Twitter is actually a pretty interesting application.  I have been “tweeting” for a while, and in addition to being able to post my migraine musings, I get to follow the posts of many people I like and respect.  Most of the folks I follow fall into one of three categories: ESPN football commentators, Chefs, and Comic Book creators.  (Oddly, most of the Comic Book creators I follow live in Oregon, making me wonder why it’s such a creative mecca.  If anything happens to Oregon, 80 percent of my comic reading will go away…)

One comic artist I follow in particular is Italian-turned-Southerner Francesco Francavilla.  Francesco uses his twitter feed to “meet” fans such as myself, but to also post links to new art.  Francesco is a brilliant artist and designer, but he also has a goofy sense of humor.  A sense of humor that I totally identify with.  For example, he and writer Paul Tobin came up with an idea for a squadron of attack ducks going after Batman, with Elmer Fudd as Robin.  If that ever gets made into a comic, I will buy several copies.

Want to see for yourself?  Here are links to Francesco’s sites:

If you read Detective Comics, you will soon be more familiar with Francesco’s work, as he has just been announced as the artist for the Commissioner Gordon monthly feature in Detective.  His creator owned action mystery book with Jeff Mariotte, Garrison, is wrapping up soon from DC/Wildstorm comics.

I have come to love Francesco’s work from both a purely artistic sense, and from a design point of view.  Covers done for various series have been so good that I have given up on titles I read just to buy comics with his covers!  He’ll post these wonderful images of classic pulp heroes or homages to classic films…  and then he’ll hit you with an idea for “what if Batman and Star Trek were combined?”  I responded to that idea with a sketch my wife helped dub “Loquackus of Beak,” a borgified duck. (If you’re nice, I’ll post it…)

Francesco is a great artist, a kind fellow, and ultimately responsible for my wanting to get back into cartooning.  At some point, as I recently told Francesco, I would really like to own a piece of his original art.  His reply to me – suggesting a particular character in duck form – triggered a really goofy idea which I had to put to paper.

So, if in the near future I do get back into cartooning and start up a regular posting of comic panels – don’t blame Canada.  Blame Italy.  (Prego!)

And Francesco, thanks for everything.  I still look forward to hoisting an ale with you some day.  In the meantime – enjoy the cartoon.

And so, I present to you, evidence of why sketchy art and bad puns shouldn’t mix…  I present…  THE TURDUCKINATOR!

"I'll be QUACK!"

Click (if you dare) to embiggen.

(By the way, one thing I realized during this exercise is that I really…  REALLY need a scanner.  And better pens.  And a real eraser…  And stock in Michael’s, apparently.)

So…  I noticed recently that Scripps, the company that owns Food Network, DIY and HGTV, has purchased the Travel Channel.  This got me thinking about a couple of things.  First, the Food Network started out being a network supposedly devoted to teaching people how to cook or improve upon already existing skills.  Someone at the network decided that if Emeril needed a Tonight Show style audience and band, then food was entertainment…  So why not give viewers almost nothing related to the original mission statement, and go with dog (biscuit) and pony (keg) shows?

While I’m slightly encouraged by the re-emergence of a channel devoted to teaching everything from basic skills to advanced concepts, I fear for what might happen when advertisers catch on, as they did a few years ago with Food Network.

By the way, if you’re reading this, Alton, I’m still waiting for you to show me how to turn a thirty dollar fish tank into a home sous vide machine.  Another aside: will we now be able to see shows actually about traveling on the Travel Channel, or will ownership by the Food Network simply continue the run of fratboy-appeal overeating shows?  I also wonder if Bourdain is ticked he’s working for Scripps again…

Back to our show…

So, if the Cooking Channel will in theory teach us how to cook…  What then happens to the Food Network?  This got me thinking of what the future landscape of television will be.

I present to you my vision for a few new channels we can expect on the horizon:

  • The Cooking Channel: A network devoted solely to showing you people cooking.  No instruction, no fuss, just voyeuristic video of everyday people cooking.  Graduation to The Next Food Network Star is prohibited.  (Hey!  You in Illinois!  No frying bacon naked!  Get a robe!)
  • The (New) Food Network: Video of nothing but food.  Peppers.  Tomatoes.  Pizza…  If you want to look at food, this is the network for you!  Inspired by the now-classic network…
  • Hearth in Home: During Winter months, it’s video of a fire in the fireplace, and during warm months, it’s an unlit fake log from Noon to midnight, and a flower arrangement in the hearth from Midnight to noon.  Or a sleeping cat.
  • The Article Network: No, it’s not a new news network.  It’s devoted solely to the words “A,” “An,” and “The.”  Why?  Well shoot: y’all watch American Idol…you’ll watch anything.
  • The Warhol Network: Are you a fan of Jon & Kate?  Their precocious 8?  What about those dynamic citizens on Real Housewives or Jersey Shore?  Wonder what happened to all those Survivor losers?  Even Liz Hasselbeck?  Then this is the network for you!  But don’t turn away!  Every attention-hungry jackass that led to the “reality boom” is here, but only for fifteen minutes, at which point they are deported to the Arctic Circle.  However, if you must continue to follow the “exploits” of these nitwits, you have only to thank…
  • The Cold Day Of Hell-raisers Network: Combining America’s love of penguins with their love of preening idiots!  Thanks to a single, stationary camera strategically placed at the North Pole, you can watch every former “reality” star or overall self-important teevee doofus huddle for warmth in front of the camera!
  • The Superiority Network: Saddened by the intelligence level of the average American?  Then this is your network!  Sit back and enjoy infomercials for the EZCracker, the Slap Chop, the Perfect Fit Button, or the Bender Ball, all designed to make you feel far superior to your fellow Americans!  Operators (carefully selected to be dumber than you) are standing by!
  • ESPnueve: Because it’s inevitable.  This channel features Curling and Figure skating, those once-every-four-years cold weather sports people say they love.  Well, here’s the test.  (Network note: if this doesn’t work, we’ll simply combine the sports, and have the Canadian Women’s Curling Team yell constantly at the skaters and see who survives…)
  • The Inferiority Network: Is Eeyore your role model?  Can’t bear to get out of your pajamas, much less your bed?  Then this is your network!  Sit back and enjoy infomercials for the EZCracker, the Slap Chop, the Perfect Fit Button, or the Bender Ball, products designed to make you feel better about yourself and help you learn to interact with the average American!  Operators (carefully selected to be nice to you) are standing by!
  • Foxseeyennen: Hate news but want to at least appear to have a clue?  Then leave your dial (dial?  what’s that?) tuned to the news network, Foxseeyennen, where you get all the day’s news, 24-7, in the latest time-honored tradition: Yelled at you by people too stupid to understand what they’re saying!  (Note: there is nothing wrong with your set; yes, there are two different stories being yelled at once, with a crying narcissist stuck in the middle.  That’s how we like it.  And that’s how you like it too.  Because we said so.)
  • The Channel Channel: Can’t decide what to watch, then have we got a solution for you!  Better get a big teevee, ’cause we’re broadcasting to you every channel live!  However, because there are so many channels, each one is allowed only one pixel, so you may want to sit close.  Bonus: See which historical dictator/genocidal madman is hidden in each day’s broadcast! (Sponsored by MagicEyestrain.)

