Rolling Up the Red Carpet on the Emmys

I'm not a TV addict (House, Monk, Medium and a few others are enough for Cat), but I enjoy watching the Emmy Awards every year. It's, well . . . something different. In the moments leading up to the show this year, however, I was channel surfing and came across a program on hunger in the third world.

Before me were images of small children sitting in homes made of plywood, cardboard, or corrugated tin. They wore dirty T-shirts or nothing at all. Many were cared for by older siblings since their parents were deceased. There were no schools or hospitals, and clean water and sanitation were absent. I could go on, but you get the picture. This is the way billions in the third world live, if you can call it "living."

I turned back to CBS in time to see the celebs strutting up the red carpet, bejewelled and dressed in gowns costing a hundred grand after emerging from the stretch limos. The contrast with the show on world hunger hit me in the gut.

Ironically, actors and actresses are fairly liberal and do more than most in championing the cause of the needy. Brad Pitt's work in New Orleans post-Katrina has been exemplary, and he's not alone in his philanthropic efforts. But I decided not to watch the Emmys last Sunday night, not because there was enything inherently evil about the broadcast, but because we tend to get caught up in the glitz and the glamour. We sympathize with the plight of the third world, but we just don't think about it that much. Out of sight, out of mind. I'm as guilty as anybody.

So I passed on the telecast for personal reasons. It was a way of making my subconscious a bit uncomfortable, a way of making my subconscious bubble to the surface and sit in a dark little hut for a few hours. It was my way to keep remembering after the show on hunger was over.

Rudeness Reigns

Forget the swine flu; bad manners seems to be quite infectious. Rep. Jim Wilson called President Obama a liar during a joint session of Congress; Serena Williams cursed a linesman with the foulest language I've ever heard on court; and Kanye West decided that his limited intelligence and lack of articulation gave him the right to not only interrupt the speaker at the VMA Awards but to dispute the choice of winner.

The discourse in American society grew mean and nasty during the '08 presidential campaign. Most pundits said that the GOP would have to moderate and become centrist in order to become a viable party again. Thus far, it hasn't happened. It seems as if the shouting at campaign rallies and, more recently, town hall meetings, has become the template for public behavior.

From a wider perspective, however, such rudeness indicates a far more dangerous and pervasive trend: the mindset that it's all about "me." There are no verbal rules of engagement. Anyone can be interrupted or shouted down--and for any reason. There is a sense of entitlement that has infected our very souls. According to West, Beyonce was entitled to win the award. According to Williams, she was entitled to win the U. S. Open. According to Rep. Jim Wilson, the nation is entitled to scream at the president as the GOP, bad loser that it is, sulks because Karl Rove led everyone to believe that one-party rule was okay ... as long as it was the Republican Party.

Things are getting out of hand. As Bob Dylan said long ago, "a hard rain's gonna fall." You heard it from Cat.

Jay Leno Redux?

Jay Leno is a talented comedian and did an admirable job with The Tonight Show for many years. I don't think his style for guest interviews is as strong as Conan O'Brian's or David Letterman's, but Jay "done good," as the saying goes. He deserves credit.

Last night Leno debuted his new 10 pm (Eastern) show on NBC. He came out, shook hands with the front row as he always does, and did a monologue. He did some shtick and had Jerry Seinfeld as his first guest. Kevin Eubanks was there with the old Tonight Show Band, and the show concluded with Jay's trademark Headlines. Sure looked like The Tonight Show to me, except that Jay sat in a comfy arm chair to do the interviews. I saw no appreciable difference between this show and The Tonight Show format. The only sour moment was when Leno allowed Kanye West to sit next to him and whimper an apology for his rudeness to Taylor Swift at the VMA Awards..

Here's the ten million dollar question: does America want four hours of talk shows in a row on NBC's weeknight line-up? Normally I'd say the answer is a resounding "no." Too much of a good thing. Essentially, we now have two Tonight Shows back to back, with only thirty-five minutes of local news to separate them. But I may be dead wrong. If anyone would have told me that eight networks could successfully air approximately forty prime time crime dramas over the past five years, I would have said they were nuts. Crime is king on TV, and the trend shows no signs of abating. For Jay Leno, maybe there is indeed life after The Tonight Show . . . unless viewers miss a 10 pm slot that could host a few more crime dramas.

