EdCone.com

Web pages for GOP hopefuls for NC governor. All pretty rudimentary at this point. No blogs, social software, etc. But still ahead of incumbent Democrat Mike Easley, who has no active campaign site up -- although I know at least one prominent Greensboro supporter has sent him the Baseline case study.

Is North Carolina really a good test bed for Internet campaigning? That's one of the subjects Henry Copeland and I discussed yesterday at Thiggy's Pizza in beautiful downtown Greensboro.

Henry raised three questions: Is the passion behind Dean lacking in the Bowles camp? Is there a blog community of critical mass to sustain a Web campaign? And, doesn't the existence of a big, strong Democratic party in the state make the party less likely to adopt new tools?

My answer to number one: campaigns shouldn't try to out-Dean Dean. He's got the anti-war vibe going -- that's unique, or at least rare. The key is to abstract the online strategy by asking simple questions: does grassroots organizing matter? If so, are tools that make such organizing cheap and effective of value? Yes, and yes. Coordinated volunteer activity in 100 counties would be a big plus for any NC campaign. The Net can help you do that. QED.

Two: the blog community. It's not there yet on the volunteer level, but with the right focus and seeding (local activists, universities...) there could be dozens of Bowles blogs by June.

Finally, the existing party structure breeding complacency and turf jealously. Definitely a danger. But in a tight race, getting new voters out and convincing swing voters to swing your way will be critical. Forget the Internet-changes-everything fallacy -- if a good online campaign delivers, say, an incremental 3% of the vote, it's well worthwhile. And any campaign that loses a close race in which it doesn't deploy Internet tools deserves what it gets.

Henry Copeland: Dan Okrent discovered Bill James, and what that might mean for the New York Times.

The Lord of the Rings resists interpretation as simple allegory, but Tolkien's myth is overlaid on several recognizable templates, eg, Norse mythology, English village life, Christianity, etc.

One underpinning of the story is the history of the Crusades; seen through this lens, the most successful films of the 9/11 era are about the triumph of Christendom over the Islamic world.

Understanding fallen Arnor and beseiged Gondor as the Western and Eastern Roman Empires requires no great leap of imagination, with Minas Tirith doing a fine impersonation of Constantinople -- a white-walled citadel against the scimitar-wielding hordes to the east, who have overrun many of the old empire's provinces.

Tolkien does indulge in racial stereotypes that reinforce this clash of civilizations motif -- evil human characters tend to be darker than the good guys, and often have eyes that slant. Middle Earth's only clearly identifiable black people fight on the side of the Dark Lord, both in the books and the movie. On the other side of the battlefield, the Rohirrim are noticably Germanic, the hobbits English. Tolkien's Jews are on the side of the West.

The question of Tolkien's alleged racism is tricky. Some of his heroes are not Aryans but instead are hobbits or talking trees, and there are bad wizards and (in the books) quisling hobbits, and he's taken the trouble of making his worst villains non-human, and so on.

It's complicated, much more complicated than, say, the racist caricatures of Arabs in The Horse and His Boy from C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.

But viewed as history retold as myth, The Lord of the Rings owes as much to The Song of Roland (pre-Crusades and non-historical, I know) and tales of the Crusades as it does to its myriad other sources.I don't think the victory of The West over Islam, er, Sauron is the key to the popularity of the movies or the books, but the subtext is unavoidable.

Spare me the zeal of converts.

Jeff Jarvis, a column in the Dallas Morning News by Kathy Shaidle about her post-9/11 attitude adjustment. It's not her new attitude that bothers me,it's that her previous "liberal" positions were so clueless in the first place, eg, "rolling my eyes at the tacky teddy bear memorials at the Oklahoma City bombing and muttering, 'You would think a building never had blown up before.'"

Got it: you are a sucker for bumper-sticker politics of various persuasions. Why should we listen to you now?

It's kind of like the young Dr. Laura letting her married boyfriend take nude pictures of her, then growing up to tell the rest of the world not to have pre-maritial sex. One extreme to the other.

Notes from a blogfree week:

Read: The Cold Six Thousand, by James Ellroy.

Good eats: Cousin John's Christmas Eve lasagna.

Blogfriends I meant to call: Jeff Jarvis for coffee in NJ, Jay Rosen for lunch in NY.

Called: nobody.

New Scrabble threat: Elijah, aka, Oedipus with a good vocabulary.

