A story in today’s Tempo section of the Tribune caught my eye: ‘To kids raised on rap, Hancock explores link to jazz.’ It begins:

Herbie Hancock opened obliquely, with a few splashy chords and a couple of rumbling bass notes.

But once he dug into the gently swaying groove that drives his classic “Cantaloupe Island,” the kids literally started screaming.

Instantly, they raised their hands, rocked in their seats, shouted out their approval and otherwise carried on as if they were relishing the latest hip-hop hit — rather than a jazz tune penned eons ago, in the 1960s.

That’s what I’m saying. Hancock, who was originally from Chicago, was playing at a session organized by the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz yesterday. Herbie Hancock: Making heads nod since 1961.

Item the first: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

The most powerful man on the planet, a demigod whose mere glances can send world markets tumbling or soaring, a political stalwart whose other titles include Knight Commander of the British Empire, has strongly hinted his retirement will take place Jan. 31, 2006.

Item the second: Hotel heiress Paris Hilton.

The most photographed woman of 2004 and of 2005, a soulless, lecherous and blonde manifestation of all that is pop-culture America - vapid, too concerned with image and sporting the word ‘entitlement’ like a mink stole - apparently has far-reaching tendrils that reach into the international shipping markets, would make a great replacement for Chairman Greenspan.

Item the third: Justification.

Such a change will result in a fundamental shift of the most powerful economic role in the world from a proactive stance to a reactive. Given the implicit power Heiress Hilton exerts over international markets, there would be no need for interest rate hikes or obtuse phrases - ‘If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said,’ he has claimed - because the world markets will suddenly go the way of Us Weekly and base its peaks and valleys on what America’s most genius, vapid airbag happened to be wearing that particular day.

Export numbers out of Taiwan down? Paris wore the same dress twice in a row.

Housing bubble? She decided to keep her former fiancé’s ring.

You get the point.

Paris Hilton for Chair-Heiress of the Federal Reserve. Support her nomination in 2006.

Posts have been few and far between of late … I’ve been training for the Thanksgiving Day Race, an event I haven’t participated in since 1995.

I’m still in the 19-24-year-old bracket, meaning I’ll be competing against fresh-faced, just-out-of-high-school cross-country freaks. Kids who haven’t had six years of solid drinking and partying under their 30-inch belts. Let the record show that I’m putting in my hard work, however. See the counter on the homepage to see how much training time remains.

If you’re not doing anything, come out and run with me in a few weeks. What you need to know:

- Cincinnati. Downtown. Start somewhere near the stadiums.
- Thanksgiving Day. 9 a.m. EST.
- 10 kilometers (a cute, European way of saying 6.2 miles).
- A 40-minute finish time (optional).

So far, participants include

- John Ryan.
- Heideh.
- Philip (he’s walking the course with his family, but hey).
- Brent (unconfirmed - hearsay only).

See you on the 24th.

Little Jimmy flipped on the television last weekend to watch Saturday morning cartoons. But instead of entertainment, he found the lesson of a lifetime waiting for him.

A commercial produced by the Department of Energy presented Jimmy with the ‘Energy Hog,’ a metaphorical concept for leaving the lights on, running the air conditioner for too long or leaving hair dryers blowing to, I don’t know, keep food warm or something. The bottom line: Wasting energy is bad, Jimmy learned.

The lovable cartoon character, embodying all the bad habits of household energy consumption, was a Department of Defense creation that made an indelible impression on the young Jimmy. As he went to bed that night, he wrote a haiku for his mother - as he was torn between his desire to turn off the lights, but was nonetheless scared of the dark. He wrote:

I’m scared of the dark!
Please? Lights? Just five more minutes?
Fuck you, Dick Cheney.

‘Don’t say that, little Jimmy,’ Mommy said. ‘Just because I drive you to school in an Acura MDX doesn’t mean we should leave the lights on at night.’

Little Jimmy drifted off to sleep, his dreams peaceful and swine-free, safe in the knowledge that the Energy Hog wouldn’t be attacking him in the dark, dark night.

To recap:

- Little Jimmy is pissed that Dick Cheney is a robot.

- When your government has chosen to rip off “Captain Planet” - a third-rate cartoon - to aid conservation efforts, there’s a definite problem. The Energy Hog looks a little too much like Hoggish Greedly. See picture.

- Haiku provides a lyrical outlet for the pouring forth of emblematic truth, namely, the idea of an ‘Energy Hog’ sucks.

A new breed of medical advertisement has caught my attention lately: Have you seen the guy with the busted-ass face peering out at you from your morning newspaper yet? ‘Cause it freaks me out every time.

Rather than using the typical ‘ask your doctor about Wellexetra’ or so forth, we find a gentleman whose face looks like it went seven rounds with a young, tire-iron wielding Holyfield plaintively -agressively? - looking at you while the caption reads ‘If Hep C was [sic] attacking your face instead of your liver, you’d do something about it.’

The grammatical case notwithstanding - the ad copy should use the subjunctive mood ‘were’ rather than the indicative ‘was,’ not that I’m picking nits - I was fine with feeling inadequate after Enzyte’s Natural Male Enhancement pills and I was fine with thinking of many things at once before finding out I actually had Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. But now I have to be fine with something I won’t know exists until I get screened for this ’silent killer.’ I’m sure I’m being (shortsighted / callous / medieval), but I make a concerted effort to get medical advice from my doctor, rather than, say, advertising.

As if I didn’t have enough to be neurotic about (say nothing for beaten faces on my morning commute), now I’ve also found out just what would happen were a Category 4 hurricane to hit New York City. Next will be earthquakes in Chicago and locusts in Seattle and armies of zombie-like Hep C sufferers in Topeka.

Oh, were all those ads I mentioned sponsored by drug companies putting out for-profit ads? Nevermind then. I’m sure they have my best interests at heart, like freaking me out of my morning stupor by showing me an abused face. Thanks, modern medicine!

I can’t put a spin on this past weekend, so I won’t try.

I should be coming up with an ‘angle’ in order to better present an event I covered on Saturday afternoon for a freelance project. This task should be easy, considering the event was a dog fashion parade.

The overall feeling you get while watching supposedly sane people parade their costumed dogs down the street is almost indescribable, but it’s something between ‘watching the fire department use the Jaws of Life to extract a trapped man from a burning wreck’ (for that horrifying, I-can’t-tear-my-eyes-away feeling) and ‘covertly watching ‘Golden Girls’ at 2:30 in the morning to indulge your crush on Bea Arthur’ (because you’re a sick bastard that wallows in your habit thrice weekly despite being well-adjusted otherwise).

During said spectacle, John and I met/witnessed:

A) a few very nice, seemingly well-adjusted people

B) one batshit woman who takes dogs from backyards in the name of ‘rescuing’ them, and told us she was going to strangle another woman at the event who was making money by selling dogs;

C) three t-shirts that boldly proclaimed ‘I have issues’ - whether the owners were cuckoo for their dogs or just had issues in general, I’ll never know;

D) dogs dressed up as batman, superman, a princess (with the cone hat and frilly pink lace and everything), sunflowers and many other various and sundry ‘cute’ tsotchkes.

Apparently you can get the ‘I have issues’ shirts at Wal-Mart. Oh America! Oh humanity!