The Hitches of Madison County

Everyone has fantasized about what they would do when the bank put a huge pile o' money into their account, but only a no-account person would SPEND the money, knowing all along it was ill-gotten gains.  

But down in Hull, Madison County, GA, Steven Fields, 18, has a bank account in the same bank as former neighbor Steven Fields (no relation).  The other Fields is 70, and recently sold some land for $30,000, which he took right to the bank, and the bank teller, instead of putting it in the older man's checking account, dumped the whole thing into the teenager's funds.

And so young Fields  a) promptly told the bank that a mistake had been made, and basked in the knowledge that honesty is its own reward   or   b) ran right out and bought himself $30,000 worth of stuff, including a BMW automobile.

Pencils down.  The correct, if sad, answer is b.  And when it was all sorted out, the bank teller lost her job, and young Fields was given 10 years of probation and has been ordered to pay the money back.  "The boy said he was sorry. That's about all he said,” said victim Fields, who added that he was most sorry for the fact that his friend, the former teller, had to be fired over all this.

Former BMW owner

The younger Fields was raised by a woman named Stacey Sorrow, who told the local TV station, "I told that woman up at the bank she should have looked over her mistake that she made if she knew there were three people up there with the same name. He (teen) was excited. I would have been too," she adds, recalling the moment the teen discovered the funds in his account.

So he was raised to deflect blame, and not take responsibility.

Since all this happened, young Fields has been arrested on drug possession charges.

I'm sure that was someone else's fault, too.

Cereal Abusers

Did you like Hall and Oates when they were popular years ago?

I sort of did.  Songs like "Rich Girl" and "Sara Smile" were sort of catchy.  The duo from Philadelphia didn't exactly bring the world to a standstill, and it's been a turtle's age since they had a hit record.  Still, I'm sure they tour the state fair and summer festival circuit in the warmer months, and take home a decent dollar for their time and trouble.

So you would think they could always use a mention now and then to keep their names in front of the public, but instead, they are making sure their names appear more on court dockets than anywhere else.

They recently found that a Brooklyn granola company is selling a brand of granola called "Haulin' Oats," so Daryl Hall (real name: Daryl Hohl) and John William Oates have filed suit in federal court to make the Early Bird Foods company stop selling the product, charging it violates their trademark.

The people over at Early Bird seem to have more of a sense of humor...they'll give you 25% off online if you order using the coupon code "SayItIsntSo." That's the title of a Hall and Oates hit song, you understand.

Last year, H&O kept their lawyers busy chasing after an oatmeal company in Kentucky and California that was selling their porridge under the name "Haulin' Oates." They swung a deal with that firm, and so oatmeal gobblers in five states can get the goods.

I'm sure that if these granola people offered to duke Daryl and John in on the take, something could be worked out.  And I'm also sure that a professional trademark is a valuable thing, to be guarded zealously against all encroachment.  I was tempted to say that ripping off the Hall & Oates name was a Cheap Trick, but I didn't want to get sued by them!

Troubled Bridge

Many people in show business make huge fortunes for one good reason:  they have come up with a way to make huge fortunes by selling entertainment to the rest of us.

And by entertainment, we mean movies, television shows, books, records, and I don't know what-all else that takes our minds off the broken-down Buick, the recalcitrant teenagers, the howling dog from down the street that keeps stealing your laundry off the line.  We watch movies that show people doing heroic things and we just know that we could be Dirty Harry if we had the chance, that we could attract any love we wanted, cure all ills, dance all dances, sing all songs.

It's a wonderful world of make-believe, and it's been good for the country over the years.  Your great-grandparents did not want to sit home every night during the Depression and fret about next month's rent and next week's grocery bill, so they went to the movies two or three times a week, and sat in a theatre where, for their 30-cent ticket, they could see Clark Gable or Carole Lombard or Laurel and Hardy and forget about the real world outside.

But this week, the widely disparate worlds of Hollywood, California, and Jesup, Georgia are converging.  Jesup is where the trial is being held in what's known as the "Midnight Rider" Trial.

Georgia is also the home to the Allman Brothers Band, a group that is no stranger to tragedy and sorrow and death, and those shadows darkened the filming of a movie version of Gregg Allman's autobiography last year when a dream sequence was being filmed on a railroad bridge over the Altamaha River, about five miles from Jesup. The book was entitled "My Cross To Bear," and the movie was to be called "Midnight Rider," after an ABB song.  On the first day of filming, a CSX train traveling at 60 mph came along, and as the moviemakers scrambled to get out of the way, a 27-year-old camera assistant named Sarah Jones was struck and killed.

