Talking the Talk

Sunday, October 3 10:08 PM

Ach. Does Crayola make a color called "Moron?" Maybe in the 120-crayon Colossal Box, I suppose. Well, color me that. The big project for tonight and tomorrow is to finalize the keynote that I'll be giving on Tuesday morning. It's all outlined and I've assembled nearly all of the visual elements I'll need. Now, all that remains is to dump 'em all into Keynote so that the folks at the DocTrain conference will have something to look at while I talk. Besides me, of course, and then, in between deep sighs, their wristwatches.

I actually just needed to photograph one more thing: my Java Ring. This is one of my favorite computers. Yes, computer: it looks like a class ring but the "jewel" is actually a computer with I/O, storage, a system clock, and enough processing oomph to perform 128-bit encryption. Security is indeed one of its intended functions; the phrase "DIGITAL DECODER RING" is subtly embossed around its face, upping the ginchiness factor by a factor of eight.

It's weatherproof and tamper-proof, and there's no reason why this ring couldn't be used as a "wallet" for digital currency. You walk up to a Coke machine and tap the ring against a special blue pad (resisting the urge to shout "Wonder Twin powers...activate!" as you do so), which both powers and activates the ring computer. Then, the two devices do some high-level math together that results in your becoming $1.25 poorer, but richer to the tune of one cold frosty bottle of phosphoric acid and caramel coloring, better known as Our Reason for Living.

It's pure Tabasco, but just try telling that to the rest of Society. As it is, my Java Ring serves only one practical purpose: when I wear it, people leap to the conclusion that I'm a high-school graduate. I'm not saying that this doesn't have its own perks, but I've always been disappointed that financial institutions have never really done anything important with these Java-based ideas, which also include keychains and Smart Cards.

My keynote is all about the question of why certain technologies never seem to penetrate to mass-acceptance, and so the Java Ring is a perfect thing to talk about. Alas, Clever Boy left it in his hotel room last week and although the Marriott is kindly mailing it back to me free of charge, it didn't arrive in yesterday's mail and I have to guess that it won't get here tomorrow, either. This is where my inconsistent commitment to clean living comes back to haunt me. Surely if I were a humbler and more penitent man, God would have thrown some sort of hoodoo down and bamboozled the Marriott into FedExing it instead of using UPS Ground. Oh, well: images.google.com to the rescue. My only worry now is that by seeking a solution through the Internet instead of through reflection and self-improvement, God will now think I'm thwarting His will or something. This Free Will is pretty dicey stuff, you know?

Tuesday's keynote and the one I'm giving at the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference at the end of the month ought to be interesting. Both are brand-new shows; I'll be doing two hours' worth of material that I've never done before.

If you read through the archives over at RichardHerring.com, you'll get to witness the process of developing a one-man show. Herring journals the whole thing, from concept to research to writing to thirty performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, after which he announces that it's finally starting to take shape and he's looking forward to taking the show on the road for the next few months. Boy, I wish I had that sort of luxury. Almost every talk I give is a one-off. I do have one show that I've done four times, and it gets more enjoyable (for both me and the audience) every time. I do a little nip here, a little tuck there, fix a few graphics so they're more clear, maybe create a new card or two because I chanced across a keen new digression the last time I did the show and it worked out so well that it's now part of the script. There are things about a presentation that you can only figure out while you're performing it, and getting a chance at improving something and trying it again is a terrific gift.

Alas, I did that show for last year's O'Reilly keynote, and it wouldn't be appropriate for the folks I'm speaking to on Tuesday, either. Well, I'll consider it a Feature: both these groups will be witnessing World Premieres.

Of course, when I call these things "shows" I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek. I don't prepare scripts; I prepare a list of the points I want to make and I nail down their sequence, but I don't know what I'm actually going to say until I get up there and start talking. Still, I think if you want to give a successful presentation you can't step up there as an Industry Pundit or the Inventor of a new technique for administering intra-vascular coinhibitors or as someone with a buttload of waffle-knives to sell. You have to treat this like you're in show business. I must educate and I must give the audience some things to think about...but the fact remains that those 50-1,000 people are indeed an audience and thus I also have a responsibility to make them feel like they're not wasting their time.

