Feeling a bit like Ryan Seacrest, I have the results to last weeks American Idol. You may have already seen the results, where the beautiful and talented La Toya London lost when everyone expected Jasmine “Flower In Her Hair” Trias, wasn’t even in the bottom two, to go home instead. I know why, and it’s not because of sympathy votes.
Last post I admitted to watching a lot of reality TV and especially Survivor. Congratulations to Rob and Amber, I’m a sucker for romantics and they’re cute together, and to Rupert for winning the ‘America voted’ million dollars. He got one of my votes. I’ve never voted on American Idol because I don’t watch the show live and the phone lines are only open for two hours in the time zone after the show airs. The key to American Idol and Jasmine’s reprieve from joining JPL and the football player is timezones.
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My name is Thad, and I’m a reality TV junkie.
This weekend is the annual 
Getting out of New York on a summer weekend can be quite a task. There’s the traffic, the traffic, and then once the traffic clears you get stuck behind bad drivers thinking 66 in the fast lane is plenty. Enter books on tape. The perfect solution to the traffic holding the audience captive. Good in concept, but The Lake House, by James Patterson, is horrible in practice.
The Green Piece
NO DOUBT it is a thrill to ride a chartered bus all night from Cleveland with your fellow peace activists. No doubt it feels great when you wake up after a few hours sleep to shouts that you are rolling into New York City, where the big workers’ rights protest, or anti-fur rally, or whatever, is being held.
You stand around all day, sing songs, make new friends, shout for the TV cameras, listen to Martin Sheen speak. A memory to last a lifetime.
But that is not the point. Of course activists of every stripe want to come to Central Park to protest. The point is whether the average New Yorker wants to have a pleasant, well-tended park, or one that looks like a vacant lot the hour after the circus left. Most would prefer a pleasant park.
The said, there is a certain the-whole-world-is-watching thrill to go for a walk in the park and stumble across some giant rally of 100,000 people fooling themselves they are accomplishing something. So I have an idea: Allow, if not lots of big gatherings, then more than the paltry pair of nonopera, nonsymphony gatherings that are allowed now. But charge them. If it costs $250,000 to restore the lawn after each big hoo-ha, then require that groups pony up beforehand. That seems only fair – you make a mess, you clean it up. An extra buck or two a head won’t break most organizations – well, except maybe the peaceniks. They never seem to have jobs.