Cow Palace
Hello World,
Well, this has certainly been an eventful week, full of comings and goings and all manner of noteworthy items of note worth noting. This is especially notable for a long and boring month that actually has no events that it is famous for, or seasonal observances of any description. No, between Independence Day and Labor Day, there's just one big honking bunch of nothing, so that you would expect the poor greeting card companies to throw their hands up in despair. (Actually, what you would expect them to do is create a new holiday to fit in there, so people would go out and buy greeting cards and gifts and party decorations, which is the kind of gung-ho pioneer spirit that built this great land of the free and the home of the brave, amen.) In any case, there was certainly no lack of news, as we bid fond farewells to Merv Griffin, Phil Rizzuto and Brooke Astor, and even - gasp! - the Weekly World News, which wheezed out of circulation as well. George Steinbrenner said that Heaven must have needed a shortstop, and I figure he ought to know, but frankly, I never thought Brooke Astor was much of a fielder.
On the other side of the coin from shaking off this mortal coil, we had two arrivals recently, namely two dangerous weather systems (the government refers to them as "named storms" to differentiate them from your average garden-variety storms) called Erin and Flossie. I'm okay with Erin as a hurricane name, but I have to tell you that I draw the line at Hurricane Flossie, which is like the name of a rag-doll in a children's book, and has no business being a wanton force of nature capable of mass destruction on an epic scale. Some things just don't go together, no matter how much you may try, and Hurricane Flossie is one of them. It's sort of like a four-door sedan with a spoiler, only worse.
And what's going on these days in the wonderful wide world of wireless communications, you might be wondering, and well might you wonder. After almost exactly two years of the JACK format, fabled radio station 101.1 returned to its previous incarnation as WCBS-FM, playing exactly the same oldies as if they never left, to the delight of their devoted fans. Or did they? Cynics among us might notice some curious discrepancies. Even when the JACK format was in full swing, they retained the call letters of WCBS-FM, and regularly advertised the WCBS oldies station that you could access online to hear all your favorite old music. Now that WCBS is back at 101.1 as an oldies station, you can still go to the JACK web site (feel free to visit them at http://www.ilikejack.com/ and see for yourself) and they are still playing their mix of songs available online. Their web site invites you to listen to oldies at CBS-FM on the radio, and also visit their web site to listen online. The WCBS-FM web site also has links to the JACK web site, and lets you know where you can listen to them online. At the bottom of both home pages, big as life and just as brazen, is the name of the parent company, CBS Radio, the same for both. This is an "aha moment" for anyone who believed that these two formats were in competition with each other, and slugging it out for New York radio market share on behalf of two different owners. In fact, this calls into question the whole switch-over in the first place, which like New Coke, Old Coke and Classic Coke, might have been nothing more than a publicity stunt to attract attention and listeners in a contrived way. Since they owned both stations, and kept both running at the same time, there was no financial gamble to swap them out, which generated a media frenzy two years ago. Now they say the ratings for JACK were only so-so, and bringing back CBS-FM as an oldies station makes them look like heroes to legions of nostalgic fans. But for anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the pre-2005 CBS-FM, the differences are glaring. Early music from the 1950's is completely eliminated, as well as special programs that focused on particular musical styles, such as doo-wop and a cappella, so beloved by purists. Whole segments are pre-recorded (just like JACK) with no on-air personalities at all, and the playlist has gotten much more mainstream. A person can't help but wonder if this whole thing, right from the very beginning, was nothing more than an elaborate ruse on the part of CBS Radio, to re-format CBS-FM without anyone noticing it or complaining. Of course, noticing and complaining is my stock in trade, so if they were trying to sneak it past me, I've got news for them, and it's not good.
Speaking of good news, everyone in the local area can thank me for the gas prices coming down at the neighborhood pumps, because I finally got gas a couple of weeks ago. I had been watching the prices come down at the Sunoco station on the way home, and when it got to $3.19/gal for regular, I thought I should probably get in while the getting was good. By the time I got there on Thursday morning, it had come down even further to $3.16/gal, and I felt like a business tycoon filling up the tank at that rate. That lasted less than one day, because when I drove past the gas station LATER THAT SAME DAY, the same gas that I bought that morning was now selling for a mere $3.14/gal instead. Oh, thank you very much not! It has continued to creep down even further since then, and today when I went past, it was down to $3.04/gal and no end in sight. (In fact, when I was on Long Island last week, all of the stations were in the $2.90's everywhere I went.) So I am happy to accept everyone's thanks for bringing down the gas prices single-handedly, and glad to do it. After all, if it wasn't for my old friends, the dinosaurs, we wouldn't even have all of these fossil fuels to start with, and where would modern technology be then?
