Cannon Fodder

2005-03-13T20:45:00.000-05:00

More than a Pain in the Butt

Each time I drive somewhere the chances are good that at least one motorist will toss a cigarette butt from his car into the roadway. While I find the resulting spray of orange ashes occasionally entertaining at night, this habit is as wrong as smoking. Yet, while we continue to increase the taxes charged to people who smoke, we show great tolerance for people who choose to toss their butts into roads, on sidewalks, in grass patches, or, my favorite, into mulch piles, causing a small fire.

The same principle guiding our efforts to crack down on smoking should be applied to people who litter with their cigarette butts. If I litter, I run the risk, albeit a small one, of facing between $50 and $500 in fines. But if I toss a lit cigarette butt aside, nothing comes of it. What's the difference? Nothing.

Cigarette butts are litter. No more, no less. The acceptance of tossing them aside needs to be treated with the same vigilance as people attempting, however hard it may be, to avoid second-hand smoke.

Until we put our feet down and acknowledge that cigarette butts are trash, we have only ourselves to blame for their scattering on parking lots, roadways, landscaped areas and elsewhere.

2005-03-04T19:18:00.000-05:00

Why "Friends," Why?

As I write this, "Friends" is on in the background. I can't tell you the number of evenings between 7 and 8 that have been wasted watching re-runs of episodes I've seen at least 10 times prior. The show isn't that funny, entertaining or timely anymore. Yet I keep watching it -- and so do a lot of other people.

On the nights I miss it, I don't feel a sense of loss. I don't even think about it. But when I am home, I always seem to find at least one of the two episodes on TV, usually both.

As I keep watching the re-runs, I note how Matthew Perry's weight and appearance changed from season to season, signs of problems outside the show. Courtney Cox became Courtney Cox Arquette at some point after marrying.

When the show was on at 8 p.m. on Thursdays, I wondered about some of the content. There's a fairly positive portrayal of sexual promiscuity, excess, poor job performance and stupidity, to name but a few of the constant themes. I'm no prude, but is this what we want our children to watch each day? A lot about life, good and bad, can be learned from the show. I fear, however, that children will watch the program and think that what they see is the reality of their futures. I thought Mike Brady of "The Brady Bunch" had the perfect job as an architect, then it was Rossi on "The Lou Grant Show." The image must have stuck enough to land me in a journalism class, the school newspaper, a college journalism program, jobs at newspapers, and even teaching journalism at the high school and college level.

What I remember of Lou Grant isn't anything like what I have experienced in my career -- not even close. Rossi dealt with more ethical issues in a night than I have in a career. He covered far better stories than I have. He also never appeared to sit through boring meetings, something I found all too often the case as a newpaper reporter.

Will children want to be like Ross, Rachel and the others? Does that mean that some of them will pursue the non-careers of those stars on the show? If so, now might be the time to buy a condo in New York to rent out to these no-future folks. Or maybe a corner coffee shop is a better investment? Maybe Starbucks noticed the trend ahead of me.

The first of two episodes has just ended. I heard most of it, but it's become patter. I know too much about the reality of life, something they appearently don't know about on the show, and about what happens to each of them. But I haven't changed the channel or turned off the TV. I know I'm not alone.

2005-02-20T18:55:00.000-05:00

Is There a Book or Something?

The church I drive by at least three times a week offers a new piece of wisdom on its marque every week, and churches all over seem to offer similar pronouncements. You've no doubt seen them, even if you don't admit to thinking of them. My favorite:

What is missing from ch ch? ur

Gets me every time. Makes me think that those who go to church have a closer connection to Johnny Carson than the rest of us.

Funnier is how you never see the same one on two marques in your community at the same time. How does that happen? Do church administrators or marque volunteers (that's an elementary school A/V technician or milk monitor who has grown up, earned a college degree, but still lacks satisfaction in life) have a rotation of pithy statements? Talk about a successful inter-faith effort.

I also wonder if there is a book filled with these statements that pastors and the others pull from each week? Do you have to follow the rotation? Or can you just open to page and use what you find?

Where do you get that book? Is it in the religion section at Amazon.com or the spirituality section at Barnes & Noble or Borders? The Book of Church Marque Sayings: 52 Ways to Increase Your Flock or Signs from God: 52 Road Pleasers. Did the author do book signings? Who attends? Does he or she tithe his 10 percent of royalties? Is Chicken Soup for the Marque Changer's Soul in the offing?