It's equally important that the audience become so engrossed that they fail to realize that the chairs they're sitting in are flimsy rentals, and that with enough of a backswing it'd actually be pretty easy to hurl one from the twentieth row all the way to the podium. I can't offer an impartial evaluation of my own skills as a public speaker, but I will say this: never, not even once, have I ever been beaten with furniture during or after one of my presentations. It might sound arrogant, but I daresay that if it had been me up on stage at Ford's Theater, John Wilkes Booth might possibly have waited until intermission before clicking the President.

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The Segway ain't the right way, but it's My Way

Tuesday, October 5 11:14 PM

Today's keynote went really well. Which is not to say that it was perfect; a few minute cracks appeared in the varnish and I attributed this to the fact that this was indeed a World Premiere and I was still getting comfortable with the material. Plus, I spent the morning laying floor tiles with that special adhesive and I'm not sure that the room was properly ventilated. To those folks in the first couple of rows that I blasted with the fire extinguisher I can only say that I'm sorry, and explain that if you were seeing what I was seeing at that moment, you would have done far, far worse.

Still and all, the audience laughed in the right places and gave me thoughtful nods when I presented the Heavy Concepts, which led me to believe that either (a) it was going over well, or (b) the audience was well-coached ahead of time. Either way, I'm willing to score this one in the Win column and not ask any dumb questions.

Boy, it's such a rush to give these talks, even when not under the influence of industrial glue vapors. It really is like surfing. You go out there with the twin benefits of preparation and experience, but you don't really know what you're going to do until you're actually doing it. I thought I'd prepared a pretty swell talk and I worked on it for a good while, but still there were all sorts of connections and subtexts to this piece that I didn't discover until I heard myself speaking the words and realized that hey, cool; if I stay on this point for just another twenty seconds, I can tie it into an offhanded comment I made at the very start, and a point that I'm going to be making at the very end! Bonus!

Which goes to show how important it is that you listen while you speak. It's counterintuitive, but it's probably one of the Four Pillars of Public Speaking. You have to pay attention to yourself and you have to pay close attention to your audience. Because if you doggedly refuse to deviate from your prepared material, you let a lot of fantastic opportunities sail by. And if you tune out the audience, it won't occur to you that the section that seemed so brilliant when you wrote it is actually boring folks to tears. It bears mentioning that snacks are complimentary at many of these conferences; heaving a cream cheese-slathered bagel at your head won't cost the audience member a thing. We speakers tolerate these things because the drive-by cheesing and the resulting cleanup eats a tidy six minutes from your time and brings you that much closer to that moment when you can thank the audience for their time and then streak off the stage, which given the tenor of the proceedings will have become your main goal in life.

But again I stress that my ten-year streak of never having been beaten with furniture during or after a presentation remains intact. I did trip over a divan after a Macworld Expo presentation in 2001, but it was not audience-related. The folks at my DocTrain keynote were terrific and after the Q&A, many of 'em hung around to talk with me.

And what a delight! I met a bunch of Southwest Airlines employees. They stepped up to introduce themselves because sometime before I officially began my talk, I think I mentioned how much I enjoyed the A&E Channel's "Airline" show. That's the reality documentary in which cameras show you what happens at Southwest terminals all across the country. Each episode features passengers who (a) insist that they're Totally Drot Nunk; (b) don't seem to understand why micro-miniskirts need to be worn with underwear, particularly when the wearer is male; or (c) have a Relative Who's A Lawyer and thinks that this is the magic phrase that will get them on an overbooked flight without any proof of ever having bought a ticket. Watch it just once, and even the most harried and stressed-out air traveller will be saying Please and Thank You to anyone with a name badge in out out of the airport. "Nothing can train our new employees as well as that show can," they told me. I replied quite sensibly that the show is a much better training video for passengers than it is for the staff.

Actually, it was an unusually cool crowd. A guy introduced himself to me as the guy who wrote the index to my iLife book. I shook his hand and thanked him with the same sincere admiration that a homeowner reserves for the plumber who comes over at 2 AM to fix a dramatic and highly disgusting problem with the septic system. It's rough, highly-demanding work and I couldn't possibly be more grateful that there are people who can do it for me. And there were a pair of familiar faces, besides: two fellow former villagers from the quaint town of Anatevka, aka former active Boston Computer Society volunteers. "Let's get together for dinner sometime," I said, and I hope they detected that special curly inflection I put on the first word, indicating that I did indeed want to set into motion a complex sequence of events that would ultimately result in food and conversation.