On that same subject, we all remember my recent technology challenges with a variety of computers and other gadgets, that defied all logic and even broke a few laws of nature. One of our alert readers (thanks, Jim!) sent along the following commentary:
==================================
In your last e-mail you mentioned your watch running backwards, my swiss army watch did that very thing, I looked at the time just glancing at the minute hand I was happy with 10 after, a little while later I looked again and thought hey it can't be 5 of already then I realized it was off by 6 hours then I noticed the second hand was moving in the wrong direction. Took the battery out and popped it back in and for 3 minutes it ran correctly and then started running backwards again.
=================================
By golly, you'd think at least the Swiss would have gotten the bugs worked out of this time-keeping business, after centuries of famous watch-making activities. Dare I suggest the darned Russkies and their infernal date machine might be behind all of this non-precision chronometry? (I was about to say that I just made that word up, but ironically found it right at the top of the page in my new college dictionary, so I obviously can't take credit for that coining.) It certainly gives a whole new meaning to "there's no time like the present."
In other news, we were all surprised in Purchasing when burly young men showed up during the week and replaced the carpet in the hallways on our floor and the floor above us. It's actually quite lovely carpet, and goes nicely with the new green-blue that we have as our door and baseboard trim, after years of somber dark brown all over. You would think that we'd be happy, but everyone knows there's no pleasing people nowadays, and that goes without saying. For as long as I've worked there, whenever anyone complained about Iselin Hall (which I believe was constructed of mud and straw as a Druid burial mound) management would wave it away saying, "Oh, there's no point in fixing up that building, they're just about to tear it down." So what if there's no heat, the toilets are broken, the fuses keep blowing, there's no elevator, the windows don't work, the ceilings are cracked? Not to worry, pretty soon they'll be tearing the building down anyway. Well, I've been hearing that for 20 years already, and Iselin Hall is standing in exactly the same place as when I started, and showing no signs of going anywhere. In fact, it couldn't help but be obvious to even the meanest intelligence that if they recently repainted all of our doors and baseboard trim, and now replaced all the carpet in the hallways, that far from tearing the building down, it would appear to have gained a new lease on life instead. At this rate, Iselin Hall will still be standing there, long after all of the other buildings have been replaced around it. Of course, the dinosaurs and I know better than to disturb a Druid burial mound, but I can't say for sure that's what the management is using as their motivation in this case. For all I know, the Russian's infernal date machine may have made their watches run backwards, and they're just waiting for the age of the Druids to come back again, which would have made a dandy story for the Weekly World News. Or in the immortal words of Brooke Astor, "Holy Cow!"
Well, this has certainly been an eventful week, full of comings and goings and all manner of noteworthy items of note worth noting. This is especially notable for a long and boring month that actually has no events that it is famous for, or seasonal observances of any description. No, between Independence Day and Labor Day, there's just one big honking bunch of nothing, so that you would expect the poor greeting card companies to throw their hands up in despair. (Actually, what you would expect them to do is create a new holiday to fit in there, so people would go out and buy greeting cards and gifts and party decorations, which is the kind of gung-ho pioneer spirit that built this great land of the free and the home of the brave, amen.) In any case, there was certainly no lack of news, as we bid fond farewells to Merv Griffin, Phil Rizzuto and Brooke Astor, and even - gasp! - the Weekly World News, which wheezed out of circulation as well. George Steinbrenner said that Heaven must have needed a shortstop, and I figure he ought to know, but frankly, I never thought Brooke Astor was much of a fielder.
On the other side of the coin from shaking off this mortal coil, we had two arrivals recently, namely two dangerous weather systems (the government refers to them as "named storms" to differentiate them from your average garden-variety storms) called Erin and Flossie. I'm okay with Erin as a hurricane name, but I have to tell you that I draw the line at Hurricane Flossie, which is like the name of a rag-doll in a children's book, and has no business being a wanton force of nature capable of mass destruction on an epic scale. Some things just don't go together, no matter how much you may try, and Hurricane Flossie is one of them. It's sort of like a four-door sedan with a spoiler, only worse.
