Shun Piking our Way Down From Vermont

During our long drive back from northern Vermont, we chose to 'shun pike,' or take the small roads that wind along the rivers, farm fields, and little towns. We stopped at Royalston, where there was a large town square, and a row of little shops and cafes. What a picture perfect lovely town to sit for a spell.

We bought some lunch and then walked to a little cafe where they made us coffee, and introduced us to the iced maple-cino, a popular drink in Roylston. You put espresso in with ice and maple syrup then shake it up in a cocktail shaker. This produces the same froth we want in a latte...voila! a new drink for the GoNOMAD cafe.

An hour later we stopped in a country cemetary, and this made me think about graves and symbols. I spent endless hours as a child playing in a graveyard in my NJ hometown, and since a trip to Hollywood cemetary in Richmond VA, these symbols have intrigued me.

The broken column is a life cut short; as is the upside down torch. A leaning tree trunk is a short interrupted life, dsp means died without having children, and dvp signifies dying during the lifetime of one's father. Stones shaped liked Tree Stumps usually signify that the deceased was a member of The Woodmen of the World.
Weeping willow Tree means perpetual mourning; Grief, wheat strands or sheaves represent the divine harvest.

Moe and Kitty--Class Act for 50 Years

 
Last night we drove up to Barre Vermont for a very special night--it was the 50th anniversary dinner, long planned, of Maurice and Kitty Bigras. I thought I was going to speak, be called upon to read one of my famous speeches...but that moment never came. I wrote some notes, however, and the next day on the sunny patio, I told Moe what I would have said had the mike been passed to me.

"You built a successful sandblasting business that your son took over, and now your grandsons work there too. You've got friends from all over Vermont, 136 of them showed up to honor you and Kitty...you're the father of four kids who are all successful, with each one you have a positive and nurturing relationship, and at the head table 19 family members sat by your side. Moe you're a rich man, and I admire you for succeeding in so many ways."

Moe smiled and thanked me, and had a puff on his pipe and sat back. We watched wild turkeys strut across the back field and enjoyed some relaxing time in the sun. 

A Regal Launch Party in Amherst

We went to the Advocate's Preview Massachusetts party, me all dolled up in a tie and Cindy in a very cute black dress. Her hair was curled and I had on a khaki suit I hadn't worn in years. Remarkably, it fit me well, and the color was right for the season....can't really pull off the wool coat in late April, can you?

There were hundreds of people at the Eric Carle Museum, a wide open space, and one the first people we talked to was Jill, who does voice overs and just moved to Greenfield. She had been in attendance that morning at my Franklin County of Chamber seminar on Search Engine strategy, here she was all dolled up for the party nine hours later. Funny.

Then we chatted with Tom Vannah, and the publisher of the new mag, Janet Reynolds. The Executive Editor of Preview is named Alistair, he is taller than most of the people in the room, and young, friendly, and interested in what the future holds for using the web in combination with all of these print vehicles. Janet told us why they're giving away this glossy four-color magazine...It's the delivery system we're used to, and we want to make it available, and out there.

You won't find piles of Preview Massachusetts at Stop and Shop. They will deliver them to higher end retailers and even deliver them to certain high income households who also get the Hartford Courant. We chatted up Bob Paquette, of WFCR, and Marc Berman, who runs radio stations around the US, and with Paul Kozub, who was serving free martinis made with the vodka he produces in Hadley.

An evening of interesting people, tasty vodka and an exciting new magazine we're pleased to be a part of. Stay tuned!

Net Neutrality is Worth Preserving!

Telecoms, like AT&T and Verizon, want to create a two-tiered Internet where customers and content providers can be charged for premium content delivery at higher speeds and quality than other content. The harshest critics believe that ability will give ISPs the ability to block, slow, or degrade content unfavorable to them, including access to websites and email. Web Pro News reported on this today.

The Markey Amendment, proposed for addition to the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE), was created to protect what proponents call "Network Neutrality," a philosophy that the Internet should remain free and open to encourage innovation, startup business, and free speech. Called the "Internet's First Amendment," this concept is supported by Internet and technology giants like Google and Microsoft.

The amendment expressly warned the telecom industry " not to block, impair, degrade, discriminate against, or interfere with the ability of any person to use a broadband connection to access, use, send, receive, or offer lawful content, applications, or services over the Internet." It was voted down by a vote of 34-22 in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“The House vote today ignores a groundswell of popular support for Internet freedom,” said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press. “We hope that the full House will resist the big telecom companies and reject the bill. But we look to the Senate to restore meaningful protections for net neutrality and ensure that the Internet remains open to unlimited economic innovation, civic involvement and free speech.”

Metalica Decreed: Let's Get Jobs!

Next month a new movie by Bruce Geisler about Michael Metalica premiers. I remember attending a rock concert in 1975 at their Gill commune, at the time I was a student at Northfield Mount Hermon. It was a true commune, at their peak 350 residents called it their home.

In today's Recorder, Dianne Broncaccio writes about the memories of the Renaissance Community's heyday, in the mid-seventies.

"Metalica bought the commune a fleet of 35 Honda 300 cars, which got 50 miles to the gallon in the early '70s. However since nobody else in Franklin County used these cars, they marked the motorists as commune members.

According to Geisler, getting run off the road was not uncommon in those turbulent years. He said he'd only driven one of the Hondas once, when someone fired a shot into the car. "That was the last time I would use one," he said. "I decided to just keep driving an old VW I had."

In 1973, Metalica decreed that they would all go out and find jobs," said Geisler. "They suddenly went from real poverty to a $15,000-per-week income. They ended up having real estate properties in four towns, including most of downtown Turner's Falls." The group's assets included an airplane, a Rolls Royce, a recording studio, a theater and a fleet of luxury buses. Rock stars chartered them for tours.

Today several of these businesses still thrive around Turners Falls. "When they were impoverished--when all they had was themselves and a common purpose--that's when they were the happiest" said Geisler..."they went from despised hippies to media-savvy yuppies."

Fun Facts from Wired

When I was young, I was a serious lad. I used walk up to my dad and tell him fun facts. That's what he used to call them, 'fun to know and tell,' we'd say. I just got this month's Wired. Full of such treats.

There is a new Finnish icebreaker that uses the same swivel-mounted motors as used on speedboats. They break the ice on an angle, cutting a wider swatch for large tankers who want to bring the oil down from the Arctic.

Every year in Anaheim they hold a contest to see who can drum the fastest. Boo McAfee, one time drummer for Willie Nelson, came up with the idea, and developed a drumbeat counting machine he calls a 'drumometer.' Johnny Rabb broke 1000 taps per minute in 2000.

The costs of an hour in an internet cafe varies wildly around the world. Here are some of them

South Deerfield, MA $6.00
New York NY $12.80
Cairo Egypt .52
Sydney Australia $2.21
Budapest, Hungary $3.27
Paris, France $4.86

If you recorded 3000 songs using your Napster subscription, and then decided you didn't want to pay the monthly $15.00, the songs would not work any more on any Ipod or computer you have.

Fox News Gets Ratings but Not the Big Bucks

It's Fox News Channel's 10th anniversary this October. But the cable network doesn't want a diamond bauble to commemorate the occasion. It wants cold, hard cash -- and plenty of it. Today's Wall Street Journal had the story.