Tyngsboro, Massachusetts isn't very far from the Manchester, NH headquarters of Segway and so a couple of scooters were on hand to play with. This was my first real hands-on with these things. I've always been quietly confident that I'll be the author of a #1 bestselling book some day, but up until that moment I didn't know which obscenely extravagant toy I'm going to buy myself when it happens. The Cautious Experimentation phase lasted all of about forty seconds; I was soon leaning forward all the way, opening up the throttle and barrelling down the hall, barely suppressing the impulse to make nyyyowwwwvroooommmmm! noises as I did so. It really is exactly that simple to operate. You twist the handgrip to pivot left or right, lean the platform forward to go faster, and rock it back to slow down or stop.

Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders ain't
got NOTHIN' on me.

The latter was actually my favorite part of the Segway's user interface. It's like every Western I've ever seen: Gene Autry pulls back on the reins and leans back in the saddle and Champion the Wonder Horse rears up on his hind legs and clatters to a stop. Actually, I haven't seen a whole lot of Gene Autry westerns. But it's also exactly like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," in which King Author skips along the countryside on a pretend horse and conveys the concept of Stopping by leaning backward and barking "Whoah, there!"

If these Segway boys were really on the ball, every time the Segway stopped it'd play a 256K MP3 of coconuts clattering together in a flurry for a second or two. And if that idea isn't worth a free Segway, then I don't know what is.

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"Don't sell yourself short: you're a TREMENDOUS slouch."

Thursday, October 7 8:50 PM

I realized a long time ago that Old Age doesn't swarm around you and tear apart your youthful self-image like pigeons setting upon a tourist with a bag of popcorn (Trafalgar Square), or like hawks upon a tourist who's been robbed, beaten and left for dead (Central Park). Nope, your youth just sort of flakes off bit by bit, eventually revealing the wrinkled and bitter 75-year-old who's been patiently lurking underneath all of those layers of optimism and moisturizer for the past five or six decades.

Yesterday, I went out golfing for the first time in about a year and a half. I've never regarded golf as a troubling sign of encroaching maturity, of course. I've been golfing since I was a teen, after all, and I've consistently exuded a distinctively proletarian image. My bag of clubs is like the staff at a downtown McDonalds: it's a motley collection in which all ages and pedigrees are evenly represented, and there's a mysteriously high rate of turnover. I've never played on a private course in my entire life. I have never knowingly purchased an article of clothing that was designed and engineered with golf in mind; I play in my street clothes and sneakers.

George Carlin really jumped all over golf on one of his albums, attacking it as an elitist sport. Well, okay, the average televised PGA Tour event does contain a lot of commercials for ingot-polishing services and things like that. But even the briefest and most cursory visit to a public golf course dispells the notion that you can't play the game unless you're the sort of person who was once the target of a shareholder class-action suit. The cigar smokers at Ponkapoag don't subscribe to Cigar Aficionado. They're mostly retirees, and they smoke fruit-flavored cigars with white plastic tips that they buy at a corner newsstand, where they greedily take their change in lottery tickets. And sure, you'll find a few expensive pickup trucks sitting in the parking lot, but they all belong to plumbing and roofing contractors. Not freshly-divorced sports-marketing executives who wanted a desperate and unconvincing midlife makeover, and who were too chicken to either get an eye tuck or start picking up hookers.

And I'm happy to say that I've fit snugly into the Public Golf Course demographic all my life. So yesterday, I was out on Ponkapoag Course 2 and I was simultaneously surprised and disappointed to discover that the cellphone service there was quite excellent. I answered three phone calls. Individually, the calls did nothing to dampen my elan but something big and terrible happened after I pressed the "End" button on the third one. Right there, ninety yards away from the 15th hole, with my 9-iron in one hand and my cellphone in the other, I realized that I'd just lost another flake of my youth.

I was playing golf while taking call after call on my cell, which was bad enough. Worse, the first had been from the world's largest software maker to schedule a conference call, and the second was with my editor to discuss an upcoming project. And the fatality — the realization that caused me to drop to the fairway and weep — was the fact that I, Andy Ihnatko, a man who implicitly trusts any restaurant that has Formica counters and an ample selection of $6 entrees, who has always regarded the night before trash day as the neighborhood's largest and most bargain-filled garage sale, a man who owns a Jeff Foxworthy CD, for God's sake...the man whom I'd grudgingly grown to love and respect over the past three decades was out on a golf course talking with his agent.

