Can You Hear Me Now? May 2, 2006March 4, 2017 JACK BAUER’S CELL PHONE Need I say more? The TV show ’24’ is so heart pounding it could bring back the dead. But of all its harmless reality suspensions, the veritable Verrezzano of them all is Jack Bauer’s cell phone. Its battery never runs low, it never lacks 5 bars, it works in the cargo hold of a jet at 30,000 feet, and you can download massive data files to it in a second and a half. What’s more, he never loses it. I don’t know who makes this phone, but I want one. STEPHEN COLBERT’S ROUTINE It may have been offensive or inappropriate – or funny and courageous – depending on your point of view (or it may have been all those things and overlong) . . . but one thing it was not was routine. When was the last time a sitting President had to sit through something like this? So the real question: how come no one reported on it? This was the White House Correspondents Dinner, after all – it’s not as if the press wasn’t there. Mary: ‘I hear C-Span – C-Span!!! – cut this out of its rerun, so the blackout was near complete.’ According to this site, the New York Times didn’t even mention it. I thought parts were funny, parts inappropriate (though spot on if he hadn’t been there) – but click the link if you want to judge for yourself. SELF CLEANING’S FURTHER USES Jacques Levy: ‘Take advantage of the self cleaning oven to clean barbecue grills cooking grates, just stick them in the oven while you’re running the clean cycle.’ Peter Thibeau: ‘You write: ‘If only our government were self-cleaning.’ I say it is. It just must get very, VERY dirty before it self-cleans.’