Alabama Fried Chicken

I'm not sure if this commercial is playing all over the country, but I've noticed a new string of TV ads for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Under the commercial, the song "Sweet Home Alabama" is playing.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but what does "Sweet Home Alabama" have to do with Kentucky Fried Chicken?
Is it possible that a Madison Avenue exec who failed seventh-grade geography was put in charge of this account?
Maybe the ad executives got together and said, "Alabama...Kentucky...all those Confederate states look alike to us."
Next thing you know, Cadillac will start putting Led Zeppelin music under their ads...

Talking To Myself

I’ve been tracking hits to the Workman Chronicles ‘Blog lately.
Let’s just say that, if I was a sitcom on the WB, I would have been cancelled already.
It made me wonder…if a writer writes in the forest, and nobody reads it, is he still a writer?
Or could the idle rantings posted thereon be considered an electronic version of talking to myself?
And if it can be construed as talking to myself, is there a 12-step program that could help?
Are there webmasters in white coats who will soon arrive at my portal to escort me to a padded chatroom?
It’s such a double-edged sword.
I simultaneously wonder if I were to write more, to post something new every single day, maybe that would inspire more visitors, while also wondering why I bother to put on a writing party at all if nobody is going to show up.
(Yes, it’s very “oh woe is me” in here today.)
I recognize that part of the problem is marketing.
Outside of the few nice folks who stumble in from my day job at the newspaper and the morbidly curious but kind who track me down from my inane rantings on other ‘blogs, nobody knows about this place.
I could try to buy ads on the internet, but that’s too much like being a prostitute’s John, where I have to pay for love.
I’m one of those hopeless romantics who believes there’s an audience out there for everyone.
Also, I’m a newspaper writer, which by definition means I don’t have any money for such luxuries as food and clothes, so I certainly can’t afford to gorge Yahoo and Google’s pockets any further.
A quick perusal of “Blog Explosion” or any of the other ‘blog catalogs out there explains that it’s tough to rise above the din of hundreds of similar sites claiming to be humorous. (On Blog Explosion alone, there are nearly 700 sites listed in the “Humor” category, way more than any other category in the catalog.)
My only hope is that I’ll become a posthumous success like Van Gogh or Jim Croce.
Long after I’ve died from an overdose of french fries and McNuggets, perhaps someone will discover this treasure trove of wit and exploit it into celebrity.
Or maybe a single stroke of the delete key will perform a bandwidth angioplasty, “killing my darlings” as Hemingway said.
In any case, I’m still here, howling at a digital moon and talking to the firewalls.
A caricature of the age-old stereotype of literary artists tinged with insanity.