Kindle Me Not

Kindle? Thanks, but no thanks. I'm sure electronic readers like Kindle are fine and dandy and will ultimately be successful. Even Amazon, however, predicts that their device will never replace old-fashioned paper and ink, which is good. I have no desire to read books on a platform. Ugh. Even the phrase is odious. Reading on a platform? Am I standing at the subway or at a train station? If I read Dickens, then it should have a different feel than when I read Dan Brown, and I don't want the text surrounded by white plastic. It makes the experience of reading . . . cold, for lack of a better term.

Books should have a certain identity. The texture of the paper is important. Is it smooth or grainy. And the font--is it large or small, and what style and pitch has the publisher used? Is the book hardcover or paperback? And what does it smell like? That's important. And the cover art? Good book covers are an invitation to step into a world of mystery, wonder, discovery, or adventure.

Some of my most favorite editions are old books I bought when I was much younger or that were given to me as a child. They are a bit worn, and some of the pages have yellowed a bit. The books are all the more treasured for their age and used condition.

Print that scrolls through white plastic isn't for me. A book should be opened and savored. You may feel differently, but cats don't change their habits very easily.

Serena Williams: Take Time Out with the Other First Graders

Serena Williams displayed what the nefarious Captain Hook might labeled bad form. After being called for a foot-fault last night in the Women's semi-final match of the U.S. Open, Ms. Williams screamed at the linesman for a full minute in the foulest of language. Bad form indeed.

There's an old adage in tennis called "play the call." Move on. Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver did it, as did many other greats of the game. Connors and McEnroe didn't, although they stopped short of outright and prolonged profanity and came to be regarded as comic relief more than anything else when it came to their on-court histrionics.

Ms. Williams lost the match after being penalized for her unsportsmanlike behavior. Good. Sports figures in the highest tiers of their sports are no longer role models for kids. They're endorsement machines who use steroids to cheat. There's no excuse for what Serena Williams did last night. She could have kept it together and moved on to the next point. Is it any wonder that children see such behavior and then throw tantrums at home or become schoolyard bullies?

And here's' the down-low part of the story. Ms. Williams: you reap what you sow. It will come back to you in some way, shape, or form. The universe keeps its karma ledger with the precision of a bachelor accountant. You heard it from Cat.

Twitter: Haiku for the Masses

The world is all a-twitter these days, with Twitter rivaling Facebook for popularity. The difference, of course, is that Twitter exists for more than just social networking. It exists for news, product promotion, conversation, political campaigning and candidate updates, and (unfortunately) spam. One may easily keep track of certain social trends on Twitter since the service is mobile in nature, with most users using using cell phones--Blackberries or iPhones--as the platform interface. Demographically, use is skewed toward those under thirty, although, as with Facebook, those over thirty can be seen pounding their thumbs in public on miniature keypads. Boomers ushered in the computer revolution, and they are doing an admirable job at keeping up with new permutations of technology.

Twitter was started in 2006 by Jack Dorsey as an SMS, or short message service, that allowed only 140 characters per message. It is rated as one of the top 50 websites by Alexa's Web Traffic Analysis.

But what can we really say in 140 characters, which translates into one or twp brief sentences? Not much. Marketing firms love the service because they can send messages, called "tweets," such as "Drink Slush Cola, regular or diet." But who wants to receive ads in a world inundated with commercials that we already try to avoid like the plague. Authors now use Twitter to keep fans apprised of their book signing schedule or work on the latest chapter of their new book. For the life of me, I can't imagine anyone who would want to receive the message "Cat in Philly Tuesday at B&N and starting ch. 33."

Many messages are idle chatter:

Going home now.

Tell the Spunker and the Moocher it didn't work.

Kiki got dumped. Men r bad.

Damn this socialism!

At their worst, tweets are bits of cyber graffiti that, thankfully, most of us of are not exposed to. At its best, tweets are similar to haiku, a few lines of beauty that might brighten someone's day if only for a few seconds even if the brief message doesn't confrom to meter or poetic form..

Consider:

Saw a girl in the subway. Such lovely red hair.

So thirsty. Water fountain in lobby on Broadway.

Sun brutal. Need soda and umbrella. Love, Neil.

As with all aspects of computers and the Internet, cyber technology is what we make of it. Cat's tip for the day: whatever you do, in word or text, think first. Make every word count. Life goes by quickly.

