211...How may I help you?

The smell of smoke is still in the air.
It's not as bad as it was last week, but when the local landscape guys fire up those leaf blowers....Well, you get the idea.

The fires were a nightmare for lots of folks in San Diego and it was amazing to witness the help that was offered voluntarily by those who were able. My youngest daughter, Katie, was one of the latter. Her whole office pitched in to answer the county's 211 information line. It was an education for her.
Questions such as: "I see flames in my backyard. Should I leave?", were not uncommon. Or, try this one on for size: "My friend is driving down from L.A. to pick me up. Do you know where she is?"
Sometimes the confusion was on the other end of the line. Katie's favorite example went something like this:

Caller: I'm in Oceanside and I'm scared because I see smoke and I don't know if I should evacuate or not."
Katie: "I don't show that you are in an evacuation zone at this time. I'm looking at the map and it appears you are seeing the smoke from the Homo fire. The Homo fire is near the coast and does not pose a threat to your area at this time. You do not need to evacuate." (Then someone taps Katie on the shoulder and says, "Katie...It's the Horno fire...not the HOMO fire!"
Katie appreciated this information very much since she had been calling it the Homo fire all day. That lasik surgery seems to be working for her.

The fires are contained now. We can laugh again.


Katie and husband Doug hugging a tree that is NOT on fire

And then we had this fire...

You may have noticed that I have been negligent lately.
We had this fire...

Isn't that how it usually happens? You begin some new adventure and all hell breaks loose. Barely a week into the launch of SignOn Radio for the Union-Tribune newspaper, and the entire county of San Diego catches fire. It has been an unforgettable experience.

Monday morning at 4:30, Linda and I were awakened by sirens outside our front door followed by a loudspeaker announcement ordering in all residents of San Elijo Hills to evacuate the area. It was a mandatory evacuation.
The immediate concern was, "what do we take"? As it turned out, we didn't have time to grab much. I would do it differently now, but hope that we never again are faced with the same dilemma. For us, the "all clear" came Monday evening and we returned to our home feeling mighty lucky. We knew that others had not been so fortunate.
Linda went to work with me and spent the day camped out with the SignOn crew as we broadcast the San Diego fire story to the rest of the world. The national and international response was amazing. We had calls from all over the world and the stories were compelling. Folks with family in the San Diego area were listening; also people who had lived here before and were wondering about friends and former neighbors. It was radio doing what radio used to do so well, only now it was internet radio.




San Diego 2007




As the situation slowly returns to normal, I will keep you current on how it is all going. Better yet, go to signonradio.com and hear it in real time.

In the GOOD NEWS file: The Nature Theater of Oklahoma, which was conceived and lovingly grown by Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska, was just named the "Breakout Theater Company of 2007" by New York's Village Voice.



Pavol & Kelly

All the hard work pays off!

As usual, I didn't get the memo...

It happens all the time.
Something important is decided and I don't get notified.

Son of a bitch!

For example: At some point during the past couple of years it was decided that things no longer have a price, they have a price point. Have you noticed?
It is impossible to tune in a conversation on any of the TV business channels and not hear references to Apple's price point, the price point of chicken giblets, or the price point of toilet paper. What gives??!! Why the extra word? My POINT is what the hell is the word point doing that is so damned important to THE PRICE of something?

ATTENTION CNBC! Knock it off!!!!

Perhaps I have been watching too much financial television....
I can't help it. I trade stocks every day and seem to be unable to stop. It is not unlike going to the track. I'll admit that I'm hopelessly hooked, although MY bookies wear ties.

Here's something else I don't get: Maybe it's just a California thing. Lately I've noticed that often cars approaching an intersection will stop a car length or two short of the crosswalk. What is that all about??? Again, was there a memo telling all drivers that they should allow plenty of leeway for getting rear-ended at stoplights? My guess is that there was no such memo. Most likely this situation manifests itself because people are so busy talking on the phone that they are merely guessing the whereabouts of the intersection.

Then... there is that stupid TV ad for one of those special pills for guys who have trouble getting their "best friend" to uhh..stand up for them. I don't know the name of the product, but it starts with a C and it features a couple sitting in separate bathtubs admiring the sunset at the end of the commercial. Now, if this thing actually works and is literally the equivalent of having the Acme Crane company at your service in pill form, then what the hell are the happy couple doing in separate tubs??!!

