I'm off to Boston to work the remainder of the convention. Posting is likely going to be sporadic or nonexistent, unless I meet Nomar and persuade him to join the softball team.

The bane of my existence in Atlanta, or at least one of the banes, Z93 FM, has become "Dave FM." Really. Infinity has changed the format from classic rock to … something.

Based on Dave FM's first 30 minutes, the music appears to have skewed more heavily the '80s and '90s: "Orange Crush," by R.E.M. ; "Stay (Wasting Time)," by the Dave Matthews Band; "It's Only Rock 'n Roll," by Rolling Stones ; "Found Out About You," by the Gin Blossoms; "Come As You Are," by Nirvana; "Clocks," by Coldplay, "Big Time" by Peter Gabriel and "Wrong Way" by Sublime.

So wrote the AJC's Rodney Ho (registration required), who has been all over this story. No, the format shift wasn't a war or anything, but most newspapers have a way of ignoring radio until somebody says too stupid for radio. That kind of coverage has often fallen short for regular people, the kind who listen to the radio every day. The Post used to be an exception until the paper dropped the Listener column. It was probably too good to last.

You see, when I was growing up, my favorite radio station changed from oldies to '70s to top 40 (making it not my favorite radio station) to "more of today's best music," which is actually "adult contemporary" or something that lets them play Jet and Semisonic (or Sugar Ray and Maroon 5, for quality-counterbalance) back to back. And every time the format change went down the same way: The music would be different one day. The DJs would be gone. The commercials would be gone. There would only be a voice assuring us that something new and better was coming, but the voice never told us why!

And clearly this traumatized me.

Ahem.

Why did they choose "Dave FM" for the Atlanta station? Radio station names were on my mind a few weeks ago at the beach, where every station ran along the lines of "WBCH, The Beach" or "WSND, The Sand" or "WBRN, The Burrrn." Then there was nearby Elizabeth City's "Classic Hits 104.9" and its slogan, the strangest classic rock radio slogan I'd ever heard, "Classic hits, without the hard rock."

Apparently, lite classic rock became a whole genre a while back — Pennsylvania's 99.9 "The Hawk" gave itself exactly the same slogan. I didn't notice the difference on the Carolina station until the announcer read the phrase, but maybe the lack of guitar solos would've become more obvious eventually. Going back north, into the range of Richmond's classic classic rock 96.5 "The Planet," I wasn't as sure as I thought I'd be about which format was better. Anyway, Rodney Ho asked Atlanta's new "Dave" about its (his?) name and got an answer, sort of:

"We're building a station that will have a personal connection with its audience," said Dave FM General Manager Rick Caffey. "Why not use a person's name? Why not Dave?"

Why not indeed. The station wanted to get across its new slogan, "Rock without rules," and one vague turn deserved another. With either move, managers have given themselves the challenge of finding a new listening base. Now left without a classic rock station in town, the existing base hasn't reacted too well. According to a second Ho story, they've faced the following in the last few days:

Dave FM so far blends '80s new wave (New Order, Depeche Mode), old standbys (Tom Petty, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix), grunge staples (Nirvana, Pearl Jam), rock currents (Modest Mouse, Jet), female-friendly flavorings (Sarah McLachlan, Norah Jones) and forgotten '90s bands (Crash Test Dummies, Lemonheads). The station is also throwing in deeper cuts, such as "Galileo" by Indigo Girls, as well as their much bigger hit "Closer to Fine."

These former Z93 core acts have proven scarce on Dave FM: Fleetwood Mac, Billy Joel, Queen, Van Halen, the Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd and part-time Atlantan Elton John.

I haven't decided what to make of this change myself. I complained about the Eagles overplay within days of moving to the city, and the station certainly abused their playlists with the rest of those "core acts." No one on Earth needed to hear that much Levon or Gimme Three Steps. But still, I didn't hear the new format these past few days. Maybe it's been worse.

Related site:

-Guide to VA, NC shore radio

Related Atlanta radio entries:

-July 6, 2002: Eagles, Steve Miller overplay

-July 11, 2002: Dave Matthews, Jimmy Eat World

-July 23, 2002: In-studio guitar solo

-July 17, 2002: What we know about the day

-July 21, 2002: John Mayer, you talentless hack

-Aug. 8, 2002: Defending Michael Jackson a little

-Nov. 2, 2002: Sheena Easton sing-a-long

-Dec. 29, 2002: Figure eights in the parking lot

-Jan. 24, 2003: Atlanta's dream interpretation radio show

The New Yorker is brought to you by the phrase "sotto voce." At least last week's issue is.

