I haven’t talked much here about my brief sojourn in radio, have I?

Well, I’ve probably mentioned it. It wasn’t all bad. But it was brief, and it was many years ago, and sometimes it seems it took place in a galaxy far, far away.

Here’s what happened: The program director at the local 50,000-watt clear-channel (lower-case; not the evil corporation we’ll hear more about in a paragraph or two) AM station called me up and said this station, which, like most institutions in Fort Wayne, wears cement overshoes, was considering a maybe moderate not too fast slow easy experiment with possibly not to be hasty just thinking about it — transition to a talk format. And would I maybe like to have a show?

This was in 1993. Yes, five full years after Rush Limbaugh had raised AM from its deathbed. Things happen slowly in Fort Wayne.

Hey, I’ll try anything once. So I said yes.

And so I entered the strange world of radio, on a show destined to fail, on a station run by the clueless leading the blind, and I had an interesting few weeks before I got a memo from the station manager advising me to be “less liberal” and “keep my opinions to myself,” because “this is what the most successful national hosts do.”

See, I told you.

That’s when I quit. I quit because the show was one lousy hour, at 2 p.m., wedged between two music shifts, an hour that was neither drive nor much of anything else. And it was astonishing, how much preparation that lousy hour took. I kept my eyes open for interesting talk topics all morning long, frequently to the exclusion of everything else in my life. It wasn’t uncommon to come back from the station, exhausted, at 3:15 p.m., and only then start working on my column for the next day.

But the station had a big reach — 50,000 watts travel a long way, especially at night. Once, driving home from Atlanta, I heard a promo for my show. In Tennessee. So that was sort of cool.

Anyway, the problem is, I just don’t have the common touch. Whatever it takes to have your finger on the pulse of the nation’s water cooler — this is something I lack. I’d scan the wires, printing out a dozen or more stories I found fascinating, things I’d love to chat with anyone about, stories that raised Larger Issues and posed Interesting Questions, and run through those in about seven minutes. “What are we teaching girls when we allow them to do whatever was mentioned in this story I just read?” I’d ask. Radio silence. “What about Bosnia-Herzegovinia? What course should the world take with these bellicose Serbs?” Nothing.

And then, in desperation, “You know why Hoosiers are fat? Because they eat chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes, that’s why.” And the phones would light up like a Christmas tree! And stay that way. Dozens of old people called to offer their opinion of potatoes and noodles together on the same plate.

It was a very strange experience.

But along the way, I saw many things that stayed with me. One was the culture of radio, which was, at least at this station, belligerent, ignorant, frat-housey, paranoid and proud of it. There were some good guys there, but I was always being shocked by something around the place. Things went up on the bulletin board that would have gotten you sent to re-education camp at the company I worked for. “Proposed new uniforms for Clinton’s all-gay military,” was one, posted during the don’t-ask-don’t-tell debate. It showed a cartoon of a limp-wristed fairy wearing sort of a military drag, with little arrows pointing to details of the uniform: “Spurs. Oooh, baby!” And so on. After the gay march on Washington that same year, one guy was practically foaming at the mouth. He told me he was glad his daughter was deaf, so she would never have to hear such smut as was spoken there.

I also got a look at the meme-spreading function of radio, the daily memos and weekly newsletters sent by consultants and the industry press. They suggested hot topics, pointed to research resources, touted interview possibilities. It helped me understand how stories and slogans can sweep across the country in an afternoon (this was before the popular discovery of the internet), why the same “experts” kept getting interviewed over and over, saying the same things over and over.

(It also made me realize, too late, that I didn’t need to spend five hours preparing for a one-hour show. I could have gotten the faxes and sliced my prep time in half.) I’m convinced these newsletters are the prototype for the Fox News daily memo, but that’s another overlong post.

Anyway, when I read this story, about morning DJs in three different, far-flung Clear Channel radio stations suggesting the same hilariously funny punishments motorists can inflict upon bicyclists — a harmonic convergence that Clear Channel claims is, really, honest, entirely coincidental — well, it brought back some memories. It made me think that things haven’t changed much at all, that true creativity in this game is still a rare talent, that I’m glad my heavy radio-listening days came before the industry was taken over by outfits like Clear Channel, et al.