Fox News executives well remember their early days, when the channel got little respect and was in the shadow of Time Warner Inc.'s CNN. While it blew by its rival almost 4½ years ago in the ratings, it still trails them in one key area -- distribution fees paid by cable and satellite operators.


On that score, the News Corp.-owned channel is now looking to overtake CNN and just about every other cable channel, aiming to triple the fees it charges them to carry the channel. It wants an increase to $1 dollar per month per subscriber, from the 25 cent to 35 cent subscriber fee the network currently earns. CNN gets an average of about 50 cents per subscriber; MSNBC takes in between 30 and 35 cents.

"We're in the elite group," says Tim Carry, vice president of affiliate sales for Fox News. "We have a significant advantage over 90% of the industry, yet over the last 10 years we've been paid as if we're at the bottom."

Only a handful of cable networks are able to command such a high fee, most notably Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN, which takes in over $2.50 per subscriber. Like ESPN, these channels pay huge sports-rights expenses and get compensated for them. Other channels that command high distribution fees include Time Warner's TNT, which carries Nascar and the National Basketball Association and gets 90 cents, and the Disney Channel, which doesn't sell advertising and gets about $1.

"If they ask for a dollar and get fifty cents they're doing very well," adds Rob Stengel, an industry consultant.

Airline Sardine Can Planes Adding Seats

Today's NY Times included this story about how airlines are figuring out ways to fit more bodies into their planes.

"One of the first to use the thinner seats in coach was American Airlines, which refitted its economy-class section seven years ago.

"Those seats were indeed thinner than the ones they replaced, allowing more knee and legroom," Tim Smith, a spokesman for American, said. American actually removed two rows in coach, adding about two inches of legroom, when it installed the new seats. It promoted the change with a campaign called "More Room Throughout Coach."

But two years later, to cut costs, American slid the seats closer together and ended its "More Room" program without fanfare. When the changes were completed last year, American said its "density modification program" had added five more seats to the economy-class section of its MD-80 narrow-body aircraft and brought the total seat count to 120 in the back of the plane.

Airlines can only do so much with their existing fleets to save space. The real opportunities, say seat manufacturers and design experts, are with the new generation of aircraft that are coming soon.

Perhaps the most extraordinary example of a new jet that could accommodate features unheard of previously is the Airbus A380. There is so much available room on the superjumbo that Virgin Atlantic Airways is even considering placing a beauty salon in its premium-class section.

With a typical configuration, the A380 will accommodate about 500 passengers. But with standing-room-only seats, the same plane could conceivably fit in 853 passengers, the maximum it would be permitted to carry.

Frank Deford, Stand Up Sports Guy

As it happened, the year Frank Deford joined Sports Illustrated was the year it finally became profitable. Sports, too, took off as never before: TV networks began vying for games, the National Football League and National Basketball Association blossomed. "I was suddenly valuable!" Deford says in that booming, gruff voice that has become so familiar on TV and radio. Turning his talents to novels ( Cut 'n Run , for instance, or Everybody's All-American ) and book-length nonfiction (on Arthur Ashe, Billie Jean King, the Miss America Pageant), he became a veritable one-man production line, the author of more than a dozen books. And he has continued as a featured commentator on National Public Radio, HBO, CNN. "The great gift SI gave me," he says now, "was to let me wander. I was no pioneer, but there wasn't a road I didn't take. I led, in every way, a charmed life."

In 1980, all that fell apart. His 8-year-old daughter succumbed to cystic fibrosis. "When Alex died, my world simply collapsed," he says. "It was horrible. Horrible." Gradually and with great effort, Deford found a way to get back into the arena. He struggled to make sense of his family's tragedy in a memoir, Alex: The Life of A Child (1983), later a TV movie. Eventually, he became the head of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and then its chairman emeritus. "If I've done any real good in my life, it was there," he insists.

But once a sportswriter, always a sportswriter. As years passed, Deford went on to serve as editor-in-chief of the celebrated but short-lived National Sports Daily. He won an Emmy for his work on the Seoul Olympics and a George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. He was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a columnist at Newsweek. There wasn't a medium he didn't plunge into. Six times his peers voted him Sportswriter of the Year.

How did one man manage to do it?

"I don't play golf," he says

The Lure of the Alaska Pipeline

Oil companies ordered 3 million tons of pipe in 1969. This was before they had even
completed the drawings for the Alaska pipeline. The route from Prudhoe Bay at the top of the state, down the entire width of Alaska to the port of Valdez, where the water wasn't frozen. "We cannot let this happen," said the environomentalists, Earth Day demonstators and others who fought the pipeline and got a court order to stop it in 1977.

The native Americans got a billion dollars and four hundred thousand acres of land. They had some new weapons, some new standing, you are going to have to listen to new demands, to force studies of caribou, fish spawning, and detailed plans to limit pollution from construction. Legal challenge follow legal challenge. Years past, the pipeline was stuck in legal limbo.

Many in Alaska blamed outsiders, and environmentalists, as the bad guys. The Anchorage Daily News and the people of Alaska painted those in the lower 48 as being out of touch, and obstacles putting up lawsuits to stop the pipeline. The first plan called for burying the pipeline. But one man fought against this, saying that it would melt the permafrost. Three years of battle followed, and they needed to idenfify the permafrost...later 400 miles would need to be built above ground.

In 1973, Spiro Agnew cast the deciding vote moving the pipeline ahead...then that same year, the Arabs went to war with Israel, this helped the pipeline. Finally, nobody would challenge the project in court, but the result was strict environmental safeguards that ultimately made the pipeline better.

Traveling the Sahel with Jeffrey Tayler

Jeffrey Tayler wrote a compelling book I am now reading called Angry Wind: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat and Camel. I have waited months to read this, I devoured his other book about a trip down the Congo river, and I finally found this at my son's apartment. I had lent it to him but he didn't mind me taking it back.

The author speaks Arabic, and is an American...this makes the people in Africa's Sahel region (south of Algeria, in the belt just south of the Sahara) look at him strangely. He befriends a tall muslim taxi driver named Mahamat, who wears the white caftan and headgear of the region and has an imperious mein. Taylor describes trying to get a permit to travel to the treacherous north of Chad. A family friend chastises a loafing bureaucrat who doesn't want to help them.

"No sooner had his footsteps pattered back up the stairs when Mai set aside the letter, took out his whiteout, and began splotching and huffing on another document. He wobbled his head. "Yours is not the only request I have to deal with," he said in a piqued tenor. An hour later, after endless sniffles and huffs, Mai finished my letter."

Meeting Olga, Ben and Mark at a Pelham Party

At a party on Saturday night in Pelham Manor, NY, I met several interesting people. They had gathered to celebrate our friend Tom's 50th. First was Mark, a 53-year-old Englishman who looked no older than 35, who said he was a retired musician. I later found out that he had been a regular player with the Ramones. This tony suburb 40 minutes from Manhattan attracts many intelligent and connected people, I learned. Across the street from Mark's house lived a producer for Saturday Night Live.

