Thursday, July 25, 2002

Monologue? thanks for voting aaron. (and nice to know your name.) i'm afraid this thing doesn't appear too interactive so far, but maybe it will get going. the closest thing i did to this was table talk, awhile back, and i'm used to throwing out questions or ideas, and getting tons of quick response. perhaps that's not what blogging is all about, though. even scott r’s blog, with 3,000 hits has only generated a handful of responses. i'm just supposed to rant along in monologue? funny, i thought i liked that idea--all the airtime, all the time!--but somehow it seems more pleasant to have people talking back. i guess you’re all talking back on your own blogs. but different conversations. hmmmm. i guess you can’t have everything. (perhaps someone will respond to these thoughts in their own blog somewhere. or maybe you all did years ago. yikes, i guess i'm just playing the big freaking neophyte, experiencing all the standard reactions everyone does when they start blogging, which most of you probably felt years ago. or maybe not. i'm not sure why i'm assuming everyone else is experienced. i am starting to miss table talk, though. though i was glad when it went premium; simplest way to kick my addiction. i subscribed to premium salon, not TT, and went back to getting work done. this blog better not be the ruin of me.) 9:57:45 PM    responses encouraged []

Dueling Leads: OK, this seems like a good place to have a little fun with something I published last month. Hopefully I won’t ever get in trouble with the Times for this--what’s the chance they’ll be reading. It will take a little feedback, though, so please vote (in the comments) if you’re visiting. So here’s the deal: three different leads I wrote for the same story, published on the NYT op-ed page June 15. You tell me which one you prefer. (And if people are interested, later I’ll tell you which one the Times went with.) Contestant #1: DENVER--You begin by immersing the severed appendage in boiling water. Two to three minutes at 212 degrees render the limb pliable enough to peel back the skin, extract her hip socket with a hemostat, and dig out the ruptured hip ball from her vinyl thigh. It’s just past noon on the first Wednesday in June, and a thousand giddy collectors are descending on downtown Denver for "Rocky Mountain Mod: The 22nd Annual National Barbie Doll Collectors Convention." Self-taught surgeon Kris Peterson has just initiated early arrivals into the secrets of vinyl limb-reattachment. Auctions, workshops, design competitions and sales, sales, sales await them over the next four days. Contestant #2: DENVER--Ruth Handler died this spring, and her hometown barely noticed. But at that very moment, two of her biggest fans were frantically finalizing plans for the biggest Barbie blowout this city has ever seen. Six weeks after her death, Barbie’s Mom got one hell of a hometown tribute, when a thousand giddy collectors descended on downtown Denver for "Rocky Mountain Mod: The 22nd Annual National Barbie Doll Collectors Convention." Contestant #3: DENVER--Last week, a thousand collectors descended on downtown Denver for what was billed as Rocky Mountain Mod: The 22nd Annual National Barbie Doll Collectors Convention. This is, after all, the hometown of Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie, as Barbie's biggest fans here proudly remember.   **** (Yeah, I realize one of them is actually two paragraphs. I guess it took a little longer to get to the point. I hope I'm not influencing you here. I didn't say that was good or bad.)Don't forget my sites: main site alt site 7:00:46 PM    responses encouraged []

"I must tell you . . ." My two current "favorite" idiocisms (promised in first post) are: ". . . having said that . . ." and ". . . but I must tell you . . ." Last week I heard a guest on Charlie Rose use "having said that" about a hundred and fifty eight times in one panel discussion. He appeared incapable of formulating any statement outside the structure, "blah blah blah, but having said that, blah blah blah." This one is perhaps less indicative of the true bullshitter, than the lazy, unimaginative or linguistically feeble mind, unwilling to process its own verbiage. Or a desperate adherent to the pack mentality, who believes its actually chic to spout the same tired phrases as all the other prognosticators. Which hardly presages anything original to follow. Hit the FF until his/her face disappears if you’re watching on tape or Tivo. ". . . but I must tell you . . ." seems more the special province of self-aggrandized newsmodels appearing on absurdly middle-brow shows like "Washington Week," where both show and stars spend the (24?*) minutes hopelessly grasping for intellectual status. "I must tell you . . ." must sound like a terribly important way to open a terribly banal reformulation of the latest conventional Cokieism. 3:27:22 PM    responses encouraged []

"The fact of the matter is . . ." Since the invention of the mute button and its inclusion on the standard remote control device, the most urgent warning signal alerting users to lunge for the treasured feature has consistently proved to be the phrase "The fact of the matter is . . ." gurgling out the hole of any fat-mouthed TV blowhard. It inevitably indicates the approach of opinion, rather than fact, and it’s a safe bet that any supporting facts to follow will be misleading. It always means that the sewage about to splatter all over you will amount to inane twaddle heaved out of an arrogant, self-righteous windbag. And if you’re hardy enough to keep your ears open, you’ll have heard it so many times already that you can mouth along with the jackass as he recites it. No one has yet conceived a phrase--or device of any kind--so reliable as an asshole-identifier, but I’d like to open the floor to nominations for the second tier of currently-most-annoying TV-talkshow-phrases: (And I’m including all the shouter shows and "news" shows here, including all its oxymoronic subsets: morning "news," Fox "news," "news"magazines . . .) 12:46:51 PM    responses encouraged []