Falcon Heene should get the Medal of Honor for protecting this country...

I knew it...I knew it...!

Knew that last month's 'balloon boy' escapade was a hoax, even before the Colorado authorities.

From the moment live images of a giant, half-deflated silver helium balloon touching down in an amber colored field, some 'official' running toward it hysterically, got me to stop on CNN (after a spate of fruitless channel surfing, during which neither Bobby Flay nor Brady was capturing my interest) and watch wide-eyed, eager to see if there really was a 'six-year-old boy' inside, I had my doubts. Where would the boy be, I thought.There's no basket, there's no apparent way in or out of the vessel...

I might not have given my skepticism a second thought had the CNN anchorwoman not expressed out loud the exact same sentiment, almost in tandem. Her doubt seemed to rise, somewhat unconsciously, out of her carefully sculpted, professional interest in the story:

"I don't really see where a little boy could be..."

And I found myself chuckling, thinking, Well, if he IS in there, he's going to come out sounding like Alvin the Chipmunk.

I would never have been so glib about something so potentially tragic, even privately, if it hadn't seemed...right from the start...so unreal.

But it was unreal. Last week, the child's father, Richard Heene, pled guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant and will likely be going to jail for a while.

Yup...I so knew!

Not that I'm anything special. It would seem to have been difficult, if not downright impossible, for anyone following the story to miss the strangeness of the Heene family from the get-go - the father's absurdly overwrought expressions and odd choice of words coupled in unnerving contrast with the mother's persistant silence, letting her husband do all the talking, as if determined to do so. Then there were the children, the three of them trotted out with the parents at every photo opportunity as if all were thought to have been in the wayward balloon, and little Falcon (uh, yeah...about that...) - the boy of the hour, back safely in his parents' loving arms - squirming, yawning, pooping and vomiting his way through national interviews, and inadvertently (because nearly everything a six-year-old does is inadvertent) spilling the beans on Larry King Live by claiming the family 'did this for a show'...

It was clear from the father's reaction he knew the jig was all but up, and he took out his frustration over this unanticipated wrinkle by getting huffy with Wolf Blitzer. From this, and the unsettling reocognition that if it hadn't been a hoax it probably would have turned out tragically, it was not hard to notice that something smelled funny...

And it wasn't coming from Falcon.

Falcon and his siblings, of course, are innocent. The parents are the idiots, and since have been suitably (to my taste, anyway) skewered in the media for their hijinks. In fairness, it's become clear the father was the true culprit, the 'mastermind' behind the whole thing, sans any reverence that word might imply. He and his family had appeared on reality shows in the past, and Richard was hoping to trade on whatever notoriety and name recognition this stunt provided to negotiate his own show.

Jesus...imagine what might have transpired if little Falcon had not blurted out the truth on national television! Imagine the mind-numbingly stupid 'reality show' (an oxymoron if ever there were one) that might have resulted, the idiotic plot-lines we would have been expected to follow...to consider entertainment! Imagine the whole thing going the way Richard Heene envisioned: talent agents contacting him after the incident, offering their services, the good folks at TLC (seriously, does anything get 'learned' as much as exploited on 'The Learning Channel'?) placing their calls, interested in a development deal. Imagine more than one network getting in on some bidding war and putting Richard Heene in the driver's seat of his piecemeal 'reality' career.

I get queasy thinking about it: some three-season, six-figure deal might have been signed, then, a year later, a much-promoted series premiere flickering onto our television screens, with some lamely contrived title, a la Keeping Up with the Kardashians, or Leave it to Lamas (what the hell is that?! Seriously, I thought Lorenzo Lamas died on the set of Renegade in 1995!), forever cementing the Heene clan in our national consciousness.

