Radio, radio

Number of commercial FM radio stations in the Tampa Bay area that play either "the greatest hits of the '60s and '70s," "the greatest hits of the '70s and '80s," or "the greatest hits of the '60s, '70s, and '80s": all of them except the two country stations.

Left on a jet plane

Uh, yes, as it turned out, I woke up at 3:56, and the chain of events that followed got me to the gate roughly an hour and 45 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart. The only problem was that the "self-service" check-in machines were having trouble printing the actual boarding card, so I had to stand in line at the gate to get one.

Then they made a "quiet" announcement, in the form of a text message on the LCD informational monitors at the gate, that they were selling upgrades to first class on the flight for $80.00. (Apparently, Delta Airlines needs cash.) I decided that, had I been given the option when I was making the reservation way back in May, I would have paid $80.00 to upgrade to first class. So I did, and I had scrambled eggs for breakfast, and there was an actual celebrity in first class, Jeanne Cooper of "The Young and the Restless." (I only spotted her because she boarded right before me, and I saw her name flash on the readout on the boarding pass scanner.) She was coming to Tampa to appear on the Home Shopping Network to sell jewelry, or so I overheard in a conversation she was having with a skycap at the baggage claim. Yes, the famous have to wait for their luggage, just like you or I.

Leaving on a jet plane

So let's see...wake up at 4:30, make it to the Van Nuys Flyaway bus terminal by 5:30, make it to Terminal 5 at Los Angeles International Airport by 6:30 for a flight leaving at 8:10...should be enough time, right? I mean, I get to use the "self-service" check-in because I have a "domestic e-ticket," in the words of the Delta Airlines web site.

Reunited, and it feels so good

My 10-year high school reunion is next week. One member of my class, who I don't remember, won't be attending because, as she wrote on classmates.com, "probably would be fun, but I summer in Southampton." Well, gosh, I'm currently summering (and wintering) in the San Fernando Valley, but I'm going. (I assume that's Southampton, Long Island, which makes my trip about 2 1/2 times longer than hers would be. If it's Southampton, England, then I don't blame her, because her life is no doubt more interesting than everyone else's at the reunion.)

Wash their mouths out with soap

I recently started watching a show on the A&E network called "Minute by Minute." Every episode goes through a chronology of a certain event, of the type that tends to have a year and/or the name of a city attached to it, such as The 1981 Kansas City Hotel Disaster, or The Great London Omnibus Disaster of 1974, and contains a lot of interviews with the people affected, plus news clips and such.

Two of the episodes I've seen so far, The 1994 O.J. Simpson Bronco Chase and The 1988 Pan Am Bombing Over Lockerbie, Scotland, have had one thing in common: they each contained exactly one use of the word "shit," unbleeped. In fact, in the O.J. Simpson episode, since it was part of a 911 call, it was presented both aurally and visually.

First of all, that's unusual for basic cable, that it wouldn't have been bleeped. But what's more unusual is that A&E has given each episode the same TV-PG rating, including those two, not even going one step up to TV-PG-L.

Yes, you can supposedly use "shit" once in a movie and still get a PG rating, but so far, television has been much more conservative with its ratings than the Motion Picture Association. I can actually cite two examples I saw on Turner Classic Movies, which shows all of its movies unedited and is a basic cable channel in some areas (in mine, it's in that nebulous area between "basic" and "premium" called "digital basic"). "The Hudsucker Proxy," rated PG in theaters, was given TV-14-L, I believe, by TCM. And "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," rated PG-13, was TV-MA.

(Yes, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" really was shown on Turner Classic Movies, I swear, uncut, letterboxed, and with what's-his-name coming on before the movie to talk about why they were showing it in the first place, and after the movie to mention what everyone in the cast is doing these days except for Mia Sara, who apparently has dropped off the face of the earth.)

