Mr. Mackey Will Return

It took a bit longer than I expected, but the Toms River Regional Board Of Education has finally approved my employment for next school year. I will be returning to teach the orchestra classes in all three high schools for the new school year, beginning on Wednesday, September 4. Our concerts this year will be January 30, 2003 and May 29, 2003, both Thursday nights. Keep practicing, kids... the Mack is back!

Site Update

We are embarking on a major redesign of the NJ Transit Bus page. We are feverishly converting pages and hope to have our new look (no pun intended) on the streets this weekend.

I Didn't Get The Hook Up!

Gee, I was in Seaside Heights yesterday, and unbeknownst to me, JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT was at the MTV Beach House. How spectacularly uninformed I was! (kicking self)

Yousuf Karsh dead

The man who took this picture of Chuck Jones (which was last seen on this blog to honor the memory of Jones after his February 22 death), as well as many other great photos, has died. Yousuf Karsh, 93, found many great celebrities and statesmen on the other side of his camera lens. His home base of Ottawa permitted him access to many great world leaders. He is perhaps most famous for a picture he took of Winston Churchill while Prime Minister in the 1940's.

Late-night talk show joke waiting to be told

An elderly couple asks for their money back at the movie theater, because they went to go see "Road To Perdition" and were disappointed that Hope and Crosby weren't in it.

Need A Ghost?

Check out this website... www.phantasmechanics.com. An old friend from my BIX days, Doug Ferguson, has obviously been doing quite a bit in the black arts since I lost touch with him and his lovely wife Barbara about a decade ago. His site is about creating "dark rides", haunted mansions, ghosts and other apparations designed to throw some good-old-fashioned scare entertainment into you. Mr. Ferguson is also an audio engineer of some note. Go visit and tell 'em Dave sent you.

Gambling At Home Is A Gamble

I now notice television spots running on some cable channels for online casinos. I am wondering why these ads refuse to address the risk of casino gambling, or even include the customary taglines that most legitimate casino ads use such as "Bet with your head, not over it" and "Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER." Back when I had links to casino sites on my web page, I made sure to use these tag lines myself, because I do recognize that gambling is a problem for some people. The ads I see on TV for these online casinos quite frankly do not and really play up the prospects of winning without warning of the odds and risk.

Now, back in the days of more steady employment for us both, my wife and I would visit Atlantic City at least once per month. However, even then, we would never think of using an Internet casino.

Never mind the rather gray legalities surrounding these sites, which all operate outside the U.S. legal jurisdiction. I think there's something rather empty and impersonal about gambling at home using your own computer rather than traveling and making an event out of it (even though I live about an hour from AC, we made it an event every time we went). Between rounds of blackjack or video poker, what is more enticing: visiting the buffet and enjoying hot food that someone else is making, or running to the cupboard for a half-eaten bag of Lay's? Entertainment: would you rather go to the showroom to see someone like Danny Gans, or have a rerun of "The Andy Griffith Show" on TV Land playing in the background as you deplete your credit cards?

Tweaks

A few minor tweaks this morning to the NJT Roster pages, because of the discovered existence of 8200-series MCI D4500 coaches.

Search Engine Jive

It seemed like a good idea for a laugh. I went to a search engine peek page to see what sort of stupid questions people would ask, but I now realize that the fix is in. It appears to me that marketing companies trying to push their products are deliberately popping questions into such search engines to ensure a result that is favorable for their product. The last straw was the last question I ever expected to find in an Internet search engine: "Where can I find the magazine People?" Hello? People Magazine, for better or worse, is sold at practically every place magazines are sold in this Hemisphere. If you have to ask a search engine that kind of question, you're stupider than the question. So it has to be a corporate marketing plant designed to drive traffic into People Magazine's web site and look at their stupid ads. Boo.

Rosemary Clooney Dead

Talk about mixed emotions. I am sitting in my living room at 1:30 in the morning, watching what appears to be a broadcast of Brian Setzer's live set from Tokyo taped earlier this year on my local public television station - apparently, not to be interrupted by pledge breaks - when I pick up the computer and stumble across the news that Rosemary Clooney has passed on from complications from cancer at the age of 74.

Rosie had an interesting career, though her exploits in recent years have come mostly on the coattails of the success of her handsome acting nephew, George. (George's dad is Rosemary's brother, Nick Clooney, a veteran Cincinnati TV personality who was most recently an on-air host for AMC before that channel got totally screwed up with young-turk hosts and ads. The elder Clooney also hosted "The Money Maze". But I digress.) We vividly remember Rosie's turn as a confused homeless woman wandering into the E.R. from time to time and bumping heads with Dr. Doug Ross (George's character) and the other denizens of the E.R. But it was ultimately the music that she'll be remembered for, starting with the William Saroyan-Ross Bagdasarian composition "Come on-a My House" and weaving through a succession of less heralded works. I heard a mid-90's Rosie on the radio not long ago interpreting the Dave Frishberg tune "Let's Eat Home" and she still sounded marvelous. Bye, Rosie.

