15 minutes
and
Stuff

September 23 , 1999

Hey look, there's me, and my very messy office in the background.

No new pic tonight. I just had a look. I'm looking pretty darned scary right now and I don't feel the need to share that with you, not that that photo is the most flattering of me ever taken.

So, my husband did this thing. He drove who knows how many hours, with a person he didn't know then to a phonebooth in the middle of the desert to hang up a phone that had been busy for a long time. At least all he thought they'd have to do was hang it up. It turned out not to be off the hook. It turned into so much more.

I think it was Andy Warhol who said that everyone gets 15 minutes of fame. OK. I'm still waiting for mine but that's another story for another time.

The thing is, Chuck had his 15 minutes. Shortly after putting up his Mojave Phone Booth site, back in May, it was picked as a Yahoo Pick of the Week. Hits on the phonebooth site skyrocketed. Hits on his journal skyrocketed. And hits on my journal, due to a variety of gratuitous links, skyrocketed.

His site got mentions in a few other web places, and he got some media attention, both here and abroad, during that same period of time. OK, the clock was ticking. His 15 minutes were running.

By the middle of June his 15 minutes were finally over.

All the fuss died down and life went back to normal.

Well, perhaps Warhol was wrong. Maybe everyone gets 30 minutes of fame because there is a renewed media interest in this phone booth thing.

There was a story in Saturday's LA Times (bottom half of the front page), there was a story on the Channel 4 news one night this week, the site was mentioned at CNN.com, and he got e-mail from a nationally syndicated TV news magazine yesterday, requesting an interview.

Mad props were flying around here last night.

Last night we watched The West Wing. It is only the second of the new series that I've caught so far this season. Usually I'm a junkie for the stuff.

I remember when I was a kid impatiently waiting for the new TV season to begin. I remember last year impatiently waiting for the new TV season to begin.

This past summer I don't think I watched a total of 20 hours of prime time programming so I wasn't fed up with summer reruns and replacement series. If not for the Sunday TV Times the new season would probably have started without me.

But, back to my point. We watched The West Wing last night.

The first 15 minutes or so had me a bit confused. It is very dark (lighting-wise, not plot-wise). There are a lot of characters. There are a lot of short scenes and fast cuts. There's a lot going on all at once. It made it a little difficult to follow at first.

Chuck came in about 2 minutes into the show. I was absolutely unable to explain what he'd missed. They kept referring to one of the characters, Josh. Who the hell was Josh? I had no clue for another 10 minutes.

At the halfway point Chuck announced that the show would never last. As far as I was concerned, the jury was still out, but this comes from a woman who watches reruns of the Nanny at 12:30 a.m. because she still can't fall asleep at night.

By the time the show was over I decided I really liked it. It was probably only the second time I've seen something on TV that doesn't dumb-down for the masses (the other show of equally high caliber is Sports Night). It is not spoon-fed to you. You have to think to watch. You have to pay attention. You have to have a brain.

Gee, what will they think of next?

Until next time. . .

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