Here's how Letterman & Leno Are
Sometimes Like Time & Newsweek

I've written before about how different in sensibility Jay Leno and David Letterman are. But they can also occasionally be like Time & Newsweek, the two leading brands battling so intently for bragging rights to the zeitgeist that (it's the magazines I'm talking about now) they have been known to sometimes go weeks in a row with the same cover subject, occasionally including eerily similar photos (though that's far less true now than in the past). Last Wednesday evening was a case in point. On the same night, and within seconds of each other, both comedians joked about Hillary Clinton in their opening monologues by referring to her pantsuit. Leno: "She got the pantsuit beat out of her" in recent primaries. Letterman: "Hillary appeared with a pantsuit painted on." Now that's just plain weird (but also funny). Anyway, we happen to be Letterman fans around here. To review earlier mentions of him and his show, go here. If I lost you in using the word zeitgeist (an essential German word that has no real equivalent in English) you'll find a definition here.

Letterman on W's
Faulty Elocution

As thinking people, we naturally tend to resist the straightjacket of declaring ourselves as one or the other polar opposites. Things generally aren't just black or white, simple yes or no, all good or bad. Years ago, my wife flew through the lengthy marriage test the Catholic Church administered in hopes of testing our compatibility, while I took almost twice as long. There's simply no way in hell to answer that with a straight yes or no, I silently thought to myself as I read half of the absurdly binary questions.

Still, there are some things that are simpler, and I think Letterman vs. Leno is certainly among them. If you like one, you're unlikely to fully like the other. And your choice of comedians probably says a lot about you. You perhaps won't find it shocking to learn that I prefer Letterman. A couple of weeks ago, he got off what I think may be his best joke ever. "Bush had dinner at Taverne on the Green to celebrate his 10,000th mispronunciation of the word nuclear." Well, okay--it was funnier to watch him say than it is to read it here. In any event, I can't picture Leno saying that. But then, maybe I'm not the best judge, since I rarely watch even a minute of his show.

Letterman on Trouble at the Leaner Times

A couple of weeks ago--July 19th to be precise--David Letterman turned his attention to the cutbacks at the New York Times in his Top Ten list. It was prompted by the announcement that the paper would be trimming its paper size, a move that seemed to suggest mild desperation to even the most casual observer. Anyway, here it is:

Top Ten Signs There's Trouble At The New York Times

10. Extensive coverage of recent fighting between the Israelis and the lesbians
9. Pages 2 through 20 are corrections of previous edition
8. Every sentence begins "So, like"
7. TV listings only for "Zorro"
6. Weather forecast reads "Look outside dumbass"
5. Multiple references to "President Gore"
4. Obituary includes list of people they wish were dead
3. Headlines fold over to create surprise Mad magazine-type hidden message
2. Restaurant critic recently gave IHOP four stars
1. Reporting that Oprah isn't gay, but Letterman is

You can view the show's complete Top Ten archives here.

Baseball Icon, Friend

of Madonna for Veep

'Isn't it time to put a little grabass back in the White House?'

--David Letterman last night on his show, outlining the reasoning behind why Yankees' star Alex Rodriguez would be a good choice for vice president. You can review earlier Letterman mentions here. Madonna and A Rod, on the other hand, are virginal subject for us, if not for each other. We apologize for this exceedingly rare descent into the idiot culture, but hell, it's summertime, and we couldn't help ourselves. We now return you to our usual highbrow (or at least middlebrow) material.

Here's a Writing Market We Never Considered

The L.A Times, in a piece that will no doubt prompt a flood of new material being offered over the transom, notes that despite union rules to the contrary, the David Letterman show regularly uses jokes supplied by freelance comedy writers. So we ask you: waddayagot that's good enough for prime time comedy? We welcome your jokes, good, bad and in between. Meanwhile, you can review earlier Letterman-related items here.

I'll Be the Adult Here

'What I was trying to do was represent the adult wing of the Democratic party.'

