin loop shots back and forth ad nauseam. Matthew Syed, on the other hand, looks like a fictional player my brothers or I would have invented on our garage table circa 1980. Syed, a cueball-bald Oxford-educated Englishman, stands 20 feet behind the table and chops the ball back, over and over again, no matter what his opponent throws at him. There's the occasional topspin and even a countersmash or two, but mainly it's the underspin -- which I didn't even realize was a viable tactic in table tennis. I thought the unorthodoxy of Fabrice Santoro and the showmanship of Mikael Pernfors on the tennis court were things to behold, but Syed is beyond belief. At least once a match, from what I've seen, he anticipates an opponent's smash and climbs over the barrier behind (or even beside) the court to make a series of successful retrievals. All this would be remarkable enough if he were merely a world-class player, but he's a top world-class player.

ESPN2 is scheduled to show a Syed match June 19 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. Set your TiVo.

2005-05-12T12:02:00.000-04:00

ATTENTION, SHORT-ORDER COOKS. The next seminar in the Bill Walsh "How Hard Is It?" series will cover the difference between scrambled eggs and a plain omelet. Be there.

2005-04-29T09:46:00.000-04:00

MASON ADAMS, R.I.P.

I could have done without the Smuckers ads, frankly, but "Lou Grant," was a major force in my life. I feel more and more like an old fart every time I tell a young journalist that I was surprised to learn about copy editors because I don't remember seeing copy editors on "Lou Grant," but that show -- in which Adams played Managing Editor Charlie Hume -- was huge when I headed to college.

It's also the first entry on my "shows I wish were on DVD" list.

The first "Dragnet" episodes arrive soon, but still on the list:

"The Paper Chase."

"It's Garry Shandling's Show."

"The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd."

"Parker Lewis Can't Lose."

"The Rookies."

"Toma."

"Ed."

"Cupid."

"Relativity."

And, hugely:

"The David Letterman Show" (the original, the morning one).

If I'm wrong about any of these shows not being on DVD (aside from maybe one "Rookies" episode), I'll be thrilled.

2005-04-28T16:31:00.000-04:00

TWO VOICE MAILS waiting for me at work.

First message:

This is Debbie from [name of talent agency] in [city of talent agency], and we have someone interested in your speaking, and I'd like to find out what your fee is and several other questions. My number is . . .

Second message:

Hi, Mr. Walsh, this is Debbie from [name of talent agency] again. Um, just go ahead and disregard the previous voice mail I left you. You were not the Bill Walsh that they were looking for. They wanted a football coach! So, thank you very much.

2005-04-26T02:09:00.000-04:00

THE ACES CONFERENCE in Hollywood couldn't have been better. A great lineup of speakers (I especially enjoyed John Allen Paulos, the Jake Johannsen of math). I thought my session went better than any of my previous attempts at public speaking (thanks, Gina, for suggesting the more casual wardrobe). I had a great time driving down streets from "Dragnet" episodes with friends old and new. All the while, though, I was wishing I had been home for the start of the endless finish of the new kitchen.

You've seen the Bradys' house. Here are some more pictures. (For pictures featuring actual people, you may want to check with Nicole.)

2005-04-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

WHAT TRIP TO LOS ANGELES is complete without a visit to the "Brady Bunch" house?

Tucked in a residential neighborhood of varying styles where Hollywood meets Studio City, the high-roofed ranch (the window on the show was fake, and of course the house was used only for the exterior scene-setting) is familiar, but I'm not sure I would have picked it out if I hadn't known the address.

Fittingly, it looks more like the "real" Brady house in pictures than in person.