The producers of the movie did not have permission from the railroad to be filming on that bridge.  The railroad says that, in fact, they had twice told the film company that they would not grant such permission, but they were certainly there that day in February 2014, and Sarah Jones is certainly dead, and now comes the trial to determine who is responsible for that.

Randall Miller is the director of the film, now in suspension.  He, his business partner/wife Jody Savin and executive producer Jay Sedrish are on trial for involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespass. All three have pleaded "not guilty."  They could serve up to 11 years if convicted.

Wayne County Superior Court judge Anthony Harrison is hearing the case. Baltimore Ravens fans will remember the man who is defending Miller - he's Ed Garland, of the Atlanta firm Garland Samuel & Loeb.  He defended Ray Lewis in that Superbowl murder trial in 2001.

Miller and Savin say the whole thing was a "horrific accident."

Where it happened

"In the weeks and months that follow when the true facts of the events are revealed, people will know that this was not a crime: we never had criminal intent; we would never knowingly or intentionally put anybody's safety at risk," read the statement from the people who went ahead and filmed on a railroad bridge without permission.

Now, I'm no lawyer, but I guess I'd be a horrible one if I were one, because I don't see any way to say that people who were doing something unsafe on someone else's property are not guilty and responsible for all that happened because of their actions.

The jury will decide where the line is between Hollywood fantasy, in which people pretend, and real life, where trains still run and people should not pretend to have the right to be on their tracks.

UPDATE: Just as the trial began Monday, a plea agreement was reached.  Here is the story from "Variety" -

A plea agreement was reached on Monday in the “Midnight Rider” case in which director Randall Miller was sentenced to two years in jail and executive producer Jay Sedrish was sentenced to 10 years probation.

Each was charged with involuntary manslaughter in the Feb. 20, 2014, death of Sarah Jones in a train accident on the set of the movie “Midnight Rider,” a biopic of singer Gregg Allman. They entered their guilty plea just as jury selection was set to begin at the Wayne County Courthouse.

Miller’s wife, Jody Savin, also faced the same charges, but those were waived as part of the plea deal. One of Miller and Savin’s attorneys, Ed Garland, said that fact weighed heavily in a plea deal, as the couple have two children.

Zapped

Double exposure

You can't do this with digital photography technology, what they used to call a double exposure.  If you're using film in a camera, just take some pictures and then run the same film through the camera again and take some other pictures.  You get two images, and it looks like this:  Sort of artistic, but not an accurate picture of either object.

Now, with that as background, let me ask you this: if you are getting married, do you have your high-school kid brother take the pictures of the most important day of your life?  Of course not. That's why people with a good grip on what's going on engage photo studios or crime-scene photographers to get pictures of the vows being taken, the candles being lit, the happy couple walking down the aisle, and Aunt Mabel falling over the feet of Cousin Alice while doing the Chicken Dance at the conception reception.

Jeb Bush and bride Columba

The happy smiling couple you see at left got married in 1974 and are still married today, even though his brother Marvin screwed up royally. This is the only picture of that happy day, because Marvin, entrusted with the honor of taking pictures of the hoedown, brought along the camera that he had just used at a Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention performance in Richmond, and he cleverly rewound the film and took double exposure pictures, ruining the memories of both the concert and the wedding.

Frank

Not wanting the debacle to be a complete debacle, Marvin submitted one of the pictures to his high school art show and won third prize for his imaginative entry "Zappa's bride."

You wouldn't even be hearing about all this, except that the groom here is current presidential contender Jeb Bush, and the hapless photographer, his brother Marvin.

My only question is, is there a "Zeppo" Bush?

Red all about it

And there I was at the Giant Food, in the dairy aisle, to be precise. A little red-headed boy was selecting his yogurts for the coming week, and I wanted to ask him and/or his red-headed mom if strangers still walk up to redhaired boys and run their hand through their hair for luck.

And then it dawned on me that not only do people not rub their paws in the hair of another person without certain permission from the rubee, it would be really weird to just ankle up and do that to a kid.

But people used to do that!  Any redhaired man over 30 can tell you that.  Total strangers just before kickoff at a football game! Your uncle, just before midnight on New Year's Eve! A kid named "Howie" who sat behind Francis X. "Reds" O'Hoolahan in Algebra when Mr Dittmar was passing out the tests!  All of these indignities were visited upon redhaired men.

An auburn-tressed buddy of mine once told me that a total stranger once asked him to remove his baseball hat, the better to muss that hair.

Red

Incidental info: In all other towns across the US of A, redhaired boys are nicknamed "Red," like in Skelton, or Schoendienst,or the guy in Shawshank.  In Baltimore, they are called "Reds."

