Billy Joel abetted first traffic ticket

Written by David Vogel Wednesday, 05 June 2013 12:28

I believe it was poet Emily Dickinson who wrote, “Because I did not slow down for the law, he kindly slowed down for me.”

Then again, I could just be stretching for an interesting quote to start this column about speeding tickets.

In all my seven and a half years of operating a motor vehicle I’ve never committed a serious traffic violation. At least not while in a motor vehicle. But several weeks ago I was driving home from Kansas City when I got stuck in a speed trap.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I was belting out “Piano Man” with Billy Joel while cruising down I-70, but I never saw the sign change.

I did, however, see the highway patrol car materialize out of the atmosphere behind me. When the lights...

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BP beyond ‘White Coat Syndrome’

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 28 May 2013 10:31

It all started last October. I was at the doctor’s office with a stiff neck. Having self-diagnosed it as a severe case of meningitis, all I needed was the doctor’s signature so I could get some medicine and perhaps reacquaint myself with my toes, whom I had been unable to see all week.

It had been months since my last checkup, so the nurse started my exam with all the trivial procedures to verify that I am, in fact, a real human being with ears, a nose, throat and kneecaps that protest with a jerk whenever bopped with a rubber mallet.

She continued with the blood pressure cuff, which she routinely wrapped around my arm and started pumping.

Then she looked at me with the type of expression a person general reserves for a corpse...

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Will we run out of new music?

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 14 May 2013 13:32

Every couple of months I have a night where I lay awake with this anxiety that someday we’re going to run out of new music to write.

Not you and me, personally. But the population in general.

If you stop to think about it—and I do, which is why I can’t sleep—there is a very finite number of pitch, rhythm and harmony combinations that can ever exist. It may be an incredibly wide collection, but at some point someone will write the very last song. Ever.

Then we’d be left with the same music day after day, sort of like TV programming after 9 o’clock on weeknights. (You know, reruns of “Full House.”)

That’s the fear I have.

But then, by about 3 a.m., I become a little less paranoid. That’s because I realize I’m...

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Some TP ads given a bum wrap

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 30 April 2013 11:58

Lately I’ve become increasingly alarmed by the explicitness of TV commercials for toilet paper. For example, the other day I Old-Faithfulled the soda I was drinking when this ad played: “This is one way to keep your underwear clean. This is another: Ta-da!”

That’s a recent plug for Charmin, the TP brand that uses animated bears to discuss bathroom tissue issues. The subjects range anywhere from needing less squares to the amount of tissue fragments get left behind on the bear’s bottoms.

It’s cute—until you start to think about the real-life implications the scenarios set up. And then it’s disturbing.

Whatever happened to the old-fashioned ads that simply spilled a blue fluid on a few squares, stacked a bunch of coins...

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