Barry's Life in Napa Blog

If you'd like people to actually pay attention to your blog, and possibly even read it, I suggest the gratuitous use of this type of photo.  I was in the radio business for a long time. I usually say I was in commercial radio, to distinguish that form from public broadcasting. "Commercial" was the key word. Back then, public stations didn't air advertising like they do now - they just mentioned grants and foundations now and then in thankful, well-modulated tones. Over in commercial radio, we were all about the advertising. Ads paid our tiny salaries, and if you had good ratings and people liked you, maybe you could make a few bucks on the side endorsing someone's pizza place or auto shop. Commercials were important. We debated the proper length of commercial breaks for different programming formats, how the breaks should begin and end, whether we could make more selling two 30-second ads or one 60-second ad. We set rules for the maximum number of commercia...

It was random but today I got an email (by mistake, I think) and someone sent me this news story with the headline: Newsstand sales of US magazines drop 12 percent NEW YORK (AP) -- Consumers are buying fewer magazines at newsstands given the deep recession and the availability of plenty of free reading material online. An industry group said Monday that single-copy sales tumbled 12 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2008. That followed a year-over-year decline of 11 percent during the second half of last year. Some group called the Audit Bureau of Circulations (and don't you wish you had THAT job!) gave out these numbers ...Cosmopolitan is still the most popular magazine at newsstands, though sales fell nearly 8 percent to 1.6 million. In overall circulation figures, Playboy and TV Guide Magazine fared the worst, down 9 percent and 10 percent, respectively. People magazine's circulation fell nearly 5 percent and Reader's Digest saw a ...

An observation: people who have car alarms that go off at 4:30 in the morning two days in a row and cause certain people to be awake way earlier than they should be, especially when certain people can never get back to sleep once they're awake, should be rounded up and exiled to Las Vegas. What's the deal with car alarms anyway? (The previous sentence brought to you by Jerry Seinfeld.) There was a time when the car alarm was a novel thing and if you heard one going off you reacted to it. Now you just walk on by, close the window (which doesn't help certain people sleep), turn up the TV. Rather pointless. The Presidential candidate who promises to do away with car alarms gets my vote. Ban leaf blowers, too, and I will vote for you twice. AT&T is promoting their new U-Verse service in my town these days. One of the things they offer is TV (not really cable, but that's the idea) and their pitch includes the promise that you can "record up to 4 programs at once....

I bought some newspapers this week. The SF Chronicle called to tell me my subscription had run out, and offered to renew it. $25 for 26 weeks, they said. I told them that sounded like more than I paid last time, and so they looked it up and sure enough, last subscription was $20 for 26 weeks but that was a "promotional" rate. So I asked if they had a promotional rate this week, and so they looked it up and said yes, and so I paid $15 for 26 weeks. A little more than 50 cents a week for the Wednesday through Sunday service, because apparently nothing you'd want to know about ever happens on Monday or Tuesday, or they can't find enough people in the Bay Area willing to work for a living to staff up and deliver all seven days. Lest you think I am now going to describe how I did my laundry or went grocery shopping, never fear, I have not become the world's most mundane blogger. (I'm still third most mundane.) There is an actual point here. Granted the Chronicle i...

I am a fan of the old time movies, the really old time movies. (Now and then I run across someone who admits they haven't seen Citizen Kane , or Casablanca , which leaves me full of The Sorrow and the Pity .) Since they "just don't make them like that anymore," it can be a little sad sometimes to think that you've seen all the classics, and if you're in the mood for an old time movie you'll just have to watch one you've watched before. That is why I am pleased to report today my personal discovery of The Miracle of Morgan's Creek . I can't hardly say this is a little-known gem - most critics call it a Preston Sturges classic - but not having delved far into the Sturges library, this one came as a real unexpected joy. Especially since I have never found the greatness in Sturges' best-known film, Sullivan's Travels , though I have tried it more than once. After watching The Miracle of Morgan's Creek , I may have to try it again, becau...