Apocalyptic TV

Published in the Desert Valley Times
April 26, 2005

I’m always on the lookout for signs of the impending Apocalypse, or the fiery end of time.
Usually, my window of impending doom sits no further away than the entertainment center in my living room, home of the 21st Century golden idol, also known as the television.
Some of the “signs” are easy to find.
War, famine, drought, pestilence, and even locusts can be found 24 hours a day on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, along with the regular menu of catastrophe and calamity on the three network news broadcasts, sandwiched between ads for Enzyte male enhancement supplements and Old Navy come-ons for tunic tops.
But to find the deeper portents of impending Armageddon, you have to spin the channel a little further.
Many of the warning signs can be seen in prime time, where man’s inhumanity to man has become prime time viewing.
They call it “reality TV.”
With shows like “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race,” and a slew of other programs which pit humans against other humans in death-defying scenarios, you know it’s just a matter of time before one of the shows cash in on the big money jackpot of videotaping someone getting killed.
We’ve degenerated into a parody of the Roman Empire, where it was considered sport and entertainment to throw Christians to the Lions.
(Here’s a sports recap for you…Christians 1, Lions 8,492).
But we’ve gone a step beyond.
The Romans would just throw you to the Lions.
On “Fear Factor,” they’ll throw you to the worms.
And the fish guts, and the pig’s blood.
I’m sure that championship nose-picking is just around the corner.
(We interrupt this diatribe for a word from our sponsor. This is Bob. Bob has a big smile because he takes a pill that enhances his sexual equipment and endurance. Be like Bob. Buy pills.)
Then I caught a show I hadn’t seen before.
It’s known as “CJ,” or by the official title “Celebrity Justice.”
Yes folks, it’s evidence that we’ve reached the bottom of the barrel.
This is a TV magazine show dedicated to celebrities in trouble with the law.
It includes news and footage of divorce filings, contract disputes, lawsuits, paternity issues, minor traffic violations, and of course, celebrities under arrest and in court.
The current poster child, pardon the pun, is Michael Jackson, who could have an entire 24-hour cable channel dedicated to his odd behavior and courtroom career.
But CJ manages to fill up an entire show with such stories as which famous rapper has been busted for, basically, being stupid in public, and which silicon-injected bimbos are dumping their Botox-addicted hubbies.
While once upon a time we discarded law-breaking famous folk on the trash heap of obscurity, we’ve now reached a place in civilization where we celebrate their scofflaw antics and wallow in their abuses of jurisprudence.
(Another word from our sponsor. You too can own a $19.99 tunic top containing 83 cents worth of fabric. Just look at our dancing girls. Since this newspaper is not equipped with audio, simply hum the song “Bust A Move” to yourself until you can’t resist.)
I just hope they get the Space Shuttle airborne so I can start saving for my one way ticket to Mars before next season’s new shows hit the airwaves, including “Who Wants To Pull The Switch On The Electric Chair” and the hot new game show, “You’ll Put Your Eye Out With That!”
The world is coming to an end.
And it will be broadcast live on “The Simple Surreal Afterlife.”
(Another word from our sponsor. This is Bob. He has overdosed on the little pill and is now chasing the Tunic Top girls like Groucho Marx on a three-day bender…)

Homesick

Congress should propose and pass a law immediately that would require every citizen to spend at least three days living somewhere other than their current hometown.
I don’t say this lightly.
The first benefit of such a statute would be a cross-pollination that would occur when people from one town are exposed to the culture and customs of another town.
For example, a Los Angeles resident could learn that recklessly zig-zagging from lane to lane at 90 miles per hour near an interstate exit is not the norm everywhere.
Small town citizens would learn that their Town Council’s vitriolic battle over whether the town park’s flowers should be yellow or red is not such a big deal.
But mostly, it would reinforce the special characteristics that made you choose your hometown in the first place.
During my own recent four-day vacation, I visited Arizona, California, and Mexico.
About as disparate a geographical triumvirate as you could find.
Here’s what I learned:
Dorothy was right.
There’s no place like home.
Sometimes I get caught up in the politics and minutiae that is inherent in suburban living.
A quick trip to California is the cure for whatever ails you, whether it be an exposure to maniacal highway driving or the ecological phenomenon of smog.
While the visit to the Pacific Ocean was awe-inspiring, the barefoot guy standing knee-deep in a tide pool playing a guitar with seaweed sprigs for a pick and singing songs aimed at the shores of Japan made me long for the more mundane insanity of our own town bum who keeps everyone guessing as to what color parka he will wear today.
(Just a reminder…I live in the Nevada desert.)
I became homesick for the 30-second delay at Interstate exit 122 that causes so much rage in our town after sitting at a dead stop for 20 minutes on a 12-lane California highway.
And a trip across the border into Mexico is the antidote for whatever complaint you could possibly have about the place you call home, because I promise that your town is Oz compared to the desperate, dispirited towns that dot the south side of the Mexican-American line.
It should be mandatory that every citizen must spend time away from home.
The experience will fill you with love for every wart and blemish that distinguishes your zip code from every other dark circle on Rand McNally’s best seller.