And there you have it!  Aren’t you glad you’re still paying $200 a month to those cable or satellite companies?  So far?

There really is no greater window to the American psyche and character than late night ads and infomercials.  Nothing else helps us understand our idiosyncrasies and failures.  Only in this country (maybe England, as well) could we create celebrity out of commercials.  (Latest example?  He smells different and is on a horse.)  From the Maytag Man to the late Billy Mays, and from Clara Peller or the Snapple Lady to Vince the Slap Chop guy, we have an uncanny ability to create fame from nothing.  Clearly, advertising in this country is a powerful thing.

However, it also shows another side of our collective persona: we are a nation of gullible idiots.  The most recent case in point is something called the “EZ Cracker,” a rather archaic torture device supposedly designed to take the difficulty out of cracking and separating eggs.

One commonality amongst these ads are those few moments at the beginning of the ad where we are shown various scenes designed (hopefully) to make us sit up and take notice of some otherworldly dilemma.  Said dilemma will soon be completely solved for us by the miracle product they are breathlessly waiting to sell us!  However…

Pay any attention to these ads and you will notice that no matter how useful the gadget being sold might be, the people acting out our frustrations involving said activity the gadget is designed to end are, and this is only my observation, lobotomized hand models.  At best.

Is it really that difficult to form a hamburger patty, Mr Mays?  No, of course not.  A piece of plastic wrap and the lid from a 32-ounce jar of mayonnaise will do the trick if you don’t have the patience to form them by hand.

Are blankets really that complex and difficult in relation to one’s arms?  No.

But these product prove that when you have a fairly goofball idea and an audience of insomniacs (or better, people recovering from surgery that can’t sleep and are hopped up on pain meds) in front of their teevees with credit cards in hand, you can make a lot of money.

Sure, you might be saying to yourself that you are a lot smarter than the average bear, and as such are not vulnerable to such obvious pitchwork.  That may be true, dear reader, but if I may note: Someone is.  After all, if these adverts were not successful, would you know who the hell Billy Mays was at all?  Or would there be a television show centered around the creation of these adverts on the Discovery channel?

So, whereas all advertising is designed to make us want something no matter how much we do not need the product, or how stupid the product really is upon reflection…  What the hell makes those late night adverts and infomercials so…  Compellingly ridiculous?

Seriously, what the hell made a blanket with sleeves, a super-absorbent cloth, or a knife that (supposedly) can cut a brick such national phenomena?

The advert for the EZ Cracker may help, in general terms.  (One sidebar: the first “spokesperson” for the EZ Cracker?  The Snapple Lady.  Not kidding.)

First, we have the intro, which shows us that you are not alone!  No, you are not the only person having trouble neatly cracking eggs, especially when you throw them at a frying pan!  Or how about when we’ve all had to recover an egg once we’ve slammed a fork onto the egg, like some out-of-practice Nazi torturer?  And don’t forget how everyone cracks an egg by squeezing it like a stress ball while simultaneously slamming it on the counter?

Clearly, these first few moments are designed to make us feel superior, and setting us up to feel inferior.  Why superior?  The examples of egg-cracking are so absurd that we all pretty much react with a jaded “oh, come on!”  The inferiority comes at the next segment, which introduces the product.

At the introduction, to counteract any potential rejection of the product, they move to the phase where they explain just why you need this product!  For the EZ Cracker, that particular reason is that it saves you from cleaning up poorly cracked eggs.  And, to drive home that point, they use the same lobotomized hand models who were just playing handball with the eggs to crack them in segment one to clean up the mess.

These nitwads use a variety of items to clean up the eggmess, including a washcloth and a single paper towel.  Ironically, no one uses a Shamwow.

Then we get another handful of demonstrations of how well the product is supposed to work, or how much easier it is to read now that you have sleeves.  Then the more maddening aspect of the ad begins, and we are shown just how much we can do because of this miracle device!

Only now with the EZ Cracker, for example, can you make an eggwhite omelet, or make a meringue.  Because, of course, there was just no way in hell you could ever do these things before, but now that you can (Shazam!) get into the egg…

But wait! There’s more!

Now that we’ve been lulled into feeling both superior to the product, and unable to live without, it…  The kicker!