Let's begin with this snippet (thank you Scotty) from Thomas L. Friedman's 6/27/07 op ed piece: Three years ago, I was catching a plane at Boston’s Logan airport and went to buy some magazines for the flight. As I approached the cash register, a woman coming from another direction got there just behind me — I thought. But when I put my money down to pay, the woman said in a very loud voice: “Excuse me! I was here first!” And then she fixed me with a piercing stare that said: “I know who you are.” I said I was very sorry, but I was clearly there first. If that happened today, I would have had a very different reaction. I would have said: “Miss, I’m so sorry. I am entirely in the wrong. Please, go ahead. And can I buy your magazines for you? May I buy your lunch? Can I shine your shoes?” Why? Because I’d be thinking there is some chance this woman has a blog or a camera in her cellphone and could, if she so chose, tell the whole world about our encounter — entirely...

Harrison Ford is making me depressed. There is no bigger fan of "Han Solo" and "Indiana Jones" than me. Well, in the sense that I really like all those movies, not in the sense that I dress up like Star Wars characters and go out in public. OK, there was that one time in the Princess Leia outfit. But I digress. Harrison Ford is making me depressed for at least three reasons. 1. He's not aging well. Still lean, and can probably run from jungle pygmies and do battle with stormtroopers and all that, but that face! Yikes! He just looks sad and tired. Maybe he looks sad because 2. He keeps making the same movie over and over. We're flipping channels last night and there's this movie called Firewall . He's a bank security expert and his family is held hostage by some bank robbers who force him to help them rob a bank. I did not need to watch it all to know he would act all scared for awhile, then come up with some clever ploys, and in the end there'...

A southern California web-based news entity has hired reporters to cover Pasadena news - from India. That was described here 5/15 . C.W. Nevius wrote about the outsourcing local journalism story in the 5/20 Chronicle. ...Macpherson's core idea, covering sleepy Pasadena "block by block," as he says, is one of the trendy new theories in modern journalism. "In this community, the local newspaper had to cut back and has left a vacuum," Macpherson said. Pasadena Now, which he says attracted 45,000 unique readers last month in a community of 155,000 and is now in its third year, intends to fill that need. He's not the only one. Rob Curley, a self-described "Internet nerd from Kansas," has pioneered a new "hyper-local" coverage that he's selling to major news organizations. Starting at small newspapers in Kansas, his approach has been such a hit that Curley is now setting up a model for the big, influential Washington Post. Cu...

From the Boston Herald story : P ASADENA, Calif. - The job posting was a head-scratcher: "We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA." Granted, the world is flat and outsourcing work to far-flung places is good for keeping prices down. (Perhaps not so good for actually getting help from the help desk in a dialect you can understand, but that's another story.) But one might think that there are some jobs that just cannot be done from a remote location, some things that simply require your presence in proximity to the job. Then again, maybe not. The story in question relates to a web publication called Pasadena Now . Management of this outlet made news last week when it was reported that they are outsourcing news reporting duties to India. Pasadena Now is a very low budget affair, and James Macpherson is trying to beef up his news content affordably. It's the same problem small local ne...

Any good parent or teacher knows that when you have a kid who is acting out, throwing fits, making a scene, you just play into their hands if you give them too much attention. That's what they're after, your attention. By getting drawn into their world, you let the tantrum-thrower take control. I remember one parenting expert who advised the best way to deal with a kid throwing a fit is to simply walk out of the room and deny them your attention. In other words, you will not get what you want by engaging in this behavior. So the Virginia Tech shooter, whose rampage is just another form of throwing an "I'm not getting my way" tantrum, is now trying to draw us unto his world and control us with his calculated acting out. The package of photos and videos that he sent to NBC are clear evidence of not just a twisted mind, but of his goal to perform the ultimate "look at me" act. Unfailingly, the media does exactly the wrong thing in almost all of these cases....