2005-04-07T12:14:00.000-04:00

100 THINGS ABOUT ME. (Yes, I know it's so 1998, but it took me this long.)

1. For a long time I was very skinny with a lot of hair. Now I'm fat and bald.
2. I love the city, but I don't dislike the country or even the suburbs.
3. I've never owned a car with an automatic transmission.
4. I have trophies for tennis, boxing, spelling and bowling. (Guess which one was a gag gift. No, it was the bowling one.)
5. I don't like cops, but I hate criminals.
6. Kate Jackson was my favorite Charlie's Angel.
7. I would love to be a wine snob; for now, I just play one on television.
8. At age 6 I campaigned for Robert F. Kennedy. And Sander Levin and Phil Hart.
9. I'm a bit of an assassination buff, but I've given up on conspiracy theories. Oswald did it.
10. For most of junior high and high school my career goal was to design cars.
11. I would retire this second if finances permitted.
12. I'm at a point where I feel I've accomplished enough on my own that winning a huge lottery jackpot would be bittersweet.
13. I have never had any desire to be a parent.
14. Cat person, most definitely.
15. I sporadically go through brief periods of Scrabble obsession.
16. I don't do crossword puzzles.
17. I taped and saved every episode of "Seinfeld."
18. In second grade, I got up in front of my class and explained what was happening with Apollo 13.
19. As a childhood sports fan, I never rooted for the home team. With some great Tigers and Red Wings teams right there, I rooted for the Yankees or Orioles and the Canadiens. And the Packers over the Lions.
20. I became very emotionally invested in every point of Bjorn Borg's matches in the late '70s and early '80s.
21. The first record album I bought (well, the first one that involved music) was the "Rocky" soundtrack.
22. I had the musical taste of a very, very old person until well into college.
23. I lived in Arizona for 10 years (10 years to the day) and never went to the Grand Canyon.
24. I lived in Arizona for 10 years without owning a pair of shorts, other than tennis shorts.
25. I have never skied.
26. I am a very adventurous eater.
27. I believe very strongly in the death penalty, but only if it could be administered by an aggrieved party or an eyewitness immediately after the crime.
28. I try very hard to make case-by-case exceptions as they come up, but basically I think you have to be an asshole to smoke cigarettes.
29. I really, really don't understand the whole tattoos-and-piercings thing.
30. Or the implants thing.
31. I miss old-fashioned roller skates.
32. I consider myself pretty smart, until I sit down to play Trivial Pursuit with my wife.
33. I have never seen a full episode of "Star Trek."
34. I was all set to major in psychology until I learned that statistics classes were required.
35. I talk on the telephone less than anyone I know.
36. I have shaken hands with Marion Barry and Sun Myung Moon.
37. Religious people puzzle me.
38. Late in 2001 I learned I was diabetic.
39. I take very few sick days, but the ones I do take leave me riddled with guilt.
40. I avoid valet parking whenever possible.
41. My favorite food is probably toro -- sushi or sashimi of fatty tuna belly.
42. I don't like licorice, but I love Pernod.
43. I will drive out of my way to use Speedpass to pay for gasoline.
44. I occasionally go on very silly eBay binges, often involving Howard Johnson's memorabilia.
45. I can come pretty close to reciting Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" or Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" from memory.
46. I used to be a coin collector.
47. I have gone to great lengths to get to a White Castle.
48. I miss being able to fall asleep to Larry King's old radio show.
49. When it comes to the needy, I can get a little Ayn Rand-y.
50. I have never done drugs.
51. Littering really bothers me.
52. I drink a lot of seltzer.
53. I would have gotten braces in junior high school, but I refused when I was told it would involve wearing the associated headgear to school.
54. The first presidential vote I cast was for John B. Anderson in 1980. (Practically everyone I know voted for Anderson. Why didn't he win?)
55. In childhood, I was obsessed with guns.
56. I wish I could have lived in Manhattan for a couple of years at some point.