And no one knows why.

Opie

But besides the bit about rubbing their hair, redheads have to deal with being called "ginger," being regarded as jinxes, people thinking that they all have fiery tempers or are natural targets for bee attacks, and, most ludicrous, during the Spanish Inquisition, the Spaniards killed redheads by the hundreds because they thought that redheads were witches who had stolen the fires of hell, and therefore were to be burned at the stake.

As someone who was born with blond hair that later became brown and of late, quite grey, I never had to deal with this sort of torment.  Of course, in a world where people are so foolishly assessed on the basis of the color of their skin, it's just a leap for the judgemental to rule on others based on their hair color, too.

Being 6' 5" and being asked to grab a quart of prune juice from the top shelf at the BuySumMor is nothing, compared to that.

Sunday Rerun: "The road to Hell is paved with adverbs" - Stephen King

Writing in Salon online, Mary Elizabeth Williams drops the bad news that the Associated Press stylebook is now accepting the improper use of the word "hopefully."

Well, you know how those of us who like correct grammar, spelling and pronunciation are reacting to that bomb.  We're the ones who stand there and mutter "and ME"  when someone says, "That DVD belongs to Connie and I."  Our eyebrows shoot skyward when someone sputters, "Who can I talk to about all this?"  We moan over misplaced modifiers, we mourn silently when someone says, "It's a mute point" and we grind our choppers upon hearing, "Splitting infinitives is something that is best to never do."  But the ne plus ultra of things that drive us to distraction is hearing someone let go with, "Hopefully, the pizzas will be here before the kids get home."

(You know what's fun?  Using hopefully correctly!  As in, "Hopefully, I went to the race track yesterday."  People will look at me, and say, "Well did you go, or didn't you?"  And I say, "I did. Hopefully!"  They walk away shaking their heads.)

Hopefully is an adverb, so it should only be used to describe the verb.  Pizzas do not arrive full of hope.  Full of cheese and pepperoni, sure.  You can say, "I hope the pizzas will be here before the kids get home."

Or, now, you can say it incorrectly, and still work for the Associated Press.  Hopefully.

The Saturday Picture Show, March 7, 2015

The Great Wall of China runs 5,500 miles across that huge nation, but like everything else, it has to end somewhere, and this is it.

The good people at General Mills make Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch, Multi Grain Cheerios, Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, Banana Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Burst Cheerios, Chocolate Cheerios, Dulce de Leche Cheerios, Multi Grain Cheerios Peanut Butter, Multi Grain Cheerios Dark Chocolate Crunch, Frosted Cheerios, Fruity Cheerios, and Yogurt Burst Cheerios.  On the other hand, this is a picture of a lot of old car tires.

My hero, Mr Garrison Keillor, host of the popular Prairie Home Companion radio show, is talking about retiring again. He first did so when he turned 70 a couple years back, and now seems to be trotting out prospective replacement hosts.  No one else on earth has the same talents as he does - writing, hosting, singing and weaving a short story on the fly while perched on a stool - and the show would not be the same without him.  Still, as Casey Stengel said, the parks are filled with statues of men once considered irreplaceable.

And we were just talking about men of great talent!  Here are two more  - Cal Ripken, Jr and Wm. J. Clinton.  This was September, 1995, the night that Cal set the record for consecutive ballgames.

This is a picture of what used to be my junior high school - Towsontown JHS, as the old building was demolished to make room for more parking or a baseball field or something.  The site is now the home of the Carver Center, a high school that teaches all sorts of skills, but I wish that someone had taught the people in power some history.  The part of the building you see here was once Carver High School, the high school for black students in Baltimore County, before the Brown Supreme Court decision integrated schools. The county then added a large southern wing to the old school and turned it into a junior high, and I would think that at least some consideration for the history of the building could have been offered.  But no.  They tore it all to hell.

Do they still use these wind-power generators on farms?  I used to see them all the time, but not so much anymore.

The pointer finger must have been in use somewhere as an indicator of how to get somewhere.  Imagine how many people over the years wondered where the gift shop, or the exit, or the lavatory was, and there was the answer.

Anyone can write a great book, they say, as long as they just have a dictionary.  After all, all the words are in there.  It's just a matter of which ones to use in which order.  Same deal with this guitar. Press down on one or more of the six strings at one end and pick it at the other, and what you have is a person taking an inanimate object and making it come alive with music and joy.

