AFTER CHANGES UPON CHANGES WE ARE MORE OR LESS THE SAME: No, I haven't blogged since the debacle at the Linc. No, it's not just a coincidence. Yes, I'm still processing through the Five Stages of Eagles Grief. No, I haven't forgotten that this was an organization too stupid to realize that having an Army paratrooper exhibition at halftime was foolish because you can't see anything in the sky at night, nor that they neglected a big opportunity to make amends by failing to invite beloved former Eagles Randall Cunningham or Reggie White to be there . . .

But let's move on, shall we? I've got a set of ellipses here that have been dying for attention . . .

I don't know about you, but I have never seen David Letterman as giddy and honestly happy as when he told Friday's audience that he was going to be a father . . . My friend Jon sent me this link to a segment from a Japanese game show involving ping pong, the Matrix and some low-tech effects that will make you smile . . . Come and knock on our door -- death's been waiting for you . . . and speaking of which, did you know you could see Jack Tripper's nutsack on a very special episode of Three's Company? . . . So, it turns out the Queer Guys' contract makes Clay Aiken look like a savvy businessman. Go figure . . . It's alright, it's alright, it's alright yeah . . . I cannot believe Conan's been on for ten years already . . . Best use for TiVo? Family Guy reruns . . . Most interesting article in this week's New Yorker? Not the piece on Russian slang which others have praised. No, it's all about the jake leg . . .

And now, this announcement. I've been looking for a way to add more content to this blog that wouldn't involve, y'know, me or effort, and I've found it.

We're expanding.

Over the next few days, I'll be introducing to you three new contributors to Throwing Things, all of whom, I hope, will provide you with even more amusement, enlightenment and infotainment in the weeks and months to come.

Let's start by introducing our first new writer, Isaac Spaceman, who claims of himself:

Though Isaac Spaceman is fussy about issues orthographic, he is a poor editor. His favorite Nicholson Baker invented word root is "punctle," as in this sentence is mispunctled. And it is. Isaac's hobbies include jiu-jitsu and Paris Hilton. Isaac believes that most current television is derived from or derivative of the early Fox sitcom lineup (including "Flying Blind," "Herman's Head," "Duet," and "Parker Lewis Can't Lose") and mourns the cruel and untimely loss of TNBC. Isaac once followed Jeff Tweedy around a Lincoln Park Barnes & Noble but could not bring himself to stalk him actively. That's probably good, because Isaac thinks Jeff Tweedy is probably a dick. Isaac is populating an unwritten screenplay in his head with the B-list actors and celebrities he has encountered living in Los Angeles. Isaac knows a lot about architecture, disease, and obscure mid-80s heavy metal (Manowar, Thor, W*A*S*P, Metal Church -- you name it), a little about the Algonquin Round Table, and almost nothing about Beverly Hills 90210 or American history. If pressed, however, he will fake it. Isaac Spaceman is not a Jew from outer space.

He's also a sports fan from a city that has never won a championship in any major sport.

Look forward to Isaac's TT debut soon.

WARREN ZEVON (1947-2003): Others will have more to say, and will be able to say it better than I could.

For now, I just want to link you to this recent article from the Philadelphia Weekly on Zevon's connections to the City of Brotherly Love, and leave you with just one of his many excellent songs, "Mr. Bad Example", from 1991:

I started as an altar boy, working at the church
Learning all my holy moves, doing some research
Which led me to a cash box, labeled "Children's Fund"
I'd leave the change, and tuck the bills inside my cummerbund

I got a part-time job at my father's carpet store
Laying tackless stripping, and housewives by the score
I loaded up their furniture, and took it to Spokane
And auctioned off every last naugahyde divan

I'm very well aquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
I'm proud to be a glutton, and I don't have time for sloth
I'm greedy, and I'm angry, and I don't care who I cross

I'm Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
I like to have a good time, and I don't care who gets hurt
I'm Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I'll live to be a hundred, and go down in infamy

Of course I went to law school and took a law degree
And counseled all my clients to plead insanity
Then worked in hair replacement, swindling the bald
Where very few are chosen, and fewer still are called

Then on to Monte Carlo to play chemin de fer
I threw away the fortune I made transplanting hair
I put my last few francs down on a prostitute
Who took me up to her room to perform the flag salute

Whereupon I stole her passport and her wig
And headed for the airport and the midnight flight, you dig?
And fourteen hours later I was down in Adelaide
Looking through the want ads sipping Foster's in the shade

I opened up an agency somewhere down the line
To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines
But I attached their wages and took a whopping cut
And whisked away their workman's comp and pauperized the lot

I'm Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
I like to have a good time, and I don't care who gets hurt
I'm Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I'll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy

I bought a first class ticket on Malaysian Air
And landed in Sri Lanka none the worse for wear
I'm thinking of retiring from all my dirty deals
I'll see you in the next life, wake me up for meals

A world without any more Zevon songs will be a sadder place. So long, Norman.

SCHMO MONEY, SCHMO PROBLEMS: Let me jump ahead of the curve in favor of something, which I haven't for awhile. The new SpikeTV reality spoof The Joe Schmo Show is, without a doubt, must-see television.

"Joe Schmo" is the happy cross-fertilization of The Truman Show's contrived realism with the snarky, knowing smile of "Joe Millionaire". (In fact, imagine The Truman Show, only with Eurosnob director/creator Ed Harris replaced by Will Ferrell.)