New Home For IRPinball

IRPinball lives on at www.irpinball.com, for the time being. Its host, hippie.net is no more. The new site isn't going to be as content rich as previous, unfortunately. IRPinball has also come under attack by the lawyers, specifically with reference to machines manufactured by Gottlieb which are still under trademark/copyright - even though the company doesn't even exist any more.

And Another Thing...

If I walk by that damn sports jersey kiosk and see another jersey with a fake looking "JETER 2" on the back, I am going to rip it off the rack, tear it into a billion little thread shreds, make the clerk eat every single one of them, and maybe think about paying for it after all of that.

Hear me now, all you idiots in the sports clothing business.

YANKEE UNIFORMS DO NOT HAVE NAMES ON THE BACK. NEVER HAVE, NEVER WILL. PERIOD. END OF STORY.

And as Don West used to say on Shop At Home, "That's just the way I feel."

More NJT Roadeo Pix

We've added the other two showbuses from the NJT Roadeo, thanks to a suggestion from an employee of Big Tree Garage in Nutley. So your 1922 is now up on the web as well as the two MCI's, the 7666 and 7788. Look for em at the NJT page. Yes, putting only one of em up wasn't the fair thing to do. Congrats, BTW, to all of this year's Roadeo winners (whoever you are... I had to leave before the winners were announced!)

NJT Bus Roadeo Reports Forthcoming

Later today or tonight we will have a selection of pictures for you from today's NJ Transit Bus Roadeo. Howell Garage has traditionally been an exclusively MCI facility (with a Nova Bus tucked away in the corner for some reason, and a Flxible still hanging around), but now, the facility is being more and more populated by the new 45-foot D4500 buses from the 7400 series. We have pix and serials of some of em. (BTW other web sites have been noting these buses as D4501's. I looked at the builder's plates. All the ones I saw are D4500's.)

More Web Stupidity

The morons who invented the pop-up ad now have a new tactic: moving ads. The ads move so fast you cannot get to the X to close the box in time. However, if you right-click on the IE entry corresponding to the ad and select Close very quickly, you can keep the ad's exposure to a minimum. Me, I have gotten very good at not looking directly at the ads.

Tomorrow's Search Engine Today!

For years, Altavista functioned as my home page because I always liked the search engine. However, the preponderance of pop up ads on Altavista has forced a switch. I now park my browser at Yahoo! because there are no popups or other annoyances. However, for searches I have recently taken to using Google. Just a peek into how I browse, for the two of you who care.

Name That Toon

Personal to the two ladies asking in tandem about the Bugs Bunny cartoon with the horse in the airplane: it was "Super Rabbit". I cannot send you the return e-mail with this information.

NBA Is Over

Lakers 113, Nets 107.

Lakers win championship.

Yawn.

Why No Ads?

I'm beginning to think that not only is the Internet not going to be the cash cow with which anyone can get rich, but I am also starting to believe that Internet advertising is more an intrusion and an annoyance than an asset to build a business, and may even steer people away from the intended result.

I was surfing a nationally-known sports information web site and was interrupted by the forgettable image of Mr. Peanut giding across the screen in a sailboat. With no way possible of turning it off. For the first time ever on the Internet, I felt trapped.

You can bet I'll probably be scarfing down store-brand peanuts after this episode, in much the same way you probably won't find me booking a trip through Orbitz or installing an X10 webcam or clicking on one of the multitude of fake looking Windows dialogue boxes masquerading as ads, designed to ensnare the less savvy among us.

But do you know what the clincher was? The relentless promotion of the movie "Death To Smoochy" on the zap2it.com website. In the hands of more capable filmmakers, I would have embraced the film's theme, which was basically a major rag on Barney.

The fact that "Death To Smoochy" went down as one of Hollywood's biggest bombs - not even grossing into eight figures - justified to me that web advertising has little if no value. And I sat through all these ads for what?

That's why, kids, you'll never see ads on this site, or any others I have involvement with. It is worth to me the price of paying for web space to not have to put you through a series of pop-ups that interrupt the real reason you come to this site - for the content.

Mackey's Packing

Our family name seems to have lent itself to a look. The new FX police drama "The Shield" features as one of its main characters rogue cop Vic Mackey, as played by Michael Chiklis. For the role, Chiklis, who previously played portly pasty types like "Commish" Tony Scali, John Belushi and Curly Howard, has buffed himself up and has shaved his balding head. The look is quite striking, especially with those dark glasses Mackey likes to wear. It looks kind of like a Bruce Willis thing, especially with the shaved head, but I think Chiklis takes it to the next level and makes it - dare I say it? - very Mackey indeed!