Phony calls

Since Friday, I've been getting an unusually high number of phone calls that show up as "out of area" on my caller ID, which almost always means it's a telemarketer.

Friday was the day signups started for the national "do not call" list. Are they trying to get as much telemarketing done as possible before the list goes live on October 1st, perhaps?

Punderful, but blunderful

Yes, "towed" and "toad" are homophones, which means that a sign reading "Witches' Parking Only/All Others Will Be Toad" is kind of amusing when hung on the wall of a garage or something like that. (Actually, it would be really amusing if it were attached to a galvanized steel post and placed near a curb, but the city public works department might not feel the same way.)

What is absolutely not amusing, because it's completely out of place and makes absolutely no sense in this location, is a bumper sticker reading "Witches' Parking Only/All Others Will Be Toad" on the rear bumper of a car. I would have complained to the driver, but I was afraid she would turn me into a newt.

Smoke from a distant fire

Well, now Metra says service on the Metra Electric line will probably be restored as of Wednesday, July 2nd, which is the day I'm going to arrive in Chicago. Hmm, I guess I shouldn't have deleted the notes I made while I was trying to figure out a possible schedule for riding on the line.

Firestarter

Last night, I was poking around the web site for Metra, the Chicago commuter train system, trying to figure out if I wanted to go on a joy ride on one (or more) of their routes while I'm in Chicago next month. I realized that I had never taken the Metra Electric route, which uses different equipment than all the other Metra lines, and I ended up making preliminary plans to go for a ride on that line, trying to figure out if the schedules were such that I could ride on all three branches of the line without having to spend a long time hanging around on a station platform. (The answer: I could easily do two of the three branches, which I guess is good enough.)

And then, just now, I find out that last night, a bridge on the Metra Electric route caught fire and was totally destroyed, so there's not going to be any service on one of the branches for the foreseeable future. From looking at the pictures on the Chicago Tribune web site, the "foreseeable future" clearly includes the time I'm going to be in Chicago, because it looks like they're going to have to build a whole new bridge.

Sports headlines that are TV-movie plots

"Dying Caddie Inspires Watson at U.S. Open"

I've always wanted my own caboose

I just got a spam with the subject line "Government seized planes, trains, and automobiles." I don't think the government has actually seized a train since World War I, when they nationalized the railroad industry...and even then, they gave them back. (Amtrak wasn't a seizure, because the railroads were glad to be rid of their passenger trains, for the most part.)

It's not funny when it happens to you

In today's Los Angeles Times comics pages, there are two strips that involve a living creature being washed after another living creature went to the bathroom on its head. That's quite an amazing coincidence, beating even the day a couple of years ago when two strips featured a joke involving one animal having to be in a carrier in the cargo area of an airplane while another rode as a passenger.

The washing up was happening today in "Frazz" (boy vs. guinea pig) and "Grand Avenue" (dog vs. bird). The simultaneous "animal in carrier" jokes were in "Mother Goose and Grimm" and "Citizen Dog," neither of which are in the L.A. Times anymore...which may spell doom for "Frazz" and "Grand Avenue."

All the best jingles, all the time

And now, T through Z (read yesterday's entry to figure out what this is):