--John Edwards on the David Letterman show last night, discussing his reaction to the ferocious squabbling that broke out between his rivals Obama and Clinton in Monday's debate in South Carolina. We happen to be Edwards fans around here, in part because we can't stomach the thought of four years of watching either Barack's puppy dog eagerness or the restoration of the grimly opportunistic Clinton machine. We also happen to think he's been by far the best of the Democratic trio when it comes to putting some actual meat on the bones of his ideas for governing. By all means, Obama fans, feel free to continue your swooning over his allegedly inspiring calls for "change." Around here, we're stubbornly old-fashioned enough to want just a bit of detail about what those changes might include. By the way, we got a serious kick out of how Letterman closed the segment by playfully asking the candidate's permission to mess up his perfect hair just a little. The "Breck girl," as some on the right have dubbed him, gladly obliged.

Why We Love
Steve Martin

Amid the dreary cattle call of late-night TV interview shows, few famous names stand out. No matter how famous, how attractive or how articulate they might be, they mostly all say the same thing, trying their best to manufacture some new blend of hipster freshness or "rehearsed spontaneity," in a ringing phrase I recently came across. But beneath it all, they're all selling their latest movie or TV show or whatever.

And yet, more than 30 years after he first blasted onto the national scene with his hilarious stand-up routines (a kind of neo-Buster Keaton with a '70s twist) and stomach-splitting Saturday Night Live character sketch brilliance, Steve Martin finds a way to remain as fresh as ever, at least for me. He's done that in part by engineering his own improbable mid-career make-over: he's now at least equal parts writer and comedian. He's written several well-received books, and has followed Woody Allen's earlier lead by writing several comic sketches for the New Yorker. However much fame he may have accumulated from movies and live appearances over the years--which is not inconsiderable--if you take his recent appearances at face value, he now sees himself primarily as a writer. And yet in his signature brilliant fashion, he finds a way to make it all work together, these twin veins of writing and comedy.

His appearance last week on David Letterman is the latest case in point. He talked mostly about writing, and then, in a roast of the ritual film clips other actors bring along to these shows, it cut to a clip of him...writing. The clip consisted of him sitting silently in front of a Mac laptop, staring into the screen without moving or saying a word. That was funny enough. But the punchline (when the clip was finished, and the camera returned to him and Letterman) was much funnier: "I wish they had cleared that with me, because that was actually a clip of me editing."

Gonzo Ends With a Bang

Last year, the Watergate reporting duo of Woodward and Bernstein raised eyebrows by selling their reporting notes and other background files from their famous Watergate investigations. The University of Texas library shelled out a cool $5 million for the right to own and display this unique stash, and the Washington Post proved to be surprisingly writer-friendly by letting the pair personally profit from the detritus they accumulated while operating as fulltime employees of the paper. Anyway, if this bit of buckraking doesn't bother you too much, you can now check out much of the collection online here.

Supporting the Next Generation of Woodsteins. American University in Washington D.C. and the Center for Public Integrity have newly teamed up to offer the first fellowship in investigative journalism. Fellows can pursue a master's in journalism at AU while pursuing investigative project with the singularly effective Center, founded by former ABC News producer Charles Lewis, who's become an icon of journalism for his aggressive exploration of the connection between money and politics. It's not a bad deal: fellows have their tuition paid in full, plus get a $24,000 stipend. If you have at least four years in the business, get those applications in by March 15th. Information is available here.

Insulting Right-Wingers Watch. In an interesting piece on Fox News in the January/February Atlantic Monthly (which is unfortunately now locked behind walls for non-subscribers), novelist Tom Carson gets off a nice line about right-wing bully boy Sean Hannity, referring to his "red-white-and-Colgate smirk." David Letterman also delivered some well-deserved body blows to George W. in his January 14th Top Ten list, reminding students of late-night comedy that the D's tend to watch Letterman while the R's generally prefer Leno. It went like this: Top Ten Perks of Being the New White House Dog: #10--you're one of the few dogs that is smarter than his master; #3--get the same high-quality leashes that are used on Abu Ghraib prisoners; #1--An owner who sleeps as much as you do!