The sole saving grace is the fact that this crystal-clear picture of shallow yuppie scum-bitude took place in New England, not in Westchester or Orange County. Because if this scene unfolded anywhere near LA, well, I'd simply have to bludgeon myself to death with my own fairway wood. I wouldn't have actually done it, of course. As a newly-minted member of the Yuppie Scum Brigade, I'd no longer have the capacity for committing such a decent, selfless act. So my first thoughts would naturally have been about calling my financial planner and telling him to stop payment on all those checks to the Red Cross and various homeless shelters, followed by a deep and all-consuming worry that someone else out there on the course might be carrying a better cellphone. And if not, was there any way that I could let everyone know how much mine cost?

That's how these things work, of course. If you talk to your agent while you're on a golf course it's really pretty much over. I don't feel any different, but it's just a matter of time before I'm having various ethnicnally-identifiable physical traits waxed off and chiseled down into a flawless picture of beige Caucasianality, and complaining about how much taxpayer money is wasted on this failed, counter-Darwinian boondoggle known as free public education. And then, can skin bronzer be far behind?

Sigh.

Well, being an open-minded free-thinking member of Generation X was fun while it lasted. I'm sure going to miss that whole "thinking and caring about other people" thing. It's a real pity; I think I was really starting to get the hang of it. But I suppose there's a bright side: this time next year, when I'm driving around the neighborhood the night before trash day looking for unappreciated treasure, I'll be able to fit way more stuff in the back of my new Hummer H2 than I ever could in the trunk of my Chrysler.

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Take Johnny Paycheck's Life And Shove It

Monday, October 11 3:47 PM

Yippee! Today is Columbus Day! It's a three-day weekend! Do you know what that means?

Actually, nothing. Nothing at all. God, I remember when a legal holiday was a Big Deal. A glorious feeling it was; a spirit of renewal filled the air, and I was so giddy about the prospect of sleeping in on a weekday that I couldn't sleep at all.

Today? Eh. The obvious upside of being self-employed is that you can sleep in on any day you please. Furthermore, if you've got a full day's work ahead of you when it suddenly becomes clear to you that (1) the Earth and every living thing upon it are all in terrible danger, (2) somebody has to do something to avert this apocalyptic crisis, and finally (3) this someone is you, and the something is "drive 90 minutes to the one theater showing 'Spider-Man 2' in IMAX, then get a very nice lunch at a luncheonette along the way, then go home and watch the first movie on DVD in its entirety," well, the planet will sleep safely that night.

The downside is that I really haven't had a real day off in years. It's a casualty of loving your job; I can't remember the last day — Christmases and Thanksgivings included — when I didn't get at least some work done. And by "work" I stress that I'm only talking about the actual conversion of synaptic misfirings into discretionary income, and not the times when I'm, quote, Putting Myself Into A Frame Of Mind Where My Creative Powers Are Most Receptive To That Most Elusive And Flirty Of All Spirits, the Lyric Muse, Through The Expedient Of Playing "Halo" For Four Fours. And when I say "I stress," of course there's a certain amount of lying associated with the statement. But really, would you respect me as a creative professional if I were satisfied with that unsatisfying and confusing first-draft known as The Plain, Honest Truth?

I'm a little embarrassed to tell you my reaction to Christopher Reeves' death: "Couldn't any of these wire service writers come up with something better than 'He truly made us all believe that a man could fly'?"

In my defense, I want to say that this reaction came only after the sad realization that a husband and father was dead at 52. It really did come as a big surprise; I was absolutely certain that sometime before I reached that age, Reeve would be walking again. I'm disappointed that I won't get to see the inevitable end of that story.

But is that line the proper way to show respect for a man's passing? I felt the same way when Rodney Dangerfield died and the lead paragraph in every obituary was "He finally got some respect." No, no, no. Both these men had great lives. Don't they deserve at least ten minutes of focused creative thought? What'll be the headline when Jerry Seinfeld dies? "A Life About Nothing"? "He was born, yadda yadda yadda, and then his private jet augered into the Nevada desert at 3:17 AM last night?"

And on a more selfish note, I going to be totally screwed because I don't even have a memorable catch-phrase? Perhaps I should get on the ball right now. Folks, from this point onward, every time you think or speak my name, I want you to follow it up with "When Ihnatko was born, God placed the Spear of Destiny in his hand and pointed him at the unbroken horizon." Just keep repeating it. When you're waiting at a subway platform, bark it out at random intervals. Once we get some people yelping it on transcontinental and international flights, it'll become part of the national zeitgeist toot sweet.