Finally...
Linda and I haven't been OUT to see a movie in over two years. This weekend we saw a good one, "Gone Baby Gone". It was well acted and the adaptation from the book was superb. We had both read the book and enjoyed it. But here's the rub: Even using our "senior" status to secure a discounted ticket, the tab for the movie, popcorn and two medium drinks was $30.
No wonder only kids go to the movies. Kids are the only ones with that kind of "whip out".
We'll be catching all of our movies on DVD and HBO for the foreseeable future.



Gone Baby Gone...

Good flick! Wait for the DVD.



Personal note:
Last week I began doing an Internet radio show with Clark Anthony on the website of the San Diego Union-Tribune. I'm not sure if it's any good...yet, but it sure is FUN. If you're at all interested, it is on from 11am-1pm Pacific time. All you need to do is go to: signonsandiego.com and click on signonradio. It should be in the right-hand corner of the home page. Well, it'll be there until they tell us to "get out!".

Dock that clown a day's pay!

Two evil dorks pumping paws






Okay...who was the moron at the Pentagon that missed this opportunity???

Two major irritants in our sites at the same time and we don't drop some Hiroshima Hot Sauce on them? The general responsible for this military blunder should be docked at least a day's pay and forced to shine camel shoes while wearing a turban and gargling borscht.

One thing I know for sure...
If these two had been in charge, the after-action report would have been stamped: TARGET IDENTIFIED AND DESTROYED.





Dick and "The King"
Still America's Dream Team!

The "Old Salt" gets me thinking...

Capt. Erickson and your correspondent
Christmas shopping for our wives in NYC. I sure hope they like the cigars we've picked out.




My longtime pal, The Skipper, is always a font of information on almost anything you care to talk about. Mention some obscure TV show from the 50's and he'll give you the list of cast members and some inside skinny on the network that ran it. The sludge that rises to the surface of his brain never ceases to amuse and amaze me. He spent years as a captain of tanker ships on the high seas, is an avid outdoors man and even flies his own plane. As long as you don't get him started on the falling dollar and what it means to the price of gold, you're usually in for some stimulating conversation when he's in the mood.

We've been pals since we were fourteen and we talk frequently.
The other day he asked me, "What kind of planes did your dad fly in WW II?" We had both been spending time watching the Ken Burns PBS series "The War" and were comparing notes.
The question took me by surprise. I didn't know the answer. Since dad never talked about the war, all I knew was that he was a member of VF 29 aboard the USS Cabot. I did know that as the war progressed my father was promoted to "flight officer" or something like that and was mostly ordering other men to fly missions.
Like I said, he didn't talk about it. My mother mentioned once that when he got promoted he had a hard time dealing with the fact that he was sending others into battle instead of getting in the plane himself. I can't imagine how tough that must have been.After our conversation I started doing some research and found a couple of books on the Cabot and its crew. It was a carrier in Bull Halsey's fleet and saw action in all the major campaigns in the South Pacific.

The next day I got an e-mail from the Skipper with a website dedicated to the USS Cabot. The pictures on the site were fascinating to me and I found myself wishing that dad were still around to fill me in on what I was looking at.
Where were his quarters? Do you remember this galley? How tough was it to land on a deck this small?
Who were these guys?
Why didn't you want to talk about it?

The USS Cabot

Dad has been gone for almost thirteen years now. We are losing the veterans of WW II at a rate somewhere near 1500 per day. The U.S. lost more than 400,000 good men and women in that conflict and we were the lucky ones. I kick myself for never sitting down with a tape recorder and insisting that he tell me his "war story". He may not have obliged me, but I should have tried.

If you still have a parent or relative who served in WW II don't let another day go by without getting their story. If nothing else we owe it to our kids and grand kids to preserve the memory of the sacrifice of what truly was "The Greatest Generation".

The Cabot was scrapped a few years ago and is now part of a reef somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, but it lives on the freedoms we enjoy in what is still the best damn country in the world.

A New Yankee Skipper?

The Yankees are toast.
Good!
I've always hated them. They ruined my childhood.
When I was a kid I lived in Michigan and the Detroit Tigers were my team. Throughout the 1950's, every Spring brought me new hope that "this will be the Tigers' year". It never was.
The Tigers were usually in sole possession of last place by Memorial Day and my pals and I would spend the Summer stewing in the juices of our hatred for the perennially first place YANKEES.
Since I still carry a grudge, each baseball post season finds me rooting for ANYBODY but the Yankees. This year my heart was with the Cleveland Indians as they nailed the coffin shut on the Bronx Bombers during the playoffs. Now, I'll switch sides and cheer for whoever represents the National League in the World Series. (My long stay in San Diego has made me a Padres fan and a certified hater of all that is the American League.)