Hunter S. Signs Off. The king of so-called Gonzo journalism has written his last sentence, his life ended by suicide. Every death is sad, of course, but no one should really be surprised by this ending. For years, I must admit, I tended to interpret a new acquaintance's interest in Thompson's life and his writing as a sign of likely shallowness, an emblem of a perhaps understandable romantic yearning for a life of nihilism by the pen. That was possibly unfair. To many, he embodied a rebellion against the cowardice of modern corporate journalism. This sense was fed by legends of his outlandish reporting expense accounts while on assignment for Rolling Stone (rented helicopters and even elephants). Okay, so far, so good. And his legacy does have its positive sides. Last year, I wrote this profile of a Cleveland native named Evan Wright who had inherited Thompson's slot as a roving international correspondent for Rolling Stone. And when I reached him by phone in Los Angeles, I made a point of asking him about what that meant to him. He quickly changed the subject, which I interpreted as his way of trying to break free of the gravitational pull of the Gonzo legend (perhaps he also wanted to forestall me from asking about his own recovery from an earlier drinking problem). Indeed, in the last quarter century, Hunter S. and his bizarre shenanigans came to stand for (to me, at least), a sad obsession with violence, booze and recreational drugs. And where does all that typically lead in human affairs? And still, intelligent, serious people indulgently tried their best to write off his admittedly self-destructive habits to the rantings of a poet-mystic. Today, I'm prepared to admit he may have been just that. I'll say a quiet prayer that he can somehow have a quieter, less-conflicted existence in the afterlife.

How Hope Coverage Gives Me Hope

'Start by doing what's necessary,
then what's possible, and suddenly
you are doing the impossible.'
--St. Francis of Assisi

NBC's me-too political news summary ABC's "The Note," an exhaustive daily political news summary/background briefing paper is justly famous in political-wonk circles. Produced by the network's crack political unit of off-camera producers, and available on the web, it's packed with so many smart observations, solid reporting and links to other sources that it often influences the political zeitgeist, surely no easy thing in a world of smart print and online political mags such as The New Republic, The American Prospect and the Weekly Standard, among others. Now, belatedly, NBC has jumped into the fray with its own me-too product, called "First Read". Thus far (it's been around since July 1st) it seems pretty lame by comparison. My suggestion to NBC: scrap it, and put that considerable time and attention into something you can do well that isn't already being done better elsewhere. It's another reminder that the best products seep up from the bottom, often in an unplanned way. The Note, after all, began as a daily summary produced only for in-house ABC personnel. But it was so good that it quickly went viral, with copies passing all over the place. NBC's product, because it's a copy cat and consciously produced for a public audience from the outset, doesn't work. At least, not yet.