Not only do we get our egg cracking whiz of a device for only $19.95 (or, in another version, just two payments of ten dollars!), we get…

(Are you sitting down?)

A free gift!

The EZ Cracker has been advertised with two different free gifts: The Bacon Wave (designed to microwave a pound of bacon by standing the strips up in a bizarre truss), and the Egg Scrambler.

I have to admit that the egg scrambler looks more like an…  Adult toy than a culinary tool.  (And no, by “culinary tool,” I do not mean Rocco DiSpirito.)

Basically, you stick an egg onto this stick with a needle protruding from the top, and the needle vibrates enough to scramble the egg within the shell, which (exactly!) you then crack with your snazzy EZ Cracker!

Genius!

Not so much.  Considering my firsthand experience when icepick meets thumb, I am perfectly fine scrambling my egg with a fork in a bowl, which is probably far more sanitary than a hard to clean (without drawing blood, anyway) device like the Scrambler.

How these devices are supposed to sweeten the pot and make you pick up that phone and order this eventual kitchen sculpture is unclear, but it works.

The finale is usually designed to incite near panic, with the announcement that not only should you act on this great deal, but these products are not available in stores!  (Again, anyone who has inadvertently wandered through the center sections of one’s local megamart or discount store can tell you they are not only available in stores, they’re cheaper!)

Sigh.

What makes these adverts so maddening is that they do work.  Someone will buy the advertised product because at that moment, they have to have it!  With this egg cracker, people will order it not realizing that (a) they will have to handle the cracked shells no matter what, EZ Cracker or not, and (b) a small saucer and a moment of care cracks the egg just as well, if not better, than said device.  (And if you really need that thing to separate eggs, you can buy something much like the separating attachment for about $5 at your local discount-mart.)  Normally intelligent people are stupid at times.

Don’t believe me?  Look at that coffee you just got from your local CafeBucks.  There is a warning on your coffee that (please…  Sit down…  We at the ICRVN don’t have legal counsel if this upsets you) your coffee is hot!  Do you remember why?  Yep some dipnugget spilled coffee on herself, and sued the restaurant for serving her…  Hot coffee!

Warnings like that and devices like the EZ Cracker exist because someone is going to need one.

However, I have to say that even if you simply cannot handle cracking an egg without some sort of aid, the EZ Cracker may not be right for you.  Search YouTube and a video comes up reviewing the EZ Cracker, revealing that it works, but only begrudgingly at best, and it really doesn’t do much of what is advertised (no!).

Pay attention, for example, to the part where it cracks a hard-boiled egg, and you might just notice that editing is slickly performed to not actually show them peeling the same egg they cracked.  Not only that, but when they actually remove the egg from the two shell halves, you might notice the fact that they are removing a medium hard boiled egg from a large egg shell.

Kinda makes a difference, you know.

(By the way…  How do the makers of the EGGstractor feel about the EZ Cracker?  Just wondering…)

The EZ Cracker is also not dishwasher safe, making cleaning a bother, and therefore the device becomes a bacterial breeding ground.  Fun for the whole family!

Every facet of life has been targeted by these silly products and commercials.  From the “Perfect Brownie” pan to the “EmoryCat” de-clawer, any activity on any level of difficulty will inevitably earn its own infomercial product.  Don’t believe me?  Google “butter dispenser,” and see how someone managed to think pushing butter through a playdoh extruder was something we couldn’t live without.

Try “chillow” to see just what wonders science have done to remove us from the stress of flipping a pillow over!

Or, for that one thing you simply cannot live without, search “presidential knife set,” and thank me later.

But do it quick, this is a limited time commentary, and operators are napping.

Wow…  It’s been a while since I posted anything here…  Well, I’ve got a post that will be up in a couple of hours, but I wanted to post a couple of notes and observations on long gone stuff no one cares about anymore:

  • Did anyone watch that two-day “special” on ABC recently called Thin Ice?  It was a screwy ice skating competition designed to take advantage of the recent Olympics, and copy once again the Dancing With the Stars success.  Well, at least ABC hoped it would share that DWTS success.  They even went so far as to copy the judging format: like DWTS, Thin Ice featured a hot Asian with plenty of knowledge of the activity in question (Kristi Yamaguchi), an aging poof no one really cares about (Dick Button), and the out-of-their-skull foreigner (Katarina Witt).  They even had the kinda-cute yet mostly annoying co-host (Elisabeth Hasselbeck) paired with the trying-too-hard host (Kurt Browning).  SOmehow, I doubt this show will be back.
  • Formula One is back!  Woo!  This makes me almost as happy as the fact that Michael Schumacher has been out-raced by his younger team-mate both races so far.
  • Re-listening to the old NPR radio drama performances of Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, and as good an adaptation as it is, it does make me laugh that to fill “dead air” during purely visual scenes from the film, added dialogue makes Luke whinier!
  • I don’t normally get into (poor choice of words) celebrity scandals or the like, but I have to say…  (A) His name is Jesse James.  That should be clue one that he’s not the most trustworthy.  (B) His second wife was a porn star.  Why are we surprised that he’s a bit freaky? (C) “Skittles Valentine?”  Please.

In the next couple of weeks (starting in a couple of hours), I will be posting entries on the gullibility of the average American, why Virginia’s governor needs some schoolin’, and what’s wrong with thie newest trend in food: Umami.  Thanks for coming back!

Part two begins…

JULY

The Republican party got a sense of deja vu when the courts awarded the vacant senate seat in Minnesota to Al Franken.  India outlawed their ban on homosexuality, going against the cold-weather trend.  Citing a lack of “VP Candidate level perks and an inability to see much financial future in politics,” Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska to better help herself.  44 people, including three New Jersey mayors, were arrested for corruption and money laundering after no one told them the Sopranos was just a TV show.  South Carolina’s charge to infamy burst out of the gates in July when a Conway man was arrested for violating his probation.  He had been on probation for having sex with a horse.  He violated his probation by having sex with the same horse!  Sadly, this means that criminals practicing beastiality are more faithful than the state’s governor.

