24 Hour News as Professional Wrestling

Other than the random trailer park grandma with tattoos and a pack of Pall Malls sitting on the TV tray, most of us understand how it goes in professional wrestling. You have the good guy and the bad guy. The bad guy, apparently, cheats incessantly and the good guy plays by the rules until he almost loses, and then he adopts the bad guys cheatin' ways and puts him away. This assumes the good guy is scripted to win that day. Sometimes if the bad guy is the star, or the holder of the gold belt, he just cheats indiscriminately and pummels the good guy until the good guy almost comes back then puts him away. Doesn't matter really, the point I'm trying to make is: after the match the good guy and the bad guy adjourn to the locker room, have a couple of beers and inquire after the wife/girlfriend/one-night-stand and kids. The wrestling announcers are constantly, and I mean constantly, hyping the next and all upcoming matches. When the wrestlers aren't actually on the card for the evening, they'll often show up and perform the verbal equivalent of wrestling, sticking to their roles and propensity for cheating or not.

So it is with the 24 hour news channels. Certainly on the Fox News Channel, where the "card" is 60-70 percent head-to-head matches, you have, a good guy and a bad guy who instead of body slamming and head locking try to beat each other's brains out with political spin and metaphors. I suppose the difference might be, with wrestling the good guys and bad guys are largely identified and acknowledged by any wrestling fan. For example, when I was growing up Vern Gagne was the good guy and The Crusher was the bad guy. With politicos, the good / bad guy depends on your political affiliation or view on a certain issue. I've watched a lot of Fox News, and I guarantee that most of the regular commentators come out of the locker room - er, green room - in character, they do battle, and adjourn to the green room to tip a latte and inquire after the spouse/girlfriend/news groupie. They might chuckle over some of the moves they put on each other and offer tips for better set-ups and responses. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they let one or the other "win" a match depending on the show and whether its audience tilts one way or the other.

The interviewer or moderator is also clearly always in on the gag. You can tell by the way he or she lets the combatants respond to questions or make points without challenging even the most obvious misstatements, oversimplifications or spin. This is the equivalent of cheating in pro wrestling - punching with a closed fist, eye-poking or hair-pulling. This is another area where 24 hour news matches differ from professional wrestling matches: political combatants all cheat. By this I mean they will routinely mischaracterize their opponent's positions, oversimplify their own positions and contribute all manner of devious motives to their opponents statements or actions. I've got my favorite performers just as I have my favorite hosts / referees.

Although I haven't watched professional wrestling for perhaps 30 years or more, I did make a rather painful sacrifice by watching several wrestling shows before finalizing this essay. Since I don't have sponsors I chose not to tune into any pay per view events or spring for a ticket to a live wrestling card. It hasn't changed other than there are more babes, and the wrestlers are ALL bigger or more physically cut or just plain larger. My hypothesis holds. The only thing missing really is the gold belt.

Regional Transportation Planning = Mass Transit - Another Solution

I can't tell you how hard it is to read about how regional transit authorities are NEVER for building roads or adding lanes to existing roads, but are ALWAYS commissioning studies for light rail, heavy rail, or monorails first; exotic buses - especially reticulated buses - second; and van pools third. The only way they will even mess with a road is to mess it up with multiple occupancy lane.

These so-called car pool lanes, honestly don't affect me, because I avoid rush hour like a blue-hair avoids a natural hair color. I take it back. It affects me when the wife and I are on the freeway on a weekend and the left lane is full of the aforementioned blue hairs -usually from another state, toodling along at 55 when the other lanes are free and clear.

Yo. Old dudes. The car pool lane is not mandatory. You will not get a ticket if you travel in the right lanes. And you will be flipped off a lot less.

But back to the plan. As soon as public policy starts herding people into the inner city, property values go up. Property values go up. The folks who had been living there, especially those who are renting, see real estate prices (and rents) go up, and they end up having to move to the next band out, but that's a different blog.

It so happens, I have a quick and guaranteed effective solution. It's going to be hard, but what solution to a massive public problem isn't? My solution? Big and boxy and yellow. School buses.

Well technically the school buses aren't the solution. After all, we already have school buses, right? The solution is to get those lazy, over-privileged, silver spooned, GAP-wearing, snot-nosed through pimply-faced punka$$ students ON them every GD morning. This would take tens of thousands of moms, at least a few hundred dads, dozens of graduated siblings without jobs and tens of thousands of driving age teeny boppers in decked out pickups or Bimmers OFF the road.

It's disgusting, really. If I happen to be driving to a meeting (one I obviously couldn't get out of) during school bus pick up time, and school is in session, it takes another 20 to 30 minutes to make the trek. An added annoyance is driving by small subdivisions and seeing dozens of SUVs and minivans and the occasional mom in sweats standing or sitting with their sweetums, waiting for the arrival of the school bus. But as I think about it, I'd rather see the sweetums waiting for a school bus than being driven to school by their over-indulgent parental unit(s).