Pekar Gets Some 'Voice' Time. I'd have to guess that I'm in the minority on this, but I've always found Cleveland cartoonist Harvey Pekar pretty much a snore. I don't know whether it's all the dozens of awful local profiles that have been written about him over the years, his tiresome Yes-I'm-a-lowly-government-file-clerk-but-also-one-of-America's-leading-underground-intellectuals schtick or his impossibly boorish behavior on Letterman (okay, I don't like GE owning NBC either, but when a guy, Letterman, who no doubt didn't like it either, invites you to his house for some national publicity, I say just fricking bite your tongue and try to be somewhat thankful). Probably it's the combination of all three. Still, a large part of me does like and respect how he's stuck at it for so many years, and I'm quite looking forward to seeing his movie when it comes in two weeks to the Cedar-Lee. This week, the Pekar Publicity Machine grinds on, with this pretty interesting piece in the Village Voice. And speaking of the Cedar-Lee: god bless you Jonathan Forman. With the recent movement of the Coventry Madstone back to mainstream drek, the venerable one retakes its place as Cleveland's only true art house playing only thoughtful, intelligent films (well, in fairness, you have to include John Ewing's Cinametheque, but that's a little different animal). In the last few weeks, I've caught two movies at the C-L, The Swimming Pool, which was splendid and oh-so-erotic, and The Friedmans, which was simply stunning. In fact, the latter was a good example of how I've come to rely on the Cedar-Lee as a stamp of quality. I generally don't even bother checking reviews (when you do need to do that, Rotten Tomatoes is the place to go, cause it aggregates reviews from around the country) or otherwise reading up on a film. I simply know that if it's booked into the Cedar-Lee, it's going to at least be pretty good. And so a few weeks ago I stumbed into the Friedmans not knowing what it was about, only to be emotionally staggered by one of the most harrowing, perfectly told documentaries on possible child sexual abuse and family dysfunction I've ever seen. Stunned by what I'd seen, I wandered out of the movie and bumped into some old friends, who were in high spirits from a night out with the girls. I must have seemed like a zombie to them--they wanted to chit chat and gossip, but I was still trying to process what I'd just seen. Anyway, if you haven't yet seen it, go this weekend! And you might also think about signing up for Cleveland Cinema's email newsletter, "Sprockets."

Blonde Dumbshell. Who says there's no justice? Even conservatives are now embarrassed by Ann Coulter's over-the-top ranting. They're apparently worried that the Connecticut-bred dingbat's embrace of American history's third rail (touch it, and you die), Sen. Joe McCarthy, has made it too easy for the enemy to lump her in with more thoughtful conservative positions. In recent weeks, the Wall Street Journal and Andrew Sullivan have been among conservatives to blast her latest book. But I thought the best roasting of all was this magazine-cover parody in the Weekly Standard. Cable TV bookers, of course, can't resist her shrill bumper sticker bromiding, and she's apparently too dim to realize that people are laughing at her rather than with her. Meanwhile, though, be warned that Coulter is due to soon join the blogging world. A truly loathesome right-wing rag, Human Events, has left this placeholder for her.

Finally, a hopeful note about journalism. When Bob Hope died, it was of course no surprise that rivers of ink and acres of TV time were allotted to covering it. After all, it's an obvious story line, a century of joke telling, an American icon, yadda yadda. Still, for a lot of us I would guess, he represented something else: how tepid middlebrow mediocrity can often become enshrined as excellence in America. And yet, I came away impressed by how a number of outlets found an imaginative way to mark the occasion, delivering stories (and in one case a multimedia surprise) that, through compelling storytelling, actually made me care just a little about the man. Which is what journalism should be all about. I'd nominate this trio of stories for special attention on the Bob Hope front: This piece in one of my favorite webzines, Flak, by Chicago-based writer Claire Zulkey I've increasingly admired, part of a rat pack of 20-something sharpies who are doing some of the best writing, much of it online, in America. So I was surprised bordering on shocked that she would choose to write about this hopeless old fart Bob Hope. But she makes it worthwhile. AARP, the magazine of the American Association of Retired People, is of course all about covering old farts. And yet they found a truly compelling way of drawing online vistors into the story, with this great little Virtual Bob Hope cartoon app, a companion to the story "Fanfare for the Common Ham." And finally, British-based The Economist, which is simply one of the most splendid publications in the world and getting better all the time, delivers this gem of a send-off to the funny man. Thanks, guys, for reminding us that no subject is too mundane for those who bring some spark and imagination to them.

