I always hear doctors and nurses say Hollywood can’t get it right on medical dramas in movies and television shows; lawyers tell me the same thing.
I myself have noticed this over the years about the newspaper business.
So I’ve compiled this list concerning Tinseltown’s version of media outlets.

1. “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” – This show ran for a couple of years on ABC in the ‘70s. Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) hunted vampires, extraterrestrials, Louisiana bayou legends and even a secret government robot gone haywire.
• Similarities to real life: Kolchak had a grouchy editor; Carl dressed tacky and was often harassed by police.
• Way you can tell it’s a show: Reporters rarely hunt vampires unless they’re at a city council meeting, or work for the Bermuda Triangle Gazette or Bigfoot Express-News.

2. “Lou Grant” – Life at a big city paper starring Ed Asner.
• Similarities to real life: Photographer dressed in weird flack jacket to carry all his lenses; e...

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Many hotels in the Jack Tar chain, like the old Orange spa/resort/restaurant, aren’t around anymore but the name has quite the Internet life.

If you Google the term you’ll get the option for a “Timeline” and a brief synopsis of about 100 newspaper articles. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to click on all 100 of them but here are some of the more interesting ones.

The term referred to seamen of the Merchant or Royal Navy, particularly during the period of the British Empire; probably because they tarred their clothes and certain parts of the ship to make them waterproof. References to Jack Tar or just “tars” are heard in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta “HMS Pinafore,” and American composer George M. Cohan’s “Grand Old Flag.” John Philip Sousa’s “Sailor’s Hornpipe” is from his “Jack Tar March”; and depending on how accurate the site Freebase.com is, the Rolling Stones wrote “Satisfaction” while staying at the Fort Harrison Jack Tar in Clearwater, Fla.

Some of th...

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Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan have all covered time and spatial relationships in their writings. I don’t understand any of these things.
I just know you can travel through time, in theory anyway, and might find a few black holes in the cosmos somewhere.

I realized in college I wasn’t that smart. I could attempt a career as a quantum physicist, or just write whatever the hell I wanted.

Now mind you, I do actually understand some science.

When that astronaut in “2001” turns into a Giant Space Baby, well I kind of get that.

When Klaatu in “The Day The Earth Stood Still” writes equations on a blackboard, I know it’s all “Hollywood-ed Up.” Probably not even a real equation.

But when he says, “This Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder.”
Well I pretty much understand that one too.

What I’m really getting at – is that I flunked fifth-grade math.

But also, that time travel exists even in our realm – with u...

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Where are the jet packs we were promised?

Remember those films in school 40 years ago where a grandfatherly scientist-type like Arthur C. Clarke told you about the wonderful things you’d get in the future?

Things you can only dream of, we were told. And we’re still dreaming of jet packs. They’d go really well with me right now because of the daily traffic tie-ups I get living in a city with only two entrances/exits, both on long bridges over large bodies of water.

I think the answer is simple. There are no jet packs because the same idiot drivers we have on the road now – would be the same idiot drivers in the air.
They’d run into power lines, tall buildings downtown and the aforementioned bridges.

And that would be just the sober ones.

We’d have to learn how to fly the darn things, get a license, keep them repaired and get them inspected every year.

Not to mention that the car and gas companies would pay off enough senators to vote them d...

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Well it’s that time of year again.
Get the old grill out and throw on some moo cow.
You just need a pit, fire, meat and a little spice.
And for the adventurous, marinade.
I don’t really even have a pit, iust a $14 piece of crap from Sav-Mor.
But you know, it works pretty good, and only took three hours to assemble since the instructions were written in Japanese.
This is how Tokyo gets revenge from World War II.
And grilling is how we get revenge on our neighbors for making us smell their ‘cue all the time.
I guess it could have been a woman – but it was probably a guy – who figured out that to cool the fire down, just throw a little beer on there.
He probably had a Pabst in his hand and said, “Hey, this is kind of like water, right?”
And that guy should get a posthumous award, because it’s one of the official rules of ‘cue – a tradition carefully passed down.
I like to marinade my moo cow in red wine, usually chianti, which inevitably leads to stupid jo...

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It’s been said there’s no such thing as a perfect job.
But is it perhaps true there really are?
It’s just that you never see them in the classifieds?
I wondered what some of those might look like, so please read along with me:

• GOLFERS WANTED: MUST HIT BALL INTO WATER, WOODS. MUST CUSS. MUST GET SMASHED ON 19TH HOLE. MUST CUSS AGAIN. CART AND SEX SCANDAL OPTIONAL. PAYS $500 WK.

