I see in today’s paper that a circle has closed, between Bill Cosby and me.
We both now have won Mark Twain awards. His award is a teense bigger than mine. His is presented by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Mine was presented (in 1990) by the western division of the Associated Press News Executives. But it is a Mark Twain award nevertheless. It weighs a ton, and there is a bust of Mark Twain right there on it.
Bill Cosby won his Mark Twain award for humor, and that is part of the circle closing. I once contributed to his humor, on an evening in 1961 when we both happened to be at the old hungry i, in San Francisco. He was starting his stand-up comedy career, and I was starting at Stanford University. I think my mother and my aunt were there, but I am not sure. I know for a fact that I was wearing slacks and black loafers and white socks.
Cosby spotted the white socks. I was sitting in, like, the second row. For a couple of minutes, he had great fun with those socks, giving the audience some laughs and me something to brag about to this very day. I am almost positive that he asked my mother – which is why I think she was there – if she had knitted me a reindeer sweater, to go with the white socks. But I may be mixing memories, which I am getting better at all the time. I do know that early in his career Cosby was very big on reindeer sweaters.
I got into the humor business myself, eventually. You could even say I was in the humor business at the time. Later, as a newspaper columnist making speeches, I would tell the audiences that I began at Stanford as a pre-med major. Then I flunked freshman chemistry. Then I flunked it again. “I didn’t leave a mark on it, and it didn’t leave a mark on me,” I said. They laughed like crazy.
So as a pre-med major, I made a good student of English, which was the first step toward a newspaper career during which I wrote a humor column for many years. I am trying to write humor right now. I try to write humor all the time. But my Mark Twain award was not for humor. It was for a long feature story I wrote in 1989 about, at age 46, meeting my father for the first time. That was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and I am glad the Associated Press News Executives thought I did it justice.
Bill Cosby, in the newspaper piece today, said Mark Twain inspired him, and he cited several of his favorite Twain pieces, one of which – “How to Cure a Cold” – I would also select. Cosby did not mention my two favorites, which are a special telling of “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” translated into French and then back into English by Twain, and “A Hundred and Ten Tin Whistles,” an account of an evening spent by Twain at the home of Brigham Young. Mark Twain was one funny writer, and he stayed on top of the events, politicians and highly placed low-lifes of his day. I can’t bring myself to imagine how good he might have been as a blogger in 2008-09.
Cosby will receive his Mark Twain award on Oct. 26, at the Kennedy Center, before a live audience. I should try to wangle a second-row ticket, and wear white socks, and see if he remembers.
April 01, 2009
March 30, 2009
Spouse one-ups husband on rat quick-thinking
We don’t live out in the country, but we do live on a hillside with sufficient open space around to encourage owls to nest, coyotes to prowl, and wood rats to multiply.
The owls do flybys of our porch, at eye level, at deepest twilight. The coyotes come and go, sometimes within 20 feet of the house, and we know when they are in the area by their pre-dawn chattering. Nothing we can do about any of that, but then the wood rats took a liking to the crawl space beneath the house.
They come up the slope, more than the owls care to catch, to the edge of the deck, through a little stand of hibiscus, then tear across to the house and down the access to the crawlspace. They are pretty big, and lightning fast. If one ran into your leg at full throttle, it might break your ankle. We saw them in the evening, at a predictable time when the light had been fading for about half an hour. We might be in the living room, watching television, with the French doors open to let in the breeze, and we would glimpse a darting movement – several darting movements, spaced a minute or so apart – from the access back to the hibiscus and over the slope.
Weekend before last, we decided it was time. We got rat poison at Dixieline and plotted our strategy. We didn’t want the critters dying under the house, so we set a tray in amongst the hibiscus just as the sun hit the horizon. Then we closed the doors so Gulliver couldn’t get outside and possibly find the tray. I put a rubber band around my wrist, to remind me to bring in the tray after about an hour and a half, when it was dark.
The first night, there was barely a nibble gone out of the tray. The second night, we couldn’t even find the tray. The third night we found the tray, and it was empty. Hee hee. I don’t like killing anything anymore, even spiders, but neither do I want wood rats to muscle up under the joists one night and carry the house down the slope.
Karen read on the box it took three days for the poison to work. I reasoned they would get sick sooner than that, too sick to get back to the crawlspace the next day. Meantime, the evening track meet disappeared. We entered a period of waiting. Saturday morning, we were sitting in the nook, drinking coffee, reading the papers, minding our own business. The dishwasher was running. From the direction of the dishwasher there came a small click. I didn’t hear it at first, but Karen did. For living things in the house other than ourselves, she has radar like a bat. “Did you hear that?” she said. “No,” I said. Then it came again. Again.