57. I don't understand people who don't speed up a little when they're walking across a street. (I don't look down on those who don't share my abnormally fast walking speed, but I do have a problem with the "I'm so cool, I pretend those speeding cars aren't even there" mind-set.)
58. I love apartment hunting, house hunting and just about everything else about real estate.
59. My great-great-grandfather was hanged for a murder related to the Molly Maguires.
60. I doubt many people make a better spaghetti carbonara than mine.
61. I don't particularly like being a supervisor, but it's better than being supervised by somebody else.
62. I have such a finely honed sense of right and wrong on the road, I look like the world's most aggressive maniac one minute and the world's most courteous milquetoast the next.
63. My dealings with people in the service industry are similar to my dealings with fellow drivers.
64. I want to buy every book that interests me and keep every book I buy.
65. I consider the insurance industry a criminal enterprise. I would devote my life to writing the definitive expose of these people if I didn't firmly believe that my life would end very soon after the publication of such a book, if not sooner.
66. I taught myself Excel programming, and I take great pleasure in automating my life with spreadsheets.
67. I like my steak rare.
68. I think I have a very healthy attitude about money.
69. I ballboyed for Billie Jean King.
70. I played with Fisher-Price Little People long after it was age-appropriate.
71. The tamest ferris wheel scares me more than the most ambitious roller coaster.
72. I have a recurring nightmare about climbing a hill in a vehicle but failing and rolling back down.
73. When I was little, I would turn any cylindrical object into a microphone and pretend to be Hugh Downs.
74. Almost as soon as I learned to talk I could identify the make and model of any car on the road.
75. I was a coffee drinker before I hit puberty.
76. Where a lot of people would type "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," I type "This is the dawning of the age of aquarius." I have no idea why.
77. I have great taste in neckties.
78. I'm ready to strangle Bill Gates any number of times during a typical day, but I tend to roll my eyes at "Mac people."
79. I have the wrists of a 12-year-old girl.
80. When I had hair, I occasionally colored it.
81. I still occasionally splurge on expensive hair-care products.
82. I bite my fingernails.
83. And crack my knuckles.
84. I can do this weird double-jointed thing with my thumbs.
85. I've needed eyeglasses since eighth grade. Wore soft contacts for a couple of years in college but tired of the hassle; now I keep disposable ones around for sports and recreation.
86. I never drank until I was legal. I've probably made up for the lost time.
87. In high school and college I wrote "The Lob Also Rises," a full-length Hemingway parody in which my junior tennis persona was the Jake Barnes character.
88. I can't decide whether I'm the sloppiest neat person ever or the neatest sloppy person ever.
89. As a college freshman, I planned my class schedule around David Letterman's morning show and, ahem, "General Hospital."
90. I make a living correcting people's English, but in real life I say "Can I," never "May I," and "lay" when it should be "lie."
91. I have a very hard time with books or movies set too far earlier or later than the modern age. This helps explain why I am Shakespeare-illiterate and science-fiction-averse.
92. I don't tend to agonize over major life decisions.
93. I don't know how I ever lived without TiVo.
94. My wedding anniversary is April Fool's Day.
95. My interest in serial killers is probably a tad beyond the healthy level.
96. For someone who's as far from being a Trekkie as anyone could be, I'm quite the Monty Python geek.
97. I have fairly elaborate rules about what beverages are allowed with what foods.
98. I cannot whistle. Not even close. (And I can't stand whistling, but envy has nothing to do with it.)
99. I often yell at inanimate objects.
100. The prospect of my picking up an apple and biting into it in public is about as likely as my re-enacting that Ozzy Osbourne bat thing.