And what's going on these days in the wonderful wide world of wireless communications, you might be wondering, and well might you wonder. After almost exactly two years of the JACK format, fabled radio station 101.1 returned to its previous incarnation as WCBS-FM, playing exactly the same oldies as if they never left, to the delight of their devoted fans. Or did they? Cynics among us might notice some curious discrepancies. Even when the JACK format was in full swing, they retained the call letters of WCBS-FM, and regularly advertised the WCBS oldies station that you could access online to hear all your favorite old music. Now that WCBS is back at 101.1 as an oldies station, you can still go to the JACK web site (feel free to visit them at http://www.ilikejack.com/ and see for yourself) and they are still playing their mix of songs available online. Their web site invites you to listen to oldies at CBS-FM on the radio, and also visit their web site to listen online. The WCBS-FM web site also has links to the JACK web site, and lets you know where you can listen to them online. At the bottom of both home pages, big as life and just as brazen, is the name of the parent company, CBS Radio, the same for both. This is an "aha moment" for anyone who believed that these two formats were in competition with each other, and slugging it out for New York radio market share on behalf of two different owners. In fact, this calls into question the whole switch-over in the first place, which like New Coke, Old Coke and Classic Coke, might have been nothing more than a publicity stunt to attract attention and listeners in a contrived way. Since they owned both stations, and kept both running at the same time, there was no financial gamble to swap them out, which generated a media frenzy two years ago. Now they say the ratings for JACK were only so-so, and bringing back CBS-FM as an oldies station makes them look like heroes to legions of nostalgic fans. But for anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the pre-2005 CBS-FM, the differences are glaring. Early music from the 1950's is completely eliminated, as well as special programs that focused on particular musical styles, such as doo-wop and a cappella, so beloved by purists. Whole segments are pre-recorded (just like JACK) with no on-air personalities at all, and the playlist has gotten much more mainstream. A person can't help but wonder if this whole thing, right from the very beginning, was nothing more than an elaborate ruse on the part of CBS Radio, to re-format CBS-FM without anyone noticing it or complaining. Of course, noticing and complaining is my stock in trade, so if they were trying to sneak it past me, I've got news for them, and it's not good.
Speaking of good news, everyone in the local area can thank me for the gas prices coming down at the neighborhood pumps, because I finally got gas a couple of weeks ago. I had been watching the prices come down at the Sunoco station on the way home, and when it got to $3.19/gal for regular, I thought I should probably get in while the getting was good. By the time I got there on Thursday morning, it had come down even further to $3.16/gal, and I felt like a business tycoon filling up the tank at that rate. That lasted less than one day, because when I drove past the gas station LATER THAT SAME DAY, the same gas that I bought that morning was now selling for a mere $3.14/gal instead. Oh, thank you very much not! It has continued to creep down even further since then, and today when I went past, it was down to $3.04/gal and no end in sight. (In fact, when I was on Long Island last week, all of the stations were in the $2.90's everywhere I went.) So I am happy to accept everyone's thanks for bringing down the gas prices single-handedly, and glad to do it. After all, if it wasn't for my old friends, the dinosaurs, we wouldn't even have all of these fossil fuels to start with, and where would modern technology be then?
On that same subject, we all remember my recent technology challenges with a variety of computers and other gadgets, that defied all logic and even broke a few laws of nature. One of our alert readers (thanks, Jim!) sent along the following commentary:
==================================
In your last e-mail you mentioned your watch running backwards, my swiss army watch did that very thing, I looked at the time just glancing at the minute hand I was happy with 10 after, a little while later I looked again and thought hey it can't be 5 of already then I realized it was off by 6 hours then I noticed the second hand was moving in the wrong direction. Took the battery out and popped it back in and for 3 minutes it ran correctly and then started running backwards again.
=================================
By golly, you'd think at least the Swiss would have gotten the bugs worked out of this time-keeping business, after centuries of famous watch-making activities. Dare I suggest the darned Russkies and their infernal date machine might be behind all of this non-precision chronometry? (I was about to say that I just made that word up, but ironically found it right at the top of the page in my new college dictionary, so I obviously can't take credit for that coining.) It certainly gives a whole new meaning to "there's no time like the present."
In other news, we were all surprised in Purchasing when burly young men showed up during the week and replaced the carpet in the hallways on our floor and the floor above us. It's actually quite lovely carpet, and goes nicely with the new green-blue that we have as our door and baseboard trim, after years of somber dark brown all over. You would think that we'd be happy, but everyone knows there's no pleasing people nowadays, and that goes without saying. For as long as I've worked there, whenever anyone complained about Iselin Hall (which I believe was constructed of mud and straw as a Druid burial mound) management would wave it away saying, "Oh, there's no point in fixing up that building, they're just about to tear it down." So what if there's no heat, the toilets are broken, the fuses keep blowing, there's no elevator, the windows don't work, the ceilings are cracked? Not to worry, pretty soon they'll be tearing the building down anyway. Well, I've been hearing that for 20 years already, and Iselin Hall is standing in exactly the same place as when I started, and showing no signs of going anywhere. In fact, it couldn't help but be obvious to even the meanest intelligence that if they recently repainted all of our doors and baseboard trim, and now replaced all the carpet in the hallways, that far from tearing the building down, it would appear to have gained a new lease on life instead. At this rate, Iselin Hall will still be standing there, long after all of the other buildings have been replaced around it. Of course, the dinosaurs and I know better than to disturb a Druid burial mound, but I can't say for sure that's what the management is using as their motivation in this case. For all I know, the Russian's infernal date machine may have made their watches run backwards, and they're just waiting for the age of the Druids to come back again, which would have made a dandy story for the Weekly World News. Or in the immortal words of Brooke Astor, "Holy Cow!"
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:24 PM
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