Author: jbenton

Received in the mail yesterday:
“Dear AT&T Digital Phone Service Customer: We missed the date for mailing your November bill!…We’re continuing to fine-tune our new billing system and have delayed mailing your November bill in order to prepare an accurate bill. Your November bill that you should have received in November will now arrive in mid-December. Don’t worry!” It’s always good to get a letter like that on Dec. 28.

Things You Learn From Your Referer Logs: I’m #19 in the grand list of “Famous Toledoans.” Surely behind Jamie Farr, though, right? (Surprisingly, no mention of Katie Holmes, certainly Toledo’s most famous at the moment, in the top 20.)

WSJ: “In a weird Islamic version of Jerry Springer, al Jazeera shows often end as shouting matches, with some guests walking out for dramatic effect.”

New census data released today. (And yes, we are devolving into a AJ Hammer-and-census-based blog. Not what you signed up for, eh?) My sorry home state of Louisiana is one of only four states to have lost people from April 2000 to June 2001. (The other winners in that number: Iowa, West Virginia, and North Dakota. Some fine company.) Texas, in contrast, gained 336,811 people.
(I love the fake precision of census estimates. It’s not like the feds stationed themselves at every state line, counting U-Hauls as they rolled past. They’re guessing. But they don’t say “about 335,000 or so people.” They say 336,811, exactly, precisely. In related news, I will be getting exactly 7 hours, 42 minutes, and 14 seconds of sleep tonight, will consume exactly 512.4 calories at lunch, and am now boring 97.3 percent of my readers.)

Back in October, shortly after I’d arrived in Japan, I made a throwaway reference to A.J. Hammer, former video introducer to the world. (The complete reference: “P.S. A.J. Hammer, ex-VJ on VH1, now has the job of introducing movies on Northwest flights. Not sure if that’s a promotion or not.”)
For the last two months, I’ve been surprised how many people have found this site by searching for “aj hammer” at Google or elsewhere. I had no idea the man was so, um, popular.
Anyway, someone left a snippy comment on that months-old entry today:
FYI, AJ Hammer is the personality used by Northwest to introduce their features (it is not “his job”). Mr. Hammer has been on FOX TV for the past 18 months as well as “Hollywood at Large” on Court TV and NBC. Northwest is a side project much as American Airlines in-flight is a side project for the members of Good Morning America. Northwest Airlines is an industry award-winner for its in-flight entertainment.
Jon Mycka, @In Flight
Thanks, Jon Mycka, for clearing that up. I was under the mistaken impression that someone paid money to perform a task could be described as “having the job” to do so. I see now that I was mistaken: clearly he is introducing The Score to an audience of disgruntled passengers as an act of charity, his small way of contributing to the larger, grail-like cause that is Northwest In-Flight Entertainment. Perhaps a better way of phrasing it might be: “A.J. Hammer, ex-VJ on VH1, now has the honor of introducing movies on Northwest flights.”
And it was clearly inaccurate of me to suggest, however subtly, that the career of “Mr. Hammer” might have taken the proverbial eight-foot dive in a five-foot pool. You are right, Jon Mycka: he does work for Fox and Court TV.
Sure, the Fox job might not be a network job — it’s a job at WNYW, the New York Fox affiliate. And sure, his job there (if one may call it “a job”) is host of the “A.J.’s Beat” segment on WNYW’s morning show, “Good Day New York,” a job apparently so insignificant it doesn’t merit a mention on the show’s “personalities” page, or anywhere else on its site.
And yes, his Court TV gig may just be as Hollywood at Large‘s “contributing host.” Which would mean he’s not quite as big a star as the show’s “celebrity/host” Wendy L. Walsh, whoever she is. I’m sure she doesn’t even get out of bed for less than $10,000; it’s natural for Mr. Hammer to accept second billing on this unwatched show behind such a tsunami-force celeb. (Ms. Walsh is apparently such a convincing ringer for a legitimate journalist that she’s played one in the movies at least five times. Who could forget her stunning turn as “Reporter Outside Courtroom” in The Cable Guy?)
I’m sure that, in sum, those are all steps up, careerwise, from hosting a bunch of big shows on a popular cable network. And you even skipped many of most noteworthy post-VH1 accomplishments, such as his role as “celebrity spokesperson for the nationwide media tour of Milton Bradley’s new Planet Hollywood: The Game.” And when I learned, from his Court TV bio, that Mr. Hammer’s “picture is featured in the coffee table book Heartthrob, A Hundred Years of Beautiful Men,” I knew that this was not a man to be trifled with. Please accept my heartfelt apologies, Jon Mycka, if I have impugned your airline, your sterling history of in-flight entertainment, or your liege, Mr. Hammer.
(Oh, and by the way: your airline sucks. Worst in America, by a fairly wide margin.)
Interesting AJ Hammer factoid: until he achieved stardom at a NYC radio station, he was known on the radio as AJ Goldberg (presumably his real name). He made the switch in October 1990. MC Hammer’s Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em was released in Feburary 1990. This likely means that AJ Hammer chose his name because he thought there was some magic in the two-initials-plus-“hammer” motif. Why he has not gone the route of his namesake (namely, bankruptcy and a name reduction to just “Hammer”) is unclear.

Oops! Larry Kramer not dead after all.