The party was a Hawaiian luau theme, and everyone had on leis and flowery shirts. I met Ben, who writes about Science for the New York Times. I asked him about what it had been like for him to move here from La-la land, and he said that at his former paper, the LA Times, things weren't going well. "The NY Times is great," he said, adding that there are 1000 reporters writing there. He does a couple of stories a week, and he likes writing about psychology and trends and the more human side of science. His wife is an editor for Bon Appetit, now she travels back to LA once a month.

Olga was a pretty blond who spoke Russian, German and English, and writes for Elle magazine in German. She said she met Tom on the train platform, as did Ben. The party was crowded but the music was catchy, we danced in the living room and the rain kept coming down outside.

Turning Fifty, Hawaiian Style

We are off to New York tonight for a Fiftieth Birthday celebration. That seems to be the year that people decide is a big party year, rarely do we celebrate 60, and 30 isn't that big a deal either. Tom Bricker turned 50, so it's time to go to a luau.

Tom's wife Cathie is a stylist and party expert. She is decking out their suburban house into a Hawaiian Luau, and in spite of uncooperative weather, more than 100 guests are expected. We had to go out and buy new clothes, I selected the perfect Hawaiian shirt to with my terribly tacky Nantucket Red pants. These pants I've only worn a few other times, to hoots from co-workers, they are those pale red pants you see the old white guys wearing, with deck shoes and gin-red noses. I am sure I will blend right in with this crowd...Tom and Cathie have a lot of interesting friends.

Cindy will be in costume with her wild capri pants, lime green top and lime green sandals, with appropriately high heels.

Despite the fact we've got to drive three hours, this party should be fun.

Spotting a Moose....or Did We?

Today we drove up to Greenfield to scout out a location for my daughter Kate's wedding in July. The White Eagle Society's Polish Picnic Grounds looked like the perfect spot. A big pavillion, acres of grass, tables, a huge barbecue pit and a nearby river. It will be great in July when the sun is high and the people arrive ready to party and celebrate.

En route, we screeched to a stop...there in a field, a huge moose, with big antlers, frozen there. We backed up for a closer look. Then we noticed that it was a lifesize cardboard cut out. How many other suckers have stopped there to gaze at that faux moose? The folks who live there must laugh at how many city slickers are fooled every day!

Looking forward to catching up with the Sopranos tonight. Now that Vito is out of the closet and on the lamb in New Hampshire, we hope to see familiar Chicopee on the show, since they filmed there earlier this year.

Don't Bother with Voicemail in China

Clive Thompson writes in the NY Times magazine about Google and China.

"Google was not, in fact, a pioneer in China. Yahoo was the first major American Internet company to enter the market, introducing a Chinese-language version of its site and opening up an office in Beijing in 1999. Yahoo executives quickly learned how difficult China was to penetrate — and how baffling the country's cultural barriers can be for Americans. Chinese businesspeople, for example, rarely rely on e-mail, because they find the idea of leaving messages to be socially awkward.

They prefer live exchanges, which means they gravitate to mobile phones and short text messages instead. (They avoid voicemail for the same reason; during the weeks I traveled in China, whenever I called a Chinese executive whose phone was turned off, I would get a recording saying that the person was simply "unavailable," and the phone would not accept messages.)

The most popular feature of the Internet for Chinese users — much more so than in the United States — is the online discussion board, where long, rollicking arguments and flame wars spill on for thousands of comments. Baidu, a Chinese search engine that was introduced in 2001 as an early competitor to Yahoo, capitalized on the national fervor for chat and invented a tool that allows people to create instant discussion groups based on popular search queries.

When users now search on baidu.com for the name of the Chinese N.B.A. star Yao Ming, for example, they are shown not only links to news reports on his games; they are also able to join a chat room with thousands of others and argue about him. Baidu's chat rooms receive as many as five million posts a day."

The Death of the Hat in 1960

A few months ago we had dinner on San Francisco's Fishermen's Wharf with another couple, and I learned a lot that night about the man, Stan. We began talking about his father, with whom he has always had a stormy relationship, fraught with terrible fights, accusations, and a tangled web of debt and forgiveness.

"He was in the hat business," Stan said. In the early '60s his dad was in the wholesale and retail hat business in New York. Everybody wore hats in the '40s and '50s, and he decided one day to move out to Cleveland and buy a hat business. The store was right downtown, and business was good. Until the fateful January day in 1960 when the young President Kennedy didn't wear a fedora on his walk from the Capital to the White House with Jackie. "My father hated JFK from that day on," since nobody with style wanted to wear their fedoras any more as a result.

The hat store was later destroyed by looters one tense night of Cleveland's race riots in the late '60s. The hatter tried to defend his turf, but was overwhelmed the the place was ruined. "He was pictured on the front page of the Plain Dealer, raging against the people who wrecked his beloved store. Even though the city's mayor offered him money, he never did rebuild that store, and later went on the road selling hats to department stores and small shops."

To Stan's credit, he was neither bitter nor angry about the many times his father had let him down, insulted him, and made him feel small. He just chalked it up to his personality. But it was clear to me that Stan's own sons would never be let down nor scorned as he had once been.

Funny Things We Say and Think About

I love words and expressions, and sometimes I chuckle to myself as I am driving or walking about certain turns of phrase. Yesterday I mulled over "poor man's," for example. I was thinking about a friend who is an adventure writer, and thought "he's a poor man's Jon Krakauer." Meaning that he isn't the real Jon, but pretty damn close.

The idea of being a Poor Man's version makes me chuckle, as if you're not as good at the rich man's version but you'll do in a pinch. I also love "slippery slope," in context of what can happen when you start something you might regret. Lurch is another verb that makes me smile, as does 'bristling' as in the top of a police cruiser bristling with antennae.

I also have my favorite words---they all relate to travel. I love the words marine, vessel, aircraft, and especially voyage. In fact I named my sales company Voyager 'cause I loved that word so much.

The Film Critics Hated it--So What!

According to a recent AP report, 11 movies so far this year haven't been shown to critics--up from two in the same period last year. Forbes this week discussed how film critics are becoming almost obsolete.

"For the folks who make their living reviewing films, this new tactic adds insult to injury. Not only do they have to forgo the ego boost of VIP treatment--but now they also have to rush to regular old premieres, sitting next to the hoi polloi (read: you and me). Being able to drop hints about the new Woody Allen or Terrence Malick flick makes you the envy of any social set. Having to spend the evening at the local multiplex to catch the opening of Benchwarmers or Phat Girlz makes you a regular working Joe or Jane.

For movie studios, freezing critics out of select premieres might have been a smart move even decades ago. As with all complex products, there's plenty that can go wrong with a movie. Inevitably, there are films in which just about everything that could have gone wrong, does. Why throw a dog of a movie to a pack of wolves if you can avoid it?

Also, some movie genres get a much fairer shake from critics than others. Let's face it: Film critics are movie buffs first–and as such, they're much more inclined to rave about an independent film than a horror flick. And they invariably prefer sharp wit to sophomoric humor. Little surprise, then, that the "unseen 11" skew heavily to subject matter that reviewers are prone to disdain."

The Glorious Silence of Yoga

Tonight I drove down to Northampton and joined dozens of others in a high-ceilinged room where we did yoga. Telling people you are going to yoga class is funny, there's always a reaction, either what for? or how great!