AUGUST

Figuring Bill was better than the other option, North Korea released the two jailed US journalists at the request of the more masculine (well, visually at least) Clinton.  Canadians everywhere rejoiced as Jeremy Roenick finally retired from the NHL, and moved on to annoy the TV and film industry.  “No Politician Left Behind” poster girl Sarah Palin protested death panels that did not exist and were also not in any form or draft of any legislation whatsoever.  Handlers suggested that no matter how dreamy she thought Heston was, she should stop watching Soylent Green constantly for ideas.  Cited for everything BUT job performance, Ben Bernanke was nominated for another term as head of the Federal Reserve.  A man from South Carolina (of course) died after he robbed a store having spray-painted his face to conceal his identity.  Edward Kennedy, longtime lion of the Senate, and the last politician to say that he cared about “regular folk” and actually do so, succumbed to cancer.  He will be missed.

SEPTEMBER

Kate Gosselin filmed a talk show pilot with Paula Deen, calling into question both the nature of fame and the need for talk shows.  The mayor of Willford in (say it with me) South Carolina issued an order preventing police from chasing certain suspects in order to save the town money.  President Obama gave an address via CCTV to students all over the country, stressing that they work hard and stay in school.  Republicans immediately adopted a “stay lazy and skirt through” policy, modelled after the successful plan of the previous president.  In an emotional and unplanned outburst, Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina yells out “You Lie!” at the president during his joint session speech about health care.  Wilson would be rebuked by Congress a week later not for his outburst, but for being from South Carolina.  YO! YO! I’M GONNA LET YOU FINISH, YO, BUT I GOTTA SAY THAT CALIFORNIA HAD A WORSE YEAR, YO! Moving on…  Mackenzie Phillips released a book about why we all prefer Valeri Bertinelli.  Glenn Beck announced on Fox and Friends that he believed Obama to be a racist with deep-seeded hatred towards whites.  Obama refuted these claims, saying that he loved “all people.  Well, except for the batshit insane white folks on teevee with no link to reality or sense of decency.”

OCTOBER

Rio De Janiero won the 2016 Olympics over Chicago with a simple proposal of “it’s the summer games.  Whose citizens do you really want to see in bathing suits?”  President Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his July Beer Summit at the White House.  Tiger Woods led the US team to victory in the President’s Cup despite claims he still needed help with his putter.  Ballooning for Children becomes a nationwide rage, quickly replaced by attic hiding.  Roman Polanski is arrested in Switzerland for his 1977 charge of molestation, after he was told to come to Zurich to accept his Publishers Clearing House prize.  The Assistant Attorney General of South (wait for it…) Carolina, Roland Corning, was arrested when he was discovered in a cemetery with various “aids” and an 18-year-old stripper.

NOVEMBER

A heat wave swept through Maine, so the state repealed the new same-sex marriage law.  Analysts pointed to the new 10% unemployment rate as a clear indicator that the recession was over.  It was revealed that there was in fact water on the moon.  It was in a Deer Park dispenser left there from 1969.  The government changed the insurance regulations and standards to change the standard age for mammograms for women to 50, while changing the standard age for free viagra to “whenever a man damn well pleases.”  A 600 pound cow fell from the sky and landed in a swimming pool in…  South Carolina.  Oprah, clearly defying the Mayans, announced her show would end on September 11, 2011.  In response, Jon and Kate ended their television show, and a nation shrugged its shoulders.  Tiger Woods, again having driving problems, ran into the ultimate sand trap.

DECEMBER

President Obama announced on national television that there was a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan, but that immediately, troop increases would take place.  The mayor of Arlington Texas, Russell Wiseman, claimed that our “muslim president” strategically timed his announcement to deliberately block the broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Obama responded that a real Christian would own the DVD.  GE was able to sell NBC Universal to Comcast by convincing the company that Seinfeld and Cosby were just on a temporary holiday.  The divorce of Jon and Kate Gosselin was finalized, thereby confirming the Republican’s drive to save the sanctity of marriage.  South Carolina almost made it a month, were it not for the announcement by state First Lady Jenny Sanford that she was divorcing her husband, once he got back from the Appalachian Trail.

*Sigh.*

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!

(Well – not you, South Carolina…  TRY to stay clean for 2010, okay?)

Part One…

To misquote FDR, 2009 is a year that will live in infamy.  Particularly if you are from South Carolina…  as I am.  While other states tried to take the spotlight from my home state, nothing worked, and my home state led with the biggest “WTF” moments throughout the year.  So, join me as I look back on a strange and screwy 2009, with a special focus on the inglorious, infamous events in and from South Carolina that proved that the South really isn’t all that deep.

JANUARY

The year began with Steve Jobs taking a leave of absence from Apple, prompting Circuit City to close from the stress.  U.S.Air pilot Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger successfully tested the new Hudson River test landing strip, using flight 1549 as a flotation device.  The year of infamy started for South Carolina when state Senator Robert Ford (a former confidant to Martin Luther King, Jr) entered legislation to ban “saggy pants” and profanity.  No one was sure if the ban on profanity was to quell still lingering “WTF” reactions to Ford’s previous legislation combining MLK day with Confederate Memorial Day.  In one of the longest ceremonies ever, which included a lip-syncing cello and the Mad Hatter, Jesus was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.  The year’s other theme, “dubious fame for the overworked uterus,” began with a California woman giving birth to eight babies and one agent.  An ignominious end came for the Democratic Party / Hair Club for Men experimental partnership when Rod Blagojevich was formally removed from office in Illinois (his hair was finally extricated in June).  The month ended with Michael Steele, the only black man able to make Cliff Huxtable look more “street” than Shaft, was named head of the Republican Party.