Kid Tested, Mother Approved

We've all seen examples of really dumb things people can do while driving...they drive after drinking alcohol, they drive while drinking alcohol, they send texts, they read texts, they read books (I once saw a college-kinda guy in rush-hour I-95 traffic with a textbook propped up on the steering wheel), they stick their left leg out of the driver's window (at least, I assumed it was the driver's leg...), they floss their teeth, they eat soup or cereal with a bowl and spoon.

These are things we've all seen.  Men who shave while driving can't be very proud of how nice they look when the ambulance drops them off at the ER after they run into a light pole, and someone told me they saw a guy playing a guitar while rolling his truck across the beltway.

Good thing he didn't play the tuba!

Toyota, the makers of my ride, has an excellent program for young drivers.  Watch this video that shows a 16-year-old female and her mother driving on a test course as they apply their makeup. Cringe as you see the mother and then the daughter bring destruction and agony to innocent rubber traffic cones. Weep as you see the daughter trying to encircle her eyes with makeup as she careers around the track.

And cry for all of our futures when you see the mother say, "It's awful that I taught her to do that."

Be the driver you want others to be.  Especially if you are the parent of a teen who might think it's OK to be a damned fool like this young lady's mother is.

Something I found

 

Digging through some old boxes of whatnots the other day, I came across my official United States of America Federal Communications Commission Restricted Radiotelephone Operator Permit, which was what was required to be the disc jockey/news person/transmitter operator/telephone answerer and trash can emptier at one of America's radio stations.

In April, 1972, I began my radio career at a small station in Prince Frederick, MD.  The station was built into what was described as "an old hermit's house" and that hermit did not have exquisite taste (so few do) but in the kitchen of his old house there was an FM radio transmitter, and on the wall in various frames, the kind of FCC licenses that we needed in those days to run the transmitter and take readings to make sure we were a) still on the air and b) not cranking out so many watts that radios and WaterPiks all over town were not melting down.  They changed the licenses a few years ago, and for all I know, anyone can have one by filling out an online form.  We used to have to study all sorts of arcane laws that seemed to have more to do with SOS signals sent by sinking ships than reading commercials for used-car dealers, and then go downtown to the Federal Building and take a test on those laws in order to be issued a license, signed by the noted Ben F. Waple, Secretary, to allow us to play records and read commercials and love every second of it.

It was always fun to visit other radio stations to see their equipment and arrayed licenses.  Here is where we would see the real names of the people who dedicated their lives to bringing you the music of Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods.  That wacky morning DJ - "Rockin' Ron" Reno - who played the sounds of people doing the technicolor yawn while he read the school lunch menu turned out to be someone named J. Ronald Renoscopy. And the deeply sensitive evening guy?  The one who played "Desiderata" and read Rod McKuen poems as he urged listeners to dim the lights and get real mellow?  He called himself "Eros" on the radio, but his license identified him as Lester L. Crackenbush.

Old style

Now the DJs play what a computer tells them to and they aren't even "live" in many cases - something called "voice tracking" allows them to record a show in advance, and many stations have syndicated jocks playing the same records for people in Dubuque, Cincinnati and Brattleboro at the same time.

It's just not the same.

Just do the right thing

Can we talk for a minute about the spate of boasting that has toppled Brian Williams from his NBC Nightly News throne for six months and caused the US Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs, Robert McDonald, to have to issue an apology and gave pugnacious commentator Bill O'Reilly reason to have to come out swinging about his allegedly-inflated stories of coming into danger zones while reporting on the Falklands War for CBS?

One at a time...the O'Reilly kerfluffle is still up in the air, air which is filled with a lot of "Oh yeah?" and "But you didn't!"   He said he was there when the fighting was getting violent and others say he was not.  I don't pay much attention to O'Reilly, and so I don't care that much for him...he puts himself squarely in every story he talks about, so he becomes the story instead of reporting the story.  We do have his employer, FOX News, admitting that it might have been hard for him to witness the 1980 murders of nuns in El Salvador, since he didn't get there until 1981, but are we really going to quibble about this man's lies?*  It's like complaining that you went to Baskin-Robbins and got ice cream: it's what he sells.

Brian Williams is home until August to ponder the error of his ways.  NBC set him down for his wildly exaggerated claim of being in a helicopter that came under enemy fire, and for a half-hearted apology when some soldiers who were in harm's way pointed out that he was well out of the way at the time. He said he was in a "following" chopper, but was in fact an hour away.  By his standards, we live right next to Cal Ripken, Jr. and will be dining on the closest thing to pheasant under glass tonight, which is to say, KFC on Corelle plates.  Brian spent too much time sharpening his media personality, doing his Regis impersonation on Letterman and not paying enough attention to the news and the strict facts of which it should be composed.  When he returns late this summer, look for a more serious approach.

