Category Archives: Personal

Apparently, black folks don’t have ‘biographies’

Today, I went to Barnes & Noble to spend a gift certificate I received for Father’s Day. Given the occasion, it seemed fitting to use it to buy a copy of a book I’ve been meaning to read, Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father.

Of course, I sought it under "biography." No dice. I scanned the shelf where the "O’s" would be repeatedly. I looked to see if it had been mistakenly placed under "New Biography." Nope. Then I looked to make sure it hadn’t been filed by "Barack." Nope. Not under the "B’s."

So I went to the "Current Affairs" section. No luck.

Finally, I did the thing I hate, and went to the information desk. The clerk made a beeline for the "Store Favorites" table, and handed me a copy. As one does under such circumstances, I felt constrained to explain why I had had to ask for help, muttering something about having searched and searched under "Biography."

The clerk told me it wouldn’t have been under "Biography." It would have been under "African-American."

You’ll note that on the Web site, it’s considered to be a biography. But apparently not in the store. In case you wondered, John McCain does appear under "biography." Yes, the subtitle of the book is "A Story of Race and Inheritance." I get that. But it’s still a biography — or, to be technical, and autobiography. If it was right to file this under "African-American" instead of "Biography," then the McCain books — which feature him as a Navy aviator on the cover — should have been under "military history." But they weren’t.

After I got home a few minutes ago, it occurred to me that I didn’t go check what the clerk had told me — I didn’t search the "African-American" section, assuming that such a section exists. I’ll try to remember to check next time. But I do know that there were no copies under "Biography."

Demise of the Executive Institute

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Here’s a veto that I missed last week. I guess I should have noticed it, since it was one of those rare ones that the Legislature actually sustained:

I am very sorry to have to report to you that funding for the Executive Institute was vetoed by the Governor and the veto was sustained by the House of Representatives. Therefore the Institute will not begin it’s 19th year in August as planned and we will shut down the operation at the end of this fiscal year.

I would like to thank all of you for the friendship, enthusiasm and support you have shown us over the years. You are the major reason for the success we have had. Thanks so much for 18 great years.

Tina

Tina Joseph Hatchell
Director
Executive Institute

Alongside such biggies as the SCHIP program and indigent defense, this one was easy to overlook. But now that I know, I’m sorry to hear it.

I’m an alumnus of the Executive Institute , class of ’94. Back then, the director of the program was Phil Grose. That was thee year that I was getting ready to come up to the editorial department from news (end of ’93, beginning of ’94). My predecessor Tom McLean paid for me to do the program, because back in those days, we had money for such professional development. Primarily, the Institute existed to train up-and-coming managers in state government, although there was always a smattering of private sector folks for leavening — which helped give the government types exposure to the private sector, and vice versa. The interaction itself was educational.

It was particularly useful because of the Institute’s teaching method. It was run in conjunction with the Kennedy School at Harvard, and the instructors led the class through real-life case studies, in which we were asked to put ourselves in the places of the public administrators who had navigated their way through a variety of crises and challenges.

Being the newspaper guy, I had to overcome a great deal of distrust and wariness on the part of my classmates, which was essential to the kind of interaction that the classes called for. Middle managers in government see press types as natural enemies, for a simple reason: Newspapers don’t write about what they do except when there is a problem, consequently we help create the phenomenon we see in the comments on this blog — a lot of folks in the electorate who only see them in terms of the worst mistakes that anyone like them has ever made, because that’s what gets written about.

But we managed to get a good enough rapport going to have some pretty good discussions going. Frequently, my role was to try to convince people that having the problem (in the case study) get into the newspapers was not the end of the world. It was interesting, and I think helpful to having a better-run state government.

Does that mean I think lawmakers should have overridden the veto. No, not if they were going to leave the prisons, mental health, our roads and 4K all underfunded. But if they were going to override either this or their pet "Competitive" Grants Program, they should have overridden this.

So guess which one they overrode — "overwhelmingly"?

My wife says I’m a big, fat hypocrite (actually, to be honest, she didn’t call me ‘fat’)

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While I was driving us up to Greenville on Saturday — meaning that I was a helpless captive at the time — my wife mentioned having looked at my blog, something she seldom does.