Tab: Tab Benoit and Jimmy Thackery, "Whiskey Store"
Tropicana: Something in Spanish
USA Today: Chocolate USA, "All Jets Are Gonna Fall Today"
WABC (New York): Babs Gonzales, "1947-1949"
Walt Disney World: "Official Album of Disneyland/Walt Disney World"
WBAE (Pittsburgh): Antonio Carlos Jobim, "Wave"
WCBS-FM (New York): "WCBS-FM 101 History of Rock: The '60s, Part 4"
WCKY (Cincinnati): "Wacky 911"
WCPO (Cincinnati): Love, "Da Capo"
WCSC (TV, Columbia, SC): Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"
WDGY (Minneapolis): Gary Lucas, "The Edge of Heaven: Gary Lucas Plays Mid-Century Chinese Pop"
WDOT (Burlington, VT): "American Idol: What the World Needs Now Is Love"
WERK (Muncie): TWDY, "Dirty Werk"
WEWS (TV, Cleveland): The Silver Jews, "American Water"
WFEA (Manchester, NH): Whitney Houston, "The Preacher's Wife"
WFIL (Philadelphia): Phil Collins, "...Hits"
WFLA (Tampa): The Chieftains, "The Nashville Sessions"
WGAL (TV, Lancaster, PA): Plumb, "Beautiful Lumps of Coal"
WGBB (Long Island): Andy Gibb, "20th Century Masters"
WGBS (Miami): "WCBS-FM 101 History of Rock: The '50s, Part 1"
WGOW (Chattanooga): Eminem, "The Eminem Show"
WHAM (Rochester, NY): Wham!, "Make It Big"
WHAS (Louisville): "White Oleander" soundtrack
WHEN (Syracuse): Diana Krall, "When I Look in Your Eyes"
WHO (Des Moines): John Eddie, "Who the Hell Is John Eddie?"
WHUT (Anderson, IN): Redman, "Whut? Thee Album"
WIBR (Baton Rouge): "Masters of Classical Music"
WIND (Chicago): Evanescence, "Fallen"
WINS (New York): Scientist, "Scientist Wins the World Cup"
WKDA (Nashville): Primus, "Pork Soda"
WKZQ (Myrtle Beach): Wizz, "Get Fuzzed Up"
WLOF (Orlando): David Bowie, "Peter and the Wolf"
WLS (Chicago): Owls, "Owls"
WMEX (Boston): The Ames Brothers, "The Very Best of the Ames Brothers"
WNEW (New York): "Classic Rock Box: WNEW-FM 25th Anniversary Box"
WNUE (Fort Walton Beach, FL): "WNUA 95.5 Smooth Jazz Sampler Vol. 15"
WOAI (San Antonio): Nelly Furtado, "Whoa, Nelly!"
WOKR (TV, Rochester, NY): Stone Sour, "Stone Sour"
WOOD (Grand Rapids): Bond, "Born"
WPIX (TV, New York): The Apex Theory, "Topsy Turvy"
Wrangler Jeans: Widespread Panic, "Space Wrangler"
WTOP (TV, Washington, DC): Wasis Diop, "Toxu"
WTUE (Dayton): Dixie Chicks, "Wide Open Spaces"
WVON (Chicago): "Godspell" soundtrack
WYNY (New York): Wynn Stewart, "The Very Best of Wynn Stewart 1958-1962"

And so, in conclusion...well, I'm not sure there's much of a conclusion here, except that I have one of the most bizarre music collections ever.

Jingles and their albums

If you weren't paying attention last week, let me see how succintly I can summarize this: I have a program called Synergy that, when I'm playing MP3s on my computer (as I often do), pops up a window with the title and artist at the beginning of every track. Newer versions of Synergy also put the album cover in the window, and to do that, it apparently "steals" the artwork from amazon.com.

Now, I happen to have a lot of radio/TV jingles as MP3s on my computer, all saved with an appropriate title, plus a set of call letters or a product name as the artist. When one of these comes up, Synergy dutifully looks for the album cover artwork...but it also seems to have some kind of "fuzzy logic" that allows it to download something that's not an exact match, to account for misspellings in people's MP3 ID3 tags.

And so here are some of the albums it's come up with for these jingles, or at least the ones from A through S:

7-Up: Roy D. Mercer, "#7: Hangin' It Up"
Barbie: Velva Blu, "Barbie Girl"
Barrelhead Root Beer: Jimmy Somerville, "Root Beer"
Budweiser: "Frank and Louie's Greatest Hits" (those are the Budweiser lizards, as seen in their commercials a few years back)
CBS: "Survivor Official Soundtrack"
Cheerios: Playa, "Cheers 2 U"
Close-Up Toothpaste: The Kingston Trio, some "2 albums on 1 CD" thing including "Close-Up"
Dairy Queen: Queen, "A Day at the Races"
Dial Soap: They Might Be Giants, "Dial-a-Song"
Dr Pepper: The Beatles, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
Extra Gum: Gum Machine, "Extra Chewy" (or perhaps it's actually Extra Chewy, "Gum Machine")
General Electric: Shihad, "The General Electric"
Green Giant: Jack Greene, "The Jolly Green Giant"
Kawasaki: Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg, "Speaking in Strings"
KCAL (TV, Los Angeles): "Now That's What I Call Music! 12"
KCBA (TV, Sacramento): Ibrahim Ferrer, "Buenos Hermanos"
KFI (Los Angeles): Kofi, "Harlem Nocturne"
KFWB (Los Angeles): "KFWB's Battle of the Surfing Bands!"
KING (Seattle): B.B. King, an album I couldn't read the name of
KLIF (Dallas): Jimmy Cliff et al., "The Harder They Come" soundtrack
KMGK (Des Moines): The Kinks, "The Kink Kronikles"
KNOX (Grand Forks): Buddy Knox, "She's Gone...: The Liberty Years"
KNX (Los Angeles): Buddy Knox, "She's Gone...: The Liberty Years"
KOY (Phoenix): "AM 1230 KOY Collectible Classics, Volume 1"
KROQ (Los Angeles): Hagfish, "On KROQ's Loveline" (yes, KROQ had jingles in the olden days)
KRTH (Los Angeles): Kurth & Taylor, "Freedom"
KSON (San Diego): Jason Mraz, "Waiting for My Rocket to Come"
KVIL (Dallas): "Ken Burns' The Civil War" soundtrack
KZZP (Phoenix): The Kills, "Keep on Your Mean Side"
McDonald's: Michael McDonald, "Motown"
Metropolitan Life: Lil Suzy, "Life Goes On"
NBC: "The '60s" soundtrack
Opel: Syd Barrett, "Opel"
Ovaltine: Harry "The Hipster" Gibson, "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?"
PBS: "Ken Burns' New York" soundtrack
Pop-Tarts: The Pop Tarts, "Woman is the Fuehrer of the World"
Simon Electronic Game: Simon & Garfunkel, "The Best of Simon & Garfunkel"
Sprite: Jewel, "Spirit"

Up next, T through Z. There are a lot of W's, thanks to all those radio stations. "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?" -- hee hee.