FEBRUARY

The Pittsburgh Steelers won their sixth Super Bowl in team history, in an effort to help the city forget about their baseball team.  Macy’s cut 7,000 jobs, including the Simon Bar Sinister balloon, leaving Underdog no one to chase.  Photos “surfaced” of Olympic hero Michael Phelps trying to get a water-pipe out of its wetsuit.  The photos were taken, of course, in South Carolina.  Congress voted another stimulus package into law, guaranteeing the financial solvency of Bernie Madoff’s lawyers.  Facebook announced new Terms of Service policies, which were promptly protested by millions of users updating their statuses.  Hugo Chavez won a huge victory as President of Venezuela when he had term limits eliminated.  From his ranch in Texas, George W. Bush asked if it was too late to do the same here.  In a televised address to the nation, President Obama announced his plan to end the war in Iraq on August 31, 2010 or December 21, 2012, whichever came first.

MARCH

The year of dubious uterine fame continued with rumors that Jon and Kate Gosselin may be splitting up.  The individual agents for their 8 children had no comment.  (Gosselin is apparently French for “the public’s albatross.”)  New Mexico ended their use of the death penalty, prompting every anti-death penalty group in the country to take sole credit, even though no one was paying attention.  After a long and bitter power struggle the President of Madagascar, Marc Ravalomanana, resigned and was replaced by four penguins.  The U.S. pledged $40 Million to Afghanistan to ‘facilitate’ elections under the new “Cash for Kandahari” program.  A Greenville woman continued South Carolina’s march when after unsuccessfully attempting to secure a babysitter for her four month old, she took the child with her… on an attempted armed robbery.

APRIL

Vermont and Sweden separately legalized gay marriage.  North Korea launched a rocket in order to prove to the rest of the world that they still knew which way was up.  Sallie Mae brought over 2,000 jobs back to the United States from overseas.  All 2,000 were assigned to be tech support for India.  Kim Jong Il celebrated his re-election to President of North Korea by singing “To Dream a Dream” on “Britain’s Got Talent.”  Tax-day “tea-party” protesters cheered on Texas Governor Rick Perry when he threatened that Texas might soon secede from the Union.  Perry does not follow through, even though most of the country was fine with his plan.  South Carolina struck again when a wildfire that ravaged Myrtle Beach and environs was revealed to have been a small debris fire started by a man named Torchi and unsuccessfully snuffed by two different firefighters.  Just in time for the annual Memphis in May barbecue competition, Swine Flu reached epidemic proportions in the U.S.  Longtime Republican Arlen Specter changed affiliations and became a Democrat, citing he “just couldn’t stand that Lieberman guy anymore.”  Justice David Souter resigned, citing a similar feeling towards colleague Antonin Scalia.

MAY

Fifty-to-one long shot Mine That Bird won the Kentucky Derby, reminding the country for a moment that people still race horses.  Maine decided Vermont needed a partner and also legalized same-sex marriage.  Scientists revealed the discovery of a missing link of homo sapien, a 47 million year old primate nicknamed “Ida,” who had apparently died after having gone missing after asking for directions of early hominids.  In an effort to help consumers, Congress passed a law restricting the practices of credit card companies.  The companies replied by destroying the credit ratings of everyone in the country, and bombarding the airwaves with more of those “free credit report” singing ads.  A judge in California ended our collective gastro-suspense, throwing out a lawsuit by a woman claiming she was misled by PepsiCo and Quaker into believing that crunchberries were a real fruit.  The Chinese furthered their reputation for being community-minded when a man contemplating suicide by jumping off a bridge during rush-hour was pushed off the bridge by a driver tired of waiting in traffic.  California banned same-sex marriage, convincing everyone that same-sex marriage is only for those in cold climates.  Judge Sonya Sotomayor was chosen to replace David Souter based solely on her ability to intimidate Scalia.  South Carolina gets the last word in May thanks to a Waffle House waitress who pulled a gun on her customers when they complained that her service wasn’t of a high caliber.

JUNE

New Hampshire spotted an opportunity to finally challenge California for tourism dollars and legalized same-sex marriage.  China blocked any and all commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square conflict after entertainers submitted as the proposed opening theme “Tanks for the Memories.”  North Korea sentenced two American journalists to 12 years in prison, or until someone other than Hilary Clinton visits.  Former state election chair got South Carolina rolling in June when he compared first lady Michelle Obama to an escaped gorilla.  In Iran, President Ahmadinejad won a landslide re-election, confirmed by a careful scrutineering of ten percent of the ballots forged by his family.  Former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf, after being arrested for breaking and entering, apparently only needs enhancement surgery to be an adequate example of every use of the word “bust.”  Jon and Kate continued their efforts to be the John and Lorena of the 2000s when they announce their legal separation.  Agents for their 8 kids had no comment, and rumors that Jon was dating the Octomom and that Kate was trying to re-form “Flock of Seaguls” were also dismissed.  Michael Jackson died suddenly, and was honored in a moving ceremony sponsored by Isotoner and Ray-Ban.  Jackson’s death was not enough to keep South Carolina out of the news, as it was revealed that Governor Mark Sanford did not like to hike the Appalachian Trail as reported, but in fact was flying back and forth to South America to have an extramarital affair with an Argentinian woman.  Most South Carolinians breathed a mild sigh of relief that Sanford was not sleeping with a cousin, which would have furthered the embarrassment of South Carolinians everywhere.

However…

The year was young!

Next week…  Part Two!