I thought, UH-ohhh, but out loud, I said, "Oh, you did?" I could tell she was about to light into me for something.

Sure enough, she called me a hypocrite for having called "Sex and the City" "trashy," because I watch and enjoy "The Sopranos." (On DVD, that is.) She submitted that there had never been, and never would be, anything in any episode that was anywhere near as bad as the fifth-worst thing that happens in the most family-values-oriented "Sopranos" episode ever produced. (She didn’t say it in those words exactly, but that’s the gist.)

"Of course, you’re right, dear," I said carefully, the way Tony spoke to Carmela at the end of episode 33, "Second Opinion." You remember — Tony comes home to find Carmela curled up on the couch, and she informs him that they ARE giving $50,000 to Columbia, and he starts to lay down the law, and she tells him again that they ARE giving the 50 Gs to their daughter’s college, and Tony wises up and realizes he’s being made an offer he can’t refuse, and starts try to think of what he can possibly say to get her to stop talking to him like this…

At one point, I did try to assert myself by noting that she watches "The Sopranos" with me — it actually kind of surprised me when she started watching it with me; I think she got pulled in because she sort of identified with Carmela (and she leaves the room whenever violence seems imminent) — but this was a tactical mistake on my part. It seems that that was neither here nor there; SHE had not publicly called anything "trashy."

So I thought hard about WHY I had written that post to begin with, and then I remembered, and it seemed exculpatory. So I explained that calling that lovely show with the nice ladies "trashy" had not been MY idea; I was simply reacting to a headline in the WSJ that raised the question of whether "Sex and the City" — actually, the fashion inspired by "Sex and the City" — was "empowering" or "trashy." And Lingerie I had just said, of course, it’s trashy; isn’t that the point? I mean, look at the title. (Extra points question for those who dare: With which program is the picture at right associated? Hint: This is not a dancer from the Bada-Bing!)

Yes, she understood that, but that was no excuse to go on and on in a holier-than-thou way about protecting children from "trash" like this, that a guy who watched all those naked women with their fake boobs at the Bada-Bing! doing nasty and degrading things in between the bloody murders had any room whatsoever to talk about such things. She explained that three of the women on "Sex and the City" are actually looking for love, that there was only one woman on the show who was an actual slut, and she recognizes herself as such, and that in any case sex was nowhere near as bad as violence, and for that matter the sexual content of "Sex and the City" wasn’t nearly as horrible and twisted as the sexual content on "The Sopranos." All of which, I’m quite sure, is true.

I sort of tried denying that the dancers at the Bada-Bing! were attractive to me — which they’re not; they’re too plastic-looking — and talked about how necessary it was for the viewer to be reminded how sordid Tony’s business was, so that we never start to think that the way he made a living was OK and start sympathizing with him too much, but I was not going to win this argument; it was fixed going in.

Then when we got to Greenville, I found out my sister-in-law had had a rare night away from the kids the night before — she’d gone to see "Sex and the City." Then this morning, I see a comment from Laurin Manning back on this post, in which she noted with amusement that no women had been a part of the discussion of this year’s biggest chick flick.

At which point, it’s probably a good idea for all guys present to stick our hands in our pockets, stare at the floor, shrug and go silent. I mean, Whaddaya gonna do?

Sopranos

Joel pauses between cocktails to say hey

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Last night, while my wife was monopolizing the TV watching "So You Think You Can Dance" (that’s OK; I can watch that "Sopranos" DVD tonight), I sent a heads-up to my former pupil who has since gone over to the Dark Side, Joel Wood. Basically, as I told him, I didn’t want to be talking about him behind his back:

Hey, Joel, how are you?

I thought I’d better tell you, as an old friend, that I mentioned you on my blog, in the context of sort kinda disagreeing with your perspective on things:
http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2008/05/hey-wait-a-minu.html

You see, I’ve become one of those single-payer radicals. It’s funny because I’m not radical about anything else. This is the one thing I agree with Dennis Kucinich about; I promise. Here are a couple of columns in which I set out my thoughts on the issue several months ago:
http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/11/health-care-ref.html
http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/12/can-anyone-any.html

Anyway, I thought I should give you the chance to demolish my arguments, which you probably can do, on account of being a professional in this particular policy area and all…

I didn’t want to be talking about you and your industry behind your back.