This was more than an exercise class, it was meditation, and quiet, and chanting ohmmmmmmmm and quiet. The instructor gently pulls the students into position, and toward the end, after many luxurious minutes of silence, she softly rang Tibetan bells. As we all sat with our feet propped up against a wall, and settled into the delicious stillness, I wondered what everyone else was thinking about, in that period of extended silence. The point is to not think at all, but of course, my mind raced between cafe details, old meetings of a 1997 Men's group, and plans to go to Italy.

I thought thought and thought and then we did headstands up against the wall. I look forward to our next class, where I promise not to think so much during the peaceful silence.

Terror in the Jordanian Desert--September 1970

In September of 1970, four planes were hijacked by Palestinian militants and flown to the Jordanian desert. Tonight on PBS, American Experience replayed the drama of hundreds of hostages left out in planes in the desert, and described how the event nearly toppled the reign of King Hussein, destablizing the country and almost caused his government to topple.

Scenes of the Intercontinental Hotel in Amman being shot and bombed by combatants while hostages cowered in the stairwells were mixed with shots of Nixon and Kissinger meeting to try to plot their next move. Nixon wanted to bomb the Palestinians, but his defense secretary Mel Laird pretended that the weather was bad, (it wasn't) so negotiations, not bombs continued.

It was a scene that gripped the world, seven long days, and in the end, the Palestinians blew up four planes, after releasing hundreds of hostages but taking 60 Jewish people to the back alleys of Amman to try to trade them for jailed comrades. In the end, all of the terrorists got away, their comrades were released, and none of the poor passengers were killed. And it wouldn't be the last time we'd hear more than we wanted to hear about hijackings in September.

I'm In the Nude for Dancing

South London Press had a story last year about a new trend in clubbing--Naked dancing. Hundreds of clubbers are descending on the country's only nude disco every Saturday night.

The craze for letting it all hang out on the dancefloor is pulling in punters to South Central in Kennington Lane. Clubbers have to wear shoes to protect their feet in case of smashed glass but the only pants to be seen in the whole place belong to the bar staff.

Even the DJ is naked behind his decks, though fully-clothed bouncers are stationed outside to stop clothed clubbers stumbling in unawares. Jamie Rocket, 29, who helps organise the Starkers! night, said naked clubbing was an exhilarating experience.

He said: "When people are naked they can feel inhibited or exposed but when everyone is the same that disappears. "Some people like the way it feels, some people like being looked at and some people like the view.

"A lot of it grew out of that clubbing generation in the 1990s which had the philosophy of being free and at one with the crowd. "All kinds of people come along, men, women, singles, couples, gay, straight. It's open to everyone."

And for any male clubbers worried about the temperature taking its toll on their manhood, the venue boasts "excellent heating."

Sailing with the Sea Shepards in the South Ocean

Peter Heller is an old friend who just published an incredible article in National Geographic Adventure, about sailing with the Sea Shepards in the Antarctic, trying to sabotage Japanese whaling ships.

"The Nisshin Maru was on our port side, and the two ships approached each other at an acute angle. In a typical collision situation, the law of the sea dictated that we had the right-of-way, as we were on her starboard. I watched with awe as the Nisshin's bow, as tall as a three-story building, lunged off a 35-foot wave, airborne, and crashed down like a giant ax. The hole it tore out of the sea vaporized, the spray driven downwind. The gap closed. Three hundred yards, 200 yards. Now we could hear the blare of the Nisshin's horn through the tearing gale. Repeated blasts, short and long, enraged.

"Collision, one minute."

I remember reaching down and tugging on the waterproof zipper of my dry suit and having one very clear simple thought: You're going to be wet and cold in about 20 seconds. The hammering bow loomed, 200 feet away, aimed midships, at our belly.

It was the most impressive sight I've ever seen. Cornelissen glanced at the radar, then at the juggernaut, and held his course. He was focused, intent. A deadly game of Antarctic chicken. One hundred fifty feet away. He blew the horn, which was the order to unleash the prop foulers. A squad on the stern stood, braced themselves, and whipped several hundred feet of mooring line off a big spool, enough to tangle any propeller.

And then the Nisshin blinked. Whoever was at their helm threw it hard to port. For an agonizing second the two ships ran parallel, and then the Japanese were pulling away, fleeing back into the fog. As they ran, Watson pulled down the mic on maritime channel 16, and barked, "Nisshin Maru, Nisshin Maru, this is the Farley Mowat. You are in violation of an international whale sanctuary. We advise you to get out. Time to go now, you murdering scumbags. Now move it! And run like the cowards you are."

It's Poker on Triple Espresso

Today's NY Times included a story about a new Fox show: " "Poker Dome" will encase a group of players in a soundproof, glass-walled stage, while viewers and a studio audience watch everything they do.

Microphones will capture game chatter, and pulse monitors strapped to the gamblers will track their heart rates. Robotic cameras will scrutinize every nervous tic on the gamblers' faces, projecting the angst of brinkmanship onto oversized video screens. New to the mix will be an N.B.A.-like shot clock that gives gamblers only 15 seconds to bet, check or fold, an innovation that Fox says will increase the rate of play to 80 to 100 hands an hour from the usual 15 to 20. "It's poker on triple espresso," Fox boasts in a "Poker Dome" news release.

The growth of the poker industry, meanwhile, has led some television executives to bet that darts, dominoes or blackjack will be next. A group of Las Vegas and Los Angeles entrepreneurs has filmed a new blackjack tournament that it is pitching to networks as the next big thing. For his part, Mr. Greenberg at Fox still sees poker as the biggest game in town — and "Poker Dome" as its most robust incarnation.

" 'Poker Dome' will be the Nascar of poker," he said, "because of its style, design, graphics, information and the speed with which the game is played."

There Used to be a Cafe There

This morning I drove down into the flats of Holyoke. There I found City Paper, where it felt like I was being transported back in time. Wooden floors, sad and tired party decorations, an older black women behind the counter, no customers in sight. I was there to find plastic cups for ice coffee...and I chatted with the lady behind the counter about the neighborhood. "There used to be a coffee house right near here," I said. "They closed...they were right over there," she replied, pointing to a boarded up building. I looked closer and saw that it was actually the one right next door, this was the cafe started by Dean Cycon, of Dean's Beans. "The grant ran out," said the saleslady. "They used to have lattes and coffees and stuff. Good coffee. But everybody goes to Dunkin' Donuts, they're right up the street.

It was sad to see another business buffeted and defeated by the mighty Dunk. I have seen the TV ads for their new "turbo" coffee, a regular joe with a shot of espresso. I've even named our own version, we call it the SuperNomad. But everybody does go to Dunk, and that's why it's tough for smaller guys like us to get the business. To everyone who does venture all the way into downtown S. Deerfield, thank you for passing by your familiar Dunk to come to the GoNOMAD CAFE!

Max E. Churchill is Done for a While

I went to Greenfield on Wednesday morning, and was crossing the street when I saw two cops quickly approach in a cruiser. They looked excited, energized, and one gripped his holster as he ran toward the BankNorth on Federal Street. They were looking for somebody, and I didn't know who. Then in the paper I read that it was Max E. Churchill they were trying to find.

