Past blast

The other night I was channel-surfing when I came upon one of the icons of my youth.

Jack La Lanne.

If you are 50 or over, the name might make you smile. La Lanne was something of a pioneer in the early days of television. In fact, I think he's about the only one from that era left.

He had a syndicated exercise program way back when in the 1950's and 60's. The show was something of a link to the days when sports magazines and comic books would have ads about how to stop bullies from kicking sand in weaklings' faces. I never knew anyone who actually bought that stuff, but somebody must have.

Exercise wasn't exactly popular back then, but La Lanne tried to get his audience in shape. Memory tells me that he often had his dog appear on the show as a guest star. What's more, he'd be happy to sell you some sort of product that would go along with the exercises. The instant breakfast comes to mind, but I'd bet there were others. In that sense too, La Lanne was ahead of his time.

Jack and wife Elaine appear on an infomercial selling their Juicer, which turns all sorts of stuff into a beverage. Jack's hair is, um, surprisingly dark for a man 92, but he still looks like he could kick sand in my face without any fear of a response.

As you might expect, La Lanne's Web site (http://www.jacklalanne.com) is filled with merchandise, including a link to the Juicer. If you are feeling nostaligic, some old shows are available on DVD.

I may have missed "Home Run Derby," but at least I got to see Jack now and then.

Quite a night

A few notes collected while looking back on Election Night and its coverage:

* Miss the political commercials that have disappeared? I didn't think so.

* It was surprising to see Keith Olbermann have a large role on the MSNBC broadcast, considering his strong anti-Bush commentaries in the past couple of months. That said, he seemed professional throughout his portions of the show. And who else would have thrown in a joke about Wisconsin Senator Bob La Follette (served from 1906 to 1925)?

* Speaking of anchors, Wolf Blitzer of CNN was given a large role in the broadcast, and he seemed a little rushed at times.

* It's a little sad to see the major networks give up the franchise, to a certain extent, when it comes to politics. CBS/NBC/ABC were on from 10 to 11 in the East; they may have done more programming at 11:35 that was preempted by local news in my neighborhood. I don't expect all of prime-time to be wiped out by a midterm election any more, but it would have been nice to compare how the various new anchors would do over a long night. Plus, Tim Russert could have used more face time.

* And speaking of giving up the franchise, my ABC affiliate did show election returns starting at 10. It also ran a crawl with the phone numbers so that people could vote for their favorites in "Dancing With the Stars." That's got to mean something, but I'm just not sure what.

* It's become pretty easy to know when to grab the remote control when watching political coverage. When someone pops on who isn't running for anything, it's time to switch stations. They aren't going to say anything but the party line. Come to think of it, most victory/concession speeches aren't too illuminating either, although everyone on TV was falling over Harold Ford's classy exit in Tennessee.

* Late on Election Night, I flipped on CNN Headline News for a moment. Nancy Grace's news judgment hasn't changed. She was talking about the "breaking developments" in a story about a pit-bull attack.

* Sometimes it's fun to watch these elections to see who pops up for interviews; it can be a sign of interest in the next Presidential election. On the Republican side, John McCain obviously qualifies, although to be fair the man is always willing to do an interview. The other GOP candidates were sprinting for cover, I guess.

* Pollster Charlie Cook was on C-SPAN on Wednesday, and he did a fine job of analysis. He said the independents essentially fired as many Republicans as they could, although there was a GOP firewall in place (gerrmandering of districts) to prevent more serious damage.

Then again, how much more damage could there be? Did they lose the town board of Harmony, NY, too?

* My nominee for best line of the night came from a co-worker, who said he watched a little of the Fox News Channel. He said it was like the Yankees' announcers describing Game Seven of the 2004 American League playoffs against the Red Sox.

* The most interesting election note I heard was from a New Yorker who moved to South Carolina. She said she had to vote early because the powers that be down there make it as difficult as possible to vote. There aren't many polling places, for example, and the lines are long. Having just watched part of "Eyes on the Prize" on PBS, it kind of makes you wonder if we're still fighting for universal voting rights in some ways.