I have never been more inclined to attend a church because of the marques I see. But if all the laws of logic apply, someone must think that they do actually work. The logic goes that no one would continue the practice if it failed. Right? The same theory applies to e-mail spam: Someone, actually at least 1 percent of someones, are opening those annoying e-mail messages promoting anatomical improvements, pleasure aids, and get-rich-qick schemes.

E-mail spammers could learn from the church sign creators. I might open an e-mail saying on the of these:

Unwrap the most special gift this Christmas.
God is always there for you. Can't you afford an hour a week to visit with him?

Would you?

2005-02-06T07:59:00.000-05:00

The Super Bowl Deserves Holiday Status

The Super Bowl has reached the point where calls are increasing coming for it to become an American holiday, although it would be more logical to call for the holiday on the Monday after the big game. That’s when everyone needs a day off. Just like New Year’s Day off after the big New Year’s Eve extravaganza.

The Super Bowl does give good cause for a holiday. No other American tradition so perfectly captures our lives. Think about it: Heavily armored warriors take to battle, almost always in warm weather or under cover, in a battle for 60 minutes to proclaim a champion. Sounds like work to me, except for the armor and the weather (the temperature at work is always iffy). The day is a tribute to survival. Players have given up years of their life, not to mention in some cases any chance of a degree or real job, to push each other around on grass, real or artificial, to determine the strongest, most able athletes. We watch, having selected our favorite team in the battle or the one or ones predetermined by the random selections on a $5-a-square grid. Others of us make more serious commitments, betting money, beer, or other foolishness if our team loses. We invest more in choosing a winning team than many of us put into choosing a president, or senator, or tax collector.

The Super Bowl fuels our economy. We buy extra rations, beer, soda, chips, etc., to prepare for the big event, and we invite our closest friends and family to share in a communal watching of the big event, preferably at the house with the biggest TV. We put aside difference, squabbles and fights to share in this special day.

We build a collective consciousness as we watch the endless stream of silly commercials, hoping that one or two might be worth our investment (I’ve actually gone to the bathroom during play to avoid missing a big commercial) not to mention the $2.4 million the advertiser paid for a 30-second spot this year. Was life not changed for all of us in 1984 with Apple’s commercial? Did we ever think that horses could play football and that a zebra could be ref? Until a Super Bowl, we could not have Yahoo!-ed. And the list goes on and on. And the commercials, if we accept them, will play on an on in the coming weeks and months.

And like all good holidays, evil does exist. For those who were wickedly observant and sober during 2004’s halftime show and who were actually watching her perform with Justin Timberlake (I admit it, I was, but I can’t figure out why), they saw Janet Jackson’s right breast from a million miles away for about 1/10 of a second. To a 13-year-old boy, it was a perfect vision. For the rest of us, it was more of a joke.

Yet the “wardrobe malfunction” (now a word in our vocabulary) caused enough of a panic to change the fabric of our culture with TV and radio now more cautious than ever about the content they carry. Her exposure spawned 5-second delays, 10-second delays, fines, and universal awareness of the name of FCC Chairman, Michael Powell. (No one seemed to care that he was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s son, which is odd since you figure there aren’t that many government jobs at that level and a father and son seem to have scored two big ones. Must be the family genes.)

Janet Jackson’s stunt continues to hurt us daily. Because of Janet -- or Miss Jackson, because she really, really was nasty -- Fox felt compelled to choose Paul McCartney to perform at this year’s halftime show. In the list of performers worth mentioning for consideration for such a plum assignment, he stands next to the kid who played Oliver on “The Brady Bunch,” Anson Williams from “Happy Days” fame, the boys of Hanson (Mmm-bop would have probably passed the censor’s knife) and the guys who can’t taste their beer anymore. It’s actually a brilliant decision from Fox. No one will be watching McCartney so whether he is wearing clothes, whether they malfunction, or whether he even sings won’t matter one bit. It’s perfect FCC safety for Fox.

No offense, but that’s a resume that’s every bit as impressive what gets us Labor Day or the day after Thanksgiving.

The Super Bowl should have a holiday associated with it because, like it or not, the Super Bowl shapes much of our lives. Arguably, nothing has affected what we see and hear in the media more than the Janet Jackson incident of last year, which came in the middle of the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl Monday should be a national holiday. You heard it here first.

2005-02-02T18:29:00.000-05:00

From Moonwalk to Martian

A couple of months ago I saw a white guitarist do the moonwalk several times, and after 23 years of wanting to learn how to do it, I suddenly realized that I had missed my chance. The guitarist looked cool enough doing it, but his fancy footwork made me immediately think of Michael Jackson. And these days, that’s not something to be thinking about.

