Life

is that a phone in your robe pocket or…

  • by Drew

All this chatter about texting and shorthand and related non sequitur nonsense has led me to a real puzzle. What about monks? I mean, I have been told that some of these guys are going around with digital cameras and mp3 players and cell phones…yes, even cell phones. I’m sure we’re not talking about the vow of silence dudes. That would just be too bizarre, even if they got one of those free texting plans.

But the regular, less orthodox monks who occasionally kick back and have a little light discussion about what type of rope makes the best robe belt, or whether an old school straight razor is better for shaving the cranium than a five-blade name brand with disposable cartridges.

I wonder if these guys are sneaking around with iPhones, downloading apps and texting their brothers. Somewhere it must be happening, right? Probably in some particularly lenient temple. Even so, though, there’s got to be a lot of quiet time in a place like that. And even if they allow a little time for chat, you know it’s got to be quiet and meditative. So if one monk is texting another monk a little humorous anecdote about enlightenment or the afterlife or whatever, and the second monk responds LOL…you know he’s probably not actually, literally laughing out loud, right.

So, is that a lie. Seriously. Wouldn’t that kind of screw up your whole karmic balance?

Life

The Lingering…

  • by Drew

That sounds like the subtitle to Highlander Part 6, doesn’t it?

Thinking about phones and texting reminds me of something I saw at dinner. We went to a kid-friendly establishment with a deal on kid meals and had a pretty good time. While we were waiting for our food, I noticed a girl who was maybe 18 at a nearby booth. She had long, straight hair, and one hand against the side of her head. Her elbow was bent and she leaned on it. It was a perfectly common pose, a young girl on the phone.

At least, that’s what I thought. There was something odd about the way she spoke, the tilt of her head. I have both witnessed and experienced the cell talker phenomenon. Even if they are sitting right across from you in a restaurant booth, the talker will avoid looking at you as mucha s possible while they chat. There is an exception for guys (and possibly gals) who make a deliberate call to their significant other trying to get out of some prior engagement so they can hang out with their friend. In those instances, the guy (or possibly girl) will usually make frequent eye contact with the friend, since they are usually getting a phone reaming and require moral support. 

Anyway, this girl was not looking away, but rather was making regular eye contact with her dinner companion (a woman, possibly her mother) who had her back to me. There was something unfamiliar to me in this combination, the phone hand to ear coupled with dinner companion eye contact did not seem right. And then I realized what was going on.

The girl was not on the phone. Yet her hand was in phone position, against her head. Two fingers to her temple, her hand fisted, but in a sort of open way. Almost like she was holding an invisible phone. Everything about her posture suggested a phone call, with the exception of the aforementioned companion-eye-contact.

It was like a nervous tick. Or a habit born of such frequent repetition that it becomes unconscious behavior. It was really a little troubling. I mean, I’m not suggesting she wasn’t a perfectly nice and sweet young lady. Surely she is just lovely. But this need to mime phoning, like some bizarro telecommunications security blanket or something…I don’t know. It was weird.

So many people are looking for quick weight loss tips. Here’s one: lose the phone. At least for a while. I know it is only a few ounces, but it’s a start. And if nothing else, breaking the holding habit will free up your arm to do something mildly athletic.

Like curling.

Life

Acronymic

  • by Drew

So I didn’t actually precedent the word acronymic. But you have to agree it’s pretty unusual and you probably never would have used it right? Of course, with all the texting and shorthand going on, maybe I’m wrong and it will find its way into everyday speech. Then again, the texting generation is so full of slackers they will probably resort to calling them letter-wordy-things or something equally idiotic. I predict that the Merriam-Webster is going to roll downhill fast in the next few years.

In the meantime there is surely an opportunity for earning extra home income for anyone who can come up with a new acronym that can find its way into everyday texting – and then copyright it.

Seriously. Think if the first dude to text OMG had thought to file paperwork. Think of all the t-shirts and mousepads and trade-show giveaways he could be collecting royalties on. We’re talking millions, I’m sure.

Granted, he (or she) wouldn’t want to go after individuals using the acronym – litigation would be costly and borderline insane. And anyway, it would be much better off to keep it in the popular vernacular, lending attractive credence to all those people out there deciding if it would be better to tag their giveaway foam visors with OMG or LOL.

Tell the truth now, don’t you want to say you’re ROTFLMFAO.

(I never know if I should include the ‘t’ from the ‘the’ – can I get a style ruling?)

Life

St. Siggy

  • by Drew

I made a WWJD joke in my last post. So, you ask, what’s next? An exploration of the Jesus fish versus the Darwin fish? No, no, no. But it reminded me of a question I posed a friend a week or so ago. He is an avowed and unapologetic atheist. I had a random thought after an exchange of acronymic nonsense (yes, I just precedented that word) and sent him a one liner hoping to elicit a bemused chuckle.

Instead, he fired back, without hesitation, a fantastic response.