It'll ensure a totally kick-ass obituary. Of course, I won't be in any sort of a position to properly thank you for your contribution — because, you know, I'll be all dead and junk — but Virtue is its own reward. Plus, you'll be kicking yourself later on if you read my obit and discover that it doesn't mention the Spear of Destiny at all, and instead wastes paragraph after paragraph on irrelevant speculation about what sort of idiot would even build a rocket out of an old hot-water heater packed with seventy pounds of old highway flares, let alone climb into it.

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eBay Is Hardly The World's Largest Garage Sale

Tuesday, October 12 11:35 PM

I probably need to point out that I wasn't kidding when I said that I tend to do a lot of streetside shopping on the night before trash day. I don't actually drive around with the purpose of picking through trash piles. Not since I reached an age when that sort of behavior ceased being Adorable. Nonetheless, I've always maintained that if I'm ever the cause of a serious vehicular accident, it'll be because I thought I saw a pair of chairs sticking out of someone's trash pile and therefore wasn't paying attention to the school bus.

"What kind of chairs?" the judge will ask, during my arraignment hearing.

"They were those thick, heavy library chairs," I'll reply, dreamily. "Someone had painted them white a long time ago, but you could tell from the curved armrests that they were at least fifty years old."

"Oak?"

"Solid oak. And when I got the paint off, I discovered dovetail and tenon construction from top to bottom."

It'll be goodbye, felony vehicular manslaughter, hello $70 citation for failure to yield!

Today, on my way home from a long-distance errand, I passed by a truly magnificent pile of trash. It was one of those piles that the heart longs for: an "I just bought this house and would you believe all the junk that the previous owner left in the garage?" pile. An "I haven't the time nor the patience to sort through all of this" pile. An "I have never seen a single episode of 'Antiques Roadshow' in my life, and am therefore ignorant of the fact that nearly every story that begins with Well, I saw this sticking out of somebody's trash one day ends with Would you be surprised to learn that this so called 'ugly' lamp would auction for at least $14,000?" pile.

Upon closer examination, it appeared that an elderly opthalmologist had finally closed up his office. The pile contained two sturdy, smart-looking chairs suitable for waiting-room use (c. 1962), a box of old charts, cartons of records, a nifty chrome swivel stool, a glass coffee table of more recent vintage, and some sort of instrument which I first took for some sort of a microscope but which I later determined was something that I didn't know what it was.

The quandary: was this somebody's Trash? Or was somebody coming back for it?

If the former, I could tear into it with abandon. If the latter, well, I was certainly willing to be that somebody. So either way, I was in the clear.

The problem is that it wasn't Trash Day, so a clean-cut ruling was impossible. I analyzed the crime scene. There was a real-estate sign on the building, so I had to suppose that this was the residue of some sort of a clean-out job. Landlord sends in a cleaning crew, which marches in with orders to clear the property to the bare walls for the next tenant. Crew doesn't care what happens to this stuff and dumps it. Cut and dried. Still: the trash was just so good. The chairs could have used some refinishing, but they were old enough to be classics. The instrument wasn't packed inside or protected by anything, but neither was it just tossed in there. It was sitting on the pavement, expectantly, "Waiting for either YOU...or ETERNITY," as the inscription to the buried treasure of "Masquerade" famously said. And would anybody simply throw away personal medical records?

I did tear a discreet hole in one of the trash bags. Aha! Pizza boxes and other kitchen waste. Clearly, this is all trash.

Or maybe someone had spent all day cleaning out his (or maybe his late father's) office by the real-estate agent's deadline, neatly stacked the contents there, and intended to come back with a U-Haul to take away both the Stuff Worth Keeping and the garbage? Or maybe a cleaning crew told the tenant "No problem, we'll just leave it all outside for you to pick up at your leisure?

We trash-pickers have our pride: ie, that we got these chairs for free instead of spending $400 for 'em at some antique mall. But we also have our Code. Time and time again I have passed by the sad scene of a fresh eviction. It's usually the mattress that gives it away: it's been tossed atop the pile with the same sense of ceremony with which a town drunk is thrown out of a bar, and it sits atop the dresser and the TV and the halogen floor-lamp like a stained beret.

I mean, it's tough enough to come home and discover that for the past four months, your roomate has been giving the rent money to online poker websites instead of to your landlord. Why make it worse by streaking away with the suitcase containing all of his NASCAR trading cards?