But mostly it made me glad I switched my j-school concentration from broadcasting to newspapers. Yes, even newspapers are better.

(P.S. There’s a chapter two in my radio career, which we can discuss another time. The theme: It pays to have a partner.)

Well, after the squirrel v. jack-o-lantern debacle, I decided to use diplomacy. I got another pumpkin and carved it with moments to spare before nightfall. Before setting it out to mark us as a trick-or-treat-friendly household, I put the guts, seeds and other pumpkin waste into a bowl for our squirrel friends. As you can see, it’s much appreciated.

As for the other jack-o-lantern, it survived the night. But today? Grrrrrr……

Everybody knows the priorities of establishing a new residence:

1) Put sheets on the beds.
2) Unpack the bathroom stuff.
3) Find a decent pizza place.

Now, Ann Arbor is the birthplace of Domino’s, so there’s no shortage of Stinky D’s around. But I can get one of those anywhere, and being an airy-fairy yuppie food snob in perpetual search of authenticity, I always hope for a locally owned alternative I can patronize. Progressives in A2 frequently boycott Domino’s, over founder Tom Monaghan’s anti-abortion work, but I think that’s a dead-end road. I was just looking for a better pizza.

A few weeks ago, we got a flyer in the door for Hello Faz Pizza. This one, actually, with one modification: Faz’ caricature has been replaced by a small photo of him with Lee Iacocca, captioned, “Lee Iacocca, Says Hello Faz.” Plus, it also seemed that if I wanted a halal pizza, I could get it there. (Halal is the Islamic version of kosher, for you non-world travelers.) And it was close by. If nothing else, this seemed to be the place I was looking for.

I ordered my first pizza for pickup, and was not disappointed, because I got to see Faz’ hall of fame, dotted with photos of him with celebrities and autographed 8-by-10 glossies of others — lots of Detroiters and, perhaps inevitably, Mitch Albom. And then I looked closer, and saw a Detroit Free Press clip of this story, about how Faz accompanied Bill Clinton on his trip to India in whenever-that-was. He was one of 300 regular folks invited to go along with the Big Dog, chosen because he’d written a letter to Clinton, encouraging him to start a peace process between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region.

I’m becoming accustomed to these stories. It seems no one in Ann Arbor is just another working shlub. The boutique publisher printed the works of Russian authors, then smuggled them into the Soviet Union. The police chief writes op-eds for the New York Times. And the pizza man went jogging with the president. In India.

On my trip to Hello Faz, Faz Himself (Faz Husain, actually) was in the shop, picking up a pie for his own dinner, a good sign. Faz said hello (of course), wished me well, hoped my pizza would be satisfactory, and then, in a final act of graciousness, complimented me on my car. “Eez a beautiful car. What kind of car? A Passat? Very beautiful.”

Haven’t seen Tom Monaghan yet.

I’m late getting to this, but there are still a few hours left, so Kate and her trick-or-treating pal say…boo!

Tonight’s seminar was Pat Oliphant, the cartoonist. The evening began with Charles recounting an incident that I guess I can sketch out for you, seeing as how it’s in the public record:

Oliphant came to Wallace House in the first days after it was purchased by the Fellowship (c. 1992), and was invited to draw on the wall. He sketched, with his usual marvelous economy, a picture of Bill Clinton jogging with a cheeseburger in his hand. Oliphant fans know about Puck, the little penguin who makes asides at the bottom of Oliphant cartoons. In this one, Puck asks Socks the cat something like, “Why did they get you and not a dog?” and Socks replies, “Mrs. Clinton said, ‘You like pussy so much, here’s a cat.'”

Well. I guess that, shall we say, tetched it off. A later speaker saw this thing and dropped the dime to the Detroit News, which did a story about it, along with various other publications. The drawing was called the “wall of shame,” and was the center of weeks worth of civil war between the Fellows and others, half of whom wanted it painted over, and others who thought doing so would be nothing short of capitulation to the forces of political correctness.

The drawing was painted over. But not before spirited debate, and lots of archival photographs.

Oliphant still has the touch. His caricatures of American leaders — on paper and in frames, not drawn on the walls — adorn our living room. They’re marvelous pieces; you can get a sense of them in the photo about halfway down this page. I’m no artist, and so the trick of conjuring a human face in just a few strokes of charcoal amazes me.

