Conflicting Consensus
Is Everyone OK With This?
Think of consensus as a glass of warm comforting milk — homogenized milk. Instead of voting on something — with the result that the majority gets its way — consensus building has the goal of a solution that everyone is “OK” with. As of yet, there is no consensus on what “OK” means…
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First Broadcast December 24, 2010
People Are Strange
Jim Morrison and the Queer State of Florida
It was while performing drunk and irreverently at a Door’s concert at the Dinner Key Auditorium in the Coconut Grove section of Miami on March 1, 1969 that Morrison achieved complete freedom while his penis made headlines…
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First Broadcast December 17, 2010
Time Does Not Fly
The Ultimate Minute Extension Program
Today, I’m going to show you how to live longer. Now, I don’t intend to add years onto your life or to make you immortal. We’ll save that for another session. But with Southern California’s latest addition to the self-improvement cavalcade, the Ultimate Minute Extension Program, I guarantee that every minute you live will be prolonged beyond your wildest expectations …
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First Broadcast December 10, 2010
Our Lives on Holidays
On Temporal Naming Rights
I was driving down Harbor Boulevard last weekend when I saw it arriving. You know what I’m talking about. It started with a 10 foot banner that said “Noel.” Next I saw twinkly lights on the hedges and palms around South Coast Plaza. On Sunflower, cranes were positioning reindeer light sculptures. A block away a chain link fence in a Home Depot parking lot marked the boundaries of a future Douglas Fir holding yard. Jesus Christ on a bike, I’m sick of it already and it’s not even December. Here we go — the slide into obsessive oblivion — our head into the holidays.…
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First Broadcast November 26, 2010
Compliments Gone Wild
How Not to Use Praise
You’ve been a very attentive audience. Thank you. I like praise, too. In fact, I’d like some praise for here, and some to go. But please be certain it’s praise you’re giving me, not butter-up, brown nose, peer-hopping, lip-service…
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First Broadcast November 19, 2010
The Movie Sets of Frank Lloyd Wright
American Idol Architect
Most intellectuals in the chattering class (as if there’s any other kind) revile Hollywood’s incessant worship of the mundane. But the American tradition of unjust boundless praise isn’t limited to entertainment nitwits. In that regard the learned class can be just as vacant …
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First Broadcast November 12, 2010
Earthquake Weather
On NetQuakes and Subterranean Winds
In the never-ending attempt to lay maps on the territory, scientists from the U.S. Geologic Survey are currently looking for volunteers in Orange County interested in installing home-based earthquake sensors. … more
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First Broadcast November 5, 2010
Kirk, Harold and Maude
On Memorabilia and Memory
Even though I’m a big baseball fan, I’m also anti-memorabilia-ist. Storing material prompts for memories is neither my ambition, nor my religion. However, the recent news that baseball legend Kirk Gibson was auctioning off his treasured Dodger World Series keepsakes grabbed me in the way Ruth Gordon’s character in Harold and Maude grabbed me … more
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First Broadcast October 29, 2010
Snow White and the EPA Creationist
On the State of Science and Religion
Last weekend, during that familiar yet awkward point at a wedding reception — before the toasts, cake cutting and garter toss — when the improvised B-list seating arrangements conspire in unpredictably embarrassing ways, I found myself sitting with a group of biologists.… more
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First Broadcast October 22, 2010
Circling the Seniors
The Natural Habitat of Real Estate Vultures
Up the outside flight of steep concrete stairs 81-year-old Frank — hot meal in hand — slowly climbs to a small landing and rings a doorbell. A long minute passes. The front door opens. A head in shadows peers out from inside. Then a wavering aphasiated octogenarian women’s voice dampened by a stroke asks Frank to open the security door that serves as protection against the world outside. The tiny landing is jammed with stacks of old wet newspapers, empty flower pots and two seatless chairs, so, in order to open the security door that swings outward, Frank has to step backward off the landing, balancing the hot meal.… more
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First Broadcast October 8, 2010
The Hyperreal Whorehouse
Themepark Simulacra and Stimulation
This Summer in Orange County, California, Knott's Berry Farm began the tear-down of Goldie's Place — one of the themepark’s last original buildings from the 1940s. The demolition began with little fanfare. That’s surprising because Goldie’s is the berry farm’s imaginary Whorehouse. … more
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First Broadcast October 1, 2010
The Thank God School of Business
Pepperdine’s PR Purgatorio
It’s 2 am. The radio is on. But it feels like a dream. Somehow a voice on the air is tempting me to enroll at the Graziadio School of Business and Management. Graziadio? A school of business that thanks God in Italian? How could this be?… more
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First Broadcast September 24, 2010
The Carnivore’s License
A Simple Solution to the Ethical Regulation of Slaughter
As a diet conscious Southern Californian, I’ve read the horrifying literature on beef and beef poo. I know about zombie chickens that can’t walk because their bodies have been transformed into meatballs. I’m told there’s lead and Pacific Gyre plastic in the Pacific so the fish are chemically enhanced. Pesticides and hormones are everywhere, mutating everything on my kitchen table. I try to eat as many fresh vegetables as I can, but I’m always checking the pedigree. Organic? On the stem? Packaged or unpackaged? Grapes from Chile? How many gallons of petrol does it take to make Ceasar Chavez roll over in his United Fruit Workers coffin. My coffee is free trade. Do I get bonus points? Is it OK to consume eggs? Sourdough? Twinkies? Tap water? Free range Chicken McNuggets?… more