Best present: Sex Pistols CD.

Drivers of America, take note: the left lane is for passing. The long line of cars behind you is not a parade. Move on or move over.

Home again, home again. Lunch today in G'boro with Henry Copeland.

It's time to talk about the Frodo Problem. The Lord of the Rings rocks on film, but Elijah Wood is just wrong for the part of Frodo Baggins.

Too young. Too wimpy. Too pretty.

I'm as grateful as the next geek to Peter Jackson for the job he did with LOTR. The movies illustrate the books beautifully, and draw in people who never read the source material. ("That cute elf doesn't die, does he?," demanded my wife  before seeing TROTK.) Jackson nails the physical world of Middle Earth, streamlines the action effectively to fit the story into filmtime, and brings to life hard-to-picture characters like Gollum and Treebeard.

I'm not crazy about all of Jackson's changes, but I think I understand them. It's a shame to have Agent Smith from the Matrix flicks play Elrond less as a wise king than an overprotective father, but I guess that underscores the gravity of Arwen's choice for movie audiences lacking the backstory. Sending Aragorn over the cliff in The Two Towers seemed a needless bit of action, but it allowed the dream sequence that explained his romance with the elven princess. And so on.

But Frodo -- please. He's supposed to be older than Merry, Pippin, and Sam, but he looks like their kid brother. Even when he embarks on that last ship, after going literally to hell and back, his face is unlined and boyish.

Jackson skipped the critical 'Scouring of the Shire' chapter, wherein the story of the books is recapitulated in microcosm in the hobbits' homeland. OK, he had to skip it, for reasons of time and pacing. But that means he skipped an important explication of Frodo's character -- the moment when he keeps the mob from killing Saruman, thus revealing his hard-won maturity, even nobility. The movie could have used that moment, because we damn sure don't get it from visual cues.

None of this is poor Elijah Wood's fault. He does what he can with a very thin role. But why did Jackson cast the callow lad to begin with? To reach the youth market? More to the point, why did Jackson not age Frodo as the movie went on? A few age lines in the makeup trailer would have worked wonders.

The Lord of the Rings is a great, great movie trilogy, true to the spirit of the books, true to their letter as much as possible. Boy Frodo is a mistake I can live with, but it's a mistake nonetheless.

John Edwards is a Democrat who could have chosen to become a Republican. His choices say good things about his character.

Edwards came from a modest background and made his fortune, but he didn't forget his roots. Rather than saying "I've got mine, pull up the ladder," he's interested in making sure others have opportunities, too.

He's a true Southern Democrat in ways that Wesley Clark is not. Nothing against Clark, whose strong Internet campaign and international experience have helped earn him grassroots support, but Edwards speaks to the long progressive tradition of this region in ways the General doesn't.

Maybe that will convince voters in South Carolina at primary time. An Edwards win there could make him a contender. A loss makes him history.

Either way, I appreciate his message of inclusiveness and opportunity for all. He represents the best this state's political culture, and I'm proud to call him my Senator.

I'm off to get ready for a big Jersey Italian Christmas Eve, a tradition of my wife's family that never ceases to entertain this nice Jewish boy from North Carolina. 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

William Safire picks up on the Dean/third party meme in an oddly overwritten column.

The Dean-Internet Party, its Bush-despising base so energized as to be frenetic, its leader happy to be the apostle of anger, its bandwidth bandwagon gaining momentum with each pulse of its cursing cursor.

See, it's all about hating Bush and this newfangled Internet thing. Thanks for the tip, Bill.

Emergent Democracy Forum, San Diego, February 9.

Spawn of the famous O'Reilly ETech conference.

Topics include online campaigning, governance, advocacy, and e-voting. Good speakers.

(Full disclosure: I'm on the program committee.)

Wired: How the Internet invented Howard Dean.

Gary Wolf moves the story forward a bit by getting some face time with the candidate. Dean: "If I give a speech and the blog people don't like it, next time I change the speech."

Meanwhile, Jay Rosen unpacks Frank Rich's NYT article on media/DC cluelessness about Dean.

Rosen: "(T)here is a big story gathering. We as nation ought to understand it whole. Political journalists should be leading the way. The story: Asymetrical warfare comes home in the form of campaign 2004."

540 miles, Greensboro to the in-laws' house; 8 hours 15 minutes. I-81 up the Shenandoah Valley. Beautiful, plus you miss Richmond, DC, Baltimore, and the Jersey Turnpike. Secret to rapid travel: send the kids up on a plane with mom (eliminates many pit stops). Worked on the phone. Glad to be here.