A Refreshing New
Hero for Our Era

He cooly maneuvered his damaged jet, US Airways flight 1549, into the first successful water landing in commercial aviation history, quickly becoming one of the most admired people in America. Suddenly, Chesley B. Sullenberger III and his nicely reserved it's-all-in-a-day's-work demeanor can be seen feted at the Super Bowl, lionized at the presidential inauguration and celebrated during an appearance on the Letterman show. Politico now asks the question, when dissecting the maneuverings over the stimulus bill, what would Sully do? We thought New York Magazine did perhaps the best comprehensive piece on the event that made him famous. What's behind all the adulation? We think he's a perfectly timed reminder of America's old can-do spirit in the face of adversity. After eight years of bumbling incompetence from on high and the more recent realization that the country's financial wizards had no clothes, the country that once put men on the moon was ready to celebrate someone who represented a merger of technical competence and steely cool under fire (with just a pinch of good luck tossed in), culminating in the saving of 155 lives. We tip our caps to you, Sully. Now, gentle readers, we'd like to hear your take.

So Maybe He Didn't
Actually Write Them;
We Still Really Love
Letterman's Jokes

'(With the economy in such trouble) you gotta hide your cash. Here's what I do: I put it all in the stock market, and a week later, no one can find it.' We also loved item #7 from a recent Top Ten list: 'Top ten signs that President Bush doesn't care anymore: He's barely trying to ruin the economy anymore.' Finally, we got a good cackle out of his absurdist explanation of the oft-heard line about how various movies are now playing in selected cities. "And did you know that they're selected by Burt Reynolds?" You can review earlier mentions of the irascible late-night Hoosier here.

Headlines of the Week

The Biology of Joy and Sex Without Nipples--two recent headlines almost guaranteed to attract wandering web surfers to stop and click. Again, we ask the question: do the articles deliver on the headline's promise? As Fox "News" would say, we report; you decide. And speaking of Fox, we loved David Letterman's recent crack about the propaganda outlet: "The Obama Administration has said they don't consider Fox News to be a legitimate news network. They're about eight years behind the rest of us." We also admired how the lefty pub In These Times skillfully used this pleasing pun and how the New York Times managed to grab attention with this headline.

Listen to Your Father

'My father always told me you don't get anything for nothing, and although I was always rebelling, I never rebelled against that.'
--actor and director Clint Eastwood, from a new biography on his life. We couldn't help noticing the applause he received some months ago when he appeared on the Letterman show around the time his most recent movie, Gran Torino, debuted. It may have been the longest, loudest, most appreciative celebration for any guest on that show in years. Something about his work strikes an emotional chord in many people, and we happen to be among that cohort.

Ch. 19 Tries Airbrushing Its Most Embarrassing
Moment: Anchor Sharon Reed's Naked Coverage

In the nearly five years we've been bringing you this blog, we've endeavored to keep this a family-friendly environment. Okay, so we occasionally ogle attractive actresses (here and here), giving our middle-aged libido a little imaginative room to roam. But we've never delved into the raunchy side of life much (except for forays into political corruption), and certainly never linked to naked videos.

Until now, that is.

When we learned recently that Cleveland's Channel 19 news, a leader of the region's idiot culture, was trying to airbrush history so as to erase the record of its most embarrassing moment ever, the 2004 gimmick in which anchor Sharon Reed disrobed to "cover" a Spencer Tunick mass naked art shoot, we figured we had to act. The tabloid news operation has been trying to intimidate various sites into taking down the video, arguing that it violates the station's copyright. This is a silly argument on several levels, not least of which is the fact that the station initially milked the gimmick by permitting Reed to appear on such national venues as the Letterman show to discuss her moment of shame. And anyone who knows anything at all about copyright law knows this short clip would easily fall under "fair use" provisions of intellectual property laws.

So anyway, here's that three-year-old peep-show clip masquerading as news (and here's a great Connie Schultz deconstruction of the sad incident, which she argues amounted to sexual harrassment). I hope my fellow bloggers from around the region (and perhaps beyond) will also link to this clip, and send a message to the whoremongers who run the "newsroom" at Ch. 19 that history can't be rewritten.