The conversation, and the drawing, went elsewhere, and I’m sorry I can’t talk about it, because there were some good ones.

Remember, in one of the Dirty Harry movies (but I can’t remember which), when we have the obligatory Harry-you’re-off-the-case scene, and he gets transferred to personnel?

Harry says, “Personnel? Only assholes work in personnel.”

And the sergeant says, “I spent 15 years in personnel.”

OK, you remember that. A new blog discovery, Whatevs.org, points out that some things never change. Even if they do call it “human resources” now. And with a Michigan twist!

(Disclaimer: One of my fF spouses is an HR consultant. Of course this does not apply to her, because she does it overseas. She probably gets to do cool things like chop off hands and whip people ‘n’ stuff.)

Just left my SI (that’s School of Information, for you non-Wolverines) class, “Understanding Networked Computing,” a.k.a. Technology Appreciation. It’s more interesting than you might think. Someday the authors of “Trivial Pursuit: Geek” will seek me out for question suggestions. A few:

1) Explain the inside joke of HAL 9000, the computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

2) Name the original seven internet domains. (Everyone knows the obvious .com, .net., .org., but the sixth and seventh will probably stump a few of you.)

3) On a peer-to-peer network, what is the slang term for a user who downloads frequently but chooses not to share? What is the usual corrective action?

I could go on. I won’t. But as long as we’re on the subject of technology, last night our screenwriting prof instituted a cell-phone fine rule. Robert McKee, the screenwriting guru played by Brian Cox in “Adaptation,” hates cell-phone interruptions. If one goes off in class, he immediately stops teaching, singles out the offender for abuse and collects a $10 fine. Our own fine is somewhat less — a dollar.

And yet, even after he instituted the fine and gave fair warning with the first offender, another phone went off. In the words of the walkin’ boss, “Some men you just can’t reach.”

And one more tech note: Poyter has a fond look back at Viewtron, a crude precursor to internet news online, promulgated by my own employer, Knight Ridder. Several of my FW colleagues in the ’80s came there directly from Viewtron layoffs, right Adrianne? Andrew? Yes. My previous employer, the Columbus Dispatch, was also online in this era, via Compuserve.

Both efforts were ahead of their time, as the story points out.

Side note: The Bloomberg user interface? Very, uh, retro. Very Viewtron.

This picture is for Jones, and it will surely make him spit beer onto his monitor. The rest of you, just move along, nothing to see here.

When you hear me talk about how techno-centric the U of M is, do you ever think, “But what about the poor kids there on hardship scholarships who can’t afford a fancy laptop? What do they do? How can they ever bridge the digital divide?”

Don’t think that anymore. As you might expect, someone thought of it first.

Scattered around the campus are public computing centers like this, which is the largest, the Angell Hall “fishbowl.” They’re all stacked rafter-high with computers, a lavish assortment of powerful PCs and Macs, equipped with all manner of Zip drives, scanners and the like, with lesser models set up as e-mail-only centers. (The campus runs on e-mail; checking it hourly or at least several times a day is nearly essential.)

But I didn’t get really jealous until I wandered through the fishbowl this morning and saw half a dozen brand-new, smokin’-fast Apple G5 Macs, each one running with not one but two monitors. (People who run graphics apps frequently need the extra monitor, which works like an extension of the main one. If you’re doing photo retouching, for instance, you can blow your picture up big on one and keep all your Photoshop tables on the other.)

I think my last official act on campus may be to use my academic discount to buy one of those suckers. Or maybe not.

Some headlines speak for themselves:

City’s image blurry to top execs
Forum speaker advises against ‘boring’ as asset

When you read something like that, you know that the consultants are at their Sisyphean task again — rolling Fort Wayne’s “image” up a hill, only to watch it…well, you know what happens.

But this story, by the irony-free Journal Gazette, is too, too amusing:

Suri Surinder, Verizon region president, drew applause when he suggested that Fort Wayne should embrace its image as a good place to raise a family. He compared the city’s marketing challenge to the ones faced by Listerine and Avis, which used their perceived disadvantages of being bitter tasting and being No. 2 in the market to their advantage.

The city, he said, could adopt the motto: We’re boring, so you can raise a family here.