2005-04-06T14:47:00.000-04:00

SO I'M STANDING IN LINE at Safeway and something in my peripheral vision catches my eye.

Why, I ask myself, does that jar of spices say BILL WALSH on it?

I take a longer look and I see:

DILL WEED.

2005-03-24T03:29:00.000-05:00

"IDOL" CHATTER. Pathetic, I know. But I didn't want an entry on nothing but the part you'll find in boldface below.

This is my first season watching "American Idol." Boy, did I roll my eyes at Kelly and Justin and Ruben and Clay and all that crap. But now, alas, I'm hooked. The most recent episode, to flirt with going on-topic, was a rebroadcast to correct a copy-editing error! I really wanted to rank Tuesday's performances, but the gap between the top five and the bottom six was so immense, I decided to simply place them in those groups:

First (tie). BO BICE, "Time in a Bottle." The better of the two token rockers has been consistently good, and this was no exception. I'm a sucker for '70s singer-songwriter stuff, but I think even those who aren't would have to admit that the unplugged Croce number was very well done.

First (tie). VONZELL SOLOMON, "The Best of My Love." Darn, it was the Emotions song. I would have loved to see her do the Eagles one. I thought Vonzell was expandable for the past two or three votes, near the bottom of the pack, but this time she stood out as one of the stars.

First (tie). JESSICA SIERRA, "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Ballsy song selection! She made it work, though. Strong voice, sweet and understated presence.

First (tie). CARRIE UNDERWOOD, "Alone." The token country girl has long been the favorite of this non-country boy. Carrie's voice is and always has been great, but her trademark as a finalist has been stage presence, and something strange is happening on that front. She looked as if she belonged up there until two or three weeks ago, when she suddenly started looking quite the opposite -- really scared. Maybe it's the non-country songs. This episode's finance-company jingle ("How will I get you a loan?") was fine but not outstanding. But the judges, even Simon, still love her, so what do I know?

First (tie). SCOTT SAVOL, "Against All Odds." Against all odds indeed. Maybe it's because he started out as a big fat outcast, but I've been rooting for the 1,700-pound dirtball (some sould say "wigger") with the big, clear voice. If he had to pick Phil Collins schlock, he picked one of the less-offensive examples.

* * *

Last (tie). CONSTANTINE MAROULIS, "I Think I Love You." Simon gave him too much grief for the intentionally tacky song selection, but I don't think the performance was that good. I'm not sure how much longer this competition will be big enough for both him and Bo. (A little tip, Conster: Don't hold the microphone like a hot dog. Never again.)

Last (tie). NADIA TURNER, "Time After Time." I can't believe none of the judges noticed this, but while they were distracted by her mohawk hairdo, she was botching some lyrics in spectacular fashion. "Caught up in circles" turned into -- I'm serious -- "always with zburkles." Confusion is nothing new indeed! Was I really the only one who heard that? I liked Nadia a lot, but this wasn't so hot, even discounting the zburkles.

Last (tie). MIKALAH GORDON, "Love Will Lead You Back." She's insufferable, yes, but I really thought she had a Barbra Streisand quality. I wanted to see her in a remake of "What's Up, Doc?" Slowly but unfortunately, she's turning into Cher.

Last (tie). ANTHONY FEDEROV, "I Knew You Were Waiting for Me." Not a bad song selection, but the hockey superstar and former Anna Kournikova husband continues to skate on the thin side after a promising start.

Last (tie). NIKKO SMITH, "Incomplete." Incomplete indeed. The son of Hall of Fame slugger Phil Rizzuto didn't deserve his later-luckily-reversed elimination, but this performance of a song that nobody has ever heard of, from an artist that nobody has ever heard of, didn't do it for me. The judges disagreed.

Last (tie). ANWAR ROBINSON, "Ain't Nobody." I really wish he could get rid of the stupid artificial smile, but he truly does seem to be genuinely and hopelessly good-natured. I liked him better earlier, though. The nasal white-guy voice just isn't working -- the gesticulating and dancing and forced audience participation of this performance made up the perfect example of not-at-all-funky masquerading as funky. At this point, I don't think the Republicans' determination to drill in him for oil is such a bad thing. (The judges kept saying he was doing a Chaka Khan song, but everybody knows Chaka Khan had only one song and this was not it. I feel for them.)

Who should go? Votes are based on more than just the last performance, of course, and so I would have to say Nadia is quite safe. Anwar, Nikko, Anthony, Mikalah and Constantine, not so much. I'd keep Mikalah for novelty value, for now. I'd be satisfied with any combination from the Anwar-Nikko-Anthony-Constantine group when the next elimination time arrives.