Secretary McDonald was a paratrooper and a West Point graduate, and those are two accomplishments that very few people will ever attain.  Why in the world did he feel it necessary to tell a man he encountered on the street in Los Angeles that we was in Special Forces?  Isn't it enough to be able to say, "I'm the Secretary of Veterans' Affairs, a former Army officer in the paratroops, and I was hired to straighten out an agency that for years was egregiously derelict in its duty to provide medical and other assistance to those who served the country"?

As I do so often in troubled times, I turn to old-school country for advice, and today it comes from Ernest Tubb's recording of a Ned Miller song called "Do What You Do Do Well."

He couldn't move a mountain
Or pull down a big oak tree
But my daddy became a mighty big man
With a simple philosophy
Do what you do do well boy
Do what you do do well
Give your love and all your of heart
And do what you do do well

* O'Reilly now says he "saw graphic pictures" of the slain nuns. Similarly, movie actor Ronald Reagan claimed to have "been there" when Nazi concentration camps were liberated, but what he meant was that he saw film footage of camps being liberated. Close enough?

While Shepherd watched his flock by night

To really get in the mood to read about the subject of today's bloviation, please click on this link and hear his theme song, "Bahn Frei."  We're talking about a man named Jean Shepherd, who used the song by Eduard Strauss (as recorded by the Boston Pops) as his intro music for over 20 years as his show came on WOR Radio in New York.  For 45 minutes late every night, he wove tales from his real life and from his imagination, enchanting millions of people with transistor radios tucked up under their pillows, with the little earpiece in use so my parents  no one would be any the wiser.

In case you'd like to hear what we heard, you can check out these recordings on the Internet Archive.

And if the name Jean Shepherd sounds familiar for more than its similarity to female Grand Ole Opry favorite Jean Shepard, it may be because the movie "A Christmas Story" was adopted from his tales in the book "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." It's all in there...the fight with Scut Farkus, the BB gun, the Bumpasses' dogs eating the turkey.

A fascinating man, he was, and talented as well.  Of course, even with all that talent, every performer needs promotional gimmicks and publicity stunts to get his/her name before the public.  Shep's was a doozy:

In 1956, he challenged his audience to create a demand for a book called "I, Libertine," by a made-up author - "Frederick R. Ewing." Jean figured that he could manipulate the best-seller lists by having his fans try to buy a certain book.  And they did, and, being a literary-type of audience in the media capital of the world, they planted references to the book in magazines and newspapers, creating further demand, as booksellers frantically attempted to purchase the book from their distributors for sale in stores. Then, with the book on the New York Times Best Seller List, Shepherd and two others actually wrote the doggone book, got a cover painted by Kelly Freas, and Ballantine Books put it out.


You'll notice the Wall Street Journal got Shep's name wrong, but the publicity went a long way toward making him a household name in New York. I just checked on Amazon...six hardback copies of the book are for sale, the lowest price being $125. We should have bought it in 1956!  But I didn't have 35 cents then.

Fingers Crossed for Keith

Unless he does something else foolish between now and 5 pm (EST) today, Keith Olbermann will once again host his tv show on ESPN2, after sitting out a three-day suspension late last week.

You may like Olbermann (I surely do) or you may despise him (you're not alone) but certain things about him stand out, no matter where you stand.  For one, he wrote and published a book called "The Major League Coaches," which listed and described every single manager and coach (bullpen, base, pitching, batting) in baseball history, a feat which no one else even ever attempted.

And Keith did that at the ripe old age of 14.

He's recognized as an expert on baseball cards and memorabilia, and he possesses a wealth of knowledge about athletes, teams, and sports history, which came in handy for his days as a sports reporter for many stations and networks.

In addition, his grammar is impeccable.  This earns bonus points from this corner.

But, when I say he has worked for many stations and networks, I think of the old joke about the guy who says his father was in the Army and "fought with Eisenhower...fought with Patton...fought with Pershing...he couldn't get along with anybody."

Olbermann has been fired more than a two-dollar pistol on a Saturday night in Baltimore, and that's a lot.

This recent suspension from ESPN came as a result of his comments about Penn State University.  Every night, Keith lists his three "World's Worst" entities about sports, and one list in January condemned the sports culture at Penn State for their pleasure in the deal the school made with the NCAA to restore 111 wins to their storied football program, in return for the school's pledge to spend $60 million on child abuse prevention in Pennsylvania.