Today's paper showed a picture of old Max. "A gentle giant," is how one of the townsfolk in Heath where he lived, described him. "We've known him his whole life, I find this very dismaying and hard to believe. And I have to say that photograph looks nothing like him." This photo was on the paper's front page, it showed Max in a ski cap looking menacing. He has lived a tough life--with lots of knocks. Leaving the scene of an accident; larceny by check, his mom's trailer with a tax lien on it... his fingerprints were easy for the cops to find.

How sad, thinking about it, that after he's caught, he's going to spend years in a jail cell. Deserving, but a sad way for Max E. Churchill, of Heath, to end up.

Sob, Weep, Here Come the Builders & Inventors

ABC is becoming the Network of Weeping. On Sunday nights, the juggernaut show is Extreme Makeover, with Ty Pennington, who can draw raw emotions out of anything, including a trip to Sears. Then each of the craftsmen and designers gets a chance to wring tears out of the audience.

Then tonight was "American Inventor." So many weeping inventors, they get so choked up on their emotional investments that they can barely make their presentations. Tonight they went from 24 to 12 lucky inventors, these winners will be getting $50K to invest and develop their products. Another black guy who's mortgaged his house, is in arrears everywhere, all because of his love for his football target device.

Another inventor dragged out his wife's terminal illlness. So sad, but he wanted to make the world better. So he invented a little hexagonal device that holds what appears to be ashes. But his sales pitch, "death is inevitable," that makes the wisest judge say, "he's ahead of his time."

No Books for You! I see Your Undies!

Falkenberg, Sweden -- A Swedish school library is refusing to lend books to pupils if their underwear is showing. Pupils of Tullbro School in Falkenberg do not have to wear a uniform but librarians are clamping down on some teenage fashions. Students who wear hipsters which show off their underwear are not allowed to borrow books, reports Hallands Nyheter newspaper. Wearers of baseball caps and beanies are also banned from using the library.

Ms. Mudflap Meets Yosemite Sam, Drives into the Sunset

Home at lunchtime baking lemon poppy and pumpkin bread, I usually turn on the television down in the basement. Today it was Modern Marvels...about UFOs. But what got my attention was this clever ad for the new Honda Ridgeline truck. Therein, the silver girl on the mudflaps slinks her way into the cab and there, waiting for her, is "back off" the image of the cartoon character Yosemite Sam, and they drive off. Charming bit of marketing.

I am very pumped up about our own clever marketing effort. Today 2800 envelopes were dropped off at the South Deerfield Post office, our first town-wide coupon mailing, with 16 local restaurant and store coupons inside. I personally met and sold each one of them, and believe that making this extra effort to promote all of the town, not just our advertisers, will help put the GoNOMAD CAFE on the map. Well at least bring the townsfolk in to become regulars.

Things are whizzing along....doing a Chamber of Commerce seminar on search engines for local businesses...working on our inflight magazine project, and continuing to reserve airport parking. Our businesses are making their marks!

It Ain't as Interesting if I We Have to Buy It

At the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the execs are up in arms about what happened after they tried making the employees pay for the newspaper. Below is part of a letter to them:

"There has been one unfortunate and unacceptable byproduct of the switch - employees are stealing print copies from the vending boxes that we placed throughout our buildings as a convenience for those who still want a print copy. A single daily single copy can be purchased for 25 cents and a Sunday single copy for $1.

Employees, by the way, also can and should take advantage of a half-price discount on home delivery subscriptions - the cost of which, if you prefer, can be deducted from your paycheck.

During the first week that the additional on-site racks were in service, 43 percent of the Star Tribunes removed from those racks were not paid for. For the second week the rate was 41 percent.

This is called "pilferage" in our business; but put more plainly, it is theft, pure and simple.

Taking more than one newspaper from a rack when you have only inserted enough money for one paper is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Employees who steal newspapers will put their jobs at risk.

There is zero tolerance when it comes to stealing from our company, even if it is a 25-cent newspaper. And I encourage our hundreds of honest employees who observe co-workers stealing newspapers to challenge them on the spot to refrain from doing so."

Oh Tiger, You Spaz!

America's leading newspapers yesterday helped Tiger Woods evade controversy by ignoring his use of the word `spaz' to describe his poor putting in the final round of the Masters at Augusta," Lewine Mair wrote in the Telegraph.

"The LA Times, changed the word to 'wreck' while The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe all expunged the word completely. Only two US sports news services ran his words in an unedited form."

Mair labelled it "an extraordinarily insensitive, if impromptu comment, from a player who usually shows nothing but compassion for his fellow men." Britain's biggest selling tabloid The Sun took umbrage at the comments.

They included reaction from Scope, the British charity for cerebral palsy sufferers formerly called the Spastic Society.

"Although in the US the term 'spaz' may not be as offensive as in the UK, many people will have taken exception to linking a poor golf stroke to a spastic," a Scope spokesman said.

The last top sportsman to use the word publicly was Australian tennis player Lleyton Hewitt who was fined during the 2001 French Open for calling a linesman a "spastic".

The 24 Guy's Had an Interesting Life

Rolling Stone published a long interview with Keifer Sutherland, star of the show 24.

"As a kid he was tossed about some. One minute he's being born in England, his extravagant dad setting him up in life with the extravagant name of Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland, the next he's living in Los Angeles. He's three. His mom, Canadian actress Shirley Douglas, and his dad aren't getting along. In fact, his dad is carrying on with Jane Fonda. The marriage dissolves. His mom goes away, leaving Kiefer and his twin sister, Rachel, behind.

It's during this time that Kiefer evolves his first real memory of his father. His father, the larger-than-life movie star, wears his hair long, wild and tangled, with a great big beard to match. A leather coat occludes his shoulders. He drives his son to preschool in a Ferrari he won in a poker game. His father is "different." The other parents stare. Kiefer likes how they stare and by his mid-twenties he will dress similarly, drawing similar stares, albeit from within a 1970 beater Porsche 911, not a Ferrari.

After six months, his mother returns and eventually takes him back to Canada. Over the next ten years he attends seven different schools, learning to make friends by making the other kids laugh. He's insecure, nervous, a compensating cutup but not a great student. In his fifteenth year, he drops out of school, determined to be an actor, despite the usual parental misgivings. Shortly thereafter, he lands the lead in a coming-of-age film, The Bay Boy, and is nominated for a Genie award, Canada's Oscar. With a $30,000 payday in his pocket, he descends on New York and the actor's life. A year later, nearly broke, he moves to L.A. and for a few months lives out of his sweet '67 Mustang.

In 1985, he lands a part in the Steven Spielberg TV show Amazing Stories, and, as he likes to say, "When Steven Spielberg hires you, that's good for three jobs easy." And so it was, first as a gang leader in Stand by Me, then as the most raffishly charming vampire ever in The Lost Boys and as a sensitive cowboy in Young Guns.

Chasing the Rich, Rich Richest

The New Republic writes on the love affair between big media and the super rich. The story began with a report on the NY Times Shopping Writer Alex Kuczynski's new $5000 shearling coat, and how 'glad she was that she had already paid her credit card bills." The writer couldn't resist including this detail in a recent column.

"Luxury porn has blossomed over the past decade, driven in part by the proliferation of city-based "controlled-circulation" magazines--ad-driven glossies distributed gratis to households meeting certain economic criteria. (In the past year, not one but three such publications were launched in Washington, D.C., alone.) Other magazines, such as Millionaire (with its annual special issue, Billionaire), hawk the luxe life on a national scale, while still others focus on a particular category of consumption.