And that would really be the crime, wouldn't it? Imagine, were it not for little Falcon's world-saving candor, we might soon have been talking about the Heenes the way we now speak of Jon and Kate....yes, that's right, Jon and Kate...no last name necessary. No need to refer to their show's title to establish whom I'm speaking of...just Jon and Kate, like a married couple you have drinks with on Friday night: they could live next door, you could have play dates for your kids on Saturday morning, catch a game on Sunday. We all feel an unwarranted sense of familiarity with the Gosselins now, resulting from the unwarranted emotional reaction viewers felt when things went wrong in their marriage last spring. Even those of us who'd never watched the show, who only know what a 'Jon and Kate' is through blaring tabloid headlines that happen to catch our attention while we're standing in line to buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's, or Ryan Seacrest's teeth chattering about them on an E! news update, or Joel McHale making fun of Kate's haircut....even we are sentenced to forever knowing who these people are; no joke, as we know who Neil Armstrong was, or Dan Marino, say....Lincoln, Sinatra, Travolta, Clinton, whoever...we now know the name Gosselin.

Sigh...

So too could have been the case with the name Heene. They might have become just Dick and Mayumi....

America owes Falcon Heene a debt of gratitude! God bless that little boy! Not since the Cuban missile crisis has this country swung so close to all-out destruction! The Heenes night have...good lord...become part of what we remember about these times!

And yet, the sad truth is Richard Heene already is. It might be possible to find some sympathy for him, actually, to regard him as a victim. He is, after all, just a sad practitioner of the modern American dream: getting as much as possible with as little as possible, usually through a dysfunctional 'look at me! look at me!' stab at exposure. The 'qualifications' for reality stardom cannot possibly be more debased. Given VH-1's seemingly endless skank parade, and TLC's seemingly relentless (and ruthless) quest for ethical aberrations and physical deformities to exploit, why shouldn't Richard Heene want to grab his piece of the (cow) pie, or think he has a reason/right to?

He is essentially as 'qualified' as any of them.

The moral of the story: If you can, for whatever reason - being freakishly talented or decidedly UN-talented, cute but stupid, ugly and stupid, deformed, ignorant or obnoxious - help sell more cases of beer, bags of Doritos and booty-licious cell phones, you can find fame in 21st century America.

In death as in life, Michael Jackson remains our generation's Elvis

It was another one of those 'where were you when you heard the news...' moments this afternoon, reading - first - that Michael Jackson had been rushed to an LA hospital for 'cardiac arrest'.

'This can't end well', I thought, as I did two years go when similarly sketchy reports were being made about Anna Nicole Smith being rushed to the hospital.

An hour later, there were conflicting reports circulating the Internet of just what was going on; nothing official, but certainly a sense through comments made by paramedics and behavior of Jackson's family that things were 'going badly', he was 'in a coma', he was 'not breathing' when he arrived.

Then, not fifteen minutes ago, confirmation from an anonymous source that Michael Jackson was dead at the age of 50.

Interesting, it will be, to see the media spin on this in the next several weeks. There will of course be a firestorm of coverage - a la Anna Nicole; a la Princess Di - a non-stop series of analysis about his life, his legacy and his demise in the last fifteen years that will go on for the next several weeks and likely reach noxiously overkill levels.

But I wonder just what the flavor of his legacy will be now that he's gone.

I predict all the ridicule and personal attacks will cease. I predict he will, in time, be lionized posthumously, reaching a greater level of stardom than ever during his life - a la Elvis.

Michael Jackson is our generation's (our times') Elvis Presley. The similarities between the two men are truly startling when one really sits down to think about it. Both were innovative, talented performers who shot to super stardom at a young age, raising the bar in pop music and culture and leaving an indelible impression. Both stars faded fairly quickly (ensuing 'comeback' attempts never quite hitting their marks). Both had demons they could not shake; demons leading them into a slow-cooked demise that reached depths that were impossible to rise out of in the final years of their lives. Both led strange (or at least mysterious) personal lives, both had children who were of tremendous interest to the media, and both sequestered themselves in indulgent, custom-made estates that at different times have been amusement park-caliber destination points for hundreds of thousands of people. UPDATE: Now it is being said that a toxic mix of potent prescription drugs was the likely cause of Jackson's cardiac arrest...just like Elvis.