Children were abused by a member of the Penn State football staff; there is not much dispute about that.  What the head coach knew, when he knew it, what he did about it, what the school administration did about it...all that is up for a debate that I don't think needs to take place, since it will be impossible to come up with answers agreed upon by all or close to all.  And really, what topic is ever agreed upon by all?  There are people among us who deny the Holocaust ever took place, who claim the moon landings were Disney fake jobs, who think a McFish® is seafood.

Olbermann lacks a certain modesty

It's better not to respond to the trolls lurking in Cyberville, but Keith did, and when some Penn State students engaged him in a Twitter fight (a "Twight"?) about all this, Keith responded in the heavy-handed manner that has so many times led to him being shown the door at his places of employment.

I hope he has finally learned his lesson and will refrain from calling people "pitiful" in the future.  That way, he can stay on the air and we can all learn from him...once he's learned from this.

Sunday Rerun: Always Leave 'Em Laughing

I love the unique..things that only take place once in history. An unassisted triple play in the seventh game of a World Series, pulled off by a seven-foot tall shortstop, would be something to remember. I am willing to bet that mine is the only iPod that shuffles from Bing Crosby to the Sex Pistols to Ernest Tubb. We once had a neighbor whose father was a horrible, mean man. When he died, her mom greeted me out by the mailbox with a sentence that might never have been spoken in our language before.

"Have some chili - my husband died today!"

Which brings me to this photo, which I saw online. Maybe the family depicted doesn't have many chances to get together to pose en masse. Maybe it's some mordant gag. Maybe they are celebrating a life, not mourning a death.

I don't know either, but I have to wonder.

The Saturday Picture Show, February 28, 2015

Of all the National League baseball teams, I always liked the Dodgers best - the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Brooklyn is the most interesting borough in Noo Yawk to me, and here is what it looks like when the sun rises up there.

Speaking of National League baseball, here is the new helmet to be worn by Miami Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton.  He took a pitch to the face last summer, and to prevent that from recurring, he will wear this facemask at the plate this summer.  Notice the stylish "G" in the design!

This is a Picasso painting called “La Coiffeuse,” French for “The Hairdresser,” which was recently found in Newark NJ. It was ripped off from Paris a decade ago and sent to this country. Shipping papers described it as a $37 “art craft/toy,” while its real value is said to be over 2.5 million semolians.  Anyone who can tell me how in the heck this looks anything like a hairdresser is welcome to try.

Remember the opening of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, where she rolled her eyes at the price of a steak before tossing tossing it into her cart?  Well, this picture is about as close as I will be getting to a steak these days.  Holy cow, is beef ever expensive.

You and I have no need for this type of clothing, but look for celebrities to be wearing it soon.  It's made of a special fabric that lights up under flash photography, thus ruining the days of all those paparazzi whose purpose in life is to take photographs of Madonna walking down the street.  That's some purpose.

Good-bye Radio Shack!  I guess there aren't that many people out to buy their own parts to build transistor radios anymore.  There aren't even people listening to transistor radios anymore.

There are two types of people in this world...those who like the sound of wind chimes, and those who spend breezy evenings fuming over the sound of brass or bamboo tubes clanging into each other, like the sound of 1001 tiny auto accidents in the backyard. I guess I'm in the latter category.

Saturday night!  Saturday night!  At the Drag-o-Way - the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick dragster is ready to zip down the quarter mile.
That should be the last underinflation joke from me.

About the Las Vegas murder

At first, the death by handgun bullet of Tammy Meyers in Las Vegas seemed to be a simple case of road rage.  Meyers was teaching her 15-year-old daughter to drive, and the story was that their car, with the younger woman at the wheel, was involved in some near-collision with another car, and the situation escalated to a point at which the unknown driver of the other car chased the Meyers women to their home and shot the mother in the head.

And then, it didn't happen to have happened that way, although that's how the initial report from Robert Meyers, husband of the deceased, had it.  He said he was confused when he left out the details, such as that the women came home angry after some confrontation with a neighbor, rounded up their 22-year-old son, and went back out in pursuit of the other party, leading to two separate gunfights.  The final gunfight took place at the Meyers home, and Mrs Meyers was in fact shot at that time.

The 19-year-old neighbor, Erich Milton Nowsch, appeared in court on Monday but has not entered a plea yet.  His attorney, Conrad Claus, says Nowsch feared for his life and acted in self-defense.

Police and prosecutors are saying that the Meyers family gave conflicting information, misleading suspect descriptions, and incomplete information.  For instance, they claimed that it was some tall random stranger, while in fact, Nowsch is a smallish sort of guy who lives around the corner and was well known to the Meyerses.  The late Tammy Meyers used to slip him a twenty when he showed up claiming hunger and would routinely admonish him to pull his pants up when she saw him affecting a gangster persona at the local park.