Oh, Mr. Chicagotribune.com Webmaster...

The story: "Skokie police arrested 28 Northwestern University students Thursday night after a bus trip to a park degenerated into a drunken party, officials said Friday...."
The ad next to it: "Part-time evening programs/Northwestern University Master of Arts in Public Policy and Administration"

Almighty, then

Something to remember if this ever comes up: with God-like powers and abilities, what you want to make sure you do is not just change things on a surface level, but change reality itself. This will help avoid all sorts of embarrassing questions, such as "Hmm, since when did Amtrak have this many trains?" and "Hmm, since when did those four scantily-clad women start hanging out with Jim 24 hours a day?" Because, as far as anyone else will be able to tell, things will have always been like that.

Granted, there's the small risk that major historical events will have to change to create the desired result, such as an Axis victory in World War II leading to the scantily-clad women thing, but if something like this happens, no one will care, because they won't know. It's a win-win situation, except for the Allies.

More jingle associations

For a WABC jingle, Synergy came up with an artist named Babs Gonzales. For KSON, it was Jason Mraz. And for a CBS television jingle, somehow it made the association with the Vince Guaraldi album "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

I'm going to have to make a complete list of these.

I can hear music

Recent versions of Apple's iTunes allow one to associate a JPEG file of "album covers" with each song, so that one can gaze longingly at a CD cover while listening to music without actually having to have the CD nearby. iTunes requires human intervention in getting the pictures, which I spent some time Sunday doing for my music collection, with the assistance of the All-Music Guide.

I also have a shareware program called Synergy that works with iTunes; among other things, every time a new song comes up, it pops up a window with title and artist information...and, in the new version of Synergy, the album cover shows up in the window, too. Now, if there's no album cover in iTunes, Synergy goes out on its own and tries to find it on the Internet, apparently at amazon.com.

Now, I have a lot of songs where there's no album listed, which is kind of how I differentiate between a song being from a CD I own and, um, an audio recording I'm not in the physical possession of, if you get my drift. For these, Synergy seems to pick the first album by that artist containing a song of that title, and it can be interesting to see what it comes up with. (Seems to be greatest hits collections more often than not, if the artist in question has such a thing.)

But Synergy seems to have some kind of bizarre "fuzzy logic" spell-check built in, and here's how I can tell: in addition to actual songs, I have a bunch of radio and TV station jingles, as well as some commercial jingles, all of which have no album listed and the radio/TV call letters or the advertised product as the "artist."

For example, for all my WCBS-FM jingles, the image it's coming up with is a CD from the "WCBS-FM Presents the History of Rock 'n' Roll" series, which is the best match Synergy's come up with. It's also pulling the same picture for another radio station with similar call letters, WGBS. WLS is resulting in a CD by a band called The Owls. Best of all, a jingle that I titled "Great Memories" from a radio station called KRNT resulted in an Amy Grant CD, I guess on the premise that "great," "KRNT," and "Grant" have a lot of letters in common between them.

Obviously, my next step is to try to find the various radio station logos and put them into iTunes, but so far, I'm having fun seeing how Synergy is dealing with them.

Places named after other places

Today being Sunday, it was a good day for a Sunday drive. I went across the San Fernando Valley to check out a street named after my hometown, Tampa Avenue, which runs north-south through the neighborhoods of Tarzana, Reseda, and Northridge. Nearby, there's a minor street named Topeka Avenue, so apparently, somebody had a naming scheme in mind, and it was just the luck of the draw that Tampa ended up as a major street.

It doesn't look much like a street in Tampa, though, mainly because it's a primarily residential street that's six lanes wide plus a center left-turn lane, with the two outer lanes set aside for parking except during evening rush hour (4:00 to 7:00 on weekdays). Some of the residential streets in the newer parts of Tampa may be seven lanes like that, but I'm pretty sure the concept of "street parking except during rush hour" doesn't exist in any residential areas in Tampa.

There are some palm trees along the way, though, so it's like Tampa in that respect. And there are businesses with names like "Tampa Hardware" located on the street. Perhaps if I'd squinted, I could have fooled myself into thinking I was in my hometown, but it's probably not a good idea to squint while driving.