First we enjoy the front of the book — July 23-24 at 8:30: DJ Spooky presents "Rebirth of a Nation," a multimedia remix of D.W. Griffith's 1915 silent film, "Birth of a Nation." — and we regret the day is already the 25th.

On the facing page, the "Pop Notes" column focuses on the Hives and their current flog, Tyrannosaurus Hives. What the review imparts more than anything else is the band's ability to title. Along with the album's name, mentioned and unmentioned go: Abra Cadaver, Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones, Walk Idiot Walk, No Pun Intended, A Little More for Little You, B is for Brutus, See Through Head, Diabolic Scheme, Missing Link, Love in Plaster, Dead Quote Olympics, and Antidote. Not included on the release is the song that recently disappointed Pitchfork, let down by the music's failure to live up to the title, Hives Are Law, You Are Crime.

The crime for me picks up on the next page, the third in a row to catch my attention, with pictures that show no law-breaking but inspire thoughts of much. Photo illustrations lay out two of the four new different plans for the High Line, the "1.45 miles of elevated railway that runs south from West Thirty-fourth Street … languishing in rusty disrepair since 1980." All four of the visions are available online, and all four make me miss Chicago. They also conjure up the chase scene from The French Connection, which was filmed elsewhere in New York but works for association's sake. The High Line, they plan to turn it into a park. A photo gallery shows the line now, on top more overgrown than rusty.

Also referencing, albeit weirdly, is the issue's first long piece. Eliza Griswold's "The Hiding Zone" (not online) begins as follows:

Khalid Wazir, who is thirty and wears his hair in a mini-pompadour, twirls the tip of his mustache when he's nervous. The habit was little in evidence when I first met him, two years ago, through his cousins, a family of generous Wazirs who had befriended me while I was reporting on the American military campaign in Afghanistan. In those days, Khalid occupied himself, when he felt like it, by selling satellite phones in the Pakistani frontier town of Peshawar, but he often spent his days stalking sandgrouse with his dogs Floppy and Scooby and complaining about the local Talibs, who refused to let women dance at family weddings.

Floppy and Scooby?

There's no explanation of the dogs' names, but who can blame the editors for enjoying their Coronas at mid-summer? If the cartoon editor wants to be blunt, weird and blunt, I say let the cartoon editor be.

One piece where the flip-flops do fit snuggly (no, not in the John Kerry profile) is "Nerd Camp," Burkhard Bilger's visit to Johns Hopkins' Center for Talent Youth summer program. After getting mailings about CTY as a kid, I'm now glad I never went. These kids talk about revising Freud's theories, and I still don't know bus hit me in NU's Intro to Psych. (Okay, so I do. An A-level class taught by a beautiful professor with a capacity for devious multiple choice equals trouble. But I digress.) Twelve-year-old Jesse Mirotznik does his best to explain the life to Bilger:

"I've tried to gear down my vocabulary," he said. "But I still get a hard time. Anti-intellectualism is really popular in Ameria." Before coming to the center, he'd spent two disastrous summers at a sports-oriented camp in Pennsylvania called Island Lake. "I hated it," he said. "It was not a stimulating environment. I took boxing, and I was very afraid." Back home, Mirotznik attends a private school that offers a strong academic program. I asked him what he would do if he had to go school with the kids from Island Lake. "I don't know," he said. "I would probably get more into sports and less into thinking." He paused. "Or maybe I would just be very, very unpopular."

Bilger's piece isn't online either, which maybe makes it unline; but the writer does sit for an interview with the site.

And then there's this, another cartoon that makes no sense to me. Ideas this time?

Sitting in a downtown restaurant Friday night, friends and I discussed Ken Jennings. The man was a Jeopardy machine, but he had frustratingly held back on breaking the single-day record total. He had banked $52,000 three times, tying the record but not going a penny further, even when he could've safely.

But if Jennings has done anything well, it has the destruction of expectations that he has done best. He has dominated from the buzzer and in the clutch, engagingly and tactically. That night as we ate dinner, he did the same, and we weren't even in the Sony Studios time zone. Jennings put his opponents out of reach and then took the plunge in Final Jeopardy. His total for his 38th show, the season-ender, was a round $75,000.

Now we have no Jennings until the fall, and inconsistently — but not surprisingly — we've heard little "good riddance" so far. While Jennings got heaps of criticism from some corners for this first run at the top, that criticism was awfully Jeff-Gordonesque. Back when Gordon was super-hot on the throttle, his NASCAR detractors generally hammered him on three points:

1) He dominated. He came up fast and took over.

2) He was bland. In a peppy kind of way.

3) He became the face of the game. He got the marketing and media to shift the core brand and draw in a wider audience.