And besides, I wanted an excuse to say "Hey."

So, hey.

— Brad

About an hour later, Joel wrote back, which was nice, because it was good to hear from him. But that’s not the good part; that’s not the schlag, the whipped cream atop the dessert — the lagniappe, if you will (as Johnny Malone used to say — you remember, Joel). The good part is that this now-senior lobbyist for the insurance industry wrote back, at 10:45 p.m. on a Thursday night, on his Blackberry from a cocktail party. If you put this stuff in a movie, they wouldn’t believe it.

Anyway, he promises to send a more substantial rebuttal to my ramblings later. In the meantime, this is all he said:

Total kick, and a delight.

But as I’m still in cocktails at a soiree with my benefits guys at the Homestead (every horrible image you imagine!), I can only glean so much from my peckings on the BlackBerry. First blush is that you have some insightful readers who make my case. But certainly when I get back to town, or to a regular computer screen, I shall respond as a good Republican insurance lobbyist should, probably with some invective about Michael Moore and commie journalists getting their due through diminished circulation. But, in the meantime, I am stupified that this stuff gets read by people I care about, and thoroughly thrilled that you would give it the time of day. And very happy to hear from you …. You would be proud to know my editors and colleagues, to whom I forward this, are no less redistributionist than you. …. Miss you!

Thanks Brad.
j

Consider that a preview.

Blasts from past come unexpected in this business

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Needless to say, I get a lot of unsolicited, pure junk mail in my line of work. Most of it goes into the round file with hardly a glance. But I guess I was moving slow or even more easily distracted than usual today (and folks, if I weren’t easily distracted, I wouldn’t be doing a blog), but I happened to notice something today that made me say, wait a minute… and actually open one of the pieces of junk.

The junk in question is this slick magazine with a snazzy cover called Edge. or Leader’s Edge (look at the cover and tell me which one it is). It’s a big one, as you can see compared to The Economist above. To the extent that it has registered on my consciousness at all in the past, I’ve just thought it was some generic thing aimed at business execs, a category in which I fit only technically (on account of having the title of V.P.). But today, I noticed there was, shall we say, a theme running through the headlines of the articles teased on the cover:

"Committing Insurance Without a License"
"Employer plans: best cure for ill health insurance market"
"Attacking group benefits — why destroy what works?"

The last one grabbed me, as it seemed to be about health insurance, and seemed to suggest that we Edge_006
currently have a system that works. Those of you who know me know that I strongly disagree.

So I opened the mag, and eventually found the masthead, and sure enough, this is a publication of "The Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers." It’s full of institutional advertising from such luminaries as UnitedHealthcare.

But that’s not the good part, the part that prompted me to write this. The good part is that in the few seconds I spent flipping through this thing, I ran across the name of an old friend, Joel Wood.

I first met Joel when I was a reporter operating out of a bureau in rural West Tennessee back in the 70s. He was a student who wrote for one of the local weeklies. Later, when I was the news editor of The Jackson Sun, he was one of my best reporters. But after the 1982 election, he left the paper to become press secretary to Don Sundquist, who had been elected to Congress over a candidate whose campaign press secretary was another former writer at the paper (whom I later hired back, as it happened). Sundquist later became governor of Tennessee. But before that happened, Joel became a lobbyist for the insurance industry. In one of those startling coincidences that make Washington seem like such a small town, I ran into him years later when I was showing one of my kids around the Capitol.

Anyway, I last ran into Joel three years ago at a Jackson Sun reunion. True to form, he kept doing deals via cell phone while the reunion was going on, as seen in the picture I shot below.