A series of clicks, like water dripping. It was coming from inside the wall, at eye level above the sink. I walked around to the other side of the wall, by the front door, and heard the clicks. They were spaced about 20 seconds apart. Then they stopped. It was Karen, several minutes later, who said in a low voice, “A rat in his death throes.” I wished bitterly that I had said it first. It sounded possible: the hind leg of the rat, jerking in the rhythm of the death spiral, kicking against the interior of the wall.
We should know by the weekend, if we’ll be drinking coffee out on the glider.
The owls do flybys of our porch, at eye level, at deepest twilight. The coyotes come and go, sometimes within 20 feet of the house, and we know when they are in the area by their pre-dawn chattering. Nothing we can do about any of that, but then the wood rats took a liking to the crawl space beneath the house.
They come up the slope, more than the owls care to catch, to the edge of the deck, through a little stand of hibiscus, then tear across to the house and down the access to the crawlspace. They are pretty big, and lightning fast. If one ran into your leg at full throttle, it might break your ankle. We saw them in the evening, at a predictable time when the light had been fading for about half an hour. We might be in the living room, watching television, with the French doors open to let in the breeze, and we would glimpse a darting movement – several darting movements, spaced a minute or so apart – from the access back to the hibiscus and over the slope.
Weekend before last, we decided it was time. We got rat poison at Dixieline and plotted our strategy. We didn’t want the critters dying under the house, so we set a tray in amongst the hibiscus just as the sun hit the horizon. Then we closed the doors so Gulliver couldn’t get outside and possibly find the tray. I put a rubber band around my wrist, to remind me to bring in the tray after about an hour and a half, when it was dark.
The first night, there was barely a nibble gone out of the tray. The second night, we couldn’t even find the tray. The third night we found the tray, and it was empty. Hee hee. I don’t like killing anything anymore, even spiders, but neither do I want wood rats to muscle up under the joists one night and carry the house down the slope.
Karen read on the box it took three days for the poison to work. I reasoned they would get sick sooner than that, too sick to get back to the crawlspace the next day. Meantime, the evening track meet disappeared. We entered a period of waiting. Saturday morning, we were sitting in the nook, drinking coffee, reading the papers, minding our own business. The dishwasher was running. From the direction of the dishwasher there came a small click. I didn’t hear it at first, but Karen did. For living things in the house other than ourselves, she has radar like a bat. “Did you hear that?” she said. “No,” I said. Then it came again. Again.
A series of clicks, like water dripping. It was coming from inside the wall, at eye level above the sink. I walked around to the other side of the wall, by the front door, and heard the clicks. They were spaced about 20 seconds apart. Then they stopped. It was Karen, several minutes later, who said in a low voice, “A rat in his death throes.” I wished bitterly that I had said it first. It sounded possible: the hind leg of the rat, jerking in the rhythm of the death spiral, kicking against the interior of the wall.
We should know by the weekend, if we’ll be drinking coffee out on the glider.
March 25, 2009
Twittered out
Is Twitter progress?
Well, yes it is. For now. But already, people in the know – most of whom Twitter, or have Twittered – are already referring to Twitter as a “time suck.” That means that Twitter, before long, will assumed its place alongside other digital, Web-based activities that once were smart but now are known time sucks, which suck away a human being’s time without leaving the human being anything to show for it.
To better understand the gravity of such a result, let us recall what it is like to paint wood trim, or moulding. If you have never painted wood trim – around doors and windows in an ordinary bedroom for example – then you have no idea how slow and painful the passage of time can be. Painting moulding is as close to infinity as a human being can approach. That is because moulding possesses all the physical characteristics of infinity. A battleship, seemingly vast, can nevertheless be painted in less time than it takes to paint the moulding in our sample ordinary bedroom.
Now imagine you have painted the moulding with a dry brush. No paint, just bare wood behind you, stretching away to Andromeda. That is the kind of time suck that Twitter is. Ninety-five percent of the Web universe is a bare-wood time suck. Hard to believe, but I can sense the day when we will ask, “What’s on the Web?” Answer: “Nothing but old movies.”
Can you say the word, “bubble?” No, of course, the Web does not constitute a giant unified bubble. There are pockets of content that consumers can learn from and take forward with them, and there is a demographic, constituting maybe 15 percent of Web users, who LIKE time sucks. But it doesn’t take totality for a bursting bubble to shake things up. A relatively small bubble of sub-prime lending just about wrecked the mortgage industry and undermined other financial structures like gophers tunneling away all but a crust of dirt beneath the Taj Mahal.
The Web is thousands of communities attracted to content of interest only to those within those communities. The Web, most of all, is a marvel in making content available to small audiences who the traditional mass media could never serve. All those small audiences taken together, though, add up to significant percentages enjoying the novelty the Web provides them. But in the media world, novelty is totally finite. More finite in some places than others. If you are painting moulding, you may feel novelty for as long as five minutes. Novelty for “Seinfeld” lasted longer, around seven years, and it is still holding for “American Idol,” though it needed re-tooling this season.