But this? This was a Gray Area. And if there's one class of people for whom Gray Areas create the most trouble, it's those of us who have Gray Morals. The good and the evil know what they have to do. Me, I was forced to execute a series of cautious orbits around the neighborhood, waiting for divine guidance or perhaps for someone to come out of the house carrying more (and possibly even better) stuff.

In the end, I have to embrace the rubbish version of the Five-Second Rule. It's an inverse implementation of the rule about what to do about food that's been dropped on the floor, and it goes like this:

Stuff that's been left on or near the curb for an afternoon is Stuff.

But if it's still there late at night it becomes Trash, and may be reallocated accordingly.

So I have room in my backseat for a couple of chairs, and after midnight I'll find some excuse to cruise the neighborhood again. Maybe I'll suddenly want to see if the Boston Globe published an evening edition for the first time since 1957. I don't know. Any excuse will do, so long as I'm not driving all that way just to claim some discarded (albeit cool) chairs. But before I leave, I'll print out a copy of this posting and I'll tuck it into a quickly-accessible pocket. If I'm stopped by the police, I'll have a solid explanation: This stuff is fair game, officer, according to Society's established Rules of Engagement. See? I read it on the Internet and everything.

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Rock Guitarists, Child Stars, and Reality TV Contestants

Wednesday, October 13 8:37 PM

Boy, as if the idea of eating raw bull fetuses while Boy Scouts shoot at you with paintball pellets loaded with artificial skunk musk wasn't enough of a scare-off, it turns out that appearing on a reality-TV show is deadly!

Well, you should definitely stay the hell away from anything on the Discovery Channel, anyway. First, Indian Larry, a regular on "The Great Biker Build-Off," performed his famous Standing Up On The Seat Of The Motorcycle And Riding With No Hands trick one time past the maximum number recommended by the Law of Averages. Then, the Vice President of the casino featured in "American Casino" died of a drug overdose.

And just last night, "Wing Nuts" was preceded by a somber memorial card for Tim Roberts, who assayed the familiar reality-TV role of Excitable Loose Cannon(tm). Apparently, he passed away on Monday.

"Wing Nuts" centers around the personnel and operations of MotoArt, a company that refurbishes classic aircraft components into high-end furniture and art pieces. As an aviation buff, I added this show to my Season Pass list about four minutes after seeing the first promo. Sure, part of me cringes at the thought of a vintage plane being cut up and turned into a $18,000 desk, from which the bored director of a multinational will surely be grinding his steel-shanked bootheel deeper and deeper into the backs of the proletariat. But given that all these parts were headed for a smelting plant and not an aircraft museum, hey, maybe survival as a cocktail table in a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon's office isn't the worst thing that could have happened to that C119 transport door.

The three main characters are the two co-owners, Dave Hall (who handles the business end and chases after money with the same level of success and hopeless optimism as a high-school freshman chasing after senior cheerleaders) and Donovan Fell, who handles the art side of the operations; the third is Roberts, whose title of "Minister of Information" belays the fact that the company really doesn't have any sort of well-thought-out role for the man, but recognizes that he's far too valuable and dangerous to let out of their sights.

Needless to say, I wouldn't assume that the man portrayed on the show was the actual Tim Roberts. The man we see is the character the producers created through selective editing. But TV-Tim is an angry, angry guy, saturated with the Dark Force; he's 38 years old, enduring a separation from his wife, reduced to living in a converted storage shed attached to MotoArt's facilities. He exhibits a confrontational personality that's clearly born from a keen sense of vulnerability. Every comment he makes and every answer he gives on the show is punctuated with a forceful statement about his life-experience or his importance to the company. But when he says that he's saving the company's ass, or that he's made a six-figure salary in his lifetime, he's clearly speaking to himself as well as to the person who's just expressed such overt skepticism about the way Tim's loading those crates into the truck.

I've neither the need nor the right to know how Roberts died, but still...well, the same algorithms that allow me to observe your Human society without drawing suspicion to myself or my mission also make me curious. I suppose I'm feeling the same disappointment I felt when I heard that Christopher Reeve had died. Watching Tim Roberts — even TV-Tim — in the first two episodes of the show was like reading the first two chapters of a fantastic novel. I was really looking forward to learning more about him, and seeing how he made it through this high-grit phase of what was obviously a colorful life.

