Radio, Amateurishly

Two things. First, generalizations are, well, general. For one thing, to the extent that I pay attention to football, I like Liverpool, who would never be mistaken for a team with an underdog mentality. I have some very good friends who are Dodger fans. Our interactions are peppered with the sort of good-natured ribbing that makes baseball fun. This isn't about them. This is about Karen and Chad and that special kind of entitled front-runner fan who feels that the world owes them a pennant.   Second, I find meta-media critiques to be tedious. The liberal media are biased. The media are normalizing the presidential candidacy of a man whose loss of mental sharpness is becoming as obvious as is his hostility toward the norms of democracy. The media are motivated entirely by clicks and eyeballs; if it bleeds, it leads. Blah blah blah. It's become tired and predictable. So naturally, I'm going to dive right in and discuss the abysmal coverage, thus far, of the Major League Baseb

  My first go at cartooning.

  "Dude, In-N-Out is the fucking Bob Dylan of burger joints." "Bob Dylan?" Sanjay asked. "You know, like how people are all obsessed with Dylan? It's not that he isn't a talented songwriter—he absolutely is—but there's this whole fanboy subculture that's developed around him with an outsized impression of his talent and his contribution to the art form that no songwriter could ever hope to live up to. You see the parallels?" "I guess. I just thought In-N-Out sounded good. You got anything else in mind for lunch?" "I dunno," Colin said. "You pick something." "I think I just did." They both laughed. "Okay. I think I have an idea. It's not great, but we haven't been there in a while." * * * The house was a corner lot, perched on a hillside, with a commanding view of the town below. The only ranch style on a street of two-stories, its corner location in an affluent neighborhood unfortuna

  Let's get this out of the way first. It was the most challenging Parks on the Air (POTA) activation I've ever done. Challenging to the point of unpleasant—dare I say, pain in the ass. For starters, it took an inordinate amount of time to find a combination of antenna and tuner setup that would get the SWR under 3. Once I got on the air, responses to my QRP CQs were slow in coming, so much so that I was facing the very real possibility that darkness or a dead battery would set in before I reached the requisite ten contacts. After a few contacts, I noticed that my lightweight, entry-level straight key that I take with me on backpack-portable activations felt funny. I took a closer look at the key and realized that a stress fracture had developed in the arm between the tension spring and the contacts. What was making my key return when I eased up between dots and dashes was not the tension spring, but the memory in the arm, its tendency to return to its original molded shape aft

 " PAN-PAN PAN-PAN PAN-PAN. This is sailing vessel SERENE HORIZON. I am taking on water about five miles outside Two Harbors and might need assistance." I barely had time to settle into my desk chair at United States Coast Guard Station Los Angeles/Long Beach. The latte that I grabbed on the way at Common Room Roasters is still nearly full. The scratch paper that I'll be taking notes on doesn't yet have a mark on it—at least not on the side that I'll be using. I'm using a couple of repurposed log sheets that I took to Dockweiler State Beach on my most recent Parks on the Air activation for scratch paper. The flip side of each sheet contains the call signs of twenty or so amateur radio stations that I worked the previous weekend. "Vessel in distress, this is COAST GUARD SECTOR LOS ANGELES. Say again your vessel name and the nature of your distress." I'm getting it all down—more neatly than I usually do—on an otherwise pristine sheet of scratch pa

Legend has it Francis Ford Coppola sometimes lets himself into the kitchen To make himself a pizza. There's a strip club across the street And an adult novelty shop next door. The pasta is sublime And the wine's not to shabby either. The hostess knows most of the customers by name. This is Old San Francisco. The San Francisco of Bullitt And Dirty Harry. Before the nouveaus showed up. When it wasn't called venture capital; It was just money.  We share a bottle of wine And a cannoli And go book shopping at City Lights.