Richard Burr and Erskine Bowles both have campaign websites. Early versions, to be sure -- Bowles says improvements are on the way and a new site will launch soon.

Burr's site is mostly boilerplate, but it works as branding -- "conservative Republican business guy" comes thru loud and clear.

The Bowles site feels a bit more personal, and he plays up his strong resume. Interesting that he leads with his leadership of the NC Rural Prosperity Task Force (which among other things pushed for high-speed Internet access for rural areas of the state) and only at the end gets to his role as Clinton's White House chief of staff.

Both sites allow volunteers to sign up and to give money. No blogs, Meetup, etc. yet for either candidate.

A credit card scam aimed at Earthlink and other ISP customers is enough of a problem that callers to Earthlink can hear about it on the automated phone menu. "If you have received X or Y email, press 5..."

I got some official looking emails telling me that my Earthlink account was going to be suspended unless I verified my credit card info at an official looking site. It didn't feel right, especially since my invoice email just arrived -- all paid up.

There are some very clever crooks out there.

Erskine Bowles has hired a campaign manager and an ad man for his Senate run.

They have an incredible opportunity ahead of them. North Carolina should be a great proving ground for Internet campaigning at a state level. With 100 counties, the ability to organize local volunteers efficiently is critical. Senate campaigns here have been very expensive in recent elections, so the cost advantage of Internet organization is important. We've got good Internet infrastructure and culture. And local voices matter in a state with three distinct regions along its 500+ mile length.   

I know Bowles has a copy of the Baseline case study, and that some of his backers understand the potential here. I hope his campaign pros buy in quickly -- here's some advice on how to get going.

I'd be happy to discuss this with Bowles' opponent, Richard Burr, too.

Halley: "The same things Bush doesn't understand about terrorists' networks and cells, he doesn't understand about political networks. He thinks you squash them from the top down."

Our neighbor had brain surgery. Cutting edge stuff, so to speak -- a device was implanted in his head to treat early-onset Parkinsons. Luna and I were out walking and I decided to ring his doorbell.

He answered, looking better than he has in years.

"How's your brain?," I asked him.

"Great," he said.

He stood straight, moved easily. No tremors. No more drugs to make him feel slow and hazy. This morning he took his kid out for pancakes, the kind of vital, normal activity denied him before.

We talked for a while in the December sunshine under a Carolina blue sky. As Luna and I headed for home I turned and said, Congratulations....Is that the right word? Mazel Tov?"

"It's like, Happy Birthday," he said.

Getting it, almost: The Times runs a semi-clueful article about turning online organizing into offline action, but writer Elisabeth Rosenthal stumbles in saying the goal is to turn Web recruits into "a disciplined army of campaign workers, who stay in step and on message." 

Using the Web to organize offline activity is a critical part of the Dean strategy, and it's good to see the Times figuring this out, especially after the mag trivialized the story a couple of weeks ago. And Rosenthal is right that volunteer energy can't be randomly directed. But "in step and on message" is the language of traditional campaigns, and I don't think that's what makes this campaign tick. Dean volunteers have been on-task for months, writing letters and performing other jobs directed from campaign HQ, without giving up local initiative and creativity.

Meanwhile, a strong Frank Rich piece brings home to the mass audience many of the points about the Dean campaign we've been discussing in the blogosphere and in Baseline -- including the cluelessness of political pros as to what's going on.

frograbbitmonkey: "It's a strange and wonderful feeling to be happy just where I am."

Something else for this fine Greensboro blogger to be happy about: she got into law school.

When I was growing up, no year was complete without an idiosyncratically rhymed recap from my father. In today's newspaper column, I continue that tradition with a review of local and national news.

Good article in the Times about grassroots organizing by the GOP:

Bush campaign officials say they envision tens of thousands of volunteers, many armed with palmtop computers with access to a database of voters' names and the issues that move them, fanning out through just about every neighborhood in the country in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

Of course, a slightly better article would have mentioned the slick online component to the GOP's effort.

Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis discuss what's new, and what's not, about the Dean campaign.

The N&R's Margaret Moffett Banks reports that Chico Sabbah's Fortress Re has lost in arbitration with a Japanese insurer and must pay over $1.1 billion in compensation and damages. A separate suit involving the American Hebrew Academy has not yet been resolved. Incredibly, the N&R chose not to put this story online this morning.