If you're looking for a movie that will spoil all the joys of drinking, try Factotum . We viewed this little slice of seamy life this weekend. Nicely acted by Matt Dillon, and the director succeeded in keeping it cohesive - cohesively depressing. If you're not familiar, this movie is based on the life and stories of Charles Bukowski . He was highly prolific, tons of stories, poems and novels. (You might recall another film for which he wrote the screenplay, Barfly .) I haven't read any of his work, but you only have to glance at one of his pages to see he had a powerful and direct style. I admire that. But it saddens me to think that only the whisky sodden can write tight prose. Is there no severability of talent with words and talent with the bottle? Today's challenge: name three great sober writers. This portrayal of a small part of Bukowski's life did not inspire me. It seemed most of his misery was self-inflcited. And in some ways the film glorified an "hon...

When you're on the radio doing a talk show, things happen fast. You've got a caller, or a partner, or a room full of people, and everyone is bantering and making wisecracks and trying to top each other and get a laugh. Somedays it's all flowing and somedays nothing works. But you keep doing it hour after hour, day after day. In my experience, there were the moments when I knew we had just done something really funny or poignant, and when we had been really sucky. And now and then, a little bell would go off in your head that the thing you just said might have been over the line, and you would probably be getting some blowback. If you're Don Imus, I doubt the little bell goes off when you say the phrase "nappy headed hos." This is a show that probably delivered 59 tasteless remarks every day. People expect this level of quasi-edgy standup comedy with a lot of stereotyping, juvenile insult humor, and a general sense that anything goes. I'd bet that Imus is ...

So I'm flipping channels a few days back and The Born Losers is on, so I cannot resist watching a bit of that. For those who have not had the pleasure - no, pleasure is not the word....hmmm, let's say the experience of viewing this 1967 film, here are a couple of the tag lines from IMDB: CORNERED! A HOT SUMMER NIGHT...A PACK OF STRAY 'CHOPPER JOCKEYS'... An innocent girl is first prize in the dirtiest game ever played! Kitten on wheels, with her bike, her boots and her bikini! So you get the idea. However, the reason I flipped to it in the first place is that this is a Tom Laughlin movie, he who would be Billy Jack . Now Billy Jack may be, by traditional standards, the most technically pathetic yet commercially successful movie ever made. Little considerations like the quality of cinematography, sound, editing, and acting did not deter Tom Laughlin from making a movie. Billy Jack has a special place in my mind because (a) the character was really cool to my 12 y...

Here's one from the you-gotta-be-kidding-me files: Iran's Cultural Minister is protesting the movie 300 , while one of the Iranian newspapers says Hollywood has "declared war on Iranians." (Little do they know Hollywood only protests wars, it doesn't declare them.) The problem is that they think the movie makes Iranians looks bad. Of course, there are no Iranians depicted in the movie, just Persians, who are the ancestors of some modern day Iranians. Ironically, the vast majority of Americans going to see this film would never have made the connection between Iran and Persia if it hadn't been pointed out, since the day that was covered in World History we skipped class to go see a movie. I haven't seen the movie yet, although I've been looking forward to it for weeks. I read Gates of Fire recently, which is an excellent telling of the Thermopylae story, and even though I'm not into the gaphic novels, I liked Sin City , another Frank Miller creatio...

I never got into South Park , or Beavis and Butthead , and I try hard but don't get many laughs from Family Guy - but to my credit, I am a major fan of Team America: World Police , everything by Sasha Baron Cohen, and I can trace my lineage as a fan to Steve Martin and Mel Brooks. So that says I like satire, and you can go so far over the top with something totally sophomoric and still be killing me on an intellectual level. And I will also admit that you can't make something that will offend me if it is funny at the same time. If you can make it work, there is no topic, language or style that will put me off. Case in point, The Aristocrats , in which the star of today's post delivered one of the most memorable renditions of the legendary joke. All that said, I give me whole-hearted endorsement to the fore-mentioned star and her new show the Sarah Silverman Program . The season finale featured Sarah having sex with God. I think she's breaking new ground here. Wikipedia...