The premise: take one doofus, tell him he's on a reality competition called "The Lap of Luxury", but put him in a house with a bunch of actors playing reality-tv archetypes (The Virgin, The Bitch, The Grizzled Veteran, The Puck Guy, The Polynesian Gay Guy Who's Neither Polynesian Nor Gay In Real Life) rather than real people, and then orchestrate the whole experience to humiliate the crap out of the one guy who thinks it's real and send him for the ride of his life.

Oh, sure, I can see how it could go too far, and be sadistic and not pleasurable. It could be "Fear Factor" with the added minus of the competitors not knowing they're eating horse rectum.

But so far, it works. It's got the same cheeky charm as "Joe Millionaire", only this time it's all the contestants lying to one of them instead of one guy lying to all the contestants, and it shares the same thrills of imperfect cast training as that show did, as the actors aren't always entirely on-script. Matt Kennedy Gould, the schmo in question, is wonderfully gullible, and takes his humiliations in good spirit. The show is goofy fun, and it made me laugh out loud. Repeatedly.

Let Tim Goodman at the SF Chronicle and the NY Daily News' David Bianculli tell you more.

WHATEVER YOU DO, TAKE CARE OF YOUR FOOD: Ladies and gentlemen, attending Phish concerts can be hazardous to your health, and not just if you're an eleven-year-old girl.

Via the CDC's latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report:

In July 2003, a cluster of hepatitis A cases was identified among young adults who had attended outdoor concert and camping events featuring various "jam bands." As of September 2, a total of 25 cases have been reported among residents of nine states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, and Wisconsin). The majority of cases were among young adults who attended concerts during the spring and summer. The median age of infected persons was 23 years (range: 17--44 years); 14 (56%) were male. . . .

The three bands that infected persons most commonly followed completed their summer concert tours in early August. However, fall tours are scheduled to begin in September. Concert attendees are advised to wash their hands frequently with soap and water, particularly after using the bathroom and before eating; to cook their food and drink only potable water; and to avoid food or drugs that could have been prepared under unsanitary conditions or handled by an infected person.

On July 9, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment first notified all other states and CDC of a possible cluster of hepatitis A among concert attendees; CDC requested reports of similar cases from other health departments. CDC plans to continue enhanced surveillance for additional cases. Because of the relatively long incubation period for hepatitis A (15--50 days), persons exposed at summer concerts might not become symptomatic until early fall, and transmission could continue with the start of fall tours. CDC requests that young to middle-aged adults with newly diagnosed hepatitis A be asked if they have attended a "jam band" concert or any outdoor concert and associated camping event.

Symptoms of Hepatitis A "include jaundice, fatigue, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, intermittent nausea, and diarrhea."

Let's just hope they're not also serving muktuk at these shows.

NOT THAT YOU WEREN'T GOING TO PICK IT UP ANYWAY: But the Fall TV Preview issue of Entertainment Weekly is a must-read. Every single page. Where else are you going to find out what failed-tv-heroes Zach Galifianakis, Jon Cryer and Adrian Pasdar are up to?

Plus which, you get a hard copy version of this letter from member of the Throwing Things Hall of Heroes Tom Shales of the Washington Post, with bile a'plenty to spare:

I am a big -- in fact big, fat -- fan of EW but am dismayed almost beyond words (or I wouldn't have been able to write this) that you are giving the superrich and overexposed Stephen King a regular column (The Pop of King). His first one, predictably, was all about his damn self. Why further enrich this hack when the spot, and the money, could have gone to a bright young writer with something fresh to say? At the least, King out to donate the fee to charity. I find him more repulsive than any horror story he ever wrote.

Tom Shales
TV Critic, The Washington Post
Washington, D.C.

By the way, I haven't been watching The O.C. yet. Do I need to start?

ALL THE BENEFITS OF SHOPPING DOWNTOWN, ONLY WITHOUT THE GOOD STUFF: I have a new bête noire, and I call it faux urbanism. As it turns out, developers have discovered that while people enjoy some aspects of cities, like having a diverse mix of shops next door to each other and being outside, not in a sterile mall enviroment, they don't so much like having to deal with city traffic, parking or, y'know, poor people in order to do so.

So, welcome to the "lifestyle retail and entertainment center". Take all your favorite mall destinations -- Old Navy, Bath & Body Works, etc., throw in a bunch of "eclectic" restaurants (Chili's, Don Pablo's), and place them on a fake "main street experience" in the back lot of a mall, with ample parking all around. Indeed, so much parking that no one can walk there from the nearest development, as if suburban shoppers would walk anywhere further than three blocks away in the first place. And put it as far away from an actual city as you can.

It's hard to describe the creepiness of these places without visiting one, but let me give one example: at a bookstore at one of these fake downtowns, a staffer told me the story of when Hillary Clinton came to the store to sign books. Well, there were protestors on the "street" in front of the store, bitching about this or that. Except that because it's not a real street -- it's all private property, even though it looks like a street and people can walk or drive along it -- they were able to have security remove these people to a far-off location so as not to disturb the carefully-arranged happy shopping mood.

Finally, these places are an insult to the real cities that inspire them. The one in suburban Maryland I visited was only a half-hour away from downtown Baltimore -- a real, trendy, vibrant, earthy city with all the shopping, culture and atmosphere you could ever want. The city of John Waters and Barry Levinson deserves better.

Faux urbanism is the Olestra of the commercial development world: sure, it may make you think you're experiencing the same thing as before, but boy do you feel sick afterwards . . . .

OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BEAT BOYS YOU WERE THE FAVORITE: Hey Jack, now for the tricky part: Kerouac Bobble Heads.

Keep reading.