At any rate, the warning is clear. Sure, the benefits of reality TV are heady ones. The thrill of having every last minute of your entire day-to-day existence dictated by the idlest whims of someone who works in television! The smug satisfaction when a total stranger comes up to you in the mall and asks "Didn't you used to date a friend of mine? You're Josh, right?" But be warned: it's possible that the moment you strap on that wireless mic, the clock starts ticking down. Caution, people, caution: the lead sentence in your obituary might be "Area bartender was famous for having drunk the entire contents of a crankcase from an '88 Pontiac Fiero, in exchange for Team Immunity."

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Are we having bread pudding yet?

Thursday, October 14 11:02 PM

Well, I added another item to the "bogus" edition of my resumé today: "Art Director for an internationally-syndicated comic strip."

Everyone should have a bogus edition of their resumé standing by, just in case the job you're gunning for (a) is so tasty that all bets are off, or (b) is the sort of position in which deceitful and underhanded behavior during the interview gives you a solid leg up on the competition, in the eyes of the interviewer. The Bogus resumé doesn't contain any actual lies, you understand. Like the meat in a McDonalds cheeseburger, the items contain just enough actual Truth to avoid federal prosecution but not enough to represent a satisfying meal of Integrity.

"My photography and cartoons have been published in Playboy (US and international editions)." That's true. Absolutely. I stand by that statement. If the interviewer is so lazy, so heedless of procedure, so eager to hire me and get out of the office in time for happy hour that he fails to ask a simple but critical followup question, well, that's his own lookout, don't you think? He only had to say "Really? How fascinating. Tell me about that." I would have happily explained that my official author photo (printed in every issue in which my articles appeared) was a self-portrait, and that one of my feature articles included illustrations drawn by yours truly.

That latest addition to my (increasingly-impressive) Bogus resumé represents the coming-together of three things I really enjoy: photography, diners, and Bill Griffith's "Zippy The Pinhead" strip. If you're a Zippy fan, you're already aware that Griffith (and, by extension, Zippy) is fascinated by diners and roadside attractions. A couple of months ago, I started sending Griffith some of my photos.

My first "Tip O'The Pin" was published on September 28:

Move your mouse over the strip to flip between
the artwork and the original photos.

I was in New York when this strip hit the newsstands, which disappointed me no end. I knew about the strip ahead of time and I so wanted to be home in Eastern Massachusetts that Tuesday. I would have gotten to the Town Square Diner bright and early, taken a spot at the counter, ordered breakfast, and then I'd try my best to be invisible. One by one, the diner's regulars would filter in. They'd order their usual and then ask the question of the morning: "Hey, did you see the Globe today? How'd the artist even find out about this place?" And at that, I'd smile discreetly behind my newspaper and I'd take another sip of coffee, much as Clark Kent does when Lois Lane remarks about how lucky it was that Superman reached the bridge seconds before the dynamite was set to go off.

(I don't drink coffee. But that morning I would have, just make it all perfect.)

I breakfasted there a week ago and naturally, a photocopy of the strip was tacked up above the register, front and center, just like hundreds of Zippy strips at hundreds of diners and lunch counters all across the country. It was ten days after the strip first appeared, and it's not like there's absolutely nothing going on in the town of Norwood, so the hubbub had long-since died off and I wasn't able to live out my Clark Kent fantasy.

Still, I couldn't resist asking about it. I was pleased to find that the staff's excitement was still fresh. "Who was that mysterious stranger?" the waitress seemed to be asking. Exit Clark Kent...enter the Lone Ranger, I suppose.

Today, the second strip hit the stands:

I shot this while in Tehachapi, California for the SpaceShipOne launch. Serendipitously enough, this cafe was just a few minutes' walk from my motel. It was damned good eatin', even if Kelcy's prices were about 20% above what you'd expect to encounter from a joint with that much Formica.

I won't share the original photos from this one, thank you. It's the "full-figured waitress" line, you see. The waitress in question has her back turned to the viewer and as such, if she ever sees this strip (or, worse, if she ever has the strip thrust in front of her) there's plausible deniability. But if the actual photo were to hit the Web, it'd no longer be "a waitress"...it'd be Dolores, no question about it.

I'm sorry that Griffith refered to Dolores as "full-figured" but I'm pleased to note that any hurt feelings can easily be averted. You'll notice that the waitress loses about 80 pounds between the start and the end of the strip. That's because the woman in the last panel is actually my friend and dinner companion, given a hair and wardrobe makeover to match the waitress.

