So, I was watching Larry King Live-via-Pacemaker on CNN, and he was having an interview with Phyllis Diller.

This was a followup to an interview I’d heard earlier by Diller, on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, on NPR.

Diller turned 85 recently, and is hanging up live performances because of it. To which one can only say, bully for her.

But it got me to thinking… If she’s 85 this year, that means she was born in 1917.

There’s another famous individual born in 1917, but I’ll bet you think of him as a much younger fellow:

JFK.

Having been born in Boston, and not moving from there until I was 9 (in 1972), Jack was clearly the Patron Saint of town. So it’s hard not to mingle the mystique of Jack throughout the country with what he had in Massachusetts.

Still.

So I went and started trawling though Encarta, looking for others born in 1917. It’s a mixed bunch. In no particular order:

Cyrus Vance
Julius Rosenberg
John Lee Hooker
Vera Lynn
Joan Fontaine
Raymond Burr
Arthur C. Clarke
Phil Rizzuto
Lena Horne
Dinah Shore
Robert C. Byrd
Anthony Burgess

What’s interesting about this list, to me, is how you think of all these people kinda sorta in their “prime”, which was different ages for each. I mean, blues man John Lee Hooker always seemed older than God. To think of him as being as fresh a scrub as JFK was when the PT 109 was hit in WWII is just jolting.

Or how about Byrd, the longtime Senator from West Virgina. Take in his courtly somnolence on C-SPAN one of these days, and realize he’s exactly the same age as JFK. Or Phyllis Diller.

Diller was interesting, too, because she started so late. She didn’t become a comedienne until after her kids were grown, and she was in her late 30′s.

No big meaning here… Although I like stories like that, along with Dennis Farina, John Mahoney, and Danny Aiello, all of whom started acting later in life than any “Brat Pack”.

I got feedback from the interview yesterday

They think I’m smart and all, and would be a valuable addition to the team. They’re a bit nervous about whether I’m too technical, and whether I can simplify things and get to the point with non-techies.

I’m not sure if what this really means is that I was verbally footnoting way too much… because I don’t consider myself all that tech-oriented. OTOH, this is the second company to give me this particular piece of feedback after an interview, which means I should pay attention to it.

Hm.

Anyway, the good news is, they want me back for Yet Another Interview, this one to be on Wed., 24 July, at 3PM. I’ve been previously told from an inside source that a second interview pretty much means a final checkoff and hire, so this is a good thing. Probably most of the point is to a) show me to a more senior manager, and b) see if I respond to the feedback.

So, all in all, things look quite promising.

I really regret not posting lately. It’s not for lack of things to say, or events happening. There was the charity dinner at a McDonald’s in Newcastle for the family of a slain King County Sheriff, where I got to meet the honest-to-God Sheriff of King County. There was Fourth of July from the top of the Space Needle, fireworks visible from all around Puget Sound. There was the Fast Horse Hootenanny at the Crocodile Cafe, with 4-count-’em-4 bands (the Wayward Shamans, Minus 5, Tuatara, and CeDell Davis), even if they all did turn out to be various constellations of the same 10 or so musicians. There was the social swirl of three parties in 24 hours last weekend (a Clarion West party, a barbeque with my prior hosts and many of their friends from work, and Karawynn’s “Three of Us” Housewarming). There was the call in to 710 KIRO when they had a substitute host with an appallingly bad take on the War On Some Drugs. There was the interview — today — with a Big Name Employer Whose Name I Dare Not Speak For Fear of Jinxing Everything… and I have no real idea how well or badly that really went. {sigh} At least they told me they’d let me know in the next two days, and unlike previous interviewers (like, say, Timberline Software in Portland — stay far, far, away, and short the stock if you have the capital for it), they probably’ll keep to that.

It’s just that I feel entirely too stream-of-consciousness-y, and I’m not sure at all how coherent I sound. Things that seem to me to hang together and feel connected… I say them, and try to explain, or write them down, and it’s as if they’re proofs with many many postulates missing. Nothing feels cohesive if I consider it for more than about five seconds.

This goes well beyond my usual worries about whether or not I’m putting my foot in my mouth, shaking vigourously, and echoing globally.

I’m not saying y’all can help, or anything. I’m just trying to explain. And not sure if I’m doing a good job. Which is kind of the problem in a meta-nutshell.

I’m at my local Starbucks, checking e-mail and the like through their wireless Net hookup. There’re windows on the south and east sides of the store.

So… I can see the inky smudge of smoke that I know is from Issaquah. I know because 710 KIRO had just broken the news that a tanker truck flipped and burned over there.

It’s an odd fact of our information age. One can see something strange, and nominally know what it is… and still yet not know. I mean, flipping and burning in a tanker truck? Even my active imagination, the one that has stood on hillsides looking below at whole cities that I could envision burning in a flash of heat, light, air pressure, and charged particles… I just don’t know what to wrap my mind around when it comes to a truck crash ike that. Perhaps something like that hideous sense of inevitability when the sailboat starts listing, and then you know you’re just at the fringes of the center of gravity, and then it all turns over… (which is why I have a pair of glasses at the bottom of Long Beach harbor).

Anyway.

I know you feel you have to have a statement with a signature that says everything someone has said in a resume is real-io, true-lio true. I got that.

But.

I humbly suggest that some sort of affadavit, saying something along the lines of, “I hereby swear and affirm that all materials previously submitted by me are true and valid under penalty of perjury…” — you know, something that would just take one signature — would save everyone huge amounts of time compared to the innumerable application forms where one completely transcribes one’s resume, just so you can have a signature on file.

Just a thought.

Respectfully submitted,

yrs, etc.

From 1 July’s broadcast of Crossfire on CNN:

NOVAK: Embarrasses you to talk about God, doesn’t it?

CARVILLE: No, it doesn’t embarrass me to talk about God… That’s an old cockamamie Republican right-wing thing. If you’re not out there publicly claiming you love God more than everybody, everybody else hates God. You know, some people can have religion and it could be a private matter.

Needless to say, I have a few thoughts…