Vin Suprynowicz

I’m to do a “blog.”

“It’ll be easy, Vin. You type in your thoughts. The readers respond. You respond to their responses.”

“I already do that. I use lots of reader mail in this thing we like to call my ‘weekly column.’”

“This will be much faster. And it builds traffic!”

Ah. Just like a weekly column, but with even less emphasis on documentation, contemplation, or craftsmanship. No wonder the Web is awash in largely unsubstantiated but furiously fervent personal opinion. It’s like giving every kid his own radio show.

I acquired my third class license and did some radio in my college days, spinning Lord Buckley, obscure Tom Lehrer LPs, .78s by the California Hummingbirds, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels.” So I don’t mean to malign my broadcast brethren, who live in fear of ever being caught with nothing to say. But have you ever done morning radio?

You rise in the pitch dark and point your car into the rising sun. Arriving at the station, I feel like I’ve fallen down a tunnel into a nest of chipmunks on speed. These people have been guzzling coffee since 3:30 a.m.

“Good morning. We’re happy to have with us as our guest today on K-DOOM Vin Suprynowicz, executive assistant associate editor of the Thingamajig. Vin! What about this crisis in Outer Daggistan?!”

“What?”

“Big Crisis! All over the news! The Grand Poobah of Outer Daggistan has kidnapped the oil minister of Lower Begonia! Begonian foreign minister says they’re not going to stand for it! Troops moving toward the border! What do you think? Has Condi Rice been caught asleep at the wheel, which would be a good name for a country band? Could this be the start of the Third World War? And what does this mean to the price of oil?!”

“The what?”

“The price of oil! Outer Daggistan adjoins three major oil producing regions! Big crisis! What do you think?”

“Well, from what I remember of my geography, Outer Daggistan is one of the former Soviet Republics …”

“Great answer, Vin! But we’re out of time for this segment! Now to Ferris Buehler, circling high over the Spaghetti Bowl in downtown Las Vegas in the K-DOOM traffic copter!”

I stagger down the hall to find the bathroom, thereafter fortifying myself with another half cup of coffee thick enough to patch potholes. By the time I’ve got my earphones back on, the brain has started to click into gear.

“I’ve been thinking about this problem in Daggistan …”

“Vin! Next issue! What about this gas leak in downtown Las Vegas?!”

“What?”

“Big gas leak! Six square blocks of the downtown closed down! Could the City Hall go up in flames? They want to build a new one, you know. Who could be behind this? And how will this affect the upcoming police bond?”

“Police bond?”

“Voters go to the polls in less than four months! More police officers to sniff for gas leaks! Don’t tell me you think it’s unrelated?!”

By now I’ve started to ‘get it.’ Don’t waste time trying to figure out if the gas leak is really of any significance. Just wade in and say something pontifical on some tangentially related subject.

“You know, Tom, bonds for more police manpower almost always pass in this community, but there’s something counterintuitive above police manpower and crime rates. People expect crime rates to go down, but statistics show when you hire more cops, reported crime rates actually go up! After all, you’ve got all these new officers driving around, they need to keep busy, so you tend to see them writing people up for behaviors that previously would have been ignored.

“And this isn’t limited to uniformed officers. Same thing with ‘Child Protection’ workers. The more you hire, the more they go out and discover there’s this supposed epidemic of new child abuse that creates a critical need for more ‘Child Protection’ workers. It’s an endless cycle, designed to suck us deeper and deeper into dependence on the Nanny State.”

Although I’m sure I’ve read this somewhere, if someone asked me to pull those ‘statistics’ out of my hat I’d be dead. But they won’t. There’s no time. This is radio.

“Great point, Vin! Got to move on! We’ve got time to take one caller! Jerry on Line One, you’re On K-DOOM; talk to me!”

“Hi, Tom.”

“Hi, Jerry.”

“Great to hear your guest there, Vin Spickowitz.”

“Always pleased when Vin can join us. You had a question, Jerry?”

“I think everything you’re talking about relates right back to the Bildersbergers and the British Royals and the way they’ve been manipulating our economy through the Rockefellers’ creation of the Federal Reserve Board in 1913, although we’ll never read about that in Vin’s newspaper, and I think we all know why!”

“We sure do.”

“Just look at his last name; no offense, Vin.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t take any. You had a question, Jerry?”

“I was wondering if Vin could comment on the first chapter of a manuscript I’ve prepared on this topic. I’ll just read the first five pages.”

“Running short of time, Jerry. Can you formulate that as a question?”

What seems like moments later, I’m being hustled out the door with a hearty handshake and a “Got to do this more often.”

After decompressing with a cheese Danish and a large orange juice at the closest McDonald’s, I wander into my own newsroom, where the day is just getting started at 11 a.m.

I used to think the pace of daily newspapering was pretty hectic when I first arrived, 35 years ago. Newsrooms were full of clattering typewriters and AP tape-punchers that sat in little glass-walled rooms that were knee-deep in yellow confetti by the time the wire editor waded in each morning. Newspapers had names like “The Telegraph,” reminiscent of the days when folks would gather outside the offices to see bulletins posted in the front window, dispatches received over the humming wires from the remote battlefields of the Civil War THAT VERY DAY!

By comparison, today’s newsroom seems almost Victorian in its leisurely pace. A few editors crane their necks to watch our morning stories being re-read by the lip-biting local TV spokesgals. The meeting to decide how the stories will be ranked for tomorrow’s paper won’t even be held till 4 p.m. I walk up to one of the early guys on the desk.

“Big gas leak downtown?”

“False alarm. Some homeless guy spilled a can of kerosene.”

“Crisis in Outer Daggistan?”

“There’s a crisis in Outer Daggistan every week. It’s all about getting more money for their pipeline rights. Four inches in the international roundup on page 12.”

“Thanks, Warren.”

“No problem.”

I can handle this “blog” thing. You just imagine you’re an extremely pumped-up chipmunk.