Now in 1982, when he first did his signature step during the Grammy Awards or American Music Awards, I think, Michael Jackson was on the top of the world. He was the King of Pop, having released the Thriller album, a marvel in many ways not the least of which was that he had a 20-minute video for the song. Remember videos were real new then. Before or after practically each showing of the Thriller video on MTV, the only music video channel at the time, they would air a 10-minute documentary, The Making of Thriller, from Steven Spielberg, the video’s director, explaining in painstaking detail exactly how the whole darn thing was created. It was a marketing coup. MTV loved it, because anything Michael was big money, and the record company loved it, because it was all about Michael. No one has ever matched it in any way.

Michael Jackson was probably deserving of the praise for that release since just about every song was a hit. These days that’s not so surprising, but in those days one or two songs from an album – yes, it really was an album, or a cassette tape – made it big. I don’t remember all the names of the song. “Billie Jean” comes to mind.

None of that matters anymore, just like Michael Jackson, whose pop fizzed out years ago. Still, he garners great attention now as his anticipated six-month trial is getting started in California. His groupies, fueled by lyrics in his most recent songs proclaiming his innocence, veiling threats and accusations against his accusers, and unbelievable trust in a freak, camp out in front of the courthouse, declaring his innocence and hoping to make him a star again. TV is all too willing to play accomplice to this act, even though we all know it’s doomed to fail. Still Michael enters court each day wearing an outfit that draws attention (white the first day, black the second – maybe he’ll do the color wheel over the next six months or the Sherwin-Williams’ palette) and the media chronicles it. The shots each day of his assistant, a bodyguard or thug or combination, covers frail Michael’s face from the sun with an umbrella, making the entire scene look, well, too Hollywood. Michael Jackson is about as much a person as a Martian these days. Like his heyday in the early 1980s, more than two decades ago, his guilt or innocence in the case doesn’t matter.

Getting in a position where these charges can be leveled – again – is just plain stupid. Charges of plying a minor with alcohol and taking advantage of him in that compromised position carry with them guilt by association. At the time the charges are filed, the damage is done. A trial is an afterthought. But not for Michael. His NeverLand Ranch remains open. The giant amusement park facility is a tribute to another celebrity accused of abusing children: John Barrie, who created Peter Pan and was the subject of the recent Johnny Depp movie, Finding Neverland. What damage his NeverLand Ranch, which he alleges is an oasis for children with serious illnesses and their families, cannot do for him, Michael does with his mouth. Amazingly, he told a British TV crew that it was okay for adults and children to share a bed in a clip shown on the BBC and then in the U.S. Prosecutors will use that clip as evidence, they say. (Why will the case take six months? The clip is about 1 minute long.)

Michael just doesn’t get it. He probably never will, and knowing juries in California, it’s likely they won’t get it either. Of if they do, they’ll treat the star with kid gloves and not give him what he deserves.

But we get it. It’s virtually impossible not to. Michael Jackson is a freak with problems, serious, serious problems. Realizing that makes his trial is a non-issue for anyone who no longer associates the Martian with the deformed nose and weird skin tone with the once-famous musician who created the moonwalk.

2005-01-17T18:47:00.000-05:00

I had occasion to use Yahoo! Driving Directions to find my way to a store in Rockville today. Reading the directions to prepare for the trip, I noted the following:

"When using any driving directions or map, it's a good idea to do a reality check and make sure the road still exists, watch out for construction, and follow all traffic safety precautions. This is only to be used as an aid in planning."

This statement appears on all of its maps. The logic for Yahoo! is simple: A statement like this covers the company legally from anyone who gets lots or sent miles out of the way. If the shortest distance between two points is X, most of the online driving direction services appear to favor X+3. The 3 equals miles, minutes, or hours, depending on where you are going and how the service chooses to get you there.

The lawyers probably didn't anticipate the humorous aspects of the statement. What is a "reality check" in this case and how could it help someone looking for directions? Should the person doing this check consider going somewhere else? A place where he's been before? Most of us know at least one place that provides just about everything we want, need or desire. Often, new places offer nothing more than new scenery or placement of the same old stuff. Home Depot and Lowe's offer most of the same tools and hardware. The only difference between them is placement and the color of the employee's smocks (HD's are orange; Lowe's are blue).

Is the reality check suggesting something greater? Should it really read this way: If you are really going to the Internet, the greatest source for information and misinformation ever created, then you probably don't have any clue where you are going in the first place and you should probably consider doing something else? In my case, what the reality check could have been was this simple question: Did I really need the 22-by-28-inch canvases that are going to beautify my home office enough to require a trip to Rockville on a holiday Monday to get 10 more?