The first two were the most directly maligned for Jennings this season. Americans have never enjoyed intranational domination — consider the Yankees, the Cowboys or the English — and Americans who speak loudly in public forums have never gotten along with the bland.

But the third Gordon objection has been the spot were I think most critics' troubles have lain. With his run, Jennings has won the recognition and success to uproot the show's identity and the dynamics of its discussion.

How? By becoming the eternal returning champion. And you know who used to hold that crown? We did. No matter how well the contestants fared on television, no matter how poorly we played along at home, we were the only ones who would be back week after week. While even the best TV folks could only five shows with Alex, we the atomized American viewing audience would compete and have a standing invitation to return, the next day or maybe months later.

That level of connection has probably been unique to Jeopardy during the most recent era of game shows. Wheel of Fortune has put money before answers; Millionaire and Weakest Link focused on hype. The Price Is Right, as always, has created spectacle. None of them have kept the viewer as intent on the game-play as Jeopardy has. None of them have so established the belief of participation — until Jennings came along.

In a way, Gordon faced the same situation with NASCAR watchers. Anyone who was a racing fan then would have developed a basic routine similar to the Jeopardy fan's: sit still, watch items of interest fly past, care more about some, know more about some, evaluate them all quickly, and comment to another fan sitting near and doing the same. Powering the whole process would have been one overriding thought: "I do what I'm watching, just not as well."

What Gordon eventually did, and what Jennings didn't so this season, was return to the pack. The driver never established an obscene winning streak, and other competitors emerged to dominate for similarly brief stretches. No critics today would call Gordon average, but they wouldn't still hold his presence against him. They've gotten back their role as the constant, win or lose or watch.

To the Jeopardy audience, Jennings hasn't allowed as much yet.

Three Links By Which to Feel Better About Ken Jennings

So, three links from the last week, for both the dissenting portion of the audience and the generally disconcerted whole.

Slate's Surfergirl blog and its readers created a drinking game, "Jeopardrink!: the KenJen Edition" (second item). Among the rules, everyone was required to take one drink whenever "KenJen's answer ends with a stylistic flourish, like last night's, 'What are the munchies, man?' in response to a clue about an 8-letter word for 'hunger pangs'."

In discussing how the game should work, one reader also made a point not mentioned much by Jennings-haters: We'll all probably miss the guy. "Something special needs to be in place for whenever Ken is finally defeated," wrote Steven Reynolds to Surfergirl. "I think either a bottle of the finest champagne for a quiet and modest celebration of this greatest of Jeopardy! champions … or maybe a few bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 to wash away the sorrow that comes with the prospect of Jeopardy! without Mr. Jennings."

Our second and third links came from CNN.com, where Entertainment Editor and one-time Jeopardy contestant Todd Leopold analyzed Jennings' success. "I come not to bury Ken Jennings, but to praise him," Leopold wrote. "Not that he needs it." The column also sent interested readers to TVgameshows.net, where a statistician was tracking Jennings and the raw dollars of brain-whupping.

Staffers at the Onion's A.V. Club interview John Landis:

"O: There's kind of a long-running thing on the Internet comparing the original Blues Brothers and The Sound Of Music, on a point-by-point plot basis. Were you aware of that?

"JL: No, but that's funny. I think you could do that with any movie. I saw Galaxy Quest and A Bug's Life, and both of those films are completely, plot-point-by-plot-point, a movie I made called ¡Three Amigos!"

You can learn more about ¡Three Amigos! from IMDB and possibly your local library. But more importantly, anyone know where the Blues-Sound comparison can be found on the Web? I'm not finding anything.

The catch-up quest continues.

In the May 31 issue of the New Yorker, a blurb for the dance performance "Noir" sets it far apart from the rest. Writes the blurbist: "Like the films that inspired it, Noemie Lafrance's new work, set in a Lower East Side parking garage, is an exercise in style. Five men and five women perform in a sultry but disjointed manner on the ramp of the garage's fifth floor, as audience members, seated in parked cars, peer through steamy windows and crane their necks, trying to catch the action. From time to time, the dancers make smoldering eye contact with spectators. (Delancey and Essex Municipal Parking Garage, 105 Essex St. 212-868-4444. May 26-29 at 7:30 and 9:30.)"

In the July 12 and 19 issue, one granting a much needed reprieve from David Remnick and the United States Postal Service, writer Nick Flynn offers "The Button Man." The story is an excerpt from his upcoming book, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, the story of his troubled father and his relationship with the man. The piece isn't online, and that's our loss because Flynn writes good stuff. He talks about life in his mid-20s: "Eventually I moved to a tiny apartment in the North End: two hundred and fifty dollars a month allowed me to lie in bed and contemplate the refrigerator."