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First Broadcast September 17, 2010
The Greatest Beneficiary Generation
A Lesson in Perspective for the Orange County Symphony
Earlier this year, Orange County, California’s Pacific Symphony dedicated a performance to “the greatest generation any society has produced”. Even though this so-called Greatest Generation is still with us, thanks to the blessing of old age they’re dwindling in numbers. And by Greatest Generation I don’t mean the generation who grew up in the United States during the Great Depression, and then went on to fight in World War II. What I mean is the people who grew up during that time and actually believe that they are The Greatest Generation who ever lived. What a load of crap.… more
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First Broadcast September 10, 2010
Circumstantial Disabilities
A Guide to the Accidentally Challenged
Dylan Thomas once said that “A born writer is born scrofulous (scruffulous); his career is an accident dictated by physical or circumstantial disabilities.” I’m not sure whether or not I’m a born writer, but I do know that I’m scruffulous — or as my parents used to say, morally degenerate and corrupt. Maybe Dylan Thomas was right. Maybe my degeneracy is related to a disability. It hasn’t gotten me a job. But I’ve always believed in hiring the disabled. Let them suffer like the rest of the world.… more
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First Broadcast September 3, 2010
Gas Powered Recreation
Thoughts on Human Ignorance
It was the front page headline in Los Angeles Times and dominated the local news channels for days. On August 14th, an decked-out off-road Ford Ranger with “Misery Motorsports” painted on its doors went airborne at the California 200 desert race and smacked into a crowd of spectators killing eight and injuring 12.… more
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First Broadcast August 27, 2010
One Year, Two Summers
Real Life Seasons in Southern California
In the summer of 1970, Washington, D.C., turned ugly. Ugly not because of the war in Vietnam, or political scandal, or urban riots. Ugly because it was hot—101 degrees perspiration-gathering-on-the-tip-of-your-nose and in-the-small-of-your-back hot. The heat wilted trees on Eye Street and visually bent the brownstones.… more
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First Broadcast August 20, 2010
My First Air Show
One Source of My Fear of Flying
There's a thump at the back of my head — on the wall. Then, I'm in the soup between awake and asleep. Was the screen door slamming?. Frank and Bettilou — my parents —— run into the back yard. With a new moon sky Mom trips, sails and hits the ground. Above, in the silence, a Cessna's engine starts.… more
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First Broadcast August 13, 2010
The Big Reason
Legends, Mantras Battle Cries and Truth in Advertising
As my grandmother Elizabeth aged, nearly all her statements became mottoes or slogans or platitudes. “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” she said right after we sang her birthday song .… more
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First Broadcast August 6, 2010
Little Beasts
Child Rearing in an Adult World
I am not myself today. It isn’t because I am awash in all variety of ruination — that my 17 year-old dog, Luna, died in my arms last Wednesday or that my 100 year-old senile grandmother — of whom I am the only grandchild — called me Herman (her long deceased brother’s name), and told me to milk the cows (I consented, hundreds of miles from the nearest bovine utter) .… more
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First Broadcast July 30, 2010
Heat Is Murder
On Sunscreen and Serial Killings
The sun does unsettling things to people. I’m always amazed by the number of us basking on Southern California’s summer beaches still trying to roast our skins and minds.… more
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First Broadcast July 23, 2010
You Don't Deserve This Home
Joseph Eichler’s Mass Market Architectural Conceit
While there's nothing cooler than the slope of a 1957 Chevrolet's tail fin, that same car is a smog-spewing, gas-guzzling metal coffin with functional flaws aplenty. In the same vein, don't let the clean, distinctive lines and mass-market appeal of an Eichler designed home fool you — it's the '57 Chevy of real estate… more
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First Broadcast July 16, 2010
Heaven and Earth
Thoughts on Baseball, Art and Other Altered States: Mystery
The nameless is the beginning of art and baseball. While the named is the mother of statistics, the nameless is the gateway to the mystery of everlasting hardball truth…
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First Broadcast July 9, 2010
The Legend of the Dancing Goat Society
So the Goodness May Flow Through the Liquid
I grew up a coffee drinker in Southern California. By 1992, I was a member of The Dancing Goat Society. Let me explain. On a morning in Ethiopia, some 1200 years ago. Khaldi, a goat herder well known for his laid back manner, awoke to the sight of his flock behaving extraordinarily. The natty beasts were dancing a dervish, standing on hind legs and bleating a Dionysian rhapsody as if primed by the goat-god Pan. When Khaldi noticed some of them munching on branches of bright red berries he took it upon himself to do the same. Enlightenment was at hand. The berries tasted bitter, but soon Khaldi found himself exhilarated, clear-thinking and wonderously joyful… more
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First Broadcast July 2, 2010
Big Picture People
It's a Binary Shakedown. Here's Their Scam
I draw a salary to work with Big Picture People. In spite of the self-ascribed grandeur of their visions and the sincerity of their altruistic posturing, I really can’t handle their crap without compensation. Sometimes serious compensation… more
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First Broadcast June 25, 2010
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