• ROADWORK CREWS NEEDED: MUST BOTCH FIRST JOB, RETURN TO DO TERRIBLE REPAIR JOB, SPENDING MORE TAXPAYERS’ MONEY. MUST COME IN WAY OVER BUDGET AND DEADLINE. PAYS $1,000 WK, EXTRA FOR TRAFFIC CONGESTION.

• POT HEADS: MUST LISTEN TO PINK FLOYD; BEATLES AND ALLMAN BROTHERS A PLUS. MUST FURNISH OWN PAPER, PIPE. SALARY COMMENSURATE WITH EXPERIENCE.

• POLITICAL PUNDITS: ARE YOU A BIG BLOWHARD? DO YOU HAVE AN AGENDA ONLY A FEW MISGUIDED PEOPLE TEND TO SHARE? THIS IS THE JOB FOR YOU! SALARY COMMENSURATE ON HOW MUCH YOU CHARGE FANS ON YOUR WEB SITE.

• AMBULANCE CHASERS WANTED. ...

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So what exactly are the Summertime Blues and how actually do you get them?

If you’re Eddie Cochran, the co-writer of the song, you’re a rebellious ‘50s teen.

You have an evil boss who makes you work late, evil parents who won’t let you take the car to go a’ridin’ on Sunday and there’s an evil congressman who cares not what you think because you can’t vote.

There have been many versions, by Eddie himself, Ritchie Valens and even old Blue Cheer and the Who did a version. It’s hit the country charts with Alan Jackson and Gary Allan.

In the end, the singer takes his problems to the United Nations.

We don’t get to hear what happened, but I’m guessing nothing.

Because after all, it’s the United Nations.

But teens of the ‘50s should be proud, because kids today won’t go to the store much less the U.N.

Maybe they glimpsed a city council meeting once while channel surfing.

Of course, there’d be plenty of changes if the song were do...

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Did you know there was a National Columnists Day?
I didn’t, and I’ve been a member for three years of the organization that started it in 1995.
It was in a recent newsletter I learned April 18 is National Columnists Day.
It’s the same day in 1945 when Ernie Pyle was killed by Japanese sniper fire. Pyle is more or less the patron saint of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, sometimes called the NSNC.
“You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don’t ask silly questions,” Pyle once wrote.
Last year I missed the NSNC conference in New Orleans, probably the closest it will ever get to me. This year I will miss it again, but interesting that the location is Bloomington, Ind., Pyle’s home state.
Sadly though, the museum that honors his name in Dana, Ind., had to close this year.
Citing small visitation numbers and financial cost-cutting, state officials in January closed the Ernie Pyle State Historic Site in Dana, Pyle’s hom...

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I first heard Art Bell in 1997 ago when my grandmother in Tennessee died, and I flew there for the funeral.

Someone got the idea that the grandkids should carry the casket, and since there were only four of us we recruited two older cousins from Nashville. We buried my grandmother, who made the best fried chicken in the world, in a cemetery where Ray Stevens had once shot a video.

I needed a place to stay for a week, so one of my relatives let me into granny’s house in Dowelltown. It hadn’t changed since she had gone to the hospital in Smithville a few weeks before.

I really didn’t need a key, since there was a store over the hill and if I had to shop for 30 minutes I could just leave the door unlocked (Dowelltown is pretty small – there’s probably one break-in a year and the “post office” is someone’s garage).

So I watched television stations I couldn’t get in Lake Charles, such as WGN in Chicago – and when I went to bed – listened to a special radio grann...

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There was a time many years ago when Milton Berle died.

I talked to some of his fans, and they told me all about the Golden Age of Television.

One woman said she and her husband frequently dressed up just to watch Lawrence Welk, martinis in hand.

I wasn’t dressed up Saturday night when I saw Lawrence. I didn’t even have a drink. Well at that point anyway. What I did have was a sense of family shows that have gone by.

These days, the Welk show is in the wasteland. It’s pretty much just not there, except on PBS or whatever your parents have hanging around.

Back in the ‘50s, Lawrence played accordion, danced a bit. I think he did some polkas. The shows I remember from 1971, he stood still – baton in hand and band behind him.

I’m told Lawrence was a pretty stern task-master. One would think of James Brown cussing out his band. Or Glenn Miller. Many don’t know of Glenn’s temper. They remember his warm, soothing Big Band voice on the radio, but apparent...

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