We should MAKE (as in FORCE) ALL elementary, middle, and high school students ride the bus to and from school. Why aren't liberals all over this? When you take all the school pseudocommuters off the road, it's very much like a quasi-holiday where all government employees (including so-called educators, but that's another blog) are off. You take the hundreds of thousands of vehicles off the road, and that frees up a lot of space for everybody else.

I bet it even opens up seats on buses, light rail and van pools.

The End of a (Breakfast) Era

Breakfast out will never be the same again. Our favorite place just burned down. The Midway Meal House was one of those southern "meat and three" places that was housed in (wait for it) a house. It was an old house with rooms that might have been ample for family living but were pretty small for tables that seat four.

The house was old enough for every last piece of wood to be aged to perfection. Speculation is that the fire was caused by an electrical short. Doesn't matter - if it wasn't an electrical short, the spark thrown off by a waitress's tongue stud against one of her fillings would have taken the place down sooner or later.

This place had the best breakfasts IN THE WORLD. I've had lunch there a few times and even supper about five years ago after we discovered it, but those meals were parallelled (opposite of unparalleled). But breakfasts. The eggs tasted like eggs, meaning they fried 'em over easy in butter. (Alas, the art of basted eggs has been lost here along with most breakfast places. This will be the topic of another toast in the weeks ahead.) The bacon was not too fat and the "chef" cooked 'em to just the right doneness - they would almost break instead of being soft enough to cut with a fork. I usually had to put my hand up when I'd break the bacon because if I didn't, a piece of bacon would leap off the plate and onto my lap or all the wayto the floor.

But the biscuits and gravy made it all work - nice flaky but not too dry or too big biscuits and creamy white gravy with little chunks of sausage suspended in the glorious semi-fluid. Always served in a little bowl, they weren't presumptuous enough to split the biscuit in two and pre-ladle the gravy over the two halves. They let YOU decide how you wanted to eat 'em. I liked to break the biscuits into little chunks and blend them into the bowl. The concoction was thick enough to eat with a fork, but even so, when I get towards the bottom of the little bowl, I would either switch to a spoon or pick up the last, slightly larger piece of biscuit, and mop the last of the gravy out of the bowl and into my mouth.

The owner says he'll rebuild, but even if he does, it won't be the same. It's like the chapter in Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine" where grandma's family finally persuades her to organize the way she cooks and label all her ingredients in the pantry. She went from being the best cook of the best food in the world to the worst. She didn't get it back until some kind-hearted soul trashed her pantry and burned the cookbooks. Then she could use a pinch of this and a dollop of that and her true country culinary artistry returned.

When, and if, the Meal House is reborn, it sure won't be in a big old house. It'll probably be in a metal building. The new ovens and griddles and fryers will be ... new. How on earth can they impart flavor to the food if they don't have 20 years worth of the experience (food residue)? They can't.

And the waitresses. These were real people with weight problems, imperfect teeth, piercings (including the tongue stud mentioned above), mismatched uniforms and warm, comfort-inducing personalities. Of course they called everybody hon. No hokey aprons or striped shirts or suspenders, for heaven's sake.

And cheap. My breakfast cost less than five bucks, including coffee. Pammie's fave, that had a little of everything including her favorite breakfast food (fourth favorite if you include all food. Her more favorite foods were M&Ms, popcorn and TAB - yes, they still make it), pancakes. How the heck are they going to keep the lid on prices when they have a new building and foodservice equipment to buy.

It's the end of an era.

This is Hard

I am stating for the world to hear (okay, I'm typing for the world to read) that I am going to ...

You know, I read a lot of blogs and see how the bloggers write about every little ol' thing that happens to them. And by and large, it's interesting. When I'm driving or playing golf or reading opinion pieces or reading letters to the editor or, hell, just taking a shower I have tons of good ideas about what to write about in SwoboBlog. but when I finally think about logging in and writing something myself, one of two things happen:

1. I find something more interesting to attend to, or
2. I schedule some time to blog and then find something more interesting to attend to.

Sooooo, I'm typing for the world to hear that I AM GOING TO BLOG NO LESS THAN FOUR TIMES A WEEK.

This fits my personal goals (Note to self: Redo my personal goals to include blogging.) that I will write something creative no less than an hour a day. Trust me. Even though I have a real job and have other things to deal with around the house and a need to play golf at least twice a week, I have tons of time that I could devote to writing but instead devote to other less productive endeavors. I promise I will still waste time on unproductive endeavors, but, dammit, I am going to do more writing. I have books and screenplays and songs inside me some place, and I am going to find a way to get them the hell onto my hard drive. Promise.