I asked him what a texting pagan uses as short hand instead of OMG.

His immediate response:

STSGA

Maybe you’ve heard this one before? I had not. And rather than invest in eye cream for dark circles from the hours of lost sleep puzzling it over, I simply asked for an explanation. Now, when my Valley Girl sounding bells ring and I want to be all like “Oh My God!” I can instead invoke a little prayer to a new phraseological friend I call St. Siggy.

Haven’t heard it? Want to know what it stands for?

Shit! The sacrifice got away.

Life

Did You Ever Notice?

  • by Drew

Did you ever notice that the people who roll the holiest, who shout things like ‘God and Country’ the loudest, who complain about low-class ‘other people’ and claim they are all about their local community and the well being of their region…did you ever notice these are the biggest schlong-tokers around?

Seriously. I’m not just talking about common sense stuff here, like if you need proactiv solution, you shouldn’t be munching on fast food and chocolate bunnies every day. I’m talking about the people who wave their flags and sticker their bumpers with statements of patriotism and religious ferocity. Why is it that these are the people who seem the least tolerant, the least forgiving and the least patient?

WWJD? Probably not freak out and condescend to the hostess who sat him at the wrong table. Even if it was thattable, you know, the one Da Vinci painted. 

These colors don’t run? Maybe not, but they have no problem waddling around looking for a manager to complain to about your fries that were not warm enough…even though you polished the entire plate off in 2 minutes flat. I guess you were so busy stuffing your patriotic little squirrel cheeks to take a breather and ask for a heat-up.

Life

Spayed

  • by Drew

I saw an interesting license plate the other day. On a rather small Honda hybrid car, a 2 door with the back wheels covered by the body, was this plate. NEUTRD. This was a fairly small vehicle, like something you’d not be surprised to see a dozen clowns exit.

After laughing a bit, I had to imagine the driver. In my mind it was one of two types. On the one hand, it could be a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches wearing veterinarian with a salt and pepper beard, neatly trimmed micro ‘fro white guy who’s running into the mall for an Orange Julius and maybe some patio furniture.

The other possibility, as I imagined it, would be a burly, tattooed dude with a sleeveless flannel shirt and possibly a starter mullet. He traded in his Charger, or maybe restored Cougar because he fell in love with a hippie chick in a crunchy sun dress.

Spring is in the air and with it comes thoughts of attracted opposites, Romeo and Juliet/Hatfield and McCoy type romances. I’m such a sucker for melodrama – even when it’s just in my head.

Life

Targeted

  • by Drew

I understand targeted advertising. I understand the presumption of qualified consumers. I worked two of the primary areas in the advertising world, both on the agency side and on the media property side. So I get it. I really do. No need to explain the value proposition.

Still, I think that technology, the answer to the prayers of target-marketing professionals sometimes fails. MISERABLY.

Lately I’ve been playing an iPhone game called Crack the Code a lot. It’s about figuring out a pattern of colored dots in a limited number of moves. It’s not ridiculously challenging, but occasionally you need to stretch your cranial muscles a little. The funny thing is that I have been playing the ad-subsidized free version, and one of the most frequent ads to scroll below the application promises Effective Cocaine Rehab.

Get it? CRACK the code. COCAINE rehab. Really. this is the best the Google-style keyword advertising module can come up with?

Or maybe they think I’m playing too much and need some sort of addicted gamer rehab.

What’s next, ads for loose diamonds on Bejeweled? Flight Simulators sponsored by Dramamine? How about diet pills shilling while you play Hungry Hungry Hippos?

Life

The New Math

  • by Drew

I was working on homework with my second grader and puzzling through some addition problems. See, they add big numbers differently then when I was a kid. No more carrying the one and such. Now they add the hundreds, add the tens, add the ones. Put them together, then you’re done. Or something like that.

Actually, I kind of like the system, it’s just a little foreign after thirty odd years of doing it another way. The thing is, at a class meeting with the teacher earlier this year, she explained the whole thing to the parents. It was a sort of warning of what to expect. I thought it was interesting. A funny Mom sitting next to me commented that she’d struggled with it when her older daughter went through second grade – FINALLY it made sense. We chuckled.

Then the bus driver Mom chimed in. She’s grizzled and weird and very trailer-y. You know what I mean, don’t even pretend you don’t. I know she is a bus driver because she tells me and everyone else at every opportunity. And there’s nothing wrong with that, until she goes into her rant about how her company is good and the drivers are well trained (she drives for a school district about 35 minutes south of us) while the company our district uses employs untrained idiots.

She goes on about how she doesn’t like letting her son ride the bus to school because the drivers don’;t know what they are doing and are piloting “death traps.” Did I mention that I thought she was the kid’s grandmother until she mentioned that she was all alone. The boy’s father is “long gone” and Granny (presumably her own mother) is around, but she can’t be doin’ no driving.

