Year: 2009

Exciting Night at Ed McKay’s

I stopped by Ed McKay’s while I was out on some errands late this afternoon. I didn’t find any books, but there were some oddly obscure 12-inch singles in the bins that tickled my fancy.

There was a boy there who ticked my fancy, too. It was strange. He was not at all my type: a little chubbier than I usually like them. But he had a really dorky grin that I couldn’t resist. And he was looking at vinyl, too. We struck up a conversation about the Soft Cell 12-inch I had in my hand. He’s a fan, apparently. As it turned out, he was in town for a job interview at Kripsy Kreme, of all places. And he’s from Pittsburgh! Who could have predicted that? He was amazed to learn that Mark and I are in the process of buying a house there.

We talked for about fifteen minutes in the store. I really couldn’t get a feel about where he was coming from and what he was looking for. I sort of felt like I was being hit on, but I wasn’t really sure. I’m a little out of practice, after all. But he did keep telling me how much he’d like to hear the Soft Cell 12-inch.

So I invited him over to the house to do just that.

I was really nervous. Like I said, I’m a little out of practice. Mark is understanding about this sort of thing, so I didn’t think he’d mind if we got a little intimate. But I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I needn’t have worried, though. We got back to the house, one thing led to another, and when I looked at that goofy grin and then took him in my mouth, I knew I hadn’t made a mistake. He was really sweet.

It was fun. I may meet up with him again this weekend when I go up for the inspection.

He let me snap a picture of him, and he said it was OK to use it on the site as long as I didn’t put it on the front page:

Continue reading “Exciting Night at Ed McKay’s” →

Sad

guidinglight

Guiding Light, the oldest dramatic series on American TV (or maybe any other, for that matter) has been cancelled after seventy-two years on radio and TV. Almost all the shows I watched as an impressionable child while staying with Oleene are long gone now.

I occasionally find myelf looking for old soap opera video online. It’s some of the ultimate TV ephemera, as most of the early shows were done live and are lst forever. Even after the advent of videotape in the 1960s, most sopar operas and game shows (along with Johnny Carson, etc.) were not deemed worthy of longterm preservation and were just recorded over by shortsighted networks. Miraculously, Dark Shadows is one of the few 1960s soaps that survived more or less in its entirety, paving the way for a successful syndication run and DVD release. Match Game is one of the few 1970s game shows that was similarly preserved, essentially giving GSN most of its start-up programming.

On the Chron

Interesting article in today’s New York Times about the special set of problems that are giving the San Francisco Chronicle even more trouble than most newspapers these days. The essence of the article is that San Francisco is a particularly tough market for newspapers because there is no real “center” there, which is largely true. The Bay Area is a very dispersed metropolitan region encompassing San Jose, Oakland, Contra Costa county, and a host of sub-regions, and (as much as San Franciscans might disagree) there is no central focus on any single city in the region.

That said, I think the article shortchanges the effect of technological advances that hit the Bay Area first and made it one of the most “wired” parts of the country early on; competition from internet sources rates brealy a paragraph. Similarly, there is no mention of the fact that the Chronicle was among the first newspapers to essentially give away all its content online — including its archives dating to 1996, which is something of a rarity even now. Mind you, that’s what has made me love the Cron’s website, and it’s why I link to it regularly when I need a “permanent” free link to a regional or national news item, but as a business model, it seeems really questionable to me.

As you might guess, I read this article in the print version of the Times, because I like my newspapers in that format. I keep looking for creative ideas from newspaper publishers that will enable me to continue doing so, but I’m not seeing very many. In fact, I’m mostly seeing changes that will only continue to alienate the “ink on paper” faithful, or those who, like me, can appreciate both models on various levels. My local paper, for example, has shrunk to the size of a pamphlet over the past few years, eliminating popular fetaures and sections and switching to a format that can best be described as “graphic design masquerading as journalism”. I’ve had a few significant delivery problems lately, with no follow-up from the circulation department.

And then there’s spiffy new “e-edition” of the paper — basically a PDF version that replicates the print version with a souped up reader that allows you to zoom in on articles — has recently been unveiled. Unfortunately, it comes at an added price, even for print subscribers. While I certainly agree that non-subscribers should probably be charged for this service, I think newspapers should be offering their print subscribers as many options as possible (or at least answering their emailed complaints) to keep them onboard.

I’m not sure what the best way out of this mess might be, and I’m starting to think most major newspaper publishers have even less of an idea than I do.