Anyway, if I were in charge of A&E's ratings, I would have gone ahead with the special "L" advisory, just in case, if for no other reason than to distinguish "Minute by Minute" from, say, Game Show Network's "Match Game" reruns, which are rated TV-PG while almost everything else on the network is TV-G, and that's solely because of the double entendres, gratuitous use of words like "tinkle," and Fannie Flagg's tight T-shirts.

Sell, sell, sell!

There's an ad for BMW in the paper this morning. It says something like, "There are over 70 different makes of car in the world. Only one is called The Ultimate Driving Machine."

Yes, but how is this lesson in trademark law supposed to sell automobiles?

The cricket in Times Square

I can hear crickets tonight, which is unusual. Using the old "add 40 to the number of cricket chirps in 15 seconds to find out the temperature" method (actually, I counted the number of chirps in a minute and divided by 4), I came up with 74 degrees Fahrenheit. The National Weather Service says the correct reading is 66. I'm not sure who I trust more.

Monday, I went to a new Target in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles. The only reason I went to this one specifically was because I was tipped off to an interior feature by a co-worker: it's a 2-story store (it used to be a Montgomery Ward), and in the middle of the store is a double set of escalators, one for humans and one for shopping carts. Needless to say, all the kids and some of the adults were absolutely fascinated by the whole thing. There was also a full complement of checkout lanes on both levels, which I wouldn't have expected, although it makes sense, since there are store entrances on both levels as well. In conclusion, all stores should be like this. Well, all former Montgomery Wards, at least. There's still an abandoned, boarded-up Montgomery Ward auto service center down the street. Maybe Target should start doing auto service.

Do not adjust your set

Late, late Saturday night, NBC shows a full 90-minute old "Saturday Night Live" rerun, which my TiVo dutifully records, and then I watch the good sketches and fast-forward through the bad ones.

Last night, my NBC affiliate, KNBC in Los Angeles, must have been having some kind of bizarre technical difficulties, because what my TiVo captured was, first of all, only about an hour and five minutes of recording, which means KNBC was off the air from 3:00 to 3:25 A.M. And when they came back on, and the TiVo picked up the recording, it was to a station identification slide, which said "4 (NBC logo)/KNBC-TV Los Angeles." It was outdated, too, since the "4" wasn't in its current font, and the graphic design of the whole thing didn't match their current on-air look at all.

Occasionally, there would be very quick flashes of other images (less than a second), including "EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM MESSAGE" and something that looked like the kind of video feedback one gets when plugging a video output back into its own input. At one point, there was a quick flash of Dennis Miller, apparently from the scheduled "SNL" rerun, but then back to the station ID.

Eventually, after about 20 minutes, the station ID began switching back and forth occasionally to what looked like a newer version, this one saying "4 (NBC logo)/NBC/KNBC Los Angeles."

And then, with no warning, "SNL" came back on, in progress, at about 4:00. So apparently they haven't worked all the bugs out of this "television" thing yet. Philo T. Farnsworth, where are you when we need you?

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

I am pretty much convinced that this is a picture of the Publix supermarket at 1313 South Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa, Florida. Unfortunately, the "GRA" portion of the "grand opening" banner is obscuring the address that was painted on the glass over the front door. But if it's not that exact Publix, it's an incredible simulation, right down to the layout of the parking lot.

This is important because that Publix was the supermarket I went to with my mother all the time in my youth, where I bought all my Archie digests and got free cookies at the bakery. It was also the first place I saw a cash register equipped with a UPC scanner (Publix was one of the first supermarket chains to have those in all their stores).

Unfortunately, this picture isn't in color, or you'd see that most of the front of the store was white, except the portion under the "Publix" name and logo, which was gray crushed stone, a concept that was really big at the time this store was built. Oh, and the lettering was green. The Publix logo was (still is) two shades of green. The female employees wore ugly green outfits, and the male employees wore white shirts and ties, until the mid-to-late 1980s, when they switched to polo shirts in various tropical colors. (Publix also gave out S&H Green Stamps until the mid-to-late 1980s. They liked the color green.)