The New Journalists

Few documentaries in the past years have examined a new trend in journalism: the layman as reporter, the pedestrian with a cell phone camera and texting ability. A major story breaks, and within minutes, the average joe or jane on the street has uploaded text or images to CNN. Frankly, this has Cat worried, and not just because her parents shelled out a lot of money on journalism school.

The problem is that in the age of Twitter and camera phones, which send text or pics to news organizations instantly, there is no guarantee that the info will be accurate or, even more importantly, have any context. Yesterday, CNN itself grabbed a radio transmission from a Coast Guard training exercise on the Potomac River and believed it had intercepted evidence of terrorist activity. Flights in and out of D.C. were temporarily shut down on the anniversary of 9/11. CNN's failure to adequately check out the story caused a lot of grief and was unprofessional. If a major news network commits this error, how much more are everyday "citizen journalists" likely to make even worse errors?

PBS's Frontline did a series on the new age of journalism, and much of it was rather sobering. The trend is apparently a fait accompli, and yet too many people do not have the slightest knowledge of journalistic standards. Information is obtained, but there is no thought given to the who, what, where, when, and why that gives a story legs.

Professional journalists are trained in writing, ethics, sources, corroboration, legalities, the history of the craft, and much more. Therein lies the heart of the problem: journalism is a craft that takes years to learn and master. In the early years of the twenty-first century, however, journalism has become the province of people with blogs and iPhones. Online news services are especially open to receiving info from the average citizen, although such services--AOL, Yahoo, and the rest--are sometimes prone to throwing out random information like someone throwing objects against a wall to see what sticks.

How we gather and process information is critical in a new age of technology in which paradigm shifts in culture, social mores, and politics seem to change with every twenty-four hour news cycle. You have a great pic taken with your phone? Great, but here's the conundrum. Is the photo of a man falling through the air, arms flung wide, a picture of a man jumping from a building or jumping on a trampoline. The angle of the shot means everything since the man's facial expression may be quite deceptive.

We live in an age where we believe what we see and are told without question. If it's "out there," it must be true. Now more than ever, however, we need to engage in analysis of the information we're fed. And that, my friends, is the job of the journalist. Blog discussion is healthy, but it's not necessarily news. You heard it from Cat.

A Few Random Acts of Kindness

I'm a big fan of The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. Kind acts send ripples through the population. They can spread exponentially, as seen in the movie Pay It Forward. A simple smile might change someone's life. It's worked wonders for me on occasions when I felt hopelessness asking for admittance to my soul.

The simplest acts of kindness cost nothing at all--that's the beauty of it. My retired paternal grandfather goes to the mall several times a week for the express purpose of smiling at the people he passes. He also waves at everyone he sees when driving, and he never passes up the chance to compliment a cashier or waitress. Many of his friends think he's nuts. I, on the other hand, think he's a great man.

Noel Paul Stookey, the "Paul" of Peter, Paul and Mary, wrote a song called "Revolution 1 x 1," which is featured on his latest solo CD called Facets of the Jewel. The song advocates a smile and a wave as the way to conquer people's fears and suspicions. It's a hard slog to try to change the world one person at a time, but it's probably the only way.

Hats off to my grandfather, hats off to Stookey. Let's keep the revolution going.

Hook-ups: Sex in the Car Pool Lane

Some observations, nothing more. I don't tell people how to live their lives, and I'm a big believer in "Judge not lest ye be judged." And before you hurl invectives at kindly Cat, make sure you read the entire post.

Casual sex is a given in today's society. After all the hippies of the 60s became mortgage bankers and pillars of the community, the pendulum on sexual mores never swung back to a neutral position. I'm not sure that's a good thing, however, at the risk of sounding like a sexual centrist.

Here's the problem: people decide to have no-strings-attached sex and then return to their neutral corners. No commitments. What could be simpler? A few months later, jealousy rears its ugly head. The classic Seinfeld episode come to mind, the one in which Jerry and Elaine decide that a little extracurricular activity in the bedroom isn't going to affect their relationship or their ability to date others. It didn't work. Bruised egos and jealousy were in plain sight by minute twenty-two of the sitcom episode.

