P.S. A Column On Things

Four Things on the Glorious Fourth

First of all, have a glorious Fourth of July!

This week, I got a little 'get to know you better' e-mail.

Four things about me that you may or may not have known in no particular order.

The idea is that you take this list, replace my answers with yours, and forward it to a bunch of friends, as well as returning it to the person who sent it to you (in this case, me). Everyone gets to know everyone else better.

A) Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Computer programmer
2. DJ at an AM underground rock station--and a skating rink
3. junkyard attendant
4. typesetter

B) Four movies I would watch over and over (or have watched over and over)
1. Groundhog Day
2. Citizen Kane
3. Deadline USA
4. Ace in the Hole

C) Four places I have lived:
1. Winthrop, MA
2. Hartford
3 . Portland, OR
4. San Francisco

D) Four TV Shows that I watch:
1. Simpsons
2. Family Guy
3. Boston Legal
4. Dr. Who

E) Four places I have been:
1. Kyoto, Japan
2. Haut de Cagnes, France
3. Golf, Ill.
4. Disneyworld

F) People who e-mail me (regularly):
1. John
2. Richard
3. Peter
4. Dan

G) Four of my favorite foods
1. cherries
2. duck
3. Peanut butter
4. Soft frozen yogurt

H) Four places I would rather be right now...
1. riding a bike
2. Next to an ocean--anywhere
3. London
4. Playing tennis


I) Four friends I think will respond:
1. John
2. Richard
3. Peter
4. Dan

J) Four Things I am looking forward to in 2008:
1. Portland
2. LA
3. Catalina
4. Bodega Bay

K) Four things I would like to do more of:
1. writing
2. Video editing
3. exercise
4. Tenor sax

L. Four things I'd like to change
1. The educational system
2. The health system
3. The party in the White House
4. The Supreme Court

Great Idea, Abruptly Rejected: Children of Jeopardy Contestants Tournament

I was on Jeopardy in 1985. My daughters are now 23 and 27. The fact is, I doubt either of them would try out, even if my idea were adopted. But I had what I think is this great idea: a tournament of the children of former Jeopardy players. There must be thousands of them by now. I floated this past the Jeopardy! people and got a dismissive answer. I admit, I got an answer, which is something, but I am chagrined the idea was rejected out of hand.

If you agree with me that there should be a tournament of the children of Jeopardy! contestants, write to:

Rocky Schmidt
Supervising Producer
Jeopardy!
10202 West Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232-3195

Thanks for your support!

So Good It Gets Its Own Item: I'm voting Republican

I'm Voting Republican about sums it up for me.

Keith Colquhoun's Novel "Beyond Reason"

British author and journalist Keith Colquhoun has written several novels, including one about journalists (Goebbels Gladys) and two that have journalist characters, Killing Stalin and his recently released Beyond Reason (Solidus Press-- An ex-journalist appears during the last chapter in a cameo).

He has been kind enough to conduct an ongoing e-mail correspondence with me, which included an early look at his most recent novel, which features the relationship between two Anglican priests, one a plodder, the other a cipher. The phrase "can't put it down" is frequently bandied about, but I used it here without reservation because it is literally true. Once I picked up this novel, I devoted full time to it (putting me even further behind in my New Yorker reading) because the plot pulled me in--I wondered where we were going, and was satisfied with the answer.

Given that I'm an ex-journalist and one of my best friends is an Episcopal (Anglican) priest, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well-written, fast-paced, entertaining, and, like his other works, endearingly eccentric. If you are interested in a good novel that doesn't read just like every other novel, and some thoughtful chatter about the state of religion, wrapped into an entertaining package, you'll like Beyond Reason.

Summertime, and the living is "easy"

Well, you'd think summer would be relaxing. You'd think that. You'd be wrong. Monday my mother and niece were here after my nephew's graduation from Davis. Tuesday morning, my mother and I left the house at 5am to get her to her plane on time. When I got home, Vicki had to ask me to sit down and take a deep breath, because I was so nervous I was making her nervous.

I wrote down everything I had to do, and divided it into the "A" pile, the "B" pile and the "C" pile. Writing it down insures I don't forget it. Putting it in priority order insures I do the important stuff first. I still get a little distracted, but the system helps. I use little memo-sized slips of paper, so I can just throw it away when I'm done.

I am slowly unwinding, and, at the same time, feeling a sense of accomplishment as I come to the end of the first week. I could have gone to see Get Smart this morning, but chose instead to catch up on this very column, to write this very item, so I could be on time and offer you a full political section as well.

Groundhog Day in June

And now for something completely different--a man with three buttocks. No, actually, a major revision and update to my fan site groundhogdaythemovie.com. The home page was getting too long and disorganized, so it now consists only of the "first day" story and the "appearance on NPR" story, while the other miscellany has been moved, along with a bunch of new miscellany, to the other page. If you've never been, or haven't been lately, check it out.

A Brief Apology For A Brief Column

It is already Monday afternoon; my niece just left, my mother's still here, and after I take her off to the airport at 5am on Tuesday, I still have to exercise, and start planning my summer. In short, no time to do the column and no prospect of much time anytime soon. So, I'll do a couple of short items of my own, and post the contributions of two regulars, Craig Reynolds and Neal Vitale. Dan Grobstein emailed me a week's worth of good stuff, and the usual correspondents inundated me with terrific political material. Tom Lasusa sent his links! Anything that doesn't got stale will be used next week.