Before I get to the point, allow me a brief digression.  Some twenty years ago, my brother and I were sitting outside on the steps, casually discussing when was in store for our future.  Ours were not the common dreams of poor kids in the throes of everyday daydreams.  Our future did not involve football glory or fame borne of film or television.  Nope, we chose more…  earthbound dreams.

You see, at the time my brother was having troubles with the opposite sex, dating-wise, and I was having troubles getting members of the opposite sex to realize that I was not – in fact – a tree, but someone with some measure of relationship potential.

How did that impact our dreams?

My brother and I both confessed that we saw ourselves as single fathers of adopted children, living together somewhere on the eastern coast trying to raise our daughters well.  My brother imagined himself becoming a law enforcement officer, and I imagined myself in some area of the arts.  (Don’t forget – neither one of us saw any future in which we were married.)

Well, twenty years later, and our juvenile predictions have come to some measure of fact!  Well…  With one major exception.

My brother is a little more impetuous than I, but our collegiate career brought forth many changes for us.  For one, women actually started to pay attention to me…  For good reasons.  For another, my brother altered his ideals slightly.  Suddenly, our lives were taking shape and our ideas from the past were becoming the realities of the present.

My brother decided upon a different career of service: teaching.  If you allow for a few hiccups in my professional career, while I currently dally in retail, I am selling product related to the arts.

More importantly, however, after several attempts, we both struck gold.  My brother married a fine woman, also a teacher, and I found someone who complements me so well I often have to pinch myself.

But even more so than finding our own wonderful life partners is when happened to that whole parenting thing.

While my brother and I were the product of the stereotypical broken home with single parent, and we both imagined ourselves ending up as such, it didn’t quite work out as we had planned.  My brother is now the very proud father of some 300 children…  No, no, no…  After a mild twist of irony, my brother and his wife have 8 amazing children.  That twist of irony? Of the 8, only two are girls, and they were adopted a few short years ago.  So, with the exception of being married, my brother’s prophecy came true for the most part.

My prophecy of self takes a little more stretching to accept as truth.  Sure, I work in the arts…  Peripherally.  Yes, I live on the eastern coast.  I also shunned perceived fate and married.  And then, real fate intervened.

Well, actually it was my wife’s biological clock, but that’s neither here nor there.

(Okay – so that was a longer digression than I had anticipated.)

As I’ve already written here, my wife and I have been together for quite a while, and married for ten years.  About five years ago, the discussion of parenthood came up in earnest.  We’d broached the topic briefly when my wife’s father was battling cancer.  Understandably, my wife wanted her father to be able to hold his grandchild before he died, but as it just couldn’t happen, we shelved the notion of having a child.

When the issue came up again, it was more about my wife’s internal clock and whether or not we even wanted one or more children.  I also had to deal with my own past, and wrestle with notions of becoming like my own father.  (My father was – as I have described – the only physically present absentee father I have known.  He had mentally given up on me and my mom, he just hadn’t made that move physically.)  Once those hurdles were crossed and we decided that we would at least try to have a child, and live with the results regardless, our foray into the world of parenting had begun.

I made the mistake of joking that no mater the outcome, we would at least have fun trying to have a child.

Karma, in its best Rod Serling suit, got me back.  My wife got pregnant with the first try.

Momentarily stunned, when I found out, all I could say at the time was “well at least something of mine can swim!”

The pregnancy itself was smooth for the most part, and when we went for that first ultrasound, again I opened my mouth.  The doctor left on the heart monitor so we could listen to our baby’s heart, and I blurted out “that’s gotta be man-made,” a line from our favorite movie.  When it was revealed that our child was a girl, I offered a potential name, suggesting that we name our child after my wife’s father, who had died some time before.

Well, then the adventure was on.

The rest of the pregnancy went well, but stress from my employment situation, combined with an error at the hospital, left the recovery difficult, and leaving us without the option of more children.

(A side note to any men out there that have not yet experienced fatherhood: if your child is to be born via c-section, do not let them sit you in the OR facing the doctor!  I didn’t eat spaghetti and meat sauce for a year.  Consider yourself warned…)

There were difficulties early on, with our daughter, some from the delivery, some from the fact that she may have needed to cook for a few more days.

Either way, we were blessed with a beautiful little girl, who took almost no time to show which parent she would potentially take after.

While she is now in every way my wife’s own “mini me,” early on she took more to me, primarily in her facial quirks, but also in her love for biscuits and fried chicken.  After all, at least half of her DNA was rooted in the deep south.

As she has grown, our daughter has evolved into a miniature copy of my wife, save her giant feet, prompting the jokes that my DNA couldn’t get far off the ground, or that my wife’s German heritage stomped all over my Irish roots.

What has been so amazing in this new life is watching a totally blank slate evolve into a person all her own.  We can see her process things that I or my wife will do, and sometime later they come back at us, with that little tinge of her own limited life experience coloring the phrase or event ever so slightly.

This is definitely something I would have missed (whether or not I was married) had I adopted a child.  (It should be noted that both my brother and I had decided upon adopting older children, as they are often the most neglected in the foster and adoption process.  And with my brother adopting two and my having one – despite the circuitous route – we both got our little girls.)

Sure, it’s been frustrating trying to help raise this child.  She is far more attuned to my wife than myself, both by just the amount of time they spend together and by biology.  She is also a child, and children do frustrating things because they are always learning, but then parenting is also a learning process, so it tends to all work out in the end.

It’s interesting to interact with our friends that have young children that are a little older than our daughter, and watch their faces as we talk about something the wee one has done, and watching a look of bemused recognition.  Apparently it’s perfectly fine to give helpful advice to friends about parenthood, but it’s also fun to watch your friends go through those growing pains too.  That’s fine, though…  Like I said it’s a learning process for us all.