Now that I’ve read his mag, and read in his latest column (the one about destroying "what works," which isn’t on line yet; here’s a previous one) that "I’ve been blessed with terrific health benefits in my 15 years at the council," which he says is a good thing given his lifestyle, which he says consists of "attending political cocktail parties professionally in the selfless service of our member firms," all I can say is…

Joel, it’s not too late. Come home! All is forgiven. And don’t bring the phone this time…
Woodjoel

Herbal domino theory

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A couple of weeks back we accompanied my brother and his family to the farmers’ market up in Greenville. We were in the market for herbs, particularly cilantro, because of an excellent recipe for three-bean salad my eldest daughter makes. It calls for fresh cilantro, a.k.a. coriander.

But all they had was something very different looking called "Vietnamese cilantro." The vendors said this variety was particularly well suited to our climate. So OK; we bought some, and added it to several other little pots of herbs we had bought in recent days.

Having recently given up on a plant at my office that didn’t seem to respond well to watering only when I felt like it, I decided to stick several of these herbs in a pot (with my wife’s supervision, because what I don’t know about plants would fill a library) and take them to the office.

I’ve been quite attentive to this little herb garden, watering it constantly (the terra cotta soaks up a lot of it) and rearranging my office in order to keep it in the sun. And what has been the result?

The Vietnamese cilantro has taken over. Relentlessly. The other plants — Spicy Globe Basil, Greek oregano, and plain old sweet basil — have seen it coming and just curled up and died in its path, like so many dominoes. Only the tiniest sprigs of the oregano and sweet basil remain, and you can’t see them because the Vietnamese herb has grown to three or four times its original size.

I don’t know what it is. Maybe all that watering has created a rice-paddy-like environment. Maybe it’s my failure to keep significant numbers of ground troops in-country. In any case, I think it’s time to send in a tiny helicopter and get the oregano and basil out.

Vietnam_paddy

Don’t worry; it’s 10 ’til 8

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A few minutes ago Mike warned me that there appeared to be a problem with the op-ed page (which is, until we print it out as a negative and a plate is made 10til8_002
from it, just a big QuarkXPress file) — one of the ads hasn’t shown up. This could mean I’ll have to finish it later in the evening because Mike has to leave soon.

I told him not to worry: It’s 10 til 8.

Earlier, as Warren and I were talking about the need to rewrite his column for tomorrow in light of new developments, and he had just told me we were expecting a fourth candidate today on top of the three I had noticed on my calendar, and Cindi started telling me we were facing a "train wreck" on our schedule if we didn’t start endorsing some candidates this week, I said don’t worry; it’s just 10 til 8. Plenty of time.

Some would say the clock in our hallway is broken. Others would say it needs a new battery. I say it’s just perfect the way it is. As I go into meetings with my colleagues and candidates, full of worry about how we’ll get it all done today, I see that clock, and am deeply reassured: It’s just 10 ’til 8.

10til8_001
Ten minutes before 8 is just a perfect time of day, no matter whether it means a.m. or p.m. It means that I’m either about to have my first cup of coffee of the day, or pop open a beer. It doesn’t get better, or more soothing or relaxing, than that. Oh, look: It’s 10 ’til 8. Ahhhhhh.

Some would say it’s right twice a day, and call themselves optimists. But the way I think about it is much more positive: I choose to believe that it’s always right.

I need to go now and see about these pages for tomorrow. But fortunately, I see by the ol’ clock on the wall that there’s no hurry, no hurry at all…

10til8_004

Now and Zen

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Yesterday, my wife and I went on a walk with one of our daughters on the Cayce segment of the Riverwalk. As we were heading back toward our car, we heard the Giant Zipper sound of a very large tree starting to fall, accelerating as it tore down through surrounding vegetation, then landing with a muffled Crump!

Curious to see the source, we started back up the trail roughly in the direction of the sound (the foliage was too dense for the direct approach), but we met a man coming from that direction, and he reckoned that the tree was about 100 yards from the path, well out of sight. So we gave up and left.

When led us to an epiphany, one which I must remember to mention to my friend Hal French over at USC:

If a tree makes a sound in the forest but no one sees it, did it really fall?