I'm thinking of getting my penis its own email address. Damn thing gets more email than I do.

Weblogs in Journalism conference at UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Monday, Jan. 26 - Tuesday, Jan 27.

I'm on the "Blogging on the Job" panel.

And we're still trying to cook up a broader NC blogging conference...

Lawrence Lessig tells Chris Lydon that in the current presidential campaign, "there will be a change that comes from the fact that people are participating in the construction of the political story around them. That in my view will be the most important political event in the last hundred years." (via BoP)

Hmm. Even allowing that a few things might vie for that most-important-in-the last-hundred-years title (Civil Rights? Women's suffrage? The New Deal?), it's still a big claim. One which I hope turns out to be true, but if it was a dotcom I probably wouldn't buy the stock.

Elizabeth Edwards says this post, lamenting response time at several campaign blogs (including her husband's) to the news of Saddam's capture, is not realistic.

John was on a red-eye from California, and he released a statement as soon as possible. Ed, you need to be realistic about the candidates, their mode of operation (some require that their words be used, others that words proposed by others be approved, and others allow staff to respond). I assume that in this case all the candidates at least approved the releases. But they all can't be available before you log in in the morning; it hardly means that they are insensitive to the medium.

Understood. A statement from the candidate isn't always going to be available on Internet time. Josh Marshall deflated a big balloon full of bloghype at BloggerCon by making a similar point.

But I think the medium is flexible enough that people who are using it really well would have found a way to have something up at the blog by noon Sunday. It's a many-to-many medium, about not just the candidate and staff but the larger campaign. Part of a parallel media, by and for a community. A forum on the news put up by a staffer, a placeholder post saying that the Senator would comment when he got off the plane...in a real-time medium, those things make sense to me. Especially if you want your website/blog to be the center of a community, not just an adjunct to it.

I've received several emails from people who are having trouble downloading the PDF file of the Dean campaign case study from the Baseline site. Word of the glitch has been passed along to the ZD citadel on East 28th Street in New York, and I'm told that the people who fix that kind of thing are working on it now. Thanks for your patience.

Elizabeth Ito, the Forsyth County community college instructor who lost her job after questioning the war in Iraq during class time, has lost her appeal for reinstatement.

The N&R says the meeting where her appeal to Forsyth Tech was discussed may have been improperly closed to the public.

Dave Winer created an aggregator for Dean-centric weblogs, Dean Community News.

Dave is not a Deaniac, he's interested in technology that makes democracy work better.

I'm not a Dean supporter, either, by the way (I'm undecided), just a journalist covering the intersection of technology and politics.

South Carolina is a key to John Edwards' primary strategy, and he's been doing well there in early polls. But the News & Record's Eric Dyer reports this morning that the state is still up for grabs.

 

Edwards himself posted from South Carolina yesterday at his campaign weblog.

 

The Edwards South Carolina campaign weblog is not the most vibrant site on the Web. It does not feel like a grassroots effort.

 

Wesley Clark supporters have two SC blogs -- whole state and upstate -- both pretty lively. Dean doesn't have an official SC weblog, but does have a volunteer blog and website.

What would you ask Joe Lieberman if he was at the urinal next to you?

I would have gone with the one about the weblog.

I once went to a Userland Software staff meeting at Dave Winer's house in Woodside, California.

Can that really have been just three years ago?

It was before 9/11, so there has definitely been a kairotic break in time since then.

But so much has happened at the company, too -- Brent was still there, JRobb wasn't there yet, Dave was still very hands-on...if I remember correctly, Radio wasn't yet packaged as a blogging product. We think of time moving quickly in the tech world, but sometimes we forget that it moves quickly for people, too.

As a user, I'm happy to see the new management team in place.

Halley: "Older men are in the meat market again and if they don't look good -- it's going to be tough on them."

Elizabeth Edwards says ABC (Anybody But Carolina) trolls and "other undesirables" ruin public forums on Tar Heel basketball, forcing her and other "real die-hards" to retreat to an email list to share their passion (Elizabeth, please put me on that email list).

I don't think this rules out my idea for a UNC hoops blog, or blogs for other teams, produced by insiders with a steady flow of specific info of interest to fans. The posts on the blog would be valuable no matter what the comments say. And if comments get out of hand, they could be moderated.