Elvis held a series of comeback concerts in the summer of 1977, weeks before his death. Jackson, too, was just planning a comeback this summer - his This is It tour that was to kick off with a string of shows in London.

Sadly, Jackson never had a chance at any final glorious performances as Elvis did in the summer of '77 (where his voice never failed him, even though his body had).

I never failed to recognize Jackson's talent, even at the worst of his PR nightmare - which has been going on for twenty years now, and run the gamut. From sleeping in oxygen tanks to pet chimps to child molestation to Elephant Man bones to child endangerment to plastic surgery addiction, there's nothing that hasn't been said about him. And, in fairness, much of it seemed to be stuff he brought on himself through undeniably bizarre behavior.

But kooky though he may have been, Michael Jackson was good at what he did. Damn good. Anybody who appreciates and understands music, as opposed to the mere high fashion of sound, will attest to this. He wrote most of his music himself, excelling at both song construction (tunes like The Way You Make Me Feel, Thriller and especially Billie Jean were rhythmically and vocally tight) and, every once in a while, getting a message across that left little need for much else to be said (Man in the Mirror, Black or White, We Are the World, which he co-wrote with Lionel Ritchie). He was a hell of performer as well, sustaining the global reach of his stardom (until recently, of course) through exhaustive stage shows. All of this he did living in a fishbowl, pretty much from age eight on.

If there's anyone in the celebrity world who deserves to finally rest in peace, it's him.

God rest his soul.

Or maybe not: The celebrity website TMZ, in posting news of his death, had this to say: "Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince "Blanket" Michael Jackson II."

'Blanket'?...Seriously?

Jackson might roll over in his grave about what is said about him in death.

Also, a la Elvis.

Dominos workers and their behavior awful, but not typical

It's easy to get shocked and grossed out by it, feel the gag reflex kick in, in tandem with your skin crawling and your stomach turning. News last week that two idiots working for Dominos Pizza in North Carolina had videotaped themselves doing unsanitary things to food (sneezing and passing gas on sandwiches, stuffing cheese up their noses) and presumably serving it to customers sent shock waves through the country for a short period of time. The man and woman were brainless enough to post their shenanigans on YouTube, where the video was watched by thousands of disgusted viewers. More than one viewer apparently recognized the workers and the store where this was going on, and so started the media storm. Within a few hours, Kristy Lynn Hammonds, 31, and Michael Anthony Setzer, 32, found themselves fired from their jobs and in jail, facing state felony charges of serving contaminated food.

Released on bail, the two individuals have apologized and stated that their behavior was merely a prank to kill time and that the food in question was never served to anyone. The incident has become a nightmare for the Dominos corporation. For all pizza places really, particularly ones featuring take-out only. Such establishments already face a constant uphill battle distancing themselves from the image held by many that two greasy-haired cretins farting, blowing snot and giggling stupidly for the results are potential management material in places like this. Factor in their take-out operation...where you don't dine in, you don't sit down, soak in the vibe of the place and have a waitress bring you food and drinks and angle for tips with her bright smile; you just pick up your food up and leave with little or no communication...and it's easy to see why a video like this would make people shudder (if not vomit), and leave Dominos scrambling for damage control. The world we live in, where not only do we read and/or hear about what happened, but get to actually see the video, which doubtless will never be removed from the Internet completely, makes the damage seem almost irreparable.

Whether we're dining out or cooking for ourselves and each other, little constitutes more primal an experience than our consumption of food. Men employ their skills in the kitchen as a prelude to amorous advances (er...cook for their date), because it is a subtle, emotionally intimate thing to do. Not so intimate when we eat out, of course, but nevertheless the same principle applies. We, as human beings, feed and are fed, and most of our social interaction centers around food. We like it this way. We don't want to think of this phenomenon being tainted, either literally or metaphorically; we don't like to be reminded of the fact that whenever we go out to eat, whether picking up pizza and chicken wings for the big game, a Friday fish fry, trying hibachi for the first time, or at some chef extraordinaire's four star with the family to celebrate someone's graduation or gammy and gamp's 50th wedding anniversary, we take our culinary lives in our hands. Particularly at fast food places, but even at nicer restaurants...the potential for something to happen - two line cooks secretly spitting in the ranch sauce as a joke, or, potentially, something worse - is there.