When you know the answer to that, Grasshopper, it will be time for you to leave the blog…

This makes me feel SO much better

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Energy Party think-tanker Samuel Tenenbaum gave me this book to read this morning, but knowing how slow I am at getting books read (currently I’m slogging my way through The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Breaking the Spell simultaneously, and have promised myself a novel when I’m done with those), I figured it would be awhile before I’d be in a positive to comment on it, which I figure is something Samuel is hoping I’ll do, which is why he gave me the book.

… To increase the pressure, Samuel emphasized I was one of the few he’d given it to, the others being Barack Obama, Joe Biden, U.S. Sen. Amy Klubocher (yeah, I had to ask, too — it’s the woman who spoke to the state Democratic convention over the weekend), Capt. Robert Miller (a Democrat, late of the U.S. Marines, who is trying to challenge Joe Wilson), Harris Pastides and John Mark Dean at USC… He plans to give one to Lindsey Graham tonight.

… you’ll notice a trend toward Democrats there. Samuel says Dr. Dean did complain about the book’s politics, to which Samuel said, Ignore the politics! Read the science!

But apparently it’s not necessary to read the book in order to blog about it. This guy panned it without Samuel even giving him a copy. That is, I think he panned it — the post was so long that I figured I could read the book quicker.

I mention this because I’ve got to hand it to the guy for admitting that he didn’t read it. Did I tell my 11th-grade English teacher I hadn’t read Moby Dick? No way (if I had, she might not have given me an A-plus on the essay test, which still stands as a great moment in the annals of the Golden Shovel). Did I tell the audience at the Salman Rushdie symposium I moderated recently that I hadn’t read any of his books? No way. They might have thought less of me…

But this guy, who just comes out and says it, and dares ’em to come on (as Huck Finn would say — and I did read that), is an inspiration to B.S. artists everywhere…

By the way, here’s my short synopsis of what the book’s about. Mr. Zubrin says thumbs-down to hydrogen, thumbs-up to methanol from coal.

One million and counting!

The Final Countdown: Millionth page view likely coming up Friday

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Folks, for what it’s worth, and whatever it means, this blog will most likely have its millionth page view sometime tomorrow. That’s Friday, May 2, 2008.

Or Saturday at the latest.

I won’t be exactly sure when we’ve hit the mark. I’ve got two counters going — the one you see in the upper right hand corner of your screen (at 997,549 as I type this), and the internal dashboard one in TypePad (at 996,986). The one you see is consistently running about 500 or 600 page views ahead of the internal one. I don’t know whether to believe either of them, of course.

Still haven’t decided how to celebrate. I won’t be able to tell who the millionth visitor is, but maybe I’ll award some arbitrary prize to the first person who leaves a comment after the first counter ticks over, or after both of them have, or something.

One thing I DO know is that the big moment is likely to come when I’m too busy to notice it, Fridays being my worst days of the week.

Anyway, I’m still open to celebration suggestions…

Somebody’s Big, Stupid Second Cousin

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There was an intriguing piece today in the WSJ applying the principles of The Wisdom of Crowds to predicting the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. The logic of it was persuasive when it invoked Wikipedia, which I find to be far more useful and reliable than detractors claim (when people say it’s inaccurate, I want to know, Compared to what source of such breadth and depth?)

It was less persuasive in the preceding sentence, when it said,

This collective intelligence also accounts for why Google results,
determined by an algorithm reflecting the popularity of Web results
matching a search, are so relevant….

Today, wearing my vice president hat, I heard a presentation on new vistas of user-specific smart online advertising that the presenter described more than once in “Big Brother” terms — not as a bad thing, but in terms of Big Brother’s storied effectiveness and, I suppose, intrusiveness into private thinking patterns.

But you know what? So far, I’ve been hugely unimpressed by the effectiveness of software that is supposed to get to know me well enough that it can predict what I want. Take Netflix, for instance. I have freely given Netflix more than its share of info on my preferences. I have, for instance — and I’m embarrassed to admit this — rated 1,872 movies on the one-through-five-star system. Yes, that’s one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-two. Any time Netflix has said I need to “rate more movies” — and it seems to have an insatiable appetite in this regard — I have taken a few moments (in the evenings, of course) to oblige.