Road Rage

I never understood the concept of road rage.
Oh sure, I get the idea of anger at bad drivers, and even the “flight of the bird” after exhibitions of inferior driving skills.
But the California version of road rage was difficult to grasp, replete with roadside fist fights and occasional gunplay.
Why would anyone shoot another person over something as innocuous as cutting someone off while entering the freeway?
Then I visited California for the first time last week.
Now I get it.
I’m in San Diego for 15 minutes, and I’M looking for a gun shop!
No disrespect to the state of California and all 20 jillion residents, but unless you have a dying patient in your back seat, is it really necessary to weave in and out of traffic at 85 mph like a crazed Martha Stewart on speed trying to finish an afghan?
I’ve been on bumper car attractions at the fair that featured better driving.
It’s even more amazing when you consider that the attitude is completely different just a few miles South.
While visiting Mexico the day before, I was treated to a phenomenon that I thought only afflicted three-year-olds and escapees from the “I Am Bulletproof” Institute.
People on one side of the street who wanted to be on the other side of the street just stepped out in front of the oncoming traffic and headed to their destination.
It poked enormous holes in the old joke “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
The real question should be “HOW did the chicken cross the road?”
After a while I realized that this wasn’t an aberration, but a custom.
Nobody got mad at anybody, there was no cacophony of offended car horns, no flight of “birds” at the pedestrian, just a laid-back acceptance of this tradition that would have filled hospitals back home.
I must admit that I was a little hesitant at first, but before long I was calmly stepping out in front of speeding taxis like a San Luis native.
I suspect the tradition was born of a place that wasn’t big on traffic lights or stop signs.
In fact, the area I visited wasn’t really big on streets, curbs, or sidewalks, and showed a complete absence of such things as traffic cops or crossing guards.
Admittedly there is a lot less to see in this part of Mexico than in Southern California, which might explain the lack of haste south of the border.
If you’ve seen one three-legged dog eating out of a garbage bag on a downtown corner, you’ve seen them all.
That’s not to say that things are safer in Mexico, but they are definitely slower.
If only we could instill a touch of this ‘tude in the driving populace of Cali, we might cure road rage in our lifetime.

Tax Time

Published in the Desert Valley Times
April 15, 2005

A news flash from our “Duh”-partment Of Obvious Facts (DOOF), today is tax day.
It’s that glorious moment when all of the Last Minute Larrys trundle down to the post office to mail off their 1040s, W-2s, and big portions of their kid’s college fund to Uncle Sam.
We always hear about the idiotic endeavors our tax dollars fund, like $20,000 hammers and $30,000 toilet seats, and it’s never a good idea to visualize your hard-earned check going into the pocket of the smiling dunderhead on C-SPAN railing to an empty Senate chamber about the dangers of imported dental floss, or an impassioned plea to save the endangered Sierra Mountain Spotted Rock Fly,
However, those aren’t the only things your tax dollars support.
You want to feel better about sending the IRS the money you were going to use as a down payment on the shiny red ATV?
Think about the other places your money may go.
Three months from now, a soldier in Iraq may be alive because it was your money that bought the Kevlar jacket that saved his life.
You may have stopped a terrorist attack when your check was used toward the purchase the bomb-sniffing equipment at a major airport.
And while the Welfare system gets plenty of knocks, your dollars just might be the ones used to feed a hungry child next week.
The fact that nobody likes to pay taxes is also a unifying bond of all Americans.
It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, brown, red, yellow, or purple, whether you’re from a red state or blue one, we are all brothers and sisters united in a disdain for sending our green to the gub’ment.
Happy Tax Day!