Three Good Reads

Brian Doyle, a gifted writer I've been following since we were fellow university editors (he remains one), offers this brilliant take in the tony Kenyon Review on that most mordant of all writerly subjects--rejection letters. Meanwhile, in last weekend's New York Times magazine, writer and faculty member David Gessner explores what's lost and gained from writing "in captivity"--as a member of a university faculty. And David Letterman submits to a rare interview, offering Rolling Stone readers a glimpse into the mind of a man who remains an enigma for many, but a pleasing one nonetheless. You can review earlier TGRs here. Wondering how this feature got started? We explained that in the inaugural voyage, here.

The Pantsuit Primary & Other Stuff

Pantsuits for Everyone. Last week, I noted the curious fact Leno and Letterman both happened to seize on Hillary's pantsuits on the same night in their opening monologue. A few days later, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd also used the word in writing about Hillary in this column. Have you spotted any other mentions of Hillary's pantsuits? Please send them along if and when you do.

More Interesting Timing. Fast on the heels of the welcome news that Josh Marshall's Talkingpointsmemo site has just landed the Polk Award for investigative journalism, for breaking the story of how the White House corrupted the Justice Department (by piecing together isolated reports from around the country and finding a pattern), we note this CBS 60 Minutes report that explores more corrupt dealings by Karl Rove. He was also the main mastermind of the sackings of the U.S. Attorneys for failing to do Republican bidding. Anyway, congratulations to Josh Marshall and his team, which I've written about often before in this space.

ESPN.com Helps Launch Hoops Legend's Audio Book. Check out Kareem Abdul Jabbar's new interactive story project here.

Finally, last year I noted the 40th anniversary of the iconic photo of Israeli paratroopers pausing in wonder in front of the Western Wall, shortly after their victory in 1967's so-called Six Day war. The other day I noticed this interesting article, which recounts the story behind that photo, taken by a photographer for Time-Life.

Our Two Favorite Bush Jokes

We couldn't decide which was better, so we simply decided to call it a draw:
David Letterman, shortly after the recent election: "Bush was in Asia, where, due to the metric system, his approval rating is 62." NPR's Michael Feldman, some months ago on GWB's difficulties with pronouncing the word nuclear: "Mr. Bush is willing to go to war over something he can't pronounce. You don't see me going to war over foi gras."

Meanwhile, historians are beginning to debate whether Bush will be considered the worst American president ever. This fellow thinks he'll only be considered fifth worst.

Puncturing Cheney Spin With Humor

Last week, in an appearance on the Letterman show, Al Franken did a marvelous job of breaking through the ridiculous White House spin that Cheney’s hunting accident was not as big a deal as the media has made it out to be. In his signature fashion, he did so simply by asking for a show of hands from the audience: “who has ever shot a friend in the face?” No one in the audience raised their hands (though they did laugh), but the moment became even more memorable when the band’s entire horn section raised their hands. Franken, the former longtime writer for Saturday Night Live, has moved back to his native Minnesota, the base from which he now produces his Air America radio show. And he's also seriously considering a run for the U.S. Senate. To some, that might seem an odd fit for the funny man, but we could do a lot worse: like about half of the right-wing Republicans currently in the Senate. With these intellectually challenged Cro-Magnons (to say nothing of their humor deficit), the joke's actually on their constituents, and indeed the entire country.

Catch-Up Friday

Okay, it's been a run-run week, so I have lots on which to catch up. Won't get it all in today, but I'll try to get to some of it in weekend entries, which will be a mostly new feature for my hungry readers around the world, who are used to my blue-collar writing habits, working hard from Mon-Fri, and then resting over the weekend. This weekend, there'll be no rest for the weary blogger.