It's an unsettling thought, yet most of us know how to grudgingly live with that potential. We get rattled when videos like this surface and remind us of how vulnerable we all are.

However, having lingered in and out of the (mostly fast) food service industry for almost 20 years now, having held every position possible amongst its minimum wage ranks, from dishwasher and delivery driver in the old days to manager and part-owner in recent years, I must say, in defense of those who do this work, whether making a career out of it or just earning a few bucks to have on the weekends, that I have never seen this type of behavior in any place I have worked.

I've never met an employee who would do something so awful. I've known plenty of bad employees, the kind who are never going to make sanitation their highest priority, maybe don't wash their hands as often as they should, or inadvertently sneeze or scratch themselves and then must be told to wash their hands, but never anyone who would derive so self-indulgent a laugh from acting at the expense of someone's right to clean, sanitary food.

I would be mindful, always, of your experience in any restaurant. But not paranoid. Dominos is scrambling to cover its bases, but they are right in the statement they issued. These two idiots DON'T represent the "the hard work performed by the 125,000 men and women working for Domino's."

Or any restaurant I have ever worked in.

A-list to C-list, celebrity attitude leaves a bad taste in my mouth

First there was Joaquin Phoenix's cringe-inducing appearance on David Letterman a few weeks ago, looking all una-Bomber with his shaggy beard and sunglasses, sounding all differently-abled with his muttered, mono-syllabic responses to Dave's questions, which eventually turned into snarky remarks as it became apparent Phoenix might nod off at any moment.

"Joaquin, I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight," Letterman quipped at the end.

And Phoenix rose out of his daze long enough to get this and respond, "Funny, he's funny, he's a funny dude..."

It's hard to know what the talented actor-turned-jaded musician was, or was not, thinking. Was he hopped up, or down, on something? Should we worry he will suffer the same fate as his older brother, River? Or was he merely playing the part of the disaffected celebrity in an attempt to bolster his music career, separating the old movie actor Phoenix from this new incarnation - a persona that cannot be bothered with anything, and is bothered by everything?

In either case, it was a little heart-breaking and a lot annoying to watch - a sign of unpalatable self-indulgence.

Then, last week, another talented actor, Billy Bob Thornton, fancying himself a musician of merit and longevity so much so he would seem to have abandoned his old career as an actor all together, gave a bizarre interview on Canadian radio...

Except this one was less bizzare, less hard to figure out, and more dripping with unwarranted attitude. Light a match, and crack a window! Billy Bob Thornton has stunk up the studio with how much he can't be bothered.

I have zero tolerance for celebrity ego, whether it's coming from Thornton, Phoenix, Jerry Seinfeld, Kanye West, or in days past, Frank Sinatra, Mickey Mantle, or Joan Crawford (it seems to me, 'No wire hangers!' was as much a celebrity tantrum, a fussy ego out of control, as it was a woman battling inner demons and the ravages of alcoholism). I find it very difficult to reconcile behind-the-scenes personalities with celebrity personas. I don't think their talent, however stellar it might be and whether it entails sports, music, stage or cinema, grants them the right to be arrogant, rude, demanding or expecting of deference, because I simply don't think many or any of them have contributed anything of lasting impact. None of them are going to cure cancer, are they? They're not the ones who will figure out what to do if an asteroid's about to strike Earth. They're not teaching our children how to be productive members of society. They're not the people we call when we hear a noise outside, walk to a window and see a shadowy figure creeping across our lawn, or awake to find our kitchen on fire. So what claim do they have to the self-important view they hold?

Whether we, as fans, lend them their self-important view, is not really the point. The responsibility to keep it in check is all theirs.

Thornton was touring Canada with his band The Boxmasters, opening for Willie Nelson. He appeared on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio show called 'Q', hosted by someone named Jiam Ghomeshi.