So it's my sincere hope that Dolores will be able to muster the (a) presence of mind or (b) capacity for self-deception to endorse the accuracy of the skinny rendition. "It kind of stinks that he drew me so much bigger in the first panel," I advise her to say, "but it's pretty obvious which figure was based on an actual photo, don't you think?"

That's what I would say if I were in her position. But I won't specify which of the aforementioned motivations would be responsible.

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The man who brings me my scarves and my water, ladies and gentlemen...

Tuesday, October 19 1:52 AM

This was one of those weekends when I wrote a lot of stuff but liked little of the results, which left me with the less-than-fulfilling sensation that those 48 hours would have been better spent out at the arcade in the mall, sharpening my once formidable but rapidly-atrophying Skee Ball skills. There's something very satisfying about an activity that rewards you with a cascade of tickets and the opportunity to exchange them for either a novelty pencil or a pair of oversized plastic lips that make squeaky noises when you squeeze them.

Unfortunately, the rewards of writing are rarely so delightfully tangible.

Well, I'm confident that I got the job done. My editor just emailed me to say that he's giving me a little extra space for this one because each line is a Flawless Gem of Perfect Truth, Beauty and Wisdom and he can't bear to cut anything, or words to that effect. Still, I feel like I made it to second base on a bobbled ground ball and a bad throw to first. On the whole, I'd rather have the plastic lips.

Oh, well. I can't complain: that Which Needed To Get Written, Got Wroted. Plus, on Sunday I made a quick trip to If I Build An Obscenely Large Store In Every Damned City And Town In America And Drive Every Last Independently-Owned Business Into Bankruptcy, Maybe Then Mommy Will Tell Me She Loves Me - Mart. I think they compress the officially-incorporated title to make it all fit on the sign, but you know the one.

Normally, a trip to *.Mart isn't a particular source of joy, but while I slid my car into a space I was distracted by something off to my left and then the next four to six minutes were given over to fits of giggling. A seven-year old boy was on his way to a Halloween party and he was enjoying his Elvis jumpsuit about as much as any American — kid or grownup — ought to. Why wouldn't he? His impersonation was handicapped by the fact that the costume didn't come with the pompadour or the sunglasses, but he had the mini-cape and the sequins, and the kid was gamely making the most of them.

He was doing the best he could, but I couldn't muzzle my critical inner voice. Where was the power windmill? The curled lip? After I complimented him on his costume, did he point at me and drawl to his father and little sister "Sonny...Red: Buy this man a Cadillac"? No, he did not. Alternatively, it was a perfect opportunity for a "Thankyew. Thankyewverrrmuch" and to be honest, I was sort of waiting for it...but the words never came.

I blame the father, of course, for loosing the boy upon a cruel and unpredictable world so woefully underprepared. For all I know, he's a single parent, doing his best to hold down a demeaning secretarial job during the daytime and then waitressing tables at night just to make ends meet, but still...exactly how much time would have been needed to administer a simple course in Fundamental Elvis? "Teach/Your children well/Their father's hell/Did slowly go by," indeed. I actually have no idea what the hell Crosby, Stills & Nash were getting at with those lyrics, but it contains the words "teach," "children" and "father," so I'm gonna use it.

The kid shyly thanked me for the compliment (after a subtle prod from Dad) and then he continued jumping around. I think my attention sort of snapped the father around to his failings as a parent. "Gee, Justin...you could use a pair of sideburns like his," he said, and there was a twinge of remorse in his voice. I would have peeled them off my face and handed them to the kid then and there, but I need them for Tuesday night.

But ah! Halloween is great. These days, little kids are rarely encouraged to dress in the style of a washed-up drug-addicted rock pioneer, so when you're having a bad weekend and you encounter that sort of thing solely by chance, you're really grateful that the Satanists successfully lobbied for their own holiday.

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Sober reflection and commentary regarding news events of 10.20.04

Thursday, October 21 12:14 AM

WOOOOOOOOO! SOX! SOX! SOX! WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! HAHAHA!! YEEEAHHHHHHH!

WHO'S YOUR DADDY?!?!?! HUH? THAT'S WHAT I WANNA KNOW! WHO'S YOUR DADDY?!?

YEEAHHHHHHHHHH! WOOOOOOOO-HOOOO! WOO-HOOOO! YEAHHHHH! YEAHHH!

YEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

...

(replay of final out)

...

YES! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! YEAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

(wipes a single, manly tear)

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