Anyway, in the mid-1990s, assuming this really is the store I think it is, it was torn down and replaced with a new, larger store on the same lot, 90 degrees to the left (the photographer is basically standing right in front of the location of the new store). As for the old store, well, "you're parking on my memories," a phrase coined by Charles Schulz.

We moved to a different neighborhood in 1986, but that Publix was still the most convenient supermarket...until a brand-new Kash n' Karry opened much closer. And now that I don't live there anymore, there's now a Publix in that neighborhood, too.

A dream is a wish your heart makes

Last night, I dreamed that the CBS television network, because of declining ad revenues due to everyone fast-forwarding through the commercials with their TiVos or whatever, changed its name to "CBS and AT&T," to the extent that the network newscast was called "The CBS and AT&T Evening News with Dan Rather." The CBS "eye" logo stayed the same, though; I didn't see the AT&T logo anywhere. Also, for some reason, "CBS and AT&T" was written in an ugly shade of pink in a blocky font. I spent much of the dream complaining about the situation, of course. In real life, I hardly ever watch anything on CBS (seriously, I watch the WB Network more often than I watch CBS), but I think my subconscious is trying to warn me that something like this is coming soon, and I'm not going to bet against it.

At least I have a vague idea of what my subconscious was going for there. About a week ago, I dreamed that I was transformed into Nicole Kidman, only with bigger breasts. I've never actually seen an entire Nicole Kidman movie, and I don't really have much of an opinion on her, except that I would have stuck with Mimi Rogers if I were Tom Cruise. Therefore, I can only think of two possibilities:

1. My subconscious thinks I should see some Nicole Kidman movies (in fact, there was a reference to "Moulin Rouge" in the dream).
2. My subconscious thinks I should be having sex more often, and thinks it would help if I looked like Nicole Kidman, only with bigger breasts. Actually, my conscious is of that opinion, too, but would prefer to transform into a more attractive man, with larger pectoral muscles, if given the choice.

Classified top secret

In the L.A. Times, "Jumble" (that scrambled word game) appears on Page 3 of the classified section. So today while eating my lunch, once I discovered what being laid back at work can lead to (being laid off), I scanned Page 3, and something under the category of "Miscellaneous Merchandise" caught my eye. Someone was selling a steam locomotive, fully operational, FRA certified, with a 2-6-0 wheel configuration, for $1 million.

Now, is the Los Angeles Times classified section really the best place to sell your million-dollar piece of railroad equipment? Sure, it's one of the highest-circulation newspapers in the country, and there are a lot of rich people and well-funded corporations in the greater Los Angeles area, but how many of them or their representatives are reading Page 3 of the classified section? This wasn't even a display ad, just a regular agate-type classified, although it did have a bold headline.

If I'm ever in the position of having to sell a steam locomotive for $1 million or more, I'm going straight to the advertising departments of magazines such as Trains. Actually, if I'm ever in the position of having to sell a steam locomotive for $1 million or more, I'm buying commercial time during "Friends" or something. ("Tonight's Must-See TV Thursday lineup is brought to you in part by...Jim Ellwanger's steam locomotive!")

The birds!

After the Comic-Con in San Diego shut down on Sunday evening, Lucas Hackett and I walked north from the convention center looking for a Wendy's that he had seen on a previous evening while in a drunken stupor. We instead came upon a hole-in-the-wall Italian place and decided to take advantage of "pizza by the slice."

The front door was wide open and a pigeon walked into the restaurant just ahead of us. Confused, it promptly flew upwards and perched on a ledge over the front window. Therefore, we had an unexpected floor show to watch with our dinner, involving a man standing on a table with a broom. Eventually giving up, he managed to pick the pigeon up in his hands, jump down off the table, walk outside, and release the pigeon into the wilds of downtown San Diego, safely down the block somewhere. I was very impressed.

