It's good to hear that the FCC is back in business, thinking about the Internet and wireless telecommunications and not so much about assessing huge fines to broadcasters who say "poop" on the air. The new chairman, Julius Genachowski, is a 46-year-old venture capitalist who is more interested in technological advances and bringing high-speed access to all Americans, and so the world moves on. Thank you, sir. How a guy so young came to be named Julius is a question for another time.
Cell phones are more crucial than cracking down on vulgarity, as I found out last week when mine went missing, a small black object the size of a box of Sen-Sen, and when I found it in the washing machine I said several vulgar things. It had drowned. I pressed # and * and ghi and mno - nothing - out of commission for an hour while I trucked on down to the cell phone store.
Here's how crucial cell phones are. In Minnesota it's illegal to text-message while driving - trying to type on a tiny keypad at 70 mph is crazy ("On my way. Be there in 20 minu - O NO NO NO aiiieeeeeeeee") - but it's legal to make calls while driving, which in my case means removing my glasses so I can see to scroll down the directory while steering with my knees at 70 mph. I call up my mother while driving, which is exciting for her since she is 94 and remembers when phones were attached to the wall and you talked on them while standing still. "Is that safe?" she says.
No, it's not, but neither is life itself. Animal fats, ultraviolet rays, unknown persons trying to get you to carry things aboard an aircraft, Argentinean women trying to lure you down to Buenos Aires - it's a minefield out there.
My hero Barry Halper died in his white convertible on Highway 12 east of St. Paul in the spring of 1961 when he was 20. He was excited to start a new job as a newsman at a radio station and crashed into the rear end of a school bus. He was a tall, swanky guy who loved comedy and radio. Had he not died, I might've become a high school English teacher, but I seem to have adopted his ambition instead. And so it goes.
Back then, the highway meant freedom. We were crazy about cars and wary of the cops who lay in wait for us. I loved to go visit my aunts in Isle, Minn., one reason being the perfectly straight stretch of Highway 47 from Ogilvie to Isle through scrub pine forest on which I kept my '56 Ford coupe at 100 mph (pre-seatbelt, mind you) for 20 miles.