Gas Pains

Published in the Desert Valley Times
April 12, 2005

As humans, we are constantly on the lookout for scapegoats.
Oh, we don’t use that term, but it’s conceptually accurate.
You can see it in the proliferation of frivolous lawsuits.
“I’m too stupid to know how to hold and drink a cup of coffee, so I’m just going to sue somebody for my burned crotch.”
When we run out of human beings to blame, we’ll often turn to the man upstairs, as if it’s somehow His fault that we’re overdrawn at the bank.
Now, we as a nation are being caught up in a crisis that we weren’t expecting, which was already pretty stupid on our part, but now that it’s here, we want to blame EVERYBODY else.
I’m talking about the price of a gallon of gas.
Word is that the near future will include gasoline prices of over three dollars a gallon.
Locally, some folks have started using the Maverik convenience store as the community punching bag.
Here’s a news flash for you:
It ain’t their fault.
In fact, you can discard your hate mail for all of the local fuel purveyors.
According to the Associated Press, Nevada has the third-highest prices for gas in America, averaging $2.38 a gallon, just behind California and Hawaii.
But we can’t hang the governor in effigy.
Keep moving up the blame trail.
The oil companies make an easy target, mostly because of their ten-dollar-a-gallon Stetson hats.
But it’s not their fault either, because it’s costing them nearly $60 a barrel to buy the stuff from our turbaned friends in Saudi Irobiya, Jordamfools, and Kuwaitandseewhatwechargenextmonth.
But we still can’t blame them.
Even if it was their fault, our government couldn’t do much about it, since we’re currently on hiatus from our favorite national game show, “Thumping Middle Eastern Countries for Fun and Profit” while the producers are working on the sequel, “Dropping Bombs On Countries Run By Guys Named Kim.”
If you want to go eyeball to eyeball with the person responsible for this whole mess, I have an exercise for you.
First, take out your car keys, head to your car, open the door, and get in.
Start the car and tune the radio to your favorite “All babble, All the time” radio station.
Then reach up and grab the rear-view mirror and twist it to face yourself as if you were going to apply lipstick.
(For many of our female readers, this will be an almost automatic function. For guys without recent Jaegermeister or college fraternity experience, it may take a few tries.)
Now, look deeply into the eyes staring back at you from that mirror.
You’ve found your culprit.
You know why gas prices are so high?
Because you’re willing to pay them.
End of story.
I remember taking a real estate class a few decades ago, back when I was still sane and believed that making money was a good thing.
The proctor, who was a realtor, passed out an info sheet on a house.
It included square footage, location, amenities, and price comparisons from three other properties.
Then he challenged the class to determine the market value of the house.
My hand shot up, ready to dazzle him with my intellectual superiority, buttressed by my intimate familiarity with advanced calculations involving square footage, replacement cost ratios, and formulas previously used to determine payloads for Apollo moonshots.
In other words, I knew my math.
Unfortunately, he knew real life.
“Wrong!” he exclaimed gleefully (or maybe it just seemed that way to the red-faced smartmouth whose hand shot up just moments before).
“The market price of a house is…whatever someone is willing to pay for it.”
This universal economic principle is applicable to everything, including and especially gasoline.
As long as we continue to buy this stuff by the tanker truck at whatever price is tossed onto the sign, that price isn’t going anywhere but skyward.
Don’t look so shocked.
This is the fourth or fifth time gas prices have spiked like this since the great oil embargo of the mid-seventies.
And if history has taught us anything, it’s this:
We’ll pay ANY price just so we don’t have to sit by that smelly, scary guy who is the poster child for public transportation.
So until we as a combined and cohesive nation make the commitment to drive less, car pool, build and buy more economical vehicles, give hydrogen fuels a chance, break out our bicycles, and begin taking vacations to locales which share our own zip codes, just look in that rear-view mirror, open up your wallet, stick out your cash, and say “Owww.”

Musical Airlines

You decided to buy a car, so you headed down to your nearby Chevy dealership.
You looked at lots of options, weighed the differences, and selected the Chevy Suburban.
You filled out the paperwork, wrote the big check, then headed outside to take your new car home.
But the vehicle waiting by the door is a Kia Sorrento.
“We didn’t really have any Suburbans on the lot, but this one will work just fine,” the salesman assures you.
Would you be happy?
Then you now know the frustration of thousands of airline passengers.
Recently I made arrangements for my mom to fly on flight 2771 to Las Vegas on a United Airlines plane from Philadelphia.
I should have smelled a rat when the airline told me they couldn’t say what seat they would assign.
(Making your own seat selection has become commonplace when buying tickets online.)
On the appointed day, my mom pulled up to the United sign at the Philadelphia airport and unloaded her bags for the skycaps.
A few minutes later, she learned that United doesn’t have a flight 2771.
Before panic could reach frenzied hysteria, the official informed her she was booked on a U.S. Airways flight.
Relieved to at least have a seat, she loaded the bags back into the car, then drove another quarter-mile to the U.S. Air terminal, unloaded her bags, and rushed to get to the gate in time for departure.
On the other end, blissfully unaware of this, I arrived at McCarran Airport and went immediately to the “Arrival” board.
No flight 2771.
I had spoken personally with a United representative the day before, so I knew the flight existed.
When I tracked down an airport employee with a walkie-talkie, I heard the blood chilling reply.
“You need to go to the United office.”
I knew from watching movies and reading books that this was the way they usually broke the news about an air crash.
So I raced down to the United kiosk located near the baggage carousels.
There, a bored clerk explained that my mom would be on U.S. Airways flight 633.
Once my heart slowed down and I could hear better, the United Airlines employee went on to explain that it was now common practice for the airlines to purchase seats on other airlines, then sell them as their own.
She also admitted that it was a despicable practice.
On this day, flight 2771 existed only on a computer screen.
I hurried to the U.S. Airways baggage carousel, found my mom, and gave her an extra-long hug.
She had paid for a flight on United Airlines, but had been baited and switched to a ripped seat on a dirty airplane filled with rude flight attendants operated by U.S. Air.
When she goes back in two weeks, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she’ll be returning on a Greyhound bus while her bags are sent back east on a train, thanks to this new scheme by the airlines.
I’m not arrogant enough to suggest that you should boycott United Airlines, but I can assure you it’s the last time I will book tickets with the Friendly Lies people.
Also, the Chicago-based airline has a new fan.
As their bankruptcy case (filed in December of 2002) continues to wind its way through the courts, I’ll be the guy on the sidelines, fervently waving pom poms and cheering their eventual demise out of existence.