There must be finiteness to small communities of people enjoying their hour of accessibility to unusual, even bizarre, pockets of content on the Web. One by one, as those communities burn out, there will be a declining number of communities attracted by novelty, and the number of novel subjects to attract them. For examples, watch television in the middle of the night, where resides content that once was new.
As this novelty fuel is spent, and the last time sucks have consumed themselves, one day a good part of the Web will collapse. Google will teeter then, not Twitter, as the search for novelty crashes. I would guess we could start looking for cracks around 2011.
Well, yes it is. For now. But already, people in the know – most of whom Twitter, or have Twittered – are already referring to Twitter as a “time suck.” That means that Twitter, before long, will assumed its place alongside other digital, Web-based activities that once were smart but now are known time sucks, which suck away a human being’s time without leaving the human being anything to show for it.
To better understand the gravity of such a result, let us recall what it is like to paint wood trim, or moulding. If you have never painted wood trim – around doors and windows in an ordinary bedroom for example – then you have no idea how slow and painful the passage of time can be. Painting moulding is as close to infinity as a human being can approach. That is because moulding possesses all the physical characteristics of infinity. A battleship, seemingly vast, can nevertheless be painted in less time than it takes to paint the moulding in our sample ordinary bedroom.
Now imagine you have painted the moulding with a dry brush. No paint, just bare wood behind you, stretching away to Andromeda. That is the kind of time suck that Twitter is. Ninety-five percent of the Web universe is a bare-wood time suck. Hard to believe, but I can sense the day when we will ask, “What’s on the Web?” Answer: “Nothing but old movies.”
Can you say the word, “bubble?” No, of course, the Web does not constitute a giant unified bubble. There are pockets of content that consumers can learn from and take forward with them, and there is a demographic, constituting maybe 15 percent of Web users, who LIKE time sucks. But it doesn’t take totality for a bursting bubble to shake things up. A relatively small bubble of sub-prime lending just about wrecked the mortgage industry and undermined other financial structures like gophers tunneling away all but a crust of dirt beneath the Taj Mahal.
The Web is thousands of communities attracted to content of interest only to those within those communities. The Web, most of all, is a marvel in making content available to small audiences who the traditional mass media could never serve. All those small audiences taken together, though, add up to significant percentages enjoying the novelty the Web provides them. But in the media world, novelty is totally finite. More finite in some places than others. If you are painting moulding, you may feel novelty for as long as five minutes. Novelty for “Seinfeld” lasted longer, around seven years, and it is still holding for “American Idol,” though it needed re-tooling this season.
There must be finiteness to small communities of people enjoying their hour of accessibility to unusual, even bizarre, pockets of content on the Web. One by one, as those communities burn out, there will be a declining number of communities attracted by novelty, and the number of novel subjects to attract them. For examples, watch television in the middle of the night, where resides content that once was new.
As this novelty fuel is spent, and the last time sucks have consumed themselves, one day a good part of the Web will collapse. Google will teeter then, not Twitter, as the search for novelty crashes. I would guess we could start looking for cracks around 2011.
March 22, 2009
Killer Storm Looms!
I know, it is not easy being a weathercaster in Southern California, a desert next to a mammoth ocean with a cold current running offshore the length of the entire Pacific Coast. As a native Texan weather freak, I try to keep that in mind on mornings like these. For the last four days, the weather burons have advertised "a quick return to winter weather," with a vigorous trough racing southward bringing high winds and some rain, maybe half an inch, starting Saturday night and continuing through Sunday. This morning at 2 I awoke and listened for rain hitting the roof. Didn't hear any. I was disappointed. Texas weather freaks gear up for a promise of storminess the same way 11-year-old girls gear up for a Hannah Montana concert. It is goofy, I know, but it is just within us to go outside with the thunder booming and grin into the gale. We take great pleasure in anticipating same. Frequently, however, in Southern California, a Texan's hopes are dashed. It is idiotic to feel disappointment with the sort of weather I got to view when I went outside this morning. On the other hand, we get to see this almost every day.
The weather burons online insist the front will race through today. Or maybe it has already raced through so fast that no one saw it, not even the Doppler Radar. Now it is March 22, and this event most certainly would have been the last of our rainy season. The Southern California weather freaks can put their hopes away, the same way Easterners store their snowshoes. If you want a closer look at how nice it was this morning, click on the image, then click the Back arrow to return here.
The weather burons online insist the front will race through today. Or maybe it has already raced through so fast that no one saw it, not even the Doppler Radar. Now it is March 22, and this event most certainly would have been the last of our rainy season. The Southern California weather freaks can put their hopes away, the same way Easterners store their snowshoes. If you want a closer look at how nice it was this morning, click on the image, then click the Back arrow to return here.
March 20, 2009
Look! It's the spring equinox!
Here is the moment of sunrise this morning, March 20, marking the first day of spring.
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