Second opinion.

Third opinion (still waiting)?

2005-03-21T18:09:00.000-05:00

AS IF I DIDN'T have enough guilty-pleasure TV shows, A&E's "Intervention" is off to a riveting start.

2005-03-21T01:12:00.000-05:00

"THE INCREDIBLES." Even if, like me, you're no fan of action-adventure crap or the usual Pixar fare, you may have to see this movie just for the, for lack of a better term, set design.

The buildings and their contents, and the cars on the roads, exist in a delightfully odd combination of the past and the future. As the movie's creators describe in the DVD extras, the idea was a mid-1960s conception of the world of tomorrow. The mid-century-modern house that the Incredible family lives in was the best part of the movie for me. I'll be on the vulnerable side if an enterprising real-estate agent corners me in Los Angeles.

2005-03-18T02:02:00.000-05:00

EQUAL TIME for the side of me that is distinguishable from a particuarly shallow 14-year-old girl.

This is a story of a book that you must read, and how I came to read it.

My favorite episode of "Seinfeld" -- not the one I think is best, but my favorite -- is "The Jacket," in which Elaine's father is an obscure but well-regarded novelist who scares the living shit out of Jerry and George. In watching a DVD, I learned that the episode was based on Larry David's similarly scary experience meeting novelist Richard Yates when David was dating Yates's daughter Monica.

In looking up exactly who Richard Yates was, I came upon some very good notices for a Yates novel called "Revolutionary Road," written in the year of my birth but set several years earlier, in '50s suburbia. The subject matter is sad, bitter, morbid, depressing -- just the way I like it -- but the thing is the writing. Clear, lucid, vivid, without frills but also without a studied absence of frills. Imagine Fitzgerald if he lived up to his admirers' opinion of him.

I won't say much else because my description would be no match for Yates's writing. Trust me. There's an excerpt on the Amazon page I link to above, if you need a taste.

2005-03-17T12:21:00.000-05:00

IF YOU'RE READING THIS you probably have the good sense not to be keeping up with "The Real World: Philadelphia." On the other hand, if you're like me, you can't stay away. Even if you're not like me, the season's reunion show is worth catching for its editing.

If "SCTV" or "Mr. Show" were still around, this is what their writers might come up with as a parody of interview editing. Barely two words are spoken on this show before there's a cut and words or reactions or applause from a different point in the taping are spliced in.

2005-03-15T02:43:00.000-05:00

MAD MARCHNESS.

It's that time of year again when I start foaming at the mouth for no good reason. Never mind the fact that such a pedestrian exercise as the annual college-basketball tournament is elevated to national-holiday status. I'll accept that, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

1. There's no such thing as a No. 1 seed or a No. 9 seed. Either you're the top seed or you're not. This year, for the first time, I'm hearing talk of the top No. 1 seed as opposed to the second No. 1 seed, which makes this ridiculousness even more ridiculous. The second No. 1 seed is the No. 2 seed. The fourth No. 16 seed is the No. 64 seed. Is that so hard?

2. Don't give me that regional crap. When the University of Hawaii is in the Bangor Regionals, they ain't regionals.

3. Final Four? The event is pretty much defined in term of its final four? ("Woo-hoo! It's the semifinals!")

Am I bitter because, in the first year I didn't place a pool entry reflexively picking my alma mater to win the whole thing, my alma mater won the whole thing? No. Not at all.