Pekar Watch, Round 18. Three fascinating Pekar developments that you should know about. In ascending order of fascination, they are as follows. This great review of American Splendor in the wonderful webzine Slate proves that being first is less important than being best. After just about every media outlet in the Western world has weighed in on the movie, this piece somehow finds not only something new to say, but something really fresh and insightful. It makes the case that AS is the "grunge Annie Hall," a reference to what I and many other Woodie Allen fans still consider his best movie. On its face, that's a pretty odd notion, but read on, and you'll be hard-pressed to argue the point. Next: I note that Pekar, who's still given to worrying aloud about finding enough freelance writing gigs to make a living, now has a booking agent. And not just any agent: his California-based agency also reps for an eclectic group which includes Walter Cronkite, Black Panther Party founder Bobby Seale, Pulitzer-winning writer Ron Suskind and CNN's Maria Hinojosa. Count on Harv to find an interesting mix. Finally, and by far the most fascinating of all, the Chicago-based libmag (my own contraction, meaning liberal mag) In These Times has just posted an amazing piece which Pekar wrote some years ago, under a pseudonym, about his encounters with Letterman. Why amazing? Try this passage, for instance: "Pekar’s greatest strength is the tension between his ordinariness as a man and his extraordinary skill in chronicling it. He is thoughtful, articulate and, above all, angry, a rare and precious attribute in his age of yappie nihilism. As a television personality, though, Pekar is a disaster. Pudgy, balding and wild-eyed, he comes across on Late Night as the sort of guy you see ranting on street corners." Remember, he said this all about himself! You'd have to give him an A for balance....

At Cleveland Works, Desperate Times Require Desperate Fundraising. Imagine my surprise when I went to the mailbox the day after I posting a piece blasting Cleveland Works for ignoring the credible story seven long years ago about the drug habits of their exec. director, only to find a letter from the group. Could it be that this little local nonprof had somehow taken a page from the first Clinton campaign and set up a war room in which their minions quickly and forcefully responded to every bit of media criticism of their guy? Had former Clevelander George Stephanopolous and the "Rajun Cajun," James Carville, been hired as consultants by Cleveland Works? Naw--as it turned out, they merely found my name and address on an ancient mailing list (which they apparently haven't used in at least a decade) to send a "we need money to stay open" alert. "Because of recent events..." it begins, without mentioning the drug busts. And they've apparently gotten so many outraged calls that they had to change phone numbers, because the request for "at least $100" ends with a note to PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW PHONE NUMBER ABOVE..." Sorry, folks, but that's one funding request that was easily ignored...

Civic Hipsters. This new piece on the very fine Christian Science Monitor site does a good job of describing what some patently unhip towns (like Cincy) are doing to try to hippify. There's even a brief mention of Cleveland's new Civic Innovation Lab, which the Cleveland Foundation, in its infinite wisdom, has chosen to hand over to the collaboratively challenged Jennifer Thomas, for reasons which only they can guess. Well, let's look at the glass half full, shall we: at least a couple of best & brightest guys are helping steer the thing--former McKinseyite Brad Whitehead, who's now at the foundation and who put the whole idea together, and my friend John Polk, who'll be serving as a mentor...

Google IPO? Reports out of Silicon Valley from plugged-in venture capitalists, which ought to soon be showing up in newspapers, are that Google will at long last be going to the capital markets for the long-awaited initial public offering. While the two brilliant young guys who founded it have held off for five long years, in the process refusing repeated offers to become billionaires while they maintained the management autonomy to keep making it better, they have new reason to do so now. Microsoft, bowing to the obvious--that search has become the most important game on the web--has put renewed emphasis on competing in web search. And with a stash of $20-billion plus in liquid cash, the Redmond Warriors can put lots of R&D into it. So Google is going to need its own deeper pockets to mount a defense of its prime position. While the company is said to be zooming in on the $1 billion annual revenue mark (as a private company, it doesn't officially disclose numbers), an IPO could bring way more into the corporate coffers, like $15-20 billion. Let's just hope this seminal event, if and when it happens, might just kick off another rebound in the market and the larger economy, as the '95 Netscape IPO touched off an unprecedented five-year run of good feeling in America. Of course, that was back when we had a bright president who surrounded himself with mostly honest folks who paid attention to little things like national budgets and peacemaking. Oh, well, as things look now, that time might just return in about a year...