One of the big NC dailies needs to put its beat reporter on this idea. Cut the writer in for a share of the ad revenue. Pimp the blog in the paper, and at the main website. And when it turns out to be a great success, you can thank me by leaving four tickets to the next ACC tourney held in G'boro at the will-call window.

Jeff Jarvis has an interesting post on presidential campaign weblogs. His three main points:

1. In terms of policy and substance, presidential campaign weblogs are not two-way. They are necessarily one-way.
2. In terms of policy and substance, presidential campaign weblogs must be essentially propagandistic.
3. In terms of organization, presidential campaign weblogs and community effectively exploit their participants.

As a debunking of the starry-eyed, campaign blog-as-Woodstock meme, good stuff. Howard Dean and Joe Trippi are trying to WIN AN ELECTION, not run an encounter group. Ditto the other candidates using or about to use the Internet to manage their campaigns. That's the whole point of setting up your own parallel media.

But I think Jeff sells short the collaborative possibilities of an Internet campaign.

The whole two-way vs. one-way communication construct is flawed to begin with -- with thousands of people in the field communicating with EACH OTHER via the blog comments and their own interlinked blogs and face-to-face, individuals get to choose their own issues and passions, and to inform each other of those things. Obviously they must choose from the candidate's menu, but they are not restricted to talking points chosen by campaign staff.

So what about Jeff's argument, that policy and substance must flow from the candidate, not from the campaign at large? True to some degree -- candidates must set their own agendas -- a finger to the electronic wind is not leadership. But ideas do bubble up. Dean has been accused of riding the anti-war theme, for example. And according to Elizabeth Edwards, her husband's campaign started talking more about a tax credit issue after it was raised on the campaign blog.

Exploiting participants -- hell, yes, but the key is that the participants aren't all told what to do, but turned loose to do what they do best. Dean has used his blog to find talent (eg, programmers for the DeanSpace project) and to get slogans ("People Powered Howard," "The Tea is in the Harbor") and tactics and tools (flyers, activities, etc.) And volunteers are running things at thousands of local meetings. They may not set policy, but they ARE substance.

As for campaign blogs being propaganda, well, yes, but it's a more sophisticated -- and honest -- message than just air-brushing out a disgraced marshall in the May Day photo. The Edwards blog, for example, has a permalink to my blog, even though I have not been a cheerleader for the campaign. Credibility means at least acknowledging critics, which Dean's blog also does. When people can talk back, and talk to each other, tight control of the message is not just impossible, it's undesirable.

"(I)n the next six or eight presidential elections, a third-party candidate will win the presidency."

A brilliant article in the Washington Post by Everett Ehrlich (thanks to Jeff Jarvis for the pointer).

Ehrlich cites economist Ronald Coase to explain the impact of technology on political parties: "The cost of gathering information determines the size of organizations."

Letterman's Top Ten list, so tired for so long, keeps getting mileage from Saddam's arrest.

A couple of letters to the N&R have questioned its front-page coverage of the drunk-driving escapades of incoming Guilford County health director Ramesh Krishnaraj.

Let's review: top local public health official blows nearly three times the legal limit, after a neighbor complained that he was honking his horn at 3:15 AM as he cruised around with the top down on his Mercedes convertible. Oh yeah, alcohol abuse and drunk driving are significant public health issues.

Sorry, that's a story.

And as long as the health board continues to withhold information on his punishment and contract status, it will remain a story. (Who do these boardmembers think they are, Dick Cheney?) Whether Krishnaraj gets to keep his $600 monthly car allowance even though he lost his driver's license is a fair question.

I feel for the guy. I don't know that he should lose his job for this first (although grievous) offense -- I tend to believe that treatment instead of punishment is the best way to deal with substance abuse. But when board chair Dot Lambeth calls the 34-year-old's actions a "youthful mistake," you have to wonder if she is taking this seriously enough.

Chico Sabbah made Business Week's list of 50 top philanthropists, and is mentioned in the accompanying article on publicity-shy givers. Even as the legal fight over Sabbah's business and charitable activities heats up, the American Hebrew Academy, the unique Jewish boarding school he founded here in Greensboro, continues to build out its 100-acre campus.

I swear I'm not making this up: a reader just emailed me to ask how he could donate to EdCone.com.

It's easy -- just click on the little credit card logo/"donate" icon in the right hand column. I guess you can say "blogging" in the line that asks what the payment is for.