One also must wonder how often Yahoo! (and presumably the other services like it, including MapQuest and MapBlaster) send people to roads that no longer exist. Everywhere I go, except for the hills of Kentucky, more roads, often many more roads, are popping up. I'm sure the number of roads and cul-de-sacs (they used to be called dead ends) has doubled or more in the U.S. in the last 20 years. Think of every development that replaced a farm and the no-name dirt path from the main highway to the house. The new townhouse development has five or 10 roads, courts, drives, avenues, boulevards, streets, squares or terraces. Old roads like Route 40 and Route 1 have moved to the background, quite literally, as superhighways have taken over.

The Yahoo! directions I used to drive from Baltimore to Rockville, a 46-mile trip, weren't very good, leading me to question my decision to use them in the first place. That was a reality I could have predicted, but chose not to, even though Yahoo! had suggested it.

2005-01-11T22:22:00.000-05:00

At a time when mother nature seems to be lashing out at California (heavy rains, mudslides, a 25-foot!!!! boulder on a highway in Malibu) and the Indian Ocean region, news about Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt seems immaterial.

Okay, I had to look up how to spell her last name becuase I didn't know it took one "n" despite the fact that newspapers, TV networks -- and therefore, everyone else -- are spending a great deal of time, effort and expense to explore a relationship that no one, except those two people, can possible have any knowledge.

The popular theory is that because each is a beautiful, successful actor that they should have been happy together for years to come. Seems logical, right? At least, the traits of the characters they have played in movies and on TV would suggest as much.

And that's where people make their mistake. It bears repeating that what you see of your stars doesn't mean that's who and what they are. They are actors playing roles, reading lines written by writers seeking to tell a story so they can be paid by producers who want to sell advertising or tickets. Writers can't write out the script for their life together. TV tabloids can't explain what it's like to live with one or the other of them.

No one knows their relationship more than they can describe your relationships or mine. Looking in from the outside yields a false perspective, but it seems to be the one everyone wants to accept as reality.

Now people lament how they had hoped to see how beautiful the children of these two beautiful people would have been. It's not like two other beautiful people ever had children before. Well, they weren't stars. Were Ricky and Lucy beautiful people back when they had Little Ricky? (They really worked hard to come up with that name.) Lots of beautiful couples who are not famous have children each day. They just don't get tabloid headlines or Regis and Kelly time. Therefore, they don't exist. None of us do. We are represented in the world through the stars and their innane comments in pre-planned interviews on Letterman or Leno or the new guy whose name is, well, not famous -- yet.

As tired as I am of tsunami video and stories of lives destroyed, I'd gladly welcome more coverage of that or the California rains than another minute of speculation or discussion about two people who I will never meet and except for when they are in a movie or on a TV show I am watching have absolutely nothing to do with me or my life. They aren't people I want to meet, and, most importantly, they aren't people worth any of my time. Enough already!

2004-12-19T18:35:00.000-05:00

A musician last night was talking about the conflict that exists between ambition and contentment. I know a great deal about the former and little about the latter. If you aren't trying to reach a goal, then what are you doing? How can someone be content with status quo? Where's the challenge, where's the excitement, where is the feeling that someone has been accomplished?

But on the other hand, being able to relax and enjoy something without wondering what to strive for next might be enjoyable. I can't imagine just enjoying the moment, but I see that others are able to do it. My question is this: Do those people accomplish half as much as those of us always looking for some new challenge? I know what's in going for new goals for me. What's in the opposite choice for them?

I wonder.

2004-12-07T19:11:00.000-05:00

There's a happy ending to yesterday's water debacle. It turns out that the source for the puddle on the new basement rug was the overwatering of a plant on the first floor. Water dripped from the table to the floor, through the floorboards, and into the basement. I identified the culprit later in the evening, about two hours after we had spent close to an hour searching the attic and walls for evidence of leakage from winter rains and snow melt. During the search, we had discussed a new roof, home equity lines, and how bad things always seem to happen to homeowners. But in the end, we had a good laugh.