So who knows what happened, anyway?  A mistake by a novice driver? Aggressive driving by Nowsch?  A long-standing dispute or a flashpoint disagreement with horrible consequences?

So sad, so avoidable

Whatever happens when the courts shake this all out, one thing remains certain: had Tammy Meyers and her daughter returned home and let either time or the police handle it, there would likely have been no murder.  But acting like an old western in which cowboys ran to the saloon and rounded up a posse to mount up and chase after the Dalton Gang is not bound to end up well.

You could ask the Meyers family about that.  Her son's defiant statement, "I did what I had to do to protect my mother" left out the possibility that he might have protected her more by staying home and acting reasonably.

Measuring Tape

There was an episode of The Simpsons in which Sideshow Bob was temporarily let out of jail so he could help the Springfield Police track the fiend who was attempting to kill Homer. Living among the Simpsons, he came outside to find Homer trying to trap the would-be murderer with an effigy of himself hanging in front of 742 Evergreen Terrace. But Homer flipped out and began assaulting the hanging dummy, leading Sideshow Bob to ask the rest of the family, "And none of this seems odd to you?"

"It's Sideshow Bob!"

Those words ring in my head ever since SB spoke them. And if you're paying attention, your head is shaking too at what people are up these days.

Let's go to the videotape!

For those who haven't noticed, everything is on video these days. So people's interactions with police out in public are most likely available for review from many surveillance cameras, and, soon, from cameras on the police themselves. Time after time, we see people whose account of some melee or fracas is shown to be at wild disparity with the reality that video provides.  So, the next time a delivery driver throws some fragile package 20 feet onto a porch, he or she should figure on being recorded...along with the sneak thief who darts onto the porch to rip off the package.

I make it a habit to wave wildly and do something flamboyant at the little smoky gray camera covers on the ceilings of banks and liquor stores. Might as well leave 'em smiling!

And the other day, a once-respected rabbi pleaded guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism. He had set up surreptitious video cameras to record women using the ritual bath at his synagogue.

And the other day, the proprietor of a string of bar/concert venues in our town was arrested for ALLEGEDLY installing video cameras in the ladies' room at one of his spots.

And there was the respected gynecologist from Johns Hopkins, one of the finest hospitals in the world, who was recording his examinations of hundreds - thousands! - of the private parts of his patients via the use of a video recording pen in his pocket.  He committed suicide when confronted with his enormous evil.

Now, you can ask any prostitute, or late-night radio call-in host. There is no limit to what people are into. There are probably millions of people who get a thrill from hidden-camera videos of others taking a bath or using the commode or being examined down there.

And so I ask the Rabbi or the night club guy, "None of this seems odd to you?"

It's a problem when some people's pleasure comes from misusing others.

From Zappa to Zendaya

I listened to Frank Zappa back in the day with the avidity of a history student hearing from Thomas Hobbes himself.  It's a pity that some people thought then, and some still do today, that Zappa was "that weirdo" with hard-to-understand lyrics and odd rhythms on his albums with The Mothers Of Invention and subsequent bands.  

I and untold millions of others found his philosophies helpful in getting to know myself and where I fit in in this crazy old world. Frank's whole point was the wonder of being what one was capable of becoming.  Listen to the album "We're Only In It For The Money" from 1968.  Over and over, we hear the theme: there are the freaks, and there are the superstraights, and you don't have to align with either group.  You can be one of the Other People and make your best life that way.

You remember that crazy thing people had with playing records backwards to hear Satanic messages, like when you spun a KISS album backward and were supposed to hear Gene Simmons asking you to give your soul to the devil?  (And this from Gene Simmons, a man interested in two things only: himself, and all of your money.) Zappa paid tribute to that by putting this verse on the end of the track called "Flower Punk" - "Take a look around before you say you don't care, and shut your #)@ing mouth about the length of my hair."

You wouldn't think Frank would have met with such resistance for something as helpful as telling people to do their best to be their best, and not to get all involved with the hair on the heads of other people,

Zendaya (l), Rancic

but you know how people are.  "People" are like Giuliana Rancic.  Rancic works on the E! channel, and part of her job is to stand around as celebrities arrive for events and comment on what sort of clothes they are wearing, how they have their hairdids, and whom they are with. 

What a worthwhile job!  

Meanwhile, I am so far removed from Youth Culture that I have no idea who Zendaya Coleman is. I read that she goes by her first name only, and is an actress, singer and dancer.  And I see that when she arrived for the Oscar awards the other night with her hair up in locs, Ms Rancic said, "I feel like she smells like patchouli oil and weed."