Are there any other kind?

It's easy to love Google, or as President Bush would call it, The Google.

Recently I responded to something in the office with the question, "Are there any other kind?" Someone said it sounded familiar, so I loaded the phrase into Google and waited for results.

Here are the best ones, creating an instant blog entry in the process:

Evil network executives
Top-secret military plans
Emotionally vulnerable high school girl
Plodding zombies
Liberal Democrats
Crooked lawyer
Psychotic killer
Temporary repairs
Group of wild teens
Bored and rich girl
Corrupt politicians and businessmen
None-too-bright rooster
Somber power officials
Evil pharmaceutical companies
Wicked stepsisters
Expensive riding boots
Self-aggrandizing district attorneys
Liberal media types
Billionaire tycoons
Desperate Ukrainians
Callow young men
Stupid lunch lady
Pro-evolution biologists
Horrid cover bands
A bad Saturday Night Live skit

And the one that hit home...

Anal copy editor

Through the looking glass

It's October. And you know what that means.

It means the World Series. The start of hockey's regular season and pro basketball's training camps. The changing of the leaves in certain parts of the country. Classic rock radio stations using the word "Rock-tober" whenever possible.

And political ads appearing on television.

Arrgh.

Is there anything more misleading on television than a political spot? Well, outside of the Fox News Channel's "fair and balanced" claim?

There is much that is distasteful about the political process in the United States, but television commercials top the list. The political ads seem to ooze out of the ground in the fall. Pictures of opponents are always done in grainy black and white, usually featuring a frown. The shots of the candidates themselves are in color, and they usually feature children -- even if the kids are borrowed from someone else's family.

What's more, the text is always a bit disturbing. Let's say someone has proposed a bill that would increase police funding by 15 percent, not expecting to get that number passed. The office-holder winds up voting for a slightly smaller number, say 10 percent, as part of the negotiation process. Only in the world of television ads would that be an example of the opposing candidate voting to cut police funding.

Then there's the matter of ads sponsored by national political action committees. When my district had a closely contested race two years ago, the out-of-town money came flooding in. You would have thought that Tom DeLay was somehow running in the district, considering how much his name came up in the ads. It looks as if the out-of-towners are responsible for the really nasty ads, although we're merely talking a matter of degree here.

Now, I realize that an incumbant is allowed to take credit for everything that's been done in office while he was there, while the challenger is allowed to attack that same office-holder for everything that didn't happen. I'm not sure how a freshman legislator can be blamed for all of the delays in state governmenet, let alone the lack of action in Congress, but that's the way it sounds. Of course, that same freshman probably didn't lower the tax rate by himself, either.

Here's the problem with all of this: if someone is willing to distort the truth in order to get elected, what will they be like once they get in office?

Makes me want to watch PBS until the first Wednesday after the first Monday.

Top 10 Comments Heard During Buffalo's Snow/Wind/Tree Disaster

1. "Hey, baby, I've got a spare generator at my place."
2. "Tom Reynolds seems really happy to change the subject these days."
3. "Will FEMA reimburse me for the loss of cable?"
4. "My favorite golf course got a lot easier this week."
5. "Well, I'll just have to walk to the bowling alleys tonight."
6. "I know it's tough, but you'll feel a lot better when the Bills stomp on the Lions."
7. "Xerox is closed, Xerox is closed, Xerox is closed ..."
8. "Looks like M&T Bank has a lot more "branch" offices now ... HAR, HAR, HAR!"
9. "Send in the Sabres; they've been cleaning up lately."
10. "Honey, I wouldn't put the wet wash on that line to dry."