However, they didn't clean off the table he had been standing on, possibly putting their "A" health department rating in jeopardy.

Shortly after that piece of pizza, I got on the train to L.A., and ended up sitting in the cafe car, upstairs. This turned out to be a slight problem because it was racing season at Del Mar, and so a teeming mass of humanity got on the train at Solana Beach, the stop near Del Mar. Many members of the mass wanted to purchase alcoholic beverages in the cafe car (where there isn't even much of a selection, just a handful of brands of bottled beer and some random wines), and were being quite noisy about it. However, there wasn't too much unruliness, thanks in part to the two Amtrak police officers who also boarded at Solana Beach, and most of the teeming mass got off the train at Irvine or Santa Ana, leaving the train much quieter for the rest of the trip.

And then on the subway from Union Station to North Hollywood, due to maintenance, the train was operating on the "wrong" side of the tracks for a portion of the trip, confusing people who were waiting in the stations (who were perhaps already confused by the messages about the maintenance that were scrolling on the hanging LED displays). Eventually, the train operator got the hint and made the announcement, "Yes, this is a train to North Hollywood. Yes, we are running on the other side tonight, and every night after 9:00 through this Thursday." Since trains don't run from about 12:30 to 5:00 A.M., I'm not sure why they needed to start doing the maintenance at 9:00. Maybe they're practicing because they're going to start 24-hour operation in the future (I hope, so I can take the last train back from San Diego in the future if necessary).

Is this the worst song lyric of all time?

"I'm not afraid to take my chances/With the Guildensterns and Rosencrantzes." -- Spin Doctors, "How Could You Want Him (When You Know You Could Have Me)?" (which I think is itself a contender for worst song title of all time)

Things you would only read at a comic convention

"If you wear a costume that includes a replica weapon, please keep it attached to the costume. Don't draw it or aim it."

The video games I played (Part 1)

I've been spending a little time recently at the Killer List of Videogames getting all nostalgic. Although I'm more of a pinball guy, I did misspend a lot of time in my youth playing video games, both in the arcade and on my Atari 800 and 800XL computers. Games like these:

Asteroids...I played this occasionally in the arcade, in all its black-and-white glory, but I also had the Atari 800 cartridge, which was in color, combined the features of Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe (hyperspace and shields), and worked with a one-button joystick instead of five buttons like the arcade game.

Baby Pac-Man...A combination video game/pinball machine, which automatically makes it cool, although the problem is that it's just boring old Pac-Man with the additional challenge of trying to play pinball to earn power pellets, and it's only a half-size pinball game that doesn't have the same "feel" as classic Bally pinball machines (even though it is a Bally pinball machine). The only other game they made like this was called Granny and the Gators, which I don't remember ever seeing in an arcade.

Berzerk...I only remember playing this a few times. This was the first video game with synthesized speech, but I don't remember thinking that was a big deal at the time. Maybe the arcade didn't have the volume turned up high enough.

Boulder Dash...I had this for the computer. See, there's this guy digging quickly (dashing, you might say), trying to get these gems, but there are all these boulders that might fall on him.

Burger Time...A man tries to assemble hamburgers, but is being chased by a fried egg with legs which can be temporarily immobilized by sprinkling pepper on it. They don't make 'em like this anymore, and probably shouldn't.

Centipede...This was one of the two game cartridges my father bought with the Atari 800. It was slightly more fun to play in the arcade because I didn't have the track ball at home, but as long as I was in the arcade anyway and wanted to play a game that involved shooting at various arachnids and other creepy crawling things, I'd play Millipede instead.

Champion Baseball...I played this game all the time in the back room at Papa Louis Pizza in Tampa.

Crystal Castles...This has some of the best background music in any video game. I think. I may be confusing it with Marble Madness. Don't ask me to hum it for you, though.

Defender...I didn't play this one often because I could never catch the humanoids as they were falling back to the planet's surface.