A few days back I mentioned 95.7 FM in SF had switched to a country format, and was kicking it off by playing "10,000 songs in a row commercial free." The commercial free part is swell, but I guess I didn't realize they were going to play the same 100 songs a 100 times each. I should have guessed. I've been reading Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media by Eric Klineberg, which explains a lot about why music radio has such tiny playlists. One explanation is simple-the big recording companies have been paying the big broadcasters for spins. What? You thought payola was outlawed in the 50s? Well, sure it was, and no one ever finds a loophole, do they? So today in the news, reports of a deal between the 4 big media conglomerates and the FCC to settle the latest payola scandal. And what a surprise! An insignificant fine, a token offer to play some non-corporate tunes (for a little while), and back to business as usual. With the huge amounts of com...

Since I can't drive without constantly changing the radio station, it's no surprise that I ran across 95.7 FM yesterday (3/1) broadcasting a countdown to a format change. They had a robotic voice doing a "T-minus 14 hours, 28 minutes" kind of thing, and having done some format flips before I knew right away what they were up to. So "Max FM" and the voice of Mr. Peterman is gone from Bay Area radio, and once we have all dried our tears we'll try to gather the pieces of our shattered lives. Today, you can hear "95.7 The Wolf" on that spot on the dial, which as you might guess, is a country format. They are kicking it off by playing 10,000 songs in a row without a commercial. After that they will play 10,000 commercials in a row without a song, or at least it will seem like it. It will be interesting to see if this version of a country station can survive here - undoubtedly the largest media market in the country where country stations are rare t...

I've heard that irony has gone out of style, but when I read that a weekly paper called AsianWeek had run an opinion piece titled "Why I Hate Blacks," I assumed it had to be some kind of - well, black humor. The weekly has pulled the story off their website but you can read parts of the attention-getting column here , and reportedly the paper is still on the streets. (I can't find the source today but somewhere I read this weekly was subsidized by the City of San Francisco as an "outreach" tool. That's embarrassing.) The latest is that this 22-year old deep thinker who wrote the piece has now been fired. I guess his earlier masterpieces (see titles here) did not give any indication of racist tendencies in his writing. The AP says : Kenneth Eng, who has described himself as an " Asian Supremacist," has written several columns for AsianWeek since November, including pieces titled "Proof That Whites Inherently Hate Us" and "Why I ...

Stunningly obvious statement #1: the Academy Awards goes on too long. Stunningly obvious statement #2: the Academy Awards is sometimes boring Providing these insights that could have been written a week or a month or a year in advance is none other than Professional Critic Tom Shales of the Washington Post. And these and similar profundities, I'm sure, are being mouthed by hundreds of others this morning. (Tom comes across a little world weary in his review of the Oscars . Who peed in your Post Toasties, my friend?) This calls for my current favorite, and seemingly very popular summary statement, which is applicable to just about every situation and makes you seem wise: "It is what it is." It is also obvious to point out that winners usually have done their best work in some earlier movie, and get the award as some kind of a make up. The constant lag between the achievement and the recognition creates a backlog, so there a line a mile long of people who deserve it but won...

Look, I'm no prude, and I defend the right of consenting adults to blah blah blah and the government does not belong in the bedroom blah blah blah and above all freedom of the press blah blah blah, ok? But all the same, how is that I turn on KGO-AM this week, one of the most respected news-talk radio stations in history, and hear Ronn Owens interviewing Ron Jeremy, the hardcore pornstar, as if he is some kind of elder statesman? Like he's some kind of hero! A role model! Since when is it that someone who makes their living by having meaningless sex on camera a person to be admired? I know that porn has become more mainstream over time. And let me repeat - watch what you want, no harm no foul. But don't bring somebody like this out into the light of day and try to tell me they belong on the talk show circuit. Is this the lasting legacy of Howard Stern, to lower standards to the point where things that were sketchy for Tom Snyder at midnight 20 years ago, are now acceptable a...