And that's what I've seen in my friends ever since my college days: bruised feelings after a casual relationship goes sour. We can proclaim sex as sport all we want, but something in our DNA still equates "the deed" with intimacy and love. Perhaps the biggest impediment to the success of casual sex is that humans are possessive by nature. This trait has been in our genes for a hundred thousand years, and we're not going to expunge it in three decades because Erica Jong says we can. If you are happily immune from the problems stated above, I won't dispute the fact.

Casual sex is a way to get from point A to point B. It's a shortcut to gratification, like riding in the carpool lane. If you tell me it works for you, I'll say "Congratulations!" All Cat is saying is a big caveat emptor--buyer beware.

Literary Fiction: A Disappearing Genre?

It's no secret that literary fiction has taken a backseat to genre fiction. Thrillers, crime, romance, and chick lit are riding high in the literary marketplace. There's nothing wrong with that. I grew up reading Nancy Drew, and later I devoured the novels and short stories of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. A good story is a good story.

But great literary fiction needs to be published as well. Can anyone who still values books and literature imagine a world without Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and many other great writers. In the latter part of the twentieth century, authors like Bellow, Heller, Updike, and Vonnegut told us who we were. They were surgeons who dissected popular culture and showed us where in society the malignancies could be found. Perhaps more than any other writer, Kurt Vonnegut showed the folly of humanity with dark satire in the same vein as Mark Twain. In the mean-spirited year of 2009, when shouts of socialism disrupt town hall meetings, we need writers who can diagnose the illnesses of the age.

The literary marketplace has been downsizing since the year 2000. Fewer books are being published, and when literary fiction begins to be excised from fall lists, the literary landscape becomes downright Orwellian. Thus far, small presses aren't picking up the slack because of tighter budgets. Most small presses and indies are always dancing perilously close to the edge of solvency. New York conglomerates and their subsidiary houses need to publish literary fiction, even if it sinks to the midlist. They need to make a profit, but they're still interested in ideas, aren't they?

We need literary surgeons. You heard it from Cat.

Facebook: A Mixed Review

Thus far I've resisted the social networking trend. I'm probably the only woman who is not "friended" to all 259 members of her high school graduating class. So many of them are worth forgetting. Maybe most, in fact. My sister, however, lives and dies by Facebook. I'm not sure why since she only comments on the status of about ten of her 577 friends. A guy recently told me that for males, getting a large number of friends is rather like a contest, like chugging beer or like rams savagely butting their horns together. It's a testosterone thing, or at least that's what I've been told by hunky "Facebookers" (an interesting word now entering the language).

I'm not sure why I would need to know on a minute to minute basis that my best friend is entering the grocery store, feeling the melons, or watching a clean-up on aisle seven. I once coaxed my sister to post "I am still breathing" as her status. Writing on her wall, dozens of people expressed grave concern about her health. Did she have respiratory distress? Was she smothering? (It's unlikely she would be able to type while being smothered.)

All this having been said, it's benign as long as you don't click on the wrong link and get phished. It's the cyber equivalent of chatting to your neighbor across the fence while taking in the laundry. It keeps people talking, and that's a good thing in these mean and perilous times. I have to wonder, however, when we're going to reach the saturation point. Perhaps one day we'll simply crawl into our PCs while the real world, vegetable and mineral, just decays. It will be up to Keanu Reeves (a.k.a. Neo) to enter the Matrix and save us. Meow.

Dylan's Latest Album: Together Through the Years

I like it. It's not as good as his previous effort, Modern Times, but the old folkie from Minnesota still has something to say. The CD is shorter, and Dylan's voice is a bit scratchier than on Modern Times, but if you're looking for a perfectly clean delivery from the pop-folk icon, then you need to step into a time machine and set the date for any time between 1963 and 1976. And if he's not afraid to venture out of his vocal range entirely, then more power to him.

The best tracks are "My Wife's Home Town," "If You Ever Go to Houston," and "Jolene." But there's not a bad song in the bunch, as they say, and a few of the slower songs are downright endearing.

Ya gotta hand it to Dylan. He doesn't have to be out there doing anything at all. His place in music is secure. But he still gets the job done. He's on Sirius radio and has a Christmas album coming out. Keep goin', Zimmie.

In Martin Scorsese's documentary of Dylan, the singer points in the air and says he has a contract with the man upstairs. To which Cat says, "Amen." Bob and I have been together through the years, and I don't see that changing. Not ever.

