“Today, I wrote about kittens. We’re in a gigantic financial crisis, everybody knows it, everybody is going crazy about it, everybody else is writing about it, so sometimes the best thing to do is write about kittens.”
– Jon Carroll, quoted last month by his paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, on winning
the 2009 Ernie Pyle Lifetime [...]
Also filed in
|
|
Hands up for all who’ll be watching any bit of the national party conventions. Yes, I’ll avoid it, too. None of them has been on the excitement level even of a State of the Union address. If there’s something huge, a stupendous announcement, or an election-risking gaffe, conventions or presidential addresses are rebroadcast so often [...]
Also filed in
|
|
American Airlines is a proud member of something called the Oneworld Alliance, which is a group of 10 airlines combining for the booking of reservations etc. but otherwise independent from one another.
Or is it? Are they?
From an American jet we took Friday, taxiing to the gate at Dallas/Fort Worth, we saw a huge banner hung, [...]
Monday, February 18, 2008
You can’t have a dope business without dopers.”
– Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
Proposed laws about paparazzi are worse-than-useless. There are already laws on stalking, creating a public nuisance and any number of other categories that would apply and hold up in court against photographers (meaning [...]
Also filed in
|
|
Friday, February 15, 2008
Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
One of the outcomes of a Democratic presidential victory come November likely will be national health care sooner not later. And one of the outcomes of national health care will be a sudden and welcome drop in pretentious fundraisers.
Nearly nine years ago I wrote an offensive column. I apologized on the [...]
Also filed in
|
|
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Driving home from work early Sunday morning, the radio was playing “It Ain’t Necessarily So” from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. The tenor’s voice was to-the-back-of-the-hall soaring, precise in enunciation and emoted with the sass the song demands but rarely gets. This was public radio’s Jazz Profiles with Nancy Wilson, who said it was Cab Calloway. [...]
Also filed in
|
|
I wish the Toyota Prius wasn’t so ugly. I wish it wasn’t so expensive, either. Some cars are ugly-fun, like the old Beetle and the new Beetle. The PT Cruiser has the charm of a friendly bull terrier.
Yet in another year or two I’ll be forced to buy a Prius; my car will have given [...]
Also filed in
|
|
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
When I clicked on C-SPAN2 midday Tuesday I did not know Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., was giving a speech important enough to make the national news. He was criticizing George II’s veto of a big domestic spending bill. Big Ted, Old Ted, swatting at the Republican in the White House: What’s new?
He was reading [...]
Also filed in
|
|
Yokel teevee is very proud of itself to have wireless capabilities and satellites and compooters and dishes. It forgets the ability to broadcast live, and to broadcast live away from the studio, reaches to the days of the Hindenberg. It’s called a “remote feed.”
This morning all the channels have treated us to the landing of [...]
Also filed in
|
|
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
“On that day, our nation changed.” Promotions, teases and lead-ins to broadcast programs or segments about today’s sixth anniversary of the 9/11/2001 terror attacks often have had this or a similar phrase. Hosts on shows so far repeat the statement and precede it with, “Everyone knows that. …”
No, we don’t. No, it didn’t.
I remember six [...]
Also filed in
|
|