I had never heard of Mr. Ghomeshi, but he is someone I now have a tremendous amount of empathy for.

There is a video of the radio interview (doubtless shot to be webcast later, and now available on YouTube). Silently fuming because Ghomeshi introduced him as 'Oscar-award winning actor and director Billy Bob Thornton', after allegedly having been instructed to make no mention of Billy Bob's acting career at all, Thornton spent the 15-minute interview making poor Ghomeshi squirm.

Great. Billy Bob wants to stand on his own two feet. Wants people to come see The Boxmasters play - or buy albums or whatever - by virtue of their music, not his stardom. Fine...I get it. But Ghomeshi could hardly have been accused of making a big deal out of Thornton's acting career, of depending on it as the only possible segue into the discussion. He made a mere passing reference to it in his introduction, then lavished the actor with a barrage of well-meaning, entirely music-oriented questions, which Thornton, marinating in his own indignation by this time, apparently feeling the whole interview was ruined because listeners knew who he was, refused to answer or answered by changing the subject all together. Ghomeshi was nonplussed and increasingly flustered by Thornton's relentless refusal to let it go, and eventually turned to the band mates (shifting uncomfortably in their own seats, it would appear) to answer questions when it became clear - not that Thornton couldn't, but wouldn't.

Ghomeshi did not deserve this. He was just trying to promote The Boxmasters. That's why he gets out of bed in the morning, that's what he does, as surely as that's why Thornton and his band show up for interviews and show up to play: Promotion. The goal is to get as many asses in the seats of the venue they're playing as possible.

Right?

I have experienced this brand of celebrity foulness myself, unanticipated and unwarranted, and I can assure you it is not pleasant to be on the receiving end.

Years ago, I was a staff writer for a newspaper. I was given an interview with a B-list (if that) celebrity, a comedian who had attained a measure of stardom decades ago, but in recent years had been relegated to playing smaller venues.

That's why my publication was involved. This individual was on tour and playing a restored downtown theater. It was a big deal in my little hometown. We had tickets to give away, paid ads to run in the paper and had devoted page space to help promote the event by landing a phone interview with the comedian.

B-list or not - and my aversion to celebrity ass-kissing notwithstanding - I was suitably nervous, in a deferential sense, as the moment approached. A pre-interview consultation with the comedian's agent did nothing to ease my anxiety, as I was given a laundry list of things I was allowed to ask him and things I was definitely NOT allowed to ask him - emphasis on 'NOT allowed.'

I called the phone number I was given precisely at the time I was told to, and could sense immediately something was not right. First of all, the comedian did not answer the phone, a woman did. She apparently had to go searching for him, as I was kept on hold several minutes. When finally he did answer, he had no idea what the call was about, and there was a surliness in his voice.

I had not been expecting it, yet I was aware of it right away.

For the next 15 minutes, I was treated to the same kind of ego-driven defiance, same snoot full of crappiness, as Ghomeshi: the comedian 'enduring' the interview, but only so as to make me feel stupid. I was pleasant, and once again deferential, for the sake of my job. I stayed away from the guy's hot button topics as instructed, and did everything I could to welcome him to the area. I made mention of his celebrity without leaving a bad taste in his mouth (or mine). I asked him a couple of noncommittal questions about his career, and for my efforts suffered a shit storm of angry effusions about how he was a star, how he didn't have time for this, how I was a lousy interviewer and I better learn how to do my job before wasting any more of his time.

All of it in STARK contrast to the persona he had affected back in his hey-day.

Like Mr. Ghomeshi with Thornton, I shifted in my seat, bit my tongue, swallowed my pride, and tried to keep the interview going smoothly, going FORWARD, but this guy would have none of it. He kept going on and on, batting my questions back at me with sarcastic remarks, asking me where the hell I'd gone to school, treating me not only as if I were incompetent, but had thoughtlessly ignored his agent and asked him all those no-no questions, one after another.