Four would appear to be a particularly good year for a kid.  My daughter is learning to appreciate music other than the Backyardigans or Barney, and is willing to watch the occasional “mommy or daddy” program, giving us a break from Spongebob or Caillou.

She also loves to help…  Well almost.  She hates picking up her own toys and stuff, but is more than willing to help collect the trash or help in the kitchen.

She’s also developing her picky eating habits, so we’re counteracting that with not only the usual desert bribe, but also by getting her involved in menu planning and assembling dishes.

In fact, part of Thanksgiving dinner this year will include dishes she helped make with mommy, as well as her own “crazy glazy carrots.”

Things have not been easy these past few years, but it’s been an amazing ride.

And I guess that’s what I’m most thankful for: the coming unknown.

Whereas your relationship with your own parents is pretty much predetermined, one’s spouse and child are relations that are chosen.  My wife and I chose to have a child and bear the responsibility for that life.

And I’m glad we did.  I still have concerns; still have fears.

But this little goofball makes it all the worth while when she comes racing to me when I get home from work to give me a big hug.  Or when she climbs up to give me a goodnight hug.  Or when she discovers a bad pun for the first time, and howls with laughter.

Being a parent is a real risk, but despite my wish that we had been able to try a few more times before actually getting pregnant, it’s a risk I am very thankful we took.

(I’m also admittedly thankful that we’re not using my daughter’s recipe for Thanksgiving Turkey…  But more on that later.)

Happy Thanksgiving to all…

(The Squirmy one, at a recent doctor’s visit, apparently helping to diagnose her cow’s lactose intollerance.)

I have two friends on Facebook (actual friends mind you, as in I have actually spent time with them in person) that have me thinking about giving thanks.

One of my friends has posted daily about what she is thankful for.

The other hasn’t posted in a few months, since her last update to announce that her husband of 25 years had died.

While I knew Joe more as my friend’s husband than I did as my own friend, I was saddened by his passing for two reasons: one, he was a fine fellow whose company I enjoyed.  Two, I know just how much my friend and Joe were a great couple, great friends and partners to each other, and his loss to my friend would be a great one.

What exactly does this have to do with me?

Well, it just makes me thankful for every day I have with my wife.  We’ve been pretty blessed as a couple, inasmuch as our tests have been outward originating, and far less from our own doing.

My wife is easily my best friend, and a wonderful partner.  Sure, things have been tough of late with the economy where it is and my back injury limiting what I’m able to do, but despite that, we’ve been able to persevere.

But the one thing that may now never change is how much I will treasure the moments – good, bad or otherwise – that I have with my wife.  My friend and Joe had over 25 years together, and no matter how much you think that they had a full life together, there is always that sense of loss.  That empty place in one’s heart when you lose your life partner.

My wife may not be perfect, but considering the fact that I am in no way shape or form going to come anywhere close to perfection myself, that’s okay.  What my wife is, however, is the best thing to ever grace my life, and I’m thankful for that like you wouldn’t believe.

As we reach this day of thanks, after this major life-changing event for my friend, I am counting my blessings.

And it is a singular blessing that I am most thankful for: that this beautiful woman I met over ten years ago said “yes.”  That she looked past my flaws, and accepted me as a partner.  That she is as much a geek as I am.  That she produced a beautiful little girl for us to care for.

That she…  Just…  Is.

Since we can never know just when our ticket on this ride is to be punched, I am thankful for having a wonderful companion for the ride.

And thanks to my two friends for helping me find a way to convey that message.

I love you, Sweetie.

And Thank You.

Happy Thanksgiving all…

A friend of mine got married last week, and I was able to supply lots of advice for how to handle marriage and the ceremony.  Most of it was tongue in cheek to be sure, but there was some truth in nearly everything I told him.

You see, it was ten years ago today that I did just what he did: I got married.

Got hitched.  Added the ball and chain.  Tied the knot.

Essentially, I formalized the best decision I ever made.

While I had been in relationships before meeting my wife, the 13th of January 1998 proved to be the day that changed everything.  I’m not the most sentimental of folk, but that day made me a believer in some of the more off-the-wall contrivances of romance.

I knew immediately that I had met the perfect woman for me, and that I would spend the rest of my life with her.  It was love at first sight.  (My wife was apparently on daylight savings, as it took her about an hour to determine the same for me.)

We haven’t had the easiest of marriages (cancer, career issues, a back injury and the difficult delivery of our goofy and wonderful child have seen to that), but our marriage has been the one constant that I know I have relied on for some semblance of normality at the end of the day.

I definitely got lucky in finding the perfect partner for the rest of my journey, and hopefully she feels the same.

For ten years now, I’ve had the joy of being able to spend time with a beautiful, smart, funny, (thankfully) goofy, and sexy woman.

I got the better part of the deal.  I got my wife: a fine combination of Nora Charles, CJ Cregg, Princess Leia, Alex Guarnaschelli and Mikel Dayan.  My wife got…  Fred Flintstone with more back hair.

No matter what, I am definitely better off having shared my life with my wife these ten (plus) years, and I am thankful and lucky to having her with me as life continues.

I certainly don’t think things would have turned out as well for me had I chosen a different door…  And I’m really glad I didn’t.

These really have been the best years of my life, and I have my wife to thank for it.

Happy Anniversary, Sweetie…  I love you.

There is a gentleman out there that I would consider a friend (and not just in the “Facebook” sense) that I have to admit…  I am very jealous of right now.  Allow me a moment to elaborate:

When I was younger, I really wanted to be Bob Costas.  Not because I wanted to be shorter or have less facial hair, but because Costas had the coolest job in the world.  He was the host of NBC’s late-late night talk show Later, an half-hour interview program in which Costas spent the entire 22 minutes with one guest for an in-depth conversation.  No band, no gimmicks, just a real dialogue.