Now that the Yankees have been eliminated from contention, the world class awful George Steinbrenner has Yankee manager Joe Torre twisting in the wind regarding his continued employment as skipper of the club. It doesn't matter that Torre has done a good job with the team he had...George is a colossal jerk and will probably have Joe clutching his "blowout box" and calling a cab from the stadium parking lot before the week is out.



Joe Torre:
How could anybody fire a mug like this??!!








With the departure of Joe Torre, major stooge Steinbrenner will be looking for a new person to helm one of the most storied franchises in baseball history...And, I have some suggestions for George's consideration:

Not sure of his name...but he appears to have all the "tools".





Queen Liz: She has a lot of time on her hands and it would be good for international relations.



Eddie Haskel: Ready and rested. Need I say more?



Goober: Could have a real following south of the Mason-Dixon line; good for countering the Brave's lock on the South.









A few others to consider....

Time Flies...Dictators Dance

Like it or not, time flies...



It has been one of those weeks.
Most of my effort was devoted to staying off a jury. I was relieved when the judge eliminated me from consideration for a panel that will hear a case that promises to be especially ugly. I'm no longer young and willing to give most people the benefit of the doubt. My philosophy leans more toward, "dirtbag at 21...dirtbag for life." If the guy is sitting at the defendant's table and the cops thought he did it; I'm inclined to agree. That's common sense where I come from.

All the time at the courthouse gave me an opportunity to do a lot of reading and observing...

Maybe you saw the picture of that little Lee Greenwood look-a-like who is the president of Iran embracing the fat pantload dictator of Venezuela while they were both in New York wasting our time at the UN. Is it just me, or does it seem as if they are dancing at their wedding and are seconds away from picking out the furniture?






"There are no people like us in Iran; so we'll have to build our love nest in your country my chubby love pumpkin."




Also, I don't know if I'm the only one to catch this, have you noticed how much TBS sportscaster Dick Stockton is starting to resemble the late actor Jerry Orbach from TVs Law & Order? If I were Stockton, there would be lots of questions for mom.



"Who's your daddy?"





Is it Jerry...or Memorex?



This week brought some sad news. My old friend, Country Al Watterson, left us on September 28. If you have been reading this blog for awhile you may recall that last March I wrote about radio adventures with Al when we broadcast primarily to prairie dogs , cattle and buffalo on the South Dakota plains in the 1960's. Al was an original who always knew how to have fun. I regret that I never made it to New England to see him in his Vermont retirement haven. The clock just ran out. Good night old pal...Save a show for me on the BIG station. (I'm sure Clear Channel doesn't own it.)

"You remember Susie...Right?"

I'm stuck at the courthouse.
I'm trying to look more unhinged than usual so that I don't get picked for a jury.
It amazes me that I get called to perform this civic duty anyway since I have in years past served on juries that convicted both a drug dealing scum bag and perhaps the dumbest man ever to be charged with murder. (He emptied a 45 into a guy in front of thirty witnesses some years back.) My theory is: Two major pieces of human debris put in cold storage equals a free lifetime pass from jury duty! I've done my DUTY! Leave me alone!
However, this is California where finding humans possessing an IQ somewhere north of yeast is a challenge for the legal system. (See O.J., Robert Blake, Phil Spector etc.)

So...here I am.

I have discovered yet another subject where people fall into one of two camps. One group consists of humans who make statements like this:

"Sally, Marie and Bob are going to Susie and Ed's for the holidays...I'm not sure what Rob and Shirley will do but, you can bet it will make Ella mad."

People who make these kind of statements containing first names only with no exposition or set-up whatsoever are called...WOMEN.

The other group is, of course, male. Men, left to fend for themselves, resort to the only recourse available to them when confronted with information so completely full of holes...They say things like: "Really" or "That's nice, honey", or that old stand-by..."um hum".

Why do women do this?! They just seem to assume that everybody they know is familiar with everybody else they know and also have access to the same set of references and expectations. It's maddening!

Guys, on the other hand, are always more than willing to provide way more information than you'll ever want or need. For example:

"Honey, do you remember my friend Bill Burpman?" "He is the guy married to the red-head with the big rack. Not that I noticed or anything, but remember how cold it was that night?" Anyway, I think he borrowed my shotgun last September 28...the day it was raining...Oh, wait...there it is. Honey?? What are you doing? Put that down! It's not good to point one of those at someone even in fun..."

"Honey?"
"Hon?"