Anthony Lane has better luck or at least shows more concern in getting his work from that same issue online. Lane's lead would nod heads in many circles: "Our first duty, with regard to 'Spider-Man 2,' is to congratulate the filmmakers on their refusal to elasticate the title. I am fed up with having to wrap my tongue around 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,' and, as for the forthcoming 'Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid,' why bother to see a picture whose name goes on even longer than its leading snake?"

Finally, for now, the Spring Humor Issue of April 16 and 26 draws my thoughts back and forth. The issue contains:

—a cartoon that makes me laugh out loud.

—the story that is the first in the New Yorker in a year that I can't stand to finish. The piece is one of movie critic Lane's, analyzing P.G. Wodehouse, the work of P.G. Wodehouse, his great-uncle's love of P.G. Wodehouse, and his own inherited love of P.G. Wodehouse. The magazine's editors haven't put the story online, and I really wish they could, just so you could attempt to experience how strongly the Wodehouse love burns there. As close as I can find to the text is an interview where Lane describes the project very accurately: "There is one big subject that I haven't written about which I have been meaning to do for about 10 years now. I finally will do it probably at the beginning of next year. Not a book, just one big piece that I want to do. Which is about P.G. Wodehouse. When that finally comes out you'll see, that in fact, I am the madman in the attic. You'll find what level of lunacy a critic can descend to."

—Steven Millhauser's Cat 'N' Mouse. The fiction has the best concept of anything I've read since the Cheney-friendly last hurrah of Nerve's "I Did It for Science" column. If you read nothing else today, read the Millhauser story.

With my orange juice carton unexpectedly empty this evening, I find myself turning to the other side of the refridgerator. There, I have a discussion my inner Fat Tony.

Patrick: Uh, say, are you guys crooks?

Tony: Patrick, um, is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?

Patrick: No…

Tony: Well, suppose you got a large starving family. Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread to feed them?

Patrick: Uh uh.

Tony: And, what if your family don't like bread? They like… orange juice?

Patrick: I guess that's okay.

Tony: Now, what if instead of giving orange juice away to them, you gave it to yourself at a price that was practically giving it away to them. Would that be a crime, Patrick?

Patrick: Hell, no!

Tony: Enjoy your gift.

Mark, your orange juice expires before you get back from your trip. So I'm drinking it.

Walking across the Gannett lawn to a softball game last week, prior to the ejection, I met a duck. It stood on the grass near the sidewalk and looked away until I came within two or three yards. Then the duck turned and quacked at me. I quacked back. I continued to the field, and the duck waddled in place.

Dave Shenin passed the midpoint of the Orioles season in top form: "If the Baltimore Orioles are having nightmares of late as they sleep, visited in their dreams by an army of evil monsters, devils, mothers-in-law or umpires, one can be sure the bogeymen in question have one thing in common: They are all left-handed."

Frank Herzog's rough year continued: "Five months after WJFK radio announced it was pulling the longtime play-by-play voice of the Washington Redskins from the broadcast team, WUSA (Channel 9) has informed him that he's out of a job as the station's main sports anchor when his contract expires at the end of November, according to several sources."

Herzog rented the house next to ours at the beach one year, and my brother and I collected Herzog sightings all week. Our previous experience with the anchor had been at the taping of his weekly Redskins TV show (now long off the WUSA airwaves), where Rob managed to get on camera every few minutes and I only finagled the brim of my hat into the frame. That we were sitting next to each other in the studio at the time said a lot about our respective luck with television cameos. Rob was a wiz. The Redskin guests for that show were Desmond Howard and Kelly Goodburn, and we got their autographs. That we got them out of all the possible Redskin players said a lot about our autograph luck at the time.

On the topic of football, the Post reported this week how Gonzaga is getting artificial grass (last item) on Buchanan Field. Gonzaga's site has published more details on the conversion. The switch was probably inevitable given the progress of artificial grass and the never-ending struggle to keep the field alive during constant practice and game use. The turf between the hash marks browned long before midseasons. But still, at least the dirt was real. Any turf that hosted that many great games, gym classes and pep rallies — like the bomb threat pep rally of '97 — couldn't have been too bad.

Almost by the artificial field's nature now, the strands have given a challenge to the kids at the school. Schedulers have marked the first game there as 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 25, against the Stags of DeMatha.

After taking conventional beach photos for years, I ditched tradition this summer and took a more avant garde approach. Editors from National Geographic have seen this work and made generous offers of cash, bling and monkeys. But out of respect for my friends and their influence in the art world, I have decided to present the ground-breaking work here without charge.