Elite Traveler, in which featured accommodations often top $10,000 per night, instructs its readers (households with incomes over $1 million) on how to procure their own private island. Robb Report puts out a handful of luxury guides on subjects like home entertainment, vacation homes, and "ShowBoats." Similarly, Millionaire produces more than a dozen online magazines/shopping guides, each spotlighting a subset of extravagance like art, wine, cars, yachts, and private jets.

These publications' business model is to attract advertisers with the richest readership possible. Ad buyers aren't promised a lot of eyeballs, just the right ones. (Why blow your budget tantalizing some schlub who cannot possibly afford a $42,000 Speedy Twilight watch from Louis Vuitton?) The stakes are high. The Times itself has reported that, by decade's end, Americans are on track to drop an estimated $1 trillion a year on luxury purchases.

Most People Don't Have What it Takes

"Do you have what it takes to be a 21st century pioneer?" I read about Northwest North Dakota in Sunday's Times. Here is how the website prairieopportunities.com entices urbanites to flee to their northern paradise.

"Most don't". NW North Dakota has openings for 5,000 people to live under clear skies, drink clean water, to worry less and enjoy life as it was meant to be enjoyed.

Most people have a problem with living in a northern climate where winters can present themselves with a magnificent ferocity. To others there is a deep satisfaction and connection to the world we live in when they commune with the seasons and the wonders each offers.

Odds are, you are not a candidate for NW North Dakota. You have succumbed to the cities. All of your pleasure must be provided and you gladly stand in long lines to receive them. But if you are one of those who is wondering what they are doing in that line, continue on. This may be the journey you have been waiting for, but had no idea where the line was to get tickets. It's OK; there are no lines in NW North Dakota.

George Schrieber Comes to Lunch

George Schrieber came to lunch with Cathie and Robbie, our neighbors in Holyoke. George is one of my father's oldest friends. They met in the early '50s and married in the same year 1953, in New York City. George is a hale and hearty 87 now, and he moved four months ago to Applewood, where there are options for three levels of assisted living. George said he's been impressed by the people who live there. Those who were once doctors, and UMass professors, scientists and CEOs. He said the conversations with them were one of the best things about his new digs.

George said that most of his neighbors rely on walkers...and he feels kind of guity being able to amble around unassisted. His cheery smile and upbeat temperment made Sunday even brighter, as we had a big lunch looking out over Cindy's backyard.

Men like George, Cindy's dad Mo, and my father Nat are moving up in age, and I sometimes think about what it will be like in twenty years when so many from this generation pass on. There won't be as many people who lived through a world war, or when people listened the radio instead of TV, or when there were no computers. Think about the way things were in 1953, that year they were both married. How different that was from today!

Probing the Korean Psyche with Park Chanwook

Today's NY Times Magazine was rich with fascinating nuggets. First was a profile of a Korean filmmaker named Park Chanwook who has made superviolent yet intriguing movies that mostly have to do with vengence. In one film, a man whose daughter is kidnapped takes brutal revenge on the captured kidnapper. His whole family takes turns exacting their violent revenge, politely lining up one by one.

In Korea during the mid eighties, student demonstrations against the military regime created two classes of people: those who demonstrated, and were beaten or tortured by the police, and those who feel guilty for not taking part. Park said that this divide polarizes the whole society because those who participated are proud since they changed Korean society; and those who did not feel guity because they enjoy the benefits but did not sacrifice anything themselves.

One of Park's movies is called "Joint Security Area." It's about South Korean soldiers who sneak over to the North Korean side and become friends with their sworn enemies. The movie will be remade by an American director and the location will be the US/Mexico border. It would be hard to duplicate Park's unique style but the subject is tantalizing, and I look forward to seeing one of his movies--It's coming this week from Blockbuster.

Chip Tells it Like it is--The Sox are Greedy

Chip Ainsworth wrote for the Valley Advocate back in the '80s, when I worked there in paste-up. He covered sports, and now he's made a comeback of sorts; every Saturday his column runs in the Recorder. He is a talented wordsmith, I loved this opener about the Red Sox this morning:

"It wouldn't be the worst thing if the Red Sox took a nosedive into the netherworld of mediocrity this season. Look at it this way, a flop would flush out fair weather fans and stabilize soaring ticket prices, but a winning season would keep the Lords of Landsdowne Street spitting in your ear and telling you it's raining.

Don't believe it? According to the Team Marketing Report, it will cost more to attend a game at Fenway Park this season than at any other ballpark, and the bottom line isn't even close. The average ticket price at Fenway is $46.46 for seats about the size of your mother's highchair. Factor in parking and concessions and the cost for a family of four to be at the old ballgame soars to $287.84 compared to the league average of $22.21 and $171.89 respectively.

NASCAR Says Its Fans Won't Take NBC's Bait

NASCAR said Wednesday it was “outrageous” that “Dateline NBC” targeted one of its race tracks last weekend for a possible segment on anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States.

NASCAR said NBC confirmed it was sending Muslim-looking men to a race, along with a camera crew to film fans’ reactions. The NBC crew was “apparently on site in Martinsville, Va., walked around and no one bothered them,” NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said Wednesday.

“It is outrageous that a news organization of NBC’s stature would stoop to the level of going out to create news instead of reporting news,” Poston said.

“Any legitimate journalist in America should be embarrassed by this stunt. The obvious intent by NBC was to evoke reaction, and we are confident our fans won’t take the bait,” he said.

NASCAR is in the final year of a broadcasting agreement with NBC Sports.

Bringing Girls Gone Wild Back to Civilization

You can count on the Onion for something blogworthy on this rainy Friday night, when we're all staying in, and Sam is here for pizza. "In what wildlifestyle reformation volunteers are calling a "positive step," the first group of rehabilitated Girls Gone Wild were released back into the civilized world Monday, and early signs indicate that they are adjusting smoothly, according to the director of the group responsible for their rescue.

Two Girls Gone Wild in their natural habitat, just before capture at the height of molting season. "At first, the girls were disoriented," said Janet Ottley, director of the South Padre Island Wild Life Rescue Foundation. "They were frightened by the absence of familiar comforts such as overt male attention, binge drinking, and camcorders. But over time, we've seen improvement: so far, no reports of nipple exposure, so we're very hopeful."

The 11 girls were captured nearly one month ago during their annual spring migration to the area and then put through an intensive rehabilitation program. "They have come a very long way," Ottley said. "When we first brought them into our clinic, they could barely function beyond baring their breasts, and they communicated solely through loud, sustained hoots."

Fondling Lighters in the Shapes of London's Phallic Landmarks

Dennis Lim writes about the new but familiarly-titled movie in the Village Voice.
"At one point in Basic Instinct 2, Sharon Stone's castrating nympho-bitch is diagnosed as a "masked psychotic"—a sneaky acknowledgment, perhaps, that the real subject of this sadly anticlimactic sequel is not sexual warfare or the pleasure principle or the death drive but cosmetic surgery. It's been 14 years since Stone's Catherine Tramell sent the San Francisco police force into a horny tizzy.

