Blinq

Tom Snyder

You loved him or you hated him. Maybe you even did a dead-on impersonation of him, collar out, cigarette waving, voice like a cartoon bear's?

But you watched The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder.

The former Philly noontime host - yes, Daily Sally has a brush with greatness - is dead at 71.

Here's the best of what you saw, via ALOTTFMA.

Herr Zappa

Reason No. Funf why I'd rather be back in Berlin:

German city names street after Frank Zappa.

Burnt Weenie Way?

Weasels Ripped My Flesh Road?

Cosmik Debris Drive?

Don't Eat the Yellow Snow Street?

Any Way The Wind Blows Avenue?

Calls for a contest.

Cheesesteak Futures

That most simple Philadelphia sammich is getting pricey.

Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor from across the pond, writes in the Sunday Telegraph that he's having to dig deeper in his pockets to taste the Philadelphia cheesesteak.

The historian, in a piece on population growth and food production, notes:

When I wanted a Philly cheese steak in the States last week, I had to pay through the nose. That's because cheese inflation is 4 per cent, steak inflation is 6 per cent and bread inflation is 10 per cent. (American steak is now 53 per cent dearer than it was 10 years ago.)

I'm guessing he wasn't even talking this pretentious abomination.

Goodnight, Mr. Bunch

It was great to see Will Bunch on national TV last night, affirming to hear Keith Olbermann describe the Daily News senior writer as author of a "superb online blog"  and fascinating to hear Mr. Attytood poke holes in the connection between terror and cheese.

More curious was the revelation that in 1975, Olbermann was senior editor at the Hackley School newspaper in Tarrytown, N.Y. while Bunch was a cub reporter. At the end of his Countdown segment Olbermann ran a screen shot of an edition of that sheet in which both angry young men earned bylines.

Hackley School? Isn't that where Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren shoot some of their catalogues? Didn't Malcolm Forbes go there? George Hamilton? Next we'll learn Will lathers Grey Poupon on his pretzels.

Reasons to be Cheerful

When you count yourself the sum of 11 counties, you can find lots to cheer about. The heart of the Phillies may have just broken, but Greater Philadelphia still can celebrate the region's latest rankings in Forbes, Money, US News & World Report and the Places Rated Almanac.

I'm still trying to figure out what's so hot about Horsham, having spent two years working in a faceless industrial park in that Athens of the norther suburbs.

Geeks of the Week

Perez Hilton makes Blender's list of the 25 most powerful people in online music, so why would you want to click on?

Really, why read any music list that lauds the haircut formerly known as Mario Lavandeira? To get to the youngest man to make the cut - the Russian immigre named Alexander Volotkin, whose Hype Machine is a sort of pure heroin to those of us trying to do the right thing and resist downloading.

Guess who's the No. 1 Powergeek. Make that pOWERGEEK.

Cover Crunch

Sheldon Brown, who graces the cover of the new Sports Illustrated, on what it was like to take down Reggie Bush during the playoff game against the Saints:

"It was like running through a cardboard box."

The Hit gets featured in a story on crushing tackles.

Enrico at the FanHouse notes that no less a linebacker than Brian Urlacher weighed in on the rare highlight of the Eagles season-ender.

Said Urlacher, "Those are the ones you dream about."

Whiskey On Ice

Every few months I try to call up a dead link on my list of "favorites," hoping to be surprised by some activity in a shuttered Web site. I'll play Rbally, to see if the music blogger's gone back to posting great shows from rock's golden ages.

And I'll drop by the Whiskey Bar, to see if the blogger named Billmon's ended his long drought to again show the way out of our current political troubles.

I wish I could report Billmon's return. (Or Rbally's for that matter.) We have to settle for second best:

Someone's put together an archive of Whiskey Bar's most essential pours -- his incisive posts on the Iraq war. The ones that show once again what happens when you combine journalistic chops (he used to be a reporter) with a sense of outrage over the way our goverment operates (just because there are two sides to a story doesn't make them equal). It may or not be Billmon who built the archive. Interesting speculation here, at All-Spin Zone.