Pekar's Latest: He's On Charlie Rose Tonight

The Harvey Pekar "American Splendor" publicity tour rolls on. With the film having opened last week in many places (including Cleveland), the avalanche of favorable coverage and reviews have been no less than staggering. In the perhaps three dozen reviews/features I've come across in print and online, I can't remember one that's been less than warmly favorable.

But tonight the Splendorous One hits a new personal high: having appeared seven times on Letterman, where his cranky everyman persona served as an easy foil for the King of Irony, he's due to appear tonight on the Charlie Rose PBS show, which is a very different environment, marked by a clubby calm and the host's often grating attempts to prove his own intellectual weight by constantly cutting off his subjects. In short, let's hope that Rose allows Harv to get a word in occasionally, since he'll also be appearing with the actor who portrays him and both of the filmakers.

If I had to choose the most interesting review of Splendor, it might be the one that appeared last week in the Times, written by the dreadlocked stylist Elvis Mitchell, who will soon begin lecturing about film at Harvard, at the invitation of Renaissance Man Professor Henry Louis "Chip" Gates, once-embattled director of the university's Afro-American studies program. (Gates has an interesting Cleveland tie: for several years, he has served as chairman of the annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Ceremony, housed at the Cleveland Foundation and quietly, anonymously nurtured for years by my friend Diana Tittle, co-founder of Northern Ohio Live and much-decorated author extraordinaire (I won't attempt to do her justice here--her bio, alas, awaits a future posting). This year's ceremony and reception, open to all, is at the Cleveland Play House's Drury Theatre, on Sept. 18th at 8 p.m. Don't miss it, it's annually one of the best cultural gatherings in Cleveland. Go here to RSVP online).

Anyway, back to Elvis's review. Among other virtues, he puts his finger on what has, or at least had, always bothered me about Pekar: "As played by Paul Giamatti, Harvey is a gray wad of anger that spends his time in his cavelike apartment, with shelves sagging under the weight of his collection of record albums and jazz 78's, sputtering to his equally powerless pals about a world that he refuses to understand. (emphasis is mine)" That's the nub of my problem with him, I now realize: I always found him not merely misanthropic, but a misanthrope who didn't want to try to understand the world or its complexities. In truth, though, the body of his work over the decades constitutes a formidable struggle to work through to some kind of understanding, however peculiar it is to him (and however universal it has since become for many).

Even more interesting, though, was this Mitchellian observation about Cleveland's weather, which I've always maintained is a key but oft-overlooked source of many of our municipal ills, especially our inferiority complex. and no doubt a source of much borderline depression in many. You have to have lived elsewhere to appreciate how infrequently the sun comes out here. As Mitchell writes: "The movie takes place under the sunless skies of Cleveland, a land where bright daylight disappears from about early fall to late spring. The production design achieves the drab pallor through use of dusty brick reds, autumnal browns and oranges and dirty ballpark-mustard yellows: it's a Rust Belt palette." Wow--that's not only some great, vivid writing, coining a splendid new phrase (Rust Belt palette), but old Elvis appears to have some special inside knowledge of the city.

You Know Me: Always Ending on a High Note. Anyway, if the Cleveland weather gets you down, take a break by checking out this site. I checked the footnotes on how these imaginative guys (at least one an MIT grad) arrive at the number, and I think it's probably a pretty accurate running tab on what the Iraq quagmire is costing us. But apart from the simple financial cost, crushing as that is, check out this prophetic warning about the aftermath of an Iraqi war by the incomparable James Fallows, who has a magisterial take in the current issue on media regulation and the Age of Rupert Murdoch. Almost a year ago, long before the battle began, he was warning in the November Atlantic (which means he staked out the argument in about August or September of last year) about the complicated aftermaths of what could easily become the 51st American state. Too bad the former Jimmy Carter speechwriter never made it into the Bush II West Wing.