I have done this in a vain attempt to give Netflix enough info to at least make a wild guess as to what sort of movies I like. It still doesn’t seem any deeper or more intuitive than what a clerk at an ’80s-style video store might have guessed after less than a dozen rentals. Or so it seems to me.

For instance, Netflix is convinced I’ve got a fierce hankering to watch “Classics” — you know, movies with Clark Gable or Myrna Loy or whatever. Apparently, this is based on the fact that I’ve given high ratings to, for instance, “It Happened One Night” and “The Thin Man.” But of course I give those high ratings! Any literate movie fan would! That doesn’t mean I want to see them again, or that I want to see lesser films with the same actors in them! I don’t have a black-and-white jones here, people. I just acknowledge quality, and I think my judgments along those lines are fairly conventional, really. What I need you to do is extrapolate what I might like among films I haven’t seen or heard about…

Whatever. Anyway, this sort of software hasn’t figured me out, even when I’ve wanted it to. It’s more like somebody’s stupid second cousin than Big Brother.

And I get this pooge WHY exactly?

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Most people get a lot of e-mail that they delete immediately, and I am surely no exception. In fact, I get so much that I have several accounts, as a way of sorting and triaging — a published one for the world (which I get to as soon as I can, and race through as quickly as possible, which involves a LOT of instantaneous deletion), an internal one for gotta-know-this-to-get-the-paper-out-today-type business, a couple of private ones (one of them for e-bills, which I do my best to ignore) and so forth.

But sometimes I pause with my finger over the "delete" key, just long enough to think "Why did I get this?" Some of the messages in this category are cool. For instance, I’ve somehow gotten on a lot of e-mail lists for commercial artists and photographers, which I forward to my daughter who’s majoring in graphic arts. Still don’t know why I get them, though.

Then there’s the stuff that’s kind of work-related, but I still don’t know how I got on the list. For instance, this one today (from a source I get messages from daily):

***MEDIA ADVISORY***
RNC Chairman Mike Duncan to Speak at Fayette County Republican Party Reagan Day Dinner

WASHINGTON – Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Robert M. “Mike” Duncan will deliver the keynote address to the Fayette County Republican Party Reagan Day Dinner. The dinner will be held on April 26 at 6:00 p.m. in the Griffin Gate Marriott’s Paddock Tent to benefit the Republican Party of Fayette County. Details are available on the party’s website: www.fayettegop.com.

WHO:             RNC Chairman Mike Duncan
WHAT:             2008 Fayette County Republican Party Reagan Day Dinner
WHEN:             Saturday, April 26, 2008 6:00 p.m. EDT

And all the way down, I’m thinking, Fayette County where? What state is this even in? Only at the very end to I get my answer:

WHERE:          Griffin Gate Marriott
                     Paddock Tent
                     1800 Newtown Pike
                     Lexington, KY 40511

Admittedly this comes from the Republican NATIONAL Committee, so I can see why I’m on their list. But what kind of doofus sends out a release nationally that doesn’t tell editors in the 49 other states that there is no way that they will EVER be interested in this. I mean, you know, I’m assuming that the purpose is that you would want editors to pay SOME attention to your releases at some point in the future, right? If not, why send out the damn’ things?

Yeah, I know, y’all don’t care about this. And even for me, it’s just one of a hundred or so petty irritations that I’ll endure today in my never-ending quest to inform and entertain thousands of Kansans. I mean, South Carolinians.

Happy 30th, Yesterday’s!

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Last night we dropped in to Yesterday’s to help Duncan and Scotty McRae and the gang celebrate 30 years in the heart of Five Points. To drag in the ultimate of journalistic cliches, a good time was had by all.

Jack Van Loan was there with wife Linda. Jack is the one who first introduced me to Duncan (whom you can see at the very center of the photo above) years ago. We saw other friends, and met new ones. Our booth was popular because we’d brought along my daughter’s roommate Laura, a longtime Yesterday’s waitress who has been out for awhile recovering from surgery, and everybody was glad to see her.