2005-03-10T14:50:00.001-05:00

FUN WITH GOOGLE MAPS (PLUS SOME PHOTOS). The places I've lived:

Pottsville, Pa. (address approximate), 1961-1962

Ferndale, Mich. (address approximate), 1962-1963

Ferndale, Mich. (address approximate), 1963-1964

Madison Heights, Mich. (the main childhood home), 1964-1973

Madison Heights, Mich., 1973-1979

Mesa, Ariz., 1979-1984

Tucson, Ariz. (college), 1980-1984

Mesa, Ariz. (first apartment), 1984-1985

Chandler, Ariz. (first house), 1985-1989

Alexandria, Va., 1989-1990

Washington, D.C., 1990-1993

Washington, D.C., 1993-1995

Washington, D.C. 1995-present (address approximate)

2005-03-09T01:56:00.000-05:00

"REALITY" ROUNDUP. Just when "The Amazing Race" had all the momentum in the world, it brings us two of the dullest episodes ever. (I did enjoy Santiago, Chile, though.)

Rob can barely speak his native language; how the hell is he doing so well in Spanish. (I hate to say this, but he and Ambuh are going to be hard to beat.)

Good riddance, "Real World: Philadelphia." I think this was the first cast without one person I liked. (Note to "M.J.": It's pretty pathetic when every 90-year-old in the country qualifies as less sheltered than you solely on the basis of a vague memory of Uncle Miltie.)

"Survivor"? Too early to tell. I was happy to see the tattooed and mutilated punker chick redeem herself, though.

Finally, Jacqueline and I have finally started watching "American Idol." I'm not in love with it, but I do see the appeal. Say what you will about the evil Simon: He's the only judge who knows what the hell he's talking about.

Links? Sorry. I'm tired.

2005-02-24T06:15:00.000-05:00

I AM THE ANTI-DAD. For so many reasons, but the reason I'm writing about right now at this moment as we speak at the present time is ... lighting.

Your typical dad walks from room to room shutting off lights and muttering, "I don't work hard all day to light the whole neighborhood."

What I tend to say is more like "Could it be any darker in here?" -- as I walk into a room where I never bothered to try flipping on the light switch.

2005-02-07T23:31:00.000-05:00

MORE THAN A (PEACEFUL, EASY) FEELING: I'm not saying that Paul McCartney isn't an American icon, but . . . the Superb Owl people missed an opportunity. I'm thinking Battle of the Bands: The Eagles vs. Boston.

2005-02-04T02:29:00.000-05:00

I'M A BIG PROPONENT of the element of surprise. You can't tickle yourself. And so every possible scheme involving MP3 collections or DVD collections or whatever is destined for failure, or at least dissatisfaction. It's one thing to be able to play "Sister Golden Hair" by America whenever I want to. It's quite another to experience the joy of happening upon someone else choosing to play it, especially for a mass audience. This is where really good radio, which these days pretty much means satellite radio, coems in.

That '70s guilty pleasure was probably a bad example. My better example comes from the next best thing to a really good radio station -- a CD I burned myself months ago but forgot. And it's on such a CD that I heard a track from an album that, if you have any faith at all in my taste, you must own. I'm talking about "High Land, Hard Rain" by Aztec Camera. This is a group that, much like the Cranberries a decade later, had one great album in it and not much else. It was fronted by Roddy Frame, who I believe was 17 years old when the band got together, and maybe 19 when this album came out. It's great stuff -- every single track.

2005-02-01T00:49:00.000-05:00

A CASTING QUESTION. Was Howard Hughes really effeminate? I'm just sayin'.

Do they base these things entirely on box-office appeal? Who was the runner-up, Julia Roberts? What next, "The Teddy Roosevelt Story," starring Jared Leto?

Speaking of Hollywood silliness, if you gave up on "The Simpsons" years ago, which is entirely understandable, you missed an inspired parody this week of the Pixar genre. "The Cards." Playing cards come to life. Voices by Jack Nicholson, Eddie Murphy, etc., etc.

2005-01-23T15:20:00.000-05:00

BRR.

2005-01-21T01:18:00.000-05:00

"HOW DO YOU SPELL WOLFOWITZ?" I overhear in the newsroom of a major metropolitan daily newspaper.