My favorite blogger shuttered his place the end of last year. For months just error messages came up when you called up his site. Now there's a way to re-read some of the posts that put him at the front of the pack. Maybe it's been up a while; I found it when I Googled, "Whiskey Bar." He's also got archives of a few more subjects, with titles such as "Come to Daddy," "Comrade Webb," and "Winners & Losers." It's only a taste, but it's still top shelf.

Beginning of the End?

I like the way Phawker noted this MAJOR DEVELOPMENT with 4:37 a.m. clarity:

"BREAKING: The War Just Ended With An Anonymous Source Trial Balloon Floated In The New York Times."

David Sanger reports that White House officials fear Republican support for the war has crumbled to the point the president must get the jump on critics and announce a pullback from Iraq's most dangerous quarters.

“When you count up the votes that we’ve lost and the votes we’re likely to lose over the next few weeks, it looks pretty grim,” said one senior official, who, like others involved in the discussions, would not speak on the record about internal White House deliberations.

Back in The High Life

Clever, those kids at Philly.com. Restore Blinq to an honored spot on the Philly.com blogroll, and maybe they can get some more new  tricks from this old hound. Not sure what I have to say, since my blog reading has been more avocational than vocational lately. That's no so bad, though. So, here's what's been on my screen.

Jon Pareles' blog in the New York Times, which I checked out mainly to learn the identity of the fawning, preening softboy with asymmetrical hair (AFI?) that I turned off so quickly during Bravo's breakfast, lunch and dinner with Live Earth. What I did see: A spirited Crowded House set from Sydney with some smart ad-libbing by Neil Finn; a dozen? gold-clad Chinese sirens playing a funked up Mozart's 40th on primitive strings; Al Gore's remedial clapping; Red Hot Chili  Peppers,but mainly to figure out if that was Will Ferrell on drums. No, silly. He could nail down the beat.

Speaking of nailing it ... Inquirer editor David Sullivan continues advancing the cause of that thing that we do. Basically, he argues, there's a lot more fight left in newspapers, and we need to get great at that which we do best. Whether or not that continues to be distributed on fishwrap remains to be seen. He writes from the trenches:

Readers have told us for years that they don’t have time to read the whole paper. A sorry excuse, we respond; look at all we do for you? If we could, we’d give you even more to read, and you darn well better be grateful. After all, everyone we know reads the New York Times. Does anyone we know ever say the New York Times should be smaller?

Something else that crossed my desk, a from-the-right evisceration of Howard Eskin. Instapunk wrote of WIP-AM's Wolfman:

Eskin's only real expertise is in-depth knowledge of Philadelphia's teams and their histories. This he gets from being a born Philadelphian (nobody can mangle the pronunciation of the letter "P" -- as in 'WIP' -- like a Philly native). He also has learned the mysterious feature of talk radio Phil Hendrie has exploited to become a cult phenomenon. The people who call in to a radio show are a tiny subset of those who listen, and the callers will keep calling and keep being as stupid as you dare them to be. Eskin's bread-and-butter fans would never call him because his whole shtick is torturing callers for the entertainment of those who listen for the easy pleasure of feeling smart; i.e., smarter than the tireless victims who don't ever get the joke. Unlike Hendrie's application of this principle, which is creative, funny, and sometimes inspired, Eskin's exploitation of dim bulbs is akin to masturbation. His whole act is designed to solicit calls only from the dumbest rocks in the box, and putting them down strokes his own insecure ego on a continuous basis.

Maybe you've read about the Seven Wonders of the World we've just picked by Internet vote. Counterpunch wonders whether we really ought to be recognizing a "monument to death."

Finally, a five-year-old article from the Stanford Daily about "the truer sound" of Uncle Tupelo. And speaking of great, gone bands, a Trip Shakespeare page with concert footage and promotional goodies.