She returns, at 48, with a performance that lends new meaning to "Stone-faced." If we accept the actress's repeated claims that her glossy, creaseless visage is all-natural, then her work here constitutes an eerie tour de force of muscle control—a weirdly minimalist form of mugging.

As she tries on one nominally come-hither look after another, the immobilized upper portion of her face has the unsettling effect of rendering her expressions doubly ambiguous, as if she's wearing half a kabuki mask. Divested of her ice pick, Catherine is reduced to touristy kitsch, fondling lighters in the shapes of London's phallic landmarks.

Vannah Calls, the Big Gala Approaches

More media today: got an early call from Tom Vannah, he said the story that the Advocate published about the Karakoram Mountains in Pakistan would be linked up on their website. Tom is a bundle of energy, They just began publishing two new glossy magazines, PreviewCT and PreviewMA, and GoNOMAD is well represented in each issue with travel features we syndicated.

A big gala will be taking place on April 27 to celebrate the new launch, and yours truly has wangled an invite. Today another media interview: Carrie is coming over from the Frontier High School for a story about the cafe. This is a constituency we want to cultivate, we have great big plans to bring kids in at night and have them play video games on our computers. Stay tuned!

You Call THAT Coffee?

MSNBC explains why airline coffee is often really bad, and what to do about it.

"It’s all in the H2O. Many people believe that bad coffee comes from bad water, and they might be right. It is certainly true that airplane water doesn’t taste all that great. It is, after all, from the local municipal water supply, and it’s been sitting in the plane’s water tank for a while. Bottled water makes much better coffee. If you don’t believe me, next time you’re in a hotel, pour bottled water into your room’s coffeemaker. Even those wretched hotel coffee packets can turn out decent coffee if the water is good.

4. You’re drinking decaf — whether you want it or not. Many flight attendants brew only decaffeinated coffee. Are they concerned about your jangled nerves? Not particularly. It’s just that they’d rather have sleeping passengers than a hyperactive crowd any day. I am not condoning it; I’m just saying it happens. Did you know that airline coffee used to be 90% caffeine-free anyway? And did you know that a few airlines still serve mostly decaffeinated coffee as a matter of course?

1. Skip the cart. Don’t drink the coffee from the beverage cart. By the time it gets to you, the coffee is either cold or stale, and it’s probably decaffeinated anyway.

2. Make inquiries. Politely ask the flight attendant’s opinion of the coffee. If he frowns, take the hint. Sometimes he’ll come back with a fresh pot for you later.

3. Take a stand. Get up and take a walk to the back of the airplane after the beverage service, and ask for a cup of coffee. The flight attendants will have time to brew it and you can see that the coffee is fresh.

Going Around the World with Arthur and Barney

Where does the day go? That must be what other business owners say to themselves, as the day winds down and you look at the clock to see it's after five. I often wrestle with five, that's when we close, because nobody seems to want coffee between 5-6. So we close, but we are always all still here, pecking away at our computers and putting up stories in the back. Britt, one of our hardworking cafe employees, still has lots to do, but I hate letting more people come in and make a mess...so if somebody comes in now, well the coffee's already down the drain.

I was on the Around the World with Arthur and Barney show today, it's taped live out of their studio in Santa Barbara. While I was on hold, I got to hear the hilarious and raucous banter between Barney and some female staffers. "We're getting wild and crazy here in the studio," they joked. Then it was time to come on, and I talked about Cyprus. I gave a lot of detail, about the halloumi cheese they serve grilled, and the seafood meze feast we had on the cliff overlooking the 'fabled birthplace of Aphrodite,' on the Southern Coast. Radio is fun, live and always energizing. I cringed at one point when my phone here wouldn't stop ringing, but they didn't seem to mind...hey it's all part of doing a live show with a live person in an cafe across the country.

All You Need to Know about Tom DeLay

Joe Conason writes in the NY Observer: The two individuals most responsible for the end of his political career are Senator John McCain, whose committee hearings on Indian gaming drew attention to the Abramoff scandal; and Emily Miller, the press flack who squealed on Mr. Scanlon to the Justice Department after he jilted her for a younger woman. Both happen to be conservative Republicans.

In an interview with Time magazine on the eve of his resignation, Mr. DeLay boasts about the virtual monopoly of jobs and contributions that his party enjoys on K Street, where lobbyists routinely purchased “access” to the Capitol by following his dictates. “Nothing illegal about that at all,” he says, claiming to have achieved “total domination” of the lobbying industry “legally and ethically.” He has forgotten that the House Ethics Committee, a toothless operation run by his fellow Republicans, admonished him on three separate occasions for the smelly appearance of his dealings with lobbyists.

With his associates singing, we may soon learn much more. The confession filed by Mr. Rudy in conjunction with his guilty plea includes mention of a certain “Representative #2” who was involved in his misdeeds and is known to be Mr. DeLay. (“Representative #1” is Robert Ney of Ohio, another probable target of the corruption probe.) The Rudy confession ominously notes that its narrative “does not include all of the facts known to me concerning criminal activity in which I or others engaged.”

France Just Doesn't Get it---Firing is OK!

Today's Republican included this column by William F. Buckley about the strikers in France. Like the author, I have been amazed by the naivete and belief that laws allowing employers to fire people are such a sore subject in France.

Buckley first states the problem: more than 30% of the French are inactive. Not looking, not working, just inactive. In the US, firing is easy...but so is finding a new job. So you lose your dishwasher's job, you find another gig flipping burgers. Not a big increase in pay, a few weeks of fear, but you're back working soon enough.

In France, one of the student leaders protesting said he had no interest in economic flexibility--nor did he care that the current French system with 9.6 % unemployment is hampered by restrictive laws against flexible hiring. The vilified French government is trying, with this new law, to give employers a little room to hire/fire as they wish.

But in France, all this means is that it's time for another strike. Too bad they just don't get it.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Plenty!

An ad agency for GM had a cool idea: let the public create a video ad for the Chevy Tahoe SUV. David Utter of Web Pro News asked: "What could possibly go wrong?"

"How about a slew of global warming complaints and viscious anti-SUV spots, quickly becoming viral videos and zipping around the internet?

Those viral spots quickly gave General Motors a PR headache as numerous criticisms of the company, the Bush Administration, and SUV owners became the focus of hundreds of people all building user-generated content.

">CNet collected some of the better creations that have probably already vanished from the website, though to GM's credit it is not pulling every ad that has a negative tone. One of the funnier creations imposed this text over scenes of a Chevy Tahoe on the roll:

Larger than any mortal needs
with four wheel drive for conditions you'll
probably never encounter...
and sized to intimidate other drivers
& damage others' cars more than yours
gives you false confidence so you can
continue to drive like a heedless jerk
...because you're the only one
on the whole damn planet.

A host of other spots, many much more critical and less publishable, have been collected by the Democratic Underground website. Quite a few commercials have already been removed by GM."

They Love the News--Just not the Newspaper

Preliminary results of a study, reports today's Washington Post, found more evidence that younger people are interested in news, just not the print version. The study found, for example, that 37 percent of adults who visited The Washington Post's Web site in the past 30 days were ages 18 to 34, while only 26 percent of the newspaper's print readers fall into the same age bracket.