Death of a Pope

Pope John Paul II has gone on to his deserved greater glory.
Unlike most people ascending to Heaven who must wait to be judged by St. Peter and The Book before passing through those pearly gates, I suspect the Pope will be taking the express lane with valet parking directly to his room next to The Big Guy’s master suite.
Unlike the lawyer joke about naming all the passengers on the Titanic in order to gain admittance, John Paul’s only test question will be something like “did you bring your toothbrush?”
Of course, the tears haven’t dried on St. Peter’s Square yet and already the big question is which backup quarterback will be elevated to the starting Papal team.
The candidates stretch from Italy to India to Brazil.
Word has it that no Americans have made the short list, but we shouldn’t take it personally.
After all, it took nearly 2000 years to get a pope from Poland into the big chair, and they’ve been around a good bit longer than we have.
So the question of succession is at hand, along with all of the corollaries which will perplex scholars until the first puff of white smoke arises from the Vatican chimney.
Questions like:
Whose picture will Sinead O’Connor tear up every morning when she gets out of bed?
Whose face will be printed on the rifle targets at the Bulgarian Secret Service firing range?
Whose effigy will the pro-choice crowd set on fire to start their weekend rallies?
Who will the Jews, Muslims, Christians, and others with no breathing religious patriarch to petition, be jealous of now?
Who gets to ride around in the Vatican’s bulletproof vehicle for the next few weeks?
(My money is on Batman, since he already has a car that looks a lot like the Pope-mobile.)
Who gets to wear the big, funny hat in the Pope’s absence?
(I suspect the Pope and Minnie Pearl will have a lot to talk about in Heaven.)
Some folks may be offended at my levity in regard to the recently-departed papal icon, but I contend that Pope John Paul II had a sense of humor.
Besides, if he can forgive the guy who put holes in his best cassock with a pistol back in 1981, I’m sure he has some forgiveness in his heart for a wayward writer from Mesquite.
(Although Sinead O’Connor hasn’t had a hit since her Saturday Night Live debacle, so maybe there’s more to fear than I realize.)
The good news is that the Pope will be reunited with the eight feet of intestines that were removed following the 1981 attempt on his life.
The bad news is that Earth-bound humanity has lost a gentle friend.