Eventually, I'd had enough, and stopped trying to act in the finest patient tradition of David Letterman or Jiam Ghomeshi. After a truly unfunny pregnant pause following the comedian snarling, Did you even do your homework for this!?..., I sighed loudly and said, "Soo...do you want to do this interview or not, buddy? I can go either way."

"No!" he raged, "what I want you to do is go to journalism school, then call me back!"

*Click.*

On the phone the next day, his agent suggested he must have been having a 'bad day, or something.'

This was probably the truth, because within a week he had cancelled his show in our area. I don't think I was the reason for this, but it's a fair assumption the decision to cancel may have been connected to the 'bad day' he was having.

Big deal. Don't talk to me that way.

I expect celebrities to be human, to have bad days. In other words, I do not hold them to some impossible standard. But that being said, because I expect nothing special of them, I hold them to the standard I hold everyone to. Don't be rude. Don't be impossible. Conduct yourself with kindness and dignity. Be patient. Understand. Try to connect with those you come in contact with every day. Really connect; not celeb to fan, but human to human.

And most importantly, when it comes to those who are interviewing you, those who are trying to, in whatever capacity (whether it's David Letterman reaching a nationwide audience or l'il old me writing for a circulation of 7,000), help your career along, how about showing a little deference for that? How about not wasting our time?

How about kissing our asses a little?

Inauguration Day Thoughts

This morning, folks are lining up in our nation's capital for a momentous event. It's barely 10 a.m. in Washington D.C., the official ceremonies having just started, but some 500,000 people have already crammed into the Mall to see Barack Obama get sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.

It's 'momentous' on more than one level. Of course, as our nation's first African-American president, Barack Obama has a lot to live up to. He must at once be a healer, bridging racial divides that haven't gotten much better since the 1960s (and in some ways seem more fractious than ever) and at the same time serve as an unequivocal champion of black Americans, a symbol for all minorities. He has no choice but to, in a variety ways, through writings and rhetoric, recognize some kind of distinction between minorities and 'white America.' Is this the way it should be? I don't think so; but everyone, including (and especially) the media, will expect it of him. We do not live in a color-blind society. We should, but we don't.

At the same time, he will have to exhibit an understanding that other than native Americans, we all came from somewhere; even 'white America' is comprised of various ethnicities, all have some kind of hyphenated identity (Polish-American, German-American, Italian-American) and there are some among us who strive to identify more with their hyphenated identities than others. Every president is expected to understand this, naturally; but Obama, purely by virtue of the color of his skin, will have this demanded of him. And he will be watched, scrutinized.

All the while, he must be solidly American, never perceived to be anything but tuned into the notion that we're essentially all of one culture in this country. We share an array of common goals, a common currency, common space, common jobs, common interests, for the most part a common language. He must straddle the fruited plain, one foot planted firmly within the ethnic neighborhoods of large cities, the other working its way into the soil of communities in rural Minnesota, where Scandinavian might be as specifically ethnic as anyone ever gets, and much of that phenomenon having gone the way of the family farm as generations passed.

These are tough times; have been for a while. Endless war and financial turmoil, and the continued threat of both, have led to a sense of uncertainty not felt in this country in a long time. Whether it's fair to blame the outgoing president for all of it, or fair to expect the new president to fix it all, that's what's at play here. The onus is on Obama and the individuals he chooses for his staff and cabinet to put things right. And in these times, that is a tall order.

And yet, most Americans think he can do it, or want to believe he can. Poll after poll in the last week has revealed a fresh wave of optimism sweeping through the nation. Whether this is just the blind hope inherent to change or a task Obama will handily step up to (or any president can step up to...) remains to be seen.

For what it's worth, I'm one of the hopeful. It's a step in the right direction, at least a different direction, and sometimes the aforementioned blind hope is all there is to keep us going. In his book, 'The Audacity of Hope', Obama writes of an 'empathy deficit' in our country. I like that phrase. I think it's brilliant in its simplicity, and very true. In battling this phenomenon, in battling our enemies at home and abroad, in seeking to bridge our society, keep us strong economically, environmentally, militarily and spiritually, I wish our new president well.