A Trip To Davis

I was away in Davis, Calif. this weekend for the graduation of my nephew, P, from the University of California, Davis. He earned a B.S. in economics. My brother married a Fillipina woman, so Paul asked us to come, not to the University graduation, or the school graduation, but to Fil-Grad, the Filipino Graduation Celebration. Instead of 30,000 students, there were around 50. Each student got 45 seconds to thank everyone, a slide with their name and major on it, and a full page in the program. It was a bit long (especially the keynote speaker, mayor of Davis, UC Davis grad and Filipina), but overall the tone was sweet and energetic, and, in all humility, P was the best speaker of the bunch.

Of course I am very, very proud of my nephew. Neither his mom nor his dad ever finished college; he was fighting the odds, and he won!

When we made our arrangements in March, the closest we could get to Davis was Dixon, about 20 minutes away. It was hot; the thermometer soared over 90 degrees both Saturday and Sunday. Thank heavens Fil-Grad took place in an air conditioned hall. We stuck close to our air-conditioned rooms, had a nice late-evening outdoor Italian meal at Osteria Fasulo and spent a cool afternoon watching the Incredible Hulk (see review below).

And the produce stand was pretty good as well.

The Story of Stuff

Vicki and I were exposed this weekend to a very interesting short video on the web: The Story of Stuff. It tells, in simple and graphic terms, where
all the stuff we buy, use and discard comes from and goes to, and describes some of the environmental consequences of that chain. It is funny, clever, accurate, meaningful and moving. How many times have you been mailed a link that good lately? Please take a look. Please share it. Let's help this baby go viral!

Google Hole, Google Rabbit Hole, Google Monkey

As mentioned here before, I listen to the best NPR program you've never heard, or heard of, The Bryant Park Project. A daily two-hour, hip, Internet-savvy, youth-oriented alternative to All Things Considered, it is unavailable in the San Francisco Bay area, so I listen to it as a podcast. (And by the way, I have tried The Takeaway, another alternative morning show produced by the BBC and the New York Times, and I just don't like it as much.

They regularly use the terms Google Hole and Google Rabbit Hole to describe what happens to you when you do a search, which leads to another and another and... well, you get the idea. The people who fall into Google Holes are Google Monkeys.

I am a Google Monkey.

As I set out to confess this, I realized the experience of starting to do a simple search, then realizing five minutes later that two hours have passed is an experience I have had before. From 1966 to 1985, I regularly wrote computer programs. The same thing happened when I was in hot pursuit of good code. Write it, test it, correct it, test it, correct it, improve it, test it... you get the idea.

So, I've been trying, on and off, for several years to confirm my dim recollection that the five-note theme of the CBS Radio hourly news was one of the first major uses of synthesizer music. Among other problems was the discovery that, as is so often the case in a Google search it helps a lot if you know what to call the thing you're looking for. In this case, it could be a sounder, a signature or a theme.

It was a long and arduous search, greatly assisted by Jeff Miller, who runs a great page on the History of American Broadcasting. He told me the five-note sounder was introduced in September 1968. That makes it about the right age; that was the cutting edge of synthesizer music, my sophomore year in high school, around the time of Wendy Carlos and Switched On Bach.

Encouraged by the first piece of real information, I searched harder, and found a page of audio from WCCO. If you scroll down to CBS, you can find the sounder used in the 60s, the first electronic sounder, the second one, and a real bonus: Douglas Edwards promoting the "new" sounder, which he calls a "signature."

This led me to Eric Siday. "In 1939, the national radio hit advertising jingle "Pepsi-Cola Hits The Spot" was written by Siday and Ginger Johnson, adapted from the tune of an 18th-century English hunting song titled "John Peel". Johnson-Siday would write early advertising jingles, and then Siday would form the first electronic jingle company "Identitones" using early analog synthesizers in the 1960s," according to the Timeline of Sound and Broadcast Technology.

There is a demo tape from Identitones, but even after I paid the $12 to join, I couldn't get it to play on my computer, until I tried my wife's Mac. RealPlayer, I see, is as goofy as ever. Anyway, the CBS theme is not on this demo reel.

But now I had another search term: Siday. Did he write the CBS sounder? I still don't know, but he definitely wrote the WCBS sounders, for the CBS Radio Network flagship station in New York City--and they sound very similar.

This from Wikipedia, which I don't trust, but in the unlikely event it is accurate it indicates he could have been doing synthesizer work at the time the CBS sounder was written:

The first Moog system was bought by choreographer Alwin Nikolais. Lothar and the Hand People began using the modular Moog in 1965. Composers Eric Siday and Chris Swansen were also among the first customers, with Paul Beaver being the first to use a modular Moog on a record in 1967. It was Wendy Carlos' 1968 Switched-On Bach which featured Carlos' custom-built modular synthesizer as the only instrument on the recording which brought widespread interest to the Moog synthesizer.

If you don't think that took a long time to research--too long, really--you'd just be wrong.