Generic Medicines: Not Always as Effective

Not all generic meds are created equal. A conversation with a pharmacist recently opened my eyes to down-low facts that few consumers are aware of. For starters, manufacturers of generics are allowed by law to put a lower percentage of the active ingredient into the med. Yes, you're still getting the same med, only not as much. Isn't this something we should know?

Second, generic drugs may metabolize differently because different binding agents (various inactive powders and chemicals) are used to make various ingredients adhere to one another

Insurance companies are paid by drug manufacturers to promote generics as safe, cheaper alternatives to brand name drugs. Where I come from, such payments are called kickbacks. And exactly how do insurance companies promote the generics? They penalize you for using brand name drugs by upping your co-pay for any given prescription. Your doctor can sometimes override this penalty by putting "no choice allowed" on the original scrip.

Some generics work just fine, and the policies of insurance companies vary. Be aware, however, that the generic pill you take may only have 80% to 90% of the medicine your doctor has prescribed. That's why you occasionally see or hear not-so-prominent stories telling you that generics are sometimes only 80% as effective. You heard it from Cat.

Reality Television and Cough Medicine

I am happy that I have only a vague idea of who Jon and Kate are. They have eight "somethings"--chickadees, I presume--but I'm not interested enough to really validate this feline hunch. As a reporter, I like stories with a little meat on the bone. Stories about nouns--people, places, and things. Granted, I think we have enough crime dramas, the reruns of which may run into the twenty-second century, but give me a character to care about. Give me a situation that scares the hell out of me or makes me mad. Give me a great location, something on the down-low, like Warehouse 13.

I'm not interested in Gene Simmons or his family jewels. Not interested in watching people ridiculed on American Idol. Not interested in who gets booted from the house or voted off the island. Not interested in who the bachelor will pick in order to use and throw away after the ratings are in. Reality TV was, and is, a bad idea. Bread and circuses for people who like to watch people suffer, moan, and cry. Fie. It has erased shows with genuine educational content, leaving TLC and the Discovery Channel with only an occasional bit of fare worth tasting. I was hoping that it would disappear, that it would be a flash in the pan, but alas, like rap music, it is apparently here to stay. Again I say fie.

And so I channel surf, trying to find out what's on the tube, reluctant to stay on the TV Guide Channel for too long, which runs all things Michael Jackson every second of every day. It's enough to make me look for old cold medicine with some codeine and sleep for sixteen hours. No meds? I opt for Charles Dickens or Mark Twain. They had characters and stories. They had something to say. Meow.

9.09.09

Superstitious . . . or just been watching too many History Channel shows on Nostradamus, Mayan calendars, and planetary alignment? Or maybe you've seen too many posters advertising Beatles Rock Band, due for release today. Mr. Lennon himself had a fascination for the number 9 as evidenced by "Revolution 9," "One After 909," and "#9 Dream." He was born on October 9, as was his son Sean.

Many superstitions revolve around cats, those mysterious creatures who prowl the alleys by night. The Egyptians, God love 'em, worshipped cats, which, I suppose, is the way it should be. But humble Cat Spaulding does not believe in numerology, the Bible Code, or astrology. Whatever Jupiter does in the constellation of Leo, assuming the big guy hangs out there, is his own business. It doesn't affect me. And if the moon is in the seventh house, then it should stop breaking and entering.

Metaphysics--that's a different ball of twine. Synchronicities, according to Mr. Jung, are quite real. He treated a woman having bad dreams about a scarab beetle. During one of her sessions, a scarab beetle scratched at the window even though the beetle wasn't indigenous to the area. Hmmm. I fervently believe in signs and synchronicities. I believe in God. In fact, I believe that the Big Guy sends us these little morsels in order top catch our attention. Einstein once said that coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous. Very clever, Albert. It's not the Theory of Relativity, but it may be just as important. Indeed, maybe you didn't drop in on Cat by accident.

So keep your eyes and ears open. It's what cats and good reporters do, as well as people who still listen for the voice of God. Not bad work when you can get it. The next song on the radio may mean something. Or the license plate ahead of you in traffic. The person you meet at the Post Office. Or anything. Me? I've been seeing 9s for about two months now but have no idea why. No problem. All in good time.

Meanwhile, it's been a hard day's night. I need to watch some History Channel shows on cats and UFOs and Nostradamus. And then sleep for sixteen hours, give or take. Meow.