Costas interviewed a great variety of people from nearly every walk of public life, from Julian Bond to Dana Carvey.  These interviews would have you completely engrossed no matter who was being interviewed.  While Costas is a fantastic sports broadcaster, his real skill was in interviewing.

I wanted to be that Costas, able to interview anyone at any time, while dreaming that I could be as good an interviewer as Costas.

Well, my friend John Milewski of the Wilson Center in D.C. has done something very close to that.

John is the new host of the Wilson Center’s interview show Dialogue.  John (much like Cowher did Knoll) took over recently for the previous host George Liston Seay who passed away some months ago.  Dialogue is a show that I was familiar with before Milewski took over, but not a regular viewer of, and that is entirely my fault as it is the closest show you will find that resembles the old Later, with some Bill Moyers thrown in for good measure.  While I have teased John about doing a hockey show, he is in the perfect situation to do just that.  The format of the show is set perfectly to allow John to do a human rights show one week, and a show on the economics of sports the next.  Not only is the show set up to allow for such diversity, John has the chops to handle that broad range of topics as well.

I would highly encourage anyone who can find the show on their local PBS or MhZ affiliate to give Dialogue a chance, particularly if the topic piques your interest in the slightest.  I have no doubt that John and his production team will not let you down.

Now, if only John could find some way to get a certain sub-mariner into the set dressing…

* * *

John’s first episode as host and executive producer of Dialogue aired last night, with a round table discussion about the current and future state of the newspaper industry.  John’s panelists were Len Downie (formerly of the Washington Post), Allison Silver (Washington Independent and the Huffington Post), and Professor Paul Starr (Professor of Sociology at Princeton).

I have to say that I found a touch of irony in this topic, as John helped relaunch the Newseum in D.C. last year.

The basic direction of the discussion was “what’s next” for newspapers, and do they in fact have a future?  One thing I found interesting, but not surprising, was how connected each member of the panel was to their past and their expectations for the medium.  Downie, a former editor at the Post and an investigative journalist for the paper in it’s most celebrated past (the Watergate era), believed that the newspaper had its heyday from the early 1970s to the early days of the current internet era.  He also believed that the size of the bullpen today was still larger than when he was a reporter, and his concern was would editorial boards be able to make smart decisions as current newsrooms shrank to levels smaller than they were in the 1970s.  He also believed that with fewer corporate bureaucracies running things these days, journalists were taking over again.

Silver, a founding editor of the Washington Independent, agreed with some of Downie’s points, but also offered that the Vietnam era allowed journalists to become “rock stars” was the high point of the industry, with the gobbling up of papers and internet sites by conglomerates as the beginning of the downturn.  Where Downie clearly represented the old guard ideal of a newspaper journalist, Silver was very much the “new idea” representative, arguing that the industry was definitely changing, and quite possibly for the better.

Professor Starr kept to his Sociology roots, and theorized that newspapers have dominated for 300 years, and that it was the end of the 1940s that began the fall of the newspaper, and that the 1980s represented the real end of the newspaper.  Starr stated that this wasn’t just an American issue, but that the demographic of newspaper readership was in flux worldwide (albeit at different paces, regionally).  He also argued that newspapers used to be a sort of clearinghouse for several things: news at various levels (national, state, local), as well as puzzles, humor, entertainment news, sports, et cetera.  Now, thanks to specialization, if someone wants sports news, they go to ESPN.  If someone wants to do a puzzle, there are thousands of sites for that.  While he believed that there would be some sort of newspaper like publication in the future, it would not be much like what we have access to today.

Milewski brought everything together nicely with his bookend comments.  He opened the show with the idea that in the past the newspaper was a kind of citizen’s handbook for an involved electorate.  Today, with the various news sources available on the internet and television, everyone brings their own fact sheet to the discussion, and there is no more central clearinghouse for ideas.

There is a lot to be said there, and my only complaint for the show was that it wasn’t another 30 minutes longer to allow for a deeper discussion of that point.

Prior to electronic media, at best you had two or three sources for news if you lived in a large enough city.  Large metropolitan areas like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, for example, had more than one paper, to allow for the populace to select a particular viewpoint.  While the same can be said today with viewers of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, the primary difference is that with newspapers up to the early 1940s, each paper still had a central theme of accurately presenting the news regardless of viewpoint.  The opinions of said papers were left to the Op-Ed pages.  Nowadays, anchors are screaming their opinions over each other, and viewers gravitate to whomever they think yells the best.

Newspapers currently are not able to compete with that idea (or volume), and thus they are slowly starting to collapse under their own weight, having enjoyed a boom in popularity prior to the 24 hour news nets.  (For what it may be worth, I think that the high point of the newspaper was during World War II, when newspapers were still faster than radio or newsreels in delivering news from overseas.  I do agree that the late 1980s and early 1990s began the downward trends in the industry, with the advent of 24 hour televised news and the internet.)

The new model may very well be the weekly magazine titled The Week, which culls stories from multiple areas and sources, allowing readers to get both sides (or more, if possible) of every topic, all the while delivering the supporting pages of news from sports, entertainment, food and dining, advice, and even a page of puzzles.  I would not be at all surprised if more and more newspapers went to a weekly summary format like The Week.  To me, it certainly seems like the next step in the evolution of the printed news format.

And that is the one thing I felt was missing from the first episode of Dialogue: a potential resolution of where, realistically, the panelists thought printed news was heading.  It would seem that the lack of such a discussion was due solely to the time restraints of the show.

Essentially, the show left me wanting to hear more from the participants, and a little upset that the show had to end…

But, isn’t that what all good Dialogues should do?

Well done all.  I’m looking forward to the next episode already.