If, like me, you’re a fan of Mark Kozelek and his on-again, off-again band the Red House Painters, check out the limited edition web-only live album Sub Pop’s selling. Mark typically makes drowsy, sad, gorgeous music (think Low, Spain, or American Music Club); he’s also made a specialty of covering bad songs in radically altered ways. (This live album includes his version of AC/DC’s “Rock and Roll Singer,” which is transcendent. RHP’s 1996 album, Songs for a Blue Guitar, had great covers of Long Distance Runaround [Yes], Silly Love Songs [Wings], and All Mixed Up [the Cars, which made its way into a Gap holiday commercial last year, probably because of its “Little Drummer Boy” backbeat]).
Sub Pop also wins the prize for e-commerce’s best way of warning people their holiday shipment may be late: “NOTICE: Due to the unfortunate birth of our lord jesus christ…”

AmazonScan tracks how a book, movie, or other item is ranked in Amazon’s sales lists. The lowest of the low being tracked at the moment is the page-turner The Brachiopod Antiquatonia Coloradoensis (Girty) from the Upper Morrowan and Atokan (Lower Middle Pennsylvanian) of the United States, a Thomas W. Henry classic from his difficult “blue” period.
When so few people purchase a book, it must be awfully difficult for Amazon to do all the wonderful number crunching it does, like figuring out what people who bought that book also bought. As a result, the #1 entry under “customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items” is The Little Book Of Crap Excuses, which, while similar in theme, likely doesn’t share many readers with Henry’s brachiopod epic.

I’ve been meaning to post this story for, oh, about three months and 16 days now.
I graduated from college (barely) in 1997, and went to work for the Toledo Blade, a newspaper in Ohio. My first assignment there was covering the night cops beat, which mainly entailed sitting in the office long hours at night — Tuesday through Saturday, 6 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. (Makes a social life tons of fun, let me tell you.)
Their vacation rules meant that I couldn’t take any time off until I’d been there for a year, so when the fall of 1998 came around and I had a week off, I figured I’d earned the right to do something special. I went online and found a $200 ticket to Paris, scouted out a cheap hotel (the Hotel Printemps, $22 a night in a great neighborhood — spartan but highly recommended), and headed off to France.
I love traveling alone. I spent my days wandering unhurriedly from museum to museum, not a stress or care in the world. There were days I didn’t speak 50 words, and the little I did say usually consisted of ordering more bread at a cafe.
On one of my last afternoons in Paris, shortly after visiting Rousseau’s tomb at Le Pantheon, I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch. But I wasn’t famished, so I stopped at a sandwich shop on a surprisingly empty street. The owner, an Algerian, was friendly, and I reasoned it would be one of my last chances to practice my French, so we started talking.
He asked what I did, and I told him I was a reporter for an American newspaper. He perked up and ran behind a curtain to the back of his store to fetch his brother. His smiling, cheery brother said he was a freelance reporter and wanted to know how American newspapers work. We settled into a conversation I’ve had many times before — yes, sometimes I come up with my own stories, yes, sometimes editors assign things, etc. — when he suddenly, non-chalantly, said: “Would you like to interview Osama bin Laden?”
This was September, 1998. The original World Trade Center bombing had been a few months earlier. Americans were hearing of bin Laden for the first time. The man told me he had connections within bin Laden’s organization and that he had interviewed bin Laden himself for an Middle East publication some time ago. And he’d helped a British reporter get in touch with bin Laden not long before. Would I like to talk with him?
In retrospect, I wish I could I say I was frightened at the prospect of being on an empty European street with a man with links to al-Qaida, but I was actually just in ambitious journalist mode: “Hell yeah, I want to chat with Osama!” After all, bin Laden had been giving interviews to Western reporters throughout 1998. Sure, the Toledo Blade wasn’t the New York Times, but maybe the sickle-and-scythe imagery of its name would appeal to a mujahedeen.
I gave my business card to the brother, and he gave me his. He said he would forward my information to Osama’s people and that I should get in touch with him in a month or two. He said it was doubtful an interview would be granted, but he said he liked me (and, perhaps, my sandwich selection) and he’d try.
This probably seems like the oddest part of my story: I didn’t think much about it for a while. Back in Toledo a month or two later, I found the brother’s business card. I reasoned that I was still a peon at the paper and there was roughly zero chance I’d ever be allowed to hike to Afghanistan to interview a terrorist. (The Blade also had and has a pretty strict policy about protecting its reporters from too-dangerous situations, which while admirably paternalistic, always made my inner reporter daredevil a little mad.) I figured I’d have more to gain at the paper by giving the guy’s card to our managing editor, a guy named Lew, and letting him do with it whatever he wanted. I did just that; Lew looked confused, said he didn’t think The Blade would be interested in an interview, and put me on my way.
Ironically, I’d later become The Blade’s ad hoc foreign correspondent, going to six countries on the company’s dime. But I never got my audience with Osama. I suppose, in retrospect, that’s not a bad thing: if i had, I’d be awfully tired from all the TV interviews I’d have given in the last three months. And I’m anxiously awaiting a call from an FBI operative asking me why my business card was discovered in a Tora Bora cave.

Man, it must be hard to work on your tan when you’re hiding in a cave and all. Probably makes your beard a bit whiter, too.
And in the category of “Things seemed to change after 9/11, but they really didn’t”: a headline on the front page of today’s paper — about a guy who applied for a loan through new city program — reads: “He’s not just a potential sub shop owner, he’s a hero.” Whatever happened to all that talk about how we’d only call “real” heroes heroes? (In the online edition, the headline‘s been changed to read “he’s their hero” — maybe others noticed, too.