Cell Phones

Published in the Desert Valley Times
April 5, 2005

I love the new generation of cellular phones.
What I find most amazing is the plethora of choices now available for ring tones.
You know, the noise a phone makes when someone wants to talk to you?
Back when I was a kid, (when phones were first invented, according to my youngest daughter), the tone was actually a bell.
I know, hard to believe.
Then, in the 80’s and 90’s, we had electronic beeps and chirps to let us know when it was time to pick up the phone and utilize that time-honored of greetings.
We used to say “Hello?” with a certain amount of anticipation or dread instead of just glancing at the caller I.D. and saying “’Sup, gurrul?”
Today, the sound has been replaced by rap music, and sounds that mimic car engines with a bad fan belt, and an electronic impersonation of Celine Dion.
(Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the three.)
Yep, now people can be annoyed in public by a whole spectrum of new
sounds.
I’m waiting for the first time a solemn church service is interrupted by some of the, um, shall we say “colorful” language of a 50 Cent ring tone.
I’ve noticed a phenomenon that should be added as one of the corollaries to Murphy’s Law.
The more obnoxious the ring tone, the louder the volume setting.
As if the tune “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” isn’t annoying enough to get someone’s attention, the phone-owner has to have it set for “jet-engine loud” so everyone in the movie theatre can enjoy the nerve-grating serenade.
There is another facet to the ring-tone craze that once again shows that I’ve outlived my usefulness on this planet.
(Warning: Another “Back when I was a kid” moment dead ahead.)
Back when I was a kid, my friends and I collected baseball trading cards, Matchbox cars, and pennies.
Today, kids are collecting ring tones.
You can download them from this thing called the “Internet,” store them in your cellular phone, and trot them out whenever life isn’t keeping you distracted enough with TV, TIVO, CD, DVD, DSL, PS2, MP3, R2D2, C3PO, or LMNOP.
(Okay, I made up the last one, but I’m optimistic that a rapper will soon glom onto it as his stage/’hood name, leading to thousands of gangsta dollars heading my way in the form of royalties.)
While some of the sounds can be annoying, the positive is that the distinctive rings help people discern when it’s their phone ringing instead of the person next to them.
Before the unique tones, business meetings resembled a convention of gunslingers at high noon.
An electronic noise would sing out, and thirty businessmen would simultaneously slap their right sides at belt level like Clint Eastwood reaching for his gun, each checking to see if it was his phone making the sound.
Those who didn’t win the cell phone lottery would grin sheepishly like the gunslinger who accidentally shot the school marm.
“It wasn’t me,” they offer, leaving others around them to figure out whether the guy is referring to his silent phone or that taco-tainted aroma now filling the room.
The only thing that rivals the avalanche of ring tone options in oddness is the proliferation of cell phone ear attachments.
(Warning: Final “Back when I was a kid” moment fast approaching.)
Today, you can find people walking the halls of a building or strolling the aisles at a local store with a wire dangling from their ear, talking to themselves.
They’re called “savvy business people.”
Back when I was a kid, we just called them “crazy."

Armored Cheapskates

I just came across a “Help Wanted” ad for a major armored car company.
(No, I’m not looking for a job…it’s like a self-affirmation I occasionally employ, looking at all the miminum-wage jobs out there that actually pay less than my weekly pittance at the newspaper, reminding me that maybe I don’t have it so bad).
The ad was looking for armed guards and drivers.
The pay?
$9 an hour.
Unbelievable.
Whenever I think about armored cars (which, admittedly, is not very often), I envision the dramatic movie and TV scenes where the bad guys are taking down the driver and guards to empty out the cash.
Now, my vision is of gun-toting guys risking their lives, tooling around town in an uncomfortable truck surrounded by stacks and stacks of hundred dollar bills, knowing that at the end of the week their paycheck will cover almost a half month worth of of rent, as long as they don’t eat or put gas in their own car.
I’m a big advocate of honesty and honor, but it just seems to me that it would require incredible self-restraint to follow the straight and narrow while embedded with the temptation of a king’s fortune on wheels.
I can imagine the driver developing a twitch in his left eye every time he approaches that last interstate exit, with visions of grandeur and opulence enticing him if he would just keep going straight to some hideout down the road where he could off-load his treasure.
(Obviously I’m killing any future I might have had in the currency transportation industry with these confessions.)
There is also a reverse perspective for the armored car companies and the banks which use them:What kind of quality employee do you think you’re going to get for nine bucks an hour?
Really, for that kind of pocket change, when the bad guys show up with automatic weapons, my bet is the driver is going to open the back door, show them where the biggest denominations are kept, and help them load it into the getaway car (which the armed guard will notice is nicer than his personal vehicle waiting at the armored car garage employee parking lot).
Polite robbers would flip the guy a tip, maybe an errant stack of fifties that would equal about three months worth of salary.
The ad goes on to mention that you must have a clean driving report, no criminal record, a favorable credit rating, and pass a drug test.
Let’s be honest, I know ex-cons and parolees who wouldn’t settle for that kind of scratch, so how do they expect to lure top-quality clean cut high school graduates with the moral compass necessary to watch over someone else’s cash?
Sorry, as long as McDonalds needs night managers, the armored car business will continue to be on the lookout for decent employees.
As long as they continue to be tight-fisted, they’ll be short-handed.