Footnotes:
Sometimes you have to have a little fun with a bleak situation. A few hundred thousand people went several days without power; as of this writing some still are in the dark. Thousands and thousands of trees were damaged and many have to be destroyed. So I wrote this to cheer myself up. It didn't get much of a reaction; apparently we needed more time to get over this one. The "top 10 signs Danny Almonte was too old for Little League" went over much better. (Some of the highlights -- "Taunted oppponents by telling them there's no Santa Claus," "Watched CNBC instead of Nickelodean at the hotel" and "Drove himself to the game."
By the way, the Xerox line isn't original. It's stolen from Danny Nevereth, a local disk jockey. Speaking of stealing, the cable/FEMA question was a real query on WBEN during the storm.

Stepping out

Remember when television anchors were the paragon of neutrality? When Walter Cronkite was the epitome of fairness and balance? When a viewer couldn't guess the political leanings of the on-air talent?

Think those days are over?

Me too. Which brings the conversation to Keith Olbermann of MSNBC.

Olbermann is busy disproving the theory that there are no second acts in American life. He became known in the sports community as one of the top anchors for ESPN's Sportscenter more than a decade ago. He and Dan Patrick attracted audiences with their intelligence and wit; they reinvented the business, and their influence is still felt on every sportscast in the nation today.

Olbermann, a man of obvious smarts, is someone who -- according to all reports -- does not suffer fools. He left ESPN, burning a few bridges behind him. After some missteps, he finally has found a niche with MSNBC's "Countdown."

Here's where it gets interesting. Olbermann is up against Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. O'Reilly gets ratings, but he certainly has a love/hate relationship with the public. Conservatives love him, liberals hate him. Some claim he has some trouble with the facts, along the lines of Rush Limbaugh. Olbermann has tweaked O'Reilly by mentioning his missteps on "Countdown" frequently.

Lately, though, Olbermann has turned up the venom. He's done some commentaries that put him squarely on the left side of the political spectrum. They are well-written; transcripts are available on the MSNBC Web site. That tilt has driven the guest list to the show decidedly in that direction as well.

If the idea is to get some attention in a cable channel-filled universe, it is working. Is it a good idea? I can't say I'm used to it. It's funny to have a news show -- not a talk/interview problem -- have such a decided slant. But it's certainly interesting counterprogramming.

Kind of makes me curious as to how it's all going to come out.

... and I'm the sap

Here's the designated story of my life over the past two weeks. I've been telling it to plenty of people, so it's time to present it here.

Someone at work wondered why someone who just died didn't have any references on Google. I tried to explain that some, especially older people, just don't pop up easily. As a foreinstance, I plugged in my father and mother.

After a little work, my father came up with four relevant references. Two were to a scholarship, one was a letter he wrote while in business back in 1988. The fourth, though, made me stop. It was on a geneology forum. Someone was looking for him, and knew where he/we lived in 1965 and who his parents were. The message was dated 2001.

Whew. I wrote the person, saying that I was five years late but that the subject of her search was my father. She wrote back with a story about how someone in England had decided to search his mother's family tree. He worked up the ladder for a few generations, then veered off and came back down ... to me, in a sense. My new cousin had written a series of articles about the family, which were sent off to me.

It's pretty amazing to read a family history like that. There are no rich relatives who are going to leave me millions in the future. But there's the tale of the person who had a family and left them without any warning or reason, never to return. No one knows what happened. There's the orphan who was hired as a "barn boy," and became known as "Barnaby." There are a couple of Civil War veterans. It turns out a main branch of the family came over as servants to William Penn. The husband and wife worked for seven years in order to pay for the trip over, and then headed to Quaker country when they were done. An ancestor was the first person to married in a meeting hall that still stands today.

Thus impressed, I did a search for my mother. I found a reference to a cookbook given my her family to a relative in 1941. After a flurry of e-mails, I discovered that the author of the blog was my second cousin. Her mother, cousin of my mother, is still alive.

With that sort of head start, it was easy to track down other pieces of information. I've found an ancestor that goes back to 1491 or so. I found out there is a little Irish in my blood, as they escaped to England and then America in search of religious freedom.

I don't think I'm ready to write my version of "Roots" yet. But I always wondered where the family tree went. It was lucky to find out someone had pretty much done it for me.