Grrr. How many #$@#%$ ways could it possibly be spelled? I know, I know -- spelling is supposedly not that great an indicator of intelligence. But I get annoyed at people who think more letters and more syllables necessarily mean a word gets more difficult to spell. "Antidisestablishmentarianism" was the vogue stumper in my youth. Again, where could you possibly go wrong on that one? Or even "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." I suppose "cali" could be "cala," but not bloody likely.

The real stumpers are the switcheroos ("tendon" but "tendinitis," "strategy" but "stratagem") and the exceptions to the rule ("supersede") and the "-ible"-vs.-"-able" coin flips.

Occasionally in coverage of an international sporting event -- say, tennis's U.S. Open -- you'll see a set piece in which Ugly American spectators are asked to spell or pronounce exotic names. A-holes without a creative bone in their bodies suddenly become verbal cubists.

"Paradorn Srichaphan?" the contestant might be asked.

"P-X-Q-Y-Z S-B-T-R-N-M-X?"

"Sorry, that's incorrect!"

Or the contestant will be shown a card reading, say, "Yevgeny Kafelnikov."

"Uggabugga Krazabaza?"

"Next!"

2005-01-17T23:53:00.000-05:00

WHAT'S WRONG with this commercial script?

"The eggs come from real chickens, the milk comes from real cows, and the sausage comes from Jimmy Dean!"

2005-01-04T23:28:00.000-05:00

I LOOKED IN on my college newspaper for the first time in a while and found this priceless string of non sequiturs in the beloved Police Beat column:

The woman first said that the pills were Oxycodone and said she had gotten them from her doctor for her teeth.

The woman later admitted that she had gotten the pills from her friend, who was the daughter of a mafia boss.

The woman said she had found the UA keys in a Jack in the Box and said she didn't know what they were.

The keys looked like they had been run over by a car, reports stated.

Extra points, as always, for a Jack in the Box reference. In Tucson, the Mexican-food capital of the world (what, you thought that would be in Mexico?), I routinely walked a mile for J-in-the-B's Chicken Supreme sandwich. I report this not with shame, but with regret for all those wasted opportunities.

2005-01-03T23:11:00.000-05:00

ON XM THE OTHER DAY I heard "Blue Spark," a wonderful '80s song by X. (In my brief flirtation with electric-guitar lessons, that was the song I wanted to learn. That and "Our Lips Are Sealed" by the Go-Go's.)

More notably, it was followed by a not-so-great but deliciously obscure number called "Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage," by a Phoenix band called Killer Pussy. As someone who lived in Phoenix in the '80s, I was more than a little surprised to hear that on the radio in Washington, D.C.

All that got me to searching, and I came upon this. I might be busy for a while.

2004-12-30T01:36:00.000-05:00

FUN WITH DIALECTS! I grew up in the land of this, with a father from here. It's a wonder I can speak at all.

2004-12-29T21:47:00.000-05:00

I ALMOST POSTED about this the day before Jerry Orbach died, it was such a great line -- and so Lennie Briscoe.

Yet another "Law & Order" rerun. Lt. Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson), who is black, couldn't understand how a black kid could be suspected of shooting up a school. She reprised the borderline-racist routine -- drugs or gang warfare she could believe, but this was a white person's crime.

"Maybe we've finally reached full equality" (or something to that effect) was Orbach/Briscoe's reply.

2004-12-29T11:45:00.000-05:00

IS IT A LITTLE SAD that a couple of reality-TV contestants who smile and laugh and enjoy the experience instead of yelling at each other make me all warm and weepy and convinced they're the best people in the whole wide world?

Yes. Yes, it is.

2004-12-28T11:05:00.000-05:00

HOLIDAY GRAPHICS, PART 3: One more. My sort-of-sister-in-law (my wife's sister-in-law, or my brother-in-law's wife) asked for a subscription to Consumer Reports. So I presented this.

2004-12-26T10:58:00.000-05:00

HOLIDAY GRAPHICS, PART 2: My turn. To indicate an addition to nephew A.J.'s college fund, I created his own currency . . .