According to NAA data culled from more than 100 newspapers in most major metropolitan markets, unique visitors to newspaper Web sites rose 21 percent from January to December last year. Younger demographic groups reading online editions helped local newspapers extend their reach beyond the print market by 14 percent among 25- to 34-year-olds and 9 percent among 18- to 24-year-olds, the NAA said in its report, released at its annual convention this week in Chicago.

"People who are not necessarily engaged with the print product are increasingly using the newspaper Web site for news and information in their local market," said Randy Bennett, senior vice president of audience and business development at the newspaper association. "Blogs, video and other multimedia content beyond what appears in the newspaper are all having an impact on usage of newspaper Web sites."

A Guy Walks into a Wal-Mart...

In case you missed the barrage of press attention given to Drake University writing major Skyler Bartels this week, here's a rundown. Beth Callas writes about this dubious piece of news on Courtv.com.

"With the encouragement of his college advisor, he set out to spend his spring break in a Wal-Mart Supercenter which never closes. He ate Subway sandwiches and prepackaged food, entertaining himself in the electronics department and taking cat naps in bathroom stalls and the home and garden section.

He admits that he didn't have a clear idea of what he hoped to accomplish other than to see if he could do it and determine whether Wal-Mart could meet his every need for seven days. Was this so-called experiment a success? Depends on how you look at it. He only lasted 41 hours. Did Wal-Mart meet his every need? Sort of. He found clothing, food, shelter and even high-tech entertainment. But this begs the question: who cares? Apparently a number of media outlets including "Good Morning America," CNN, the Associated Press and NPR. But I'm still confused about what the story is.

I have yet to find anything remotely interesting about the time Bartels spent in the store. Perhaps the fact that the Wal-Mart staff didn't even notice his presence for almost two days is slightly noteworthy from a customer service standpoint. You can hardly blame them, as anyone who's spent time in a Wal-Mart would probably agree that all the glazed-over shoppers who plod through the aisles look as if they've been there for days.

Eating only Subway sandwiches for a week could be an interesting angle, but oh, guess what, Jared already did it. Skyler bought a jacket, he got a haircut, he talked to a nun and an Army recruiter...I'm getting bored just writing this. Apparently at one point he filled out a job application. Finally, a step in the right direction.

I LOVE Being a MAN!

Tired of playing second fiddle to men in conservative Saudi Arabia, five women decided if you can't beat them, join them. Reuters reports today.

"Al Watan newspaper said the five women underwent sex change surgery abroad over the past 12 months after they developed a "psychological complex" due to male domination.

Women in Saudi Arabia, which adopts an austere interpretation of Islam, are not allowed to drive or even go to public places unaccompanied by a male relative.

The newspaper quoted a senior cleric as saying the authorities have to fill what he described as a legal vacuum by issuing laws against sex change operations.

An interior ministry official told al Watan such cases are examined by religious authorities, and sometimes by psychologists, but those who undergo sex change are never arrested.

For Jeff Taylor, There is No Time to Putter

Jeff Taylor made a fortune by founding Monster.com. Now he's got a new venture called Eons, for which he has raised $10 million. But nobody yet knows what the company will offer its target audience---people over age 50. Haiwatha Bray writes in today's Boston Globe.

"A Pew survey finds that 83 percent of Americans between ages 30 and 49 use the Internet, nearly mirroring the rate found among those in their teens and 20s. For people between 50 and 64, the number edges down to 71 percent. As this group gets older, they'll push up the rate of Internet use among older seniors, bringing it into line with that of younger people.

But experts say there's a shortage of Internet resources tailored to the needs and interests of older people. Fox noted that many sites ignore the physical problems of older users -- using small type that they may find difficult to read, for example. ''We're dealing with people who are very Internet-savvy but are losing their vision," said Fox. ''In five years, we're going to have an even bigger group in that demographic."

In addition, seniors need more sites that feature information of importance to them. ''This fairly well-to-do, post-World War II generation seems to be just starving for information and resources on how to maximize their health and their wealth," said Tom Perls, associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine.

Perls noted that baby boomers are likely to live longer than earlier generations. Taylor is keeping mum on exactly what services Eons will offer. But he was clear on the company's goal -- helping people live useful and pleasant lives no matter their age.

Taylor scoffed at the traditional image of the retiree aimlessly puttering around the house until he dies. ''I hate this whole puttering thing," he said. ''I have way bigger plans for my life, and so does this whole generation."

Paul Bowles Kept Doing What He Did Best

I've reached the end, finally, of a book I've been reading since October 2005. It was a lovely book, Paul Theroux' "The Pillars of Hercules," given to me by my fellow traveler Carla Waldemar, as we left Santiago. In one of the last scenes, the author visits another legendary writer, Paul Bowles, in Tangiers. They smoke kif (pot) cigarettes together in his tiny room, that Bowles rarely leaves.

"We kept puffing, companionably, saying nothing. Then I saw what Bowle's real strength was: he was stubborn. People came and went. Bowles stayed. People started and abandoned their symphonies and novels. Bowles finished his own. People got sick and neglected their work. Bowles took to his bed and kept working. His life was a masterpiece of non attachment, of a stubborn refusal to become involved in anyone else's passions. I could just imagine his blue eyes narrowing and his thin lips saying 'I'm not moving.'

Bowles said. "People come every day...I work all the time. Malraux said to me, 'Never let yourself become a public monument. If you do, people will piss on you."

The Rich, Duped, Missed the Good Parties

Some friends came for a weekend visit to Cindy's and they brought Friday's Wall Street Journal. This fat paper is always full of good stuff, it's hard to get through the whole thing. I found a funny item about the proliferation of food festivals, and how the rich are missing out and still paying big bucks.

"But the oenophiles who paid $5,000 last month to drink rare wines and mingle with the likes of NY chef Daniel Boulud and Hawaiian-fusion pioneer Roy Yamaguchi were in for a surprise. While Mr. Boulud stayed at the dinner, Mr Yamaguchi and most of the other chefs spent the night at private afterhours parties with sommeliers and winemakers, where whole pigs were roasted on spits, oysters were slurped until dawn, and bottles opened that the patrons never saw.

Last month's South Beach festival in Miami was basically a two-party system. The top billed public event was a $600-a-head, seven course tribute dinner honoring iconoclastic Spanish chef Ferran Adria. There, Mr. Adria didn't cook or contribute to the menu, some courses took nearly an hour to arrive, and the wine, provided by a local distributor, didn't always pass muster. A few nights earlier, however, there was a smaller private fete for Mr. Adria. This cost five times as much as the public tribute."

Brad Shepard and Barney: Radio Next Week

Brad Shepard emailed me last week, recalling that I'd left him a voicemail. I left that message two months ago, but hey, I'm glad he called. Brad does the morning show on WHYN-AM 560, my favorite radio station. I'll be chatting about the GoNOMAD Cafe on Monday morning at 8:05 am. Just now a fire alarm went off, I began thinking that I left something on, but it was something in the apartment upstairs. Outside the guys from Georgios were looking bemusedly at me from the parking lot.

Later in the week I am going to be on Arthur and Barney's Around the World radio show, out of Santa Barbara. They do this one live, I'll chat with them about Cyprus and what it was like there. Soon I will finish writing that article and put it up, and be caught up with my writing duties...until the next trip.