Yesterdayscowboy
One of those who stopped by was the Yesterday’s cowboy himself, who had been missing from the bathtub over the front door during the last weeks of the countdown to the anniversary. (My apologies for the quality of the photos; I didn’t have my camera, and shot these with my phone.)

But guess who else we met? Frequent blog commenter James D McCallister, whose recent comments you can find on this post, and on this one as well.

There was live music by a man with a guitar immediately behind where I was sitting. His first number, of course, was "Yesterday."

Anyway, it was a fine party, and I wish the folks at Yesterday’s 30 more good years…

Yesterdaysneon

35 years of delayed gratification

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Yes, it was pretty sweet when John McCain finally made up for the historic miscarriage of justice in 2000 by winning the S.C. primary this time, and Memphis2 going on to win the nomination (presumptively speaking).

But hey, that was only 8 years.

We Memphis State fans (for so the school was called when Fred Thompson and I were there) have waited 35 years to make up for the heartbreaking NCAA final of 1973, when Wooden and Walton and company did in Larrys Finch and Kenon and the rest of the Tigers.

Minutes ago, Memphis moved on to the final by defeating, yes, UCLA!

Sweet.

Ucla

Notes from the bunker

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Sorry I’ve been so scarce the last day or two. I’ve been trying to make this Saturday online-only opinion page thing happen. As I suspected it would be, it’s WAY harder to make happen than just doing editorial and op-ed pages the old way.

That is, it’s harder for me. It’s lighter on the rest of the staff, which is the point, since it’s a smaller staff than it was.

So I hope you’ll get some use out of it — and offer constructive suggestions. It will evolve.

Anyway, in case you missed me, I replaced the Easter-eggs shot with a new picture — upper left part of the page. Can’t you tell I’m having lots of fun today? (Gary Ward of thestate.com, who shot it, asked me to look "serious." That’s why it looks like I have indigestion or something.)

Countdown to a million

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Check out the cool new counter that Kelly Davis of thestate.com set up for me — it’s in the upper right-hand corner of this page, at about 2 o’clock from here.

I still haven’t decided how to mark this blog’s millionth page view. But in the meantime, y’all can watch the countdown along with me.

And no, I didn’t expect chills to run up and down your spine, or anything. I just wanted to share.

My Spidey sense is tingling

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Just got a telemarketing call that was more interesting than most. A young lady from Greenville said, "I’m calling on behalf of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’."

Well, I couldn’t hang up on her after a beginning like that. If Spidey needs me, how can I turn my back? He’s suffered enough at the hands of a fellow newspaper editor, and I am no J. Jonah Jameson.

But when she started thanking me for being such a loyal subscriber, I told her that would be my son, the serious collector. Some of his comics still come to our house from when he still lived at home, but it would be up to him whether to renew at the terrific new price they were offering.

I gave her his number. I hope it was the right thing to do. But how could it not be? I’ll bet she looks just like M.J.

Dogonomics

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Just fed the dog, and mentioned to my wife that he’s really low on food, so that one of us will be sure to get another one of those huge bags. She asked if there was enough for tomorrow, and I said yes, and for the next day, too.

Then I thought a moment, and added, "But don’t tell him how low it is… as far as he knows, that can is limitless." All he needs is someone with opposable thumbs to open it — we keep his ready food in one of those big popcorn cans my great-aunt gives us each Christmas — and to place it in his bowl. He’s completely dependent on this for survival, but that’s fine; he trusts us completely.

But if he knew that it was possible for the can to run out, that would rock his world completely. He’d stay up nights worrying about it. He might even get an ulcer.

It’s reassuring to me that at least one sentient creature I know never worries about where the food is coming from, or paying the bills, or whether that work on the house can be put off another year, or anything else. All he has to do is threaten intruders — and he has a loose interpretation of the word — in his own rather easygoing way (you don’t have to work hard at it when you’re as big as he is), and everything is covered.

Dogs are good, loving, dutiful creatures. If anyone I know is to be free of worry about material limits, I’m glad it’s a dog. He deserves it.

Have an awesome time — responsibly, of course

bradwarthen.com

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Dogonomics

Have an awesome time — responsibly, of course