Dig Dug...Just like Boulder Dash, except without the gems and with the added attraction of being able to inflate the bad guys until they popped.

Donkey Kong...The problem with the arcade version was that it was made by Nintendo, which for some reason decided that joysticks should be controlled by the left hand and jump buttons should be controlled by the right hand, a concept that's still in place on the controllers on their home systems, as far as I know. Anyway, the joysticks I had hooked up to the Atari 800 were the American kind, with the button at the upper left. I was used to pressing the button with my left hand and moving the joystick with my right hand, so I was much better at Donkey Kong at home.

Donkey Kong Junior...I don't think I ever played this in the arcade, but I did play it at home, and sometimes I still see the Chains level in my sleep. This was actually a pretty good idea for a sequel, the idea that Mario finally captured Donkey Kong at the end of the last game, and now Donkey Kong Jr. is trying to rescue his father.

Dragon's Lair...I've never played this, but unlike with Berzerk's speech synthesis, I do remember what a big deal it was when this came out. The main reason I never played this? It was the first game to be priced at 50 cents, alone in a world of 25-cent games.

In the next installment: The game with the best background music, which I can still hum.

Trains are better than planes

On the day after Christmas 2000, I was scheduled to fly nonstop from Tampa to Los Angeles on Delta Airlines flight 1193. However, at the time, many of Delta's pilots were calling in, making fake coughing noises, and claiming they were too sick to fly in order to protest something or other. So Delta canceled flight 1193 and the computer system, apparently without human intervention, decided that the best alternate route from Tampa to Los Angeles involved flying from Tampa to Cincinnati, then from Cincinnati to San Francisco (obviously, the theory being that San Francisco is in the same time zone as Los Angeles), and finally from San Francisco to Los Angeles. And I didn't even realize Delta had flights between San Francisco to Los Angeles. I would have assumed one would have to change planes in Atlanta. Anyway, I got back to L.A. about eight hours later than I'd been originally scheduled to arrive.

The best thing about that fiasco was that I got bumped up into first class from Tampa to Cincinnati, so I got a full breakfast while the people on the other side of the curtain got an underripe banana and six spoonfuls of blueberry yogurt. The worst thing was that my assigned seat from Cincinnati to San Francisco was an aisle seat in the back of the plane right next to the galley, and there were a few turbulence incidents during the flight, and stale airplane cooking odors are not the best odors to be smelling in the event of turbulence, at least with my tender tummy. But I made it to San Francisco with the first-class breakfast still in my digestive system, and I had about two and a half hours to walk around the airport looking at all the art exhibits, as well as all the vacant, partially boarded-up airline check-in desks in one of the terminals (because the new international terminal had just opened).

But that was then, this is now. On the day after Labor Day 2002, I was scheduled to fly nonstop from Tampa to Los Angeles on Delta flight 1193. However, many people are choosing not to fly because they don't want to have random people pawing through their carry-on baggage. So Delta has already canceled flight 1193 for that day and the computer system, apparently without human intervention, has decided that the best alternate route from Tampa to Los Angeles involves...flying from Tampa to Dallas or perhaps Ft. Worth, and then from Ft. Worth or perhaps Dallas to Los Angeles. I'll get to Los Angeles about an hour and a half later than I was scheduled to arrive, but I also leave Tampa about an hour earlier than I was scheduled to depart. Which means I have to wake up an hour earlier. Which means I'm going to be seriously tired when I get back.

This is the price we pay for not having to make this trip on the train, which would take three full days.

Downside of up style

Headline in today's Los Angeles Times: "'Senseless' Attack by Chicago Mob Leaves 2 Dead." I swear, my first thought was of Al Capone (or, more likely, his current-day successors). But it turned out it was a Chicago mob, not the Chicago Mob.

Places with frequent bus service

Out of Service, New York; Garage, Illinois; Good Morning (coffee cup icon), Washington.