This is the woman who got into a shouting match with the principal when the school requested her son be checked by a doctor for H1N1 when he’d been in and out (mostly out) of school for three weeks with flu-like symptoms. Okay, I know the H1N1 hysteria was irritating, but even I thought it was reasonable for the school to demand a note from the kid’s doctor that it had been considered. I mean, without such confirmation, how would they even know that bus Mom is taking him to the doctor. Seriously, the kid was sick for a month. I mean…what the hell?

Look, I’m not saying people with advanced degrees are better or something. Sure, a GED might help, but…okay, that was mean. Jobs in IT or banking or education or whatever do not make you any smarter or more well-rounded, or even more hygienically sound. I know that. Nevertheless, when the teacher is explaining how they now teach math to kids, a new system developed by educators to be more useful and sensible for youngsters, I don’t think you should argue with her.

And when she explains that she will be teaching this method in school, but if the child already knows another way and uses it to get correct answers, she will accept it, I don’t think this is either necessary or appropriate as a response:

“So if my kid does it the right way, not your way, you’re not going to give him an F?”

Noise

Pop Culture Revisited

  • by Drew

Since I’ve been doing all this writing about old time radio shows like Harry Lime and The Shadow, and the late, great Orson Welles, I am reminded of another interesting old time…well, event I should talk about. While working on my undergraduate thesis I got very involved in the study of literary hoaxes. That’s a whole other topic, but this line of research eventually led my to the Geritol quiz show scandal in the late 50s. It was discovered at that time that Producers on the show were giving answers to preferred contestants. There were investigations, some lives were ruined, and none of the rich bad guys suffered.

In the mid-90s, Robert Redford made a movie about it all. And, actually, its a very good movie. I know this because I researched the events and watched a number of documentaries about the scandal while I was in college. Several years later, I caught the film on a movie channel and thoroughly enjoyed it (Rob Morrow’s atrocious Boston accent aside).

At the time, Geritol was the sponsor, and had a reigning national tonic to help you age better, lose weight, stay regular, cleanse your body, heal everything, cure zombie-ism, lube your chassis and anything else you wanted it to do. They wanted drama. They wanted characters you could either love or hate, characters you would tune it to either cheer for or against. They sanctioned the producers to manipulate the contestant pool to heighten drama and weed out the less desirables.

They had a long run with Herb Stempel, a brash, working-class Jew from Brooklyn who could virtually sweat on command. John Turturro is fantastic in the role – trust me, I saw a lot of interviews with this guy. The real kicker, however, is when they lassoed Charles Van Doren, product of one of America’s great literary families, and a popular Columbia University professor, and made him an American folk hero.

If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s a thinky movie, sure, but it’s also true. It’s all true. It reveals a dark but persistent and very, very real aspect of our popular culture. And if you think anything has improved since the 50s…think again.

Noise

What evil lurks…

  • by Drew

My love of Old Time Radio began with The Shadow. Back in my college radio days I got on some mailing lists with catalogs of esoteric recordings. These were back of ‘zine catalogs, mouse type on a single photocopied page with handwritten corrections, send a SASE for a copy of the pricelist kind of things. Within a year or two of my dawning interest, all of this back page stuff pretty much disappeared along with the ‘zines, moving onto the Internet. Sure, it was the early days, but it wouldn’t be long before those types of classified ad pricelists by mail were a thing of the past.

Anyway, in one of these catalogs I found a couple of inexpensive cassettes that I bought for long drives, going to gigs or back and forth between Boston and New York. It was the beginning of an insane collection, but most things big have to start out small…or, at least less big.

One tape I got was War of the Worlds. The other had a couple episodes of the Shadow. Classic, early episodes after the Shadow show format changed from a Tale From the Crypt style show to the more recognizable Lamont Cranston, man about town, version. The first season of Lamont Cranston as the shadow starred Orson Welles. And it was magnificent. Truly, truly, like a couple of Ambersons.

It was dark and moody and less comic-booky than the later seasons. In ran up through the 50s, so there was plenty of time for evolution. In fact, some of the later seasons, long after Welles left the show, were among the most enjoyable to listen to. They were more polished and often better written, if a bit safer or tamer. Radio seemed to go tame and lose a lot of its edge after World War Two. The same goes for movies and even a lot of music, I think. The woo hoo 50s really did end up begging for the 60s.

But in the late 30s, the world was on the verge of massive conflict and the tense energy pervaded all media. Thus, when I first heard the Shadow some 14 years ago, hissing out of the cassette player in my car, it was truly extraordinary. Radio show sponsors in those days were coal and cigarette companies, shaving cream and hair tonic peddlers. Latter day phisoderm and little blue pill merchants, maybe, but who cares. And a couple years later, they’d start asking all good Americans to buy War Bonds and follow the rationing rules.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

The Shadow knows. Ha ha ha ha ha!

[brought to you by Pennsylvania’s finest anthracite, Blue Coal]

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.