2004-12-06T20:37:00.000-05:00

Water is an important resource, one we can't live with and one we have spent a great deal of time and expense to look for on Mars. No water, no life. But too much water can cause problems, especially if it is going in places that you would rather have dry. While I have never experienced anything like a flood, tonight I am writing with an annoying drip ringing in my ear. The water causing the drip appears to be falling from the roof, the result of snow melt and a day of heavy rains in the Mid Atlantic region. The water is falling through our 74-year-old house to the basement, a straight shot. It pools on the rafters above the basement, then drops -- about twice a minute at the current rate -- into a bucket. It started falling onto a newly installed carpet in a newly built basement office area. Fortunately, I caught it early. The bucket soon replaced the spreading water spot on the rug, where it had begun. Yet there's great irony. The office was built in a part of the basement where water had never been so as to prevent it from ever appearing. We discussed it. Making matters worse, getting into the attic is impossible. The attic access point is a square hole in a closet leading up to the eaves, thus forcing you to contort and twist, sidestepping the roof nails that could impale your back. When you get that far -- and that's about as far as any normal-sized human can reach, it appears that one side of the roof has water damage. It also looks like it's going to be an expensive, time-consuming, frustrating repair process -- not my strong suit. Bruce Springsteen sings, "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back." Tonight, he's right. At least the song wasn't on Springsteen's album entitled "The River."

2004-12-03T21:10:00.000-05:00

After more than 21 years driving motor vehicles (from my own to my parents, to various other people's, including, once, a Cadillac), I have learned that there are two types of people on the road: The people who obey signs indicating that they should move left or right for road construction, and the people who think that those signs are for everyone else. You've probably encountered the latter group, the ones who refuse to merge into the more crowded lane until the last possible second, the moment when cones are a mere inches from intersecting with their SUV's front grill. It's always an SUV. These Road Rulers are the same folks who think that it is okay to drive to the last possible point in a merge lane, coming into a highway, before darting into your path. You wait in traffic, they move ahead. As annoying as that is, it is nothing compared to their insistence that they have a right to the place right in front of you, even though you have been waiting for 10 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic. They think they own the road, and we are merely renters. There's no justice -- except for when an 18-wheeler sees the situation coming and blocks two lanes, forcing the SUV owner to wait until he clears the merge, or when the SUV operator gets caught by a police officer for running down the shoulder. It's rare, but when it happens, it is sweet, sweet revenge. I wish I could be one of them. I really do, but I have tried and I don't have the heart for it. I'm a wait in the same lane regardless of how much quicker the next lane is moving kind of guy. I'm jealous, I think, of these people's complete disregard for the rest of us. Or am I?

2004-11-30T21:14:00.000-05:00

The guy who created the code for Control-Alternate-Delete for Microsoft was in the news ealrier this year and it has stuck in my head. Control-Alternate-Delete is one of those things you never really think about. It was always there, well, at least for as long as we've been using computers. Why would you think about it? Do you think about the fax machine maker, the cell phone maker, the person who created credit cards (who died a few years ago)? Death, or rather the resulting obituary, is what usually lands this long-forgotten achievement in the news for a few moments, assuming USA Today or the local rag considers it news. Imagine being in on the discussion the night or day he created the code. "How about Shift-Insert-Control, SIC, for short?" his cube mate said. "No, I'm feeling something, wait, here it is, it's got to be Control-Alternate-Delete," he said. "Brilliance, sheer brilliance," the cube mate said, unaware that he was standing in the middle of a history-making moment. Heck, the guy probably warrants a Bud Lite commercial because he is a "true American hero." "Mr. Control-Alternate-Delete Creator." Of course, his name didn't stick with me. But then, when it's all said and done, is it our name or that which we create that is supposed to last. The Control-Alternate-Delete guy's crowning achievement will live forever -- each time someone has to shutdown the computer. Some legacy for whoever he is.

2004-11-28T22:46:00.000-05:00

About 12 years ago, I had the chance to write a weekly newspaper column, and with it came the need for a name for the column. Cannon fodder was my choice. But don't go looking in the great newspaper archives because I lost the column-naming battle, minor though it was, because I was the low man on the totem pole. I was just happy to have an avenue to express myself to the greater Bel Air, Maryland, community. The Cannon Fodder name always stuck with me, but I have never had the chance to use it. It's first use, in the 1890s, is tied, obviously, to soldiers, actually, the infantry who run the greatest risk of being wounded or killed in warfare. The two words have a great symmetry, in that they are each six letters and a repeating consonant in the middle. When I think of the words I see the front-line soldiers, a vision that is easier now than in 1990 when I first pondered it (guess we have two Bush administrations to thank for that). I see the soldiers who have no choice but to fight, but at the same time know there's a great chance that they will die. That's how I look at the ideas you will see here. The likely result of their appearance here is that they, and by extension, I, or at least my perceptions about the world, will become cannon fodder. We shall see.