All proceeds are plowed back into the blog -- currently I'm looking at wireless access for home and office.

Meanwhile, the return on investment for this project is high, regardless of cashflow generated. My blog has made me a better journalist, and helped advance my career, and introduced me to new friends. Thanks to all -- from mentors to venters -- who have contributed to the experience.

While Iraqi blogger Zeyad continues to feel a strange ambivalence about Saddam's capture, Greensboro blogger frograbbitmonkey just can't get excited about the whole thing.

Where are the UNC basketball weblogs? Where are the insider blogs for all teams with fanatic followings?

If there was ever a subject that cried out for blog coverage, it's sports. Not just by fans, but by the journalists who cover the beats. This could be a profit center for the publications that figure it out.

All the key factors for a successful blog habitat are in place. A built-in community, thirsty for more detail and inside info than the mainstream press can ever provide. And at the other end, experts with access to that detail.

Consider Carolina basketball, or even (shudder) Duke. The beat reporters for the big NC dailies and the specialist sports sites get more material than they'll ever fit into articles and columns. Fans are hungry for that stuff -- how did practice go yesterday, what did Roy tell the guys after the game, how are freshmen fitting in, etc.

A constant flow of info, a rabid audience, established brands...somebody, please, take this idea and run with it.

Jay Rosen lays out nine news beats for Internet-era journalists (that is, anyone interested) covering Internet-era campaigns.

For those who buy the premise that something's happening in campaign 2004, there are hundreds of new stories potentially reportable out there. The campaign system has been de-centered in the open style pioneered by Howard Dean, although it must be added: not completely so, and not always convincingly so, not by Dean alone, and not necessarily to winning effect.

I'd like to see a case study of the Clark campaign, and reports on the use of the Net at other campaigns -- and just as important, the non-use of the Internet at other campaigns. Who is holding back, and why?

Letterman's Top Ten Questions Asked By Saddam Hussein When He Was Captured:

10. "Be honest...have you ever seen a nicer spider hole than this?"

9. "Who's got a coat hanger -- this beard itches like a son of a bitch!"

8. "Anyone have a mint?"

7. "Is this about the illegal music downloads?"

6. "Am I going to be on 'Cops'?"

5. "Which describes me better right now -- 'haggard' or 'grizzled'?"

4. "How did you get past my impenetrable styrofoam brick?"

3. "Do I get the 25-million-dollar reward?"

2. "How's the war going?"

1. "Will you go easy on me if I tell you where Martha Stewart is hiding?"

From a Hewlett-Packard employee: "The lab I was working for in Texas was shut down, with half the folks given walking papers...I'm betting that 50% of the work here in Fort Collins will get moved to India or China in the next year or so."

Audio files of the WUNC radio show about political action on the Internet have been posted here, featuring Zephyr Teachout, Ruby Sinreich, and me, along with host Melinda Penkava and some callers. If you are running a political campaign, or thinking of running a political campaign, or interested in political campaigns, it's worth listening to.

Three murders in just over 24 hours in Greensboro, a triple homicide in High Point.

 

So which Guilford County city gets the tabloid prize? Greensboro, for the involvement of a woman named Ultraviolet Sampson.

"Be sure to marry someone who watched the same amount of TV that you did as a kid -- that way you'll have something to talk about when you get old." That's what Lisa told Sydney last night at dinner.

Lisa and I were singing the zip code for Zoom ("oh, two wunn, three fourr"), a terrible kids show that we watched, hundreds of miles apart, a generation ago. Zoom was a show I knew was bad. I watched it anyway, we only got four channels, just as I watched Davey and Goliath on Sunday mornings, because nothing else was on but preachin'.

We watched other bad shows, like The Brady Bunch, but they were slick and on network TV, and I felt weird for thinking they were bad, because everyone else seemed to like them, and it wasn't until I got older that I realized that everyone else knew they were bad, too.

But Zoom was bad bad, so bad I think I once quit watching and picked up a book. I told Sydney it was something like All That on Nickelodeon, but with lower production values and a crunchy public television vibe. She looked at us with pity.

Then I called my sister-in-law Sue in Colorado and when she picked up the phone I asked her to sing the zip code for Zoom. No hesitation: "oh, two wunn, three fourr." Lisa and I were laughing so hard I almost blew Chateauneuf du Pape out my nose.

Just another high-brow evening at the salon that is our dinner table.