And then, you know what happened.  We see it every day. Insult, mad reaction, apology based on "I had no idea you would be offended by my offensive actions!"  

Zendaya tweeted: “To say that an 18 year old young woman with locs must smell like patchouli oil and weed is not only a large stereotype but outrageously offensive."  And she pointed out that plenty of people wear dreadlocks without being slammed about it.
She was wearing her hair the way she wanted to wear her hair, and did not deserve to have drugs dragged into it!

Rancic, predictably, grabbed her Twitter and tweeted: “Dear @Zendaya, I’m sorry I offended you and others. I was referring to a bohemian chic look. Had NOTHING to do with race and NEVER would!!!” 

So now we know that if we want to compliment someone for being "bohemian" and "chic," the thing to do is to say they must reek of that 60's essence from a species of plant from the genus Pogostemon.  

Or just say they smell like dope.  

Or, shut up about it.

Titanic Decision

Mr Masabumi Hosono paid £13 (13 British Pound Sterlings, worth about 20 American dollars today) for ticket No. 237798 to cross the Atlantic on the Titanic in 1912, and we all know how that worked out.

But Mr Hosono, 42, the only Japanese passenger aboard, survived the shipwreck, only to be broken for it.  Here's what happened:

He was writing a letter to his wife while sailing for New York.  He began the letter using English, but finished it later in Japanese, aboard the Carpathia, the ship that rescued the Titanic passengers who made it into lifeboats.  When the Titanic hit the iceberg and began taking on water, someone knocked on the door of his second class cabin. He ran to the lifeboat area, but as a foreigner, he was ordered to go below the main decks.

(Every once in a while you come across a passage like that in history, and you wonder what people were thinking 103 years ago. And why.)

In the letter he later finished, Hosono wrote to his wife, "All the while flares signalling emergency were being shot into the air ceaselessly, and hideous blue flashes and noises were simply terrifying. Somehow I could in no way dispel the feeling of utter dread and desolation."

He went on to describe how he climbed back up to the upper deck. "I tried to prepare myself for the last moment with no agitation, making up my mind not to leave anything disgraceful as a Japanese. But still I found myself looking for and waiting for any possible chance for survival."

He came upon a lifeboat filling up with people.  An officer hollered "Room for two more!"   He paused and considered this his final chance to live and see his wife and children again, and jumped into the boat, lifeboat #10.

(Remember, many people chose to stay aboard, having bought into the myth that the ship was unsinkable.  These are the antecedents of people today who stay in large office buildings as the fire alarm rings, refusing to evacuate because "it can't happen here.")

Mr Hosono

And from that lifeboat, Hosono was rescued, and he returned to Japan to be attacked in his own country for saving himself when so many others died.  The government agency he worked for fired him (although he was rehired eventually), newspapers called him a coward, and a professor of ethics called him immoral.  He may have even become a textbook case; legend has it that a schoolbook was published that called him a "model of shameful behavior."

It would appear that Mr Hosono took the chance to save himself when it was presented to him. In his country, this was seen as a betrayal of the Samurai spirit of self-sacrifice," or that he failed to show the expected conformity.  As a result he was subjected to mura hachibu or ostracism.

He was said to be a broken man when he died in 1939 at age 69. Today, we wonder, who among us would not want to live, when given the chance?  Even if we knew it would cost so much...

There is only one truth

I hate to have to bring this up, but the mass slayings at that elementary school in Newtown, CT, did in fact occur, in December 2012.  99.75% of us know this, and I'm sure at least that many of us deplore the whole incident and wish it did not happen.

But, happen it did. And compounding the shame of it is the sad reality that a certain few gozzleheads among us choose to believe the bizarre notions and conspiracy theories promulgated by the supreme gozzleheads among us.  One of these theories is that the children and teachers were not really killed, that they were actors taking part in a fake that was all part of a plan to take guns away from gun owners.  You know that thing on Amazon, when you order something, that says, "People who bought this also bought..."? Well, the people who believe that Adam Lanza didn't kill anyone in that school are the people who believe that the president was born in Nigeria and that 9/11 was staged by the U.S. government.

What happened here is that someone got hold of the Connecticut State Police crime statistics for Dec '12, and found there were no murders reported in that area. Whoa! Ho! There's the proof of chicanery afoot! Except that the State Police stats only reflect crimes handled by the State Police, and that murder spree was handled by town police, whose stats are reported elsewhere.

But here's what happened next: Chipper Jones, former third baseman for the Atlanta Braves, saw the crazy web page that circulates among the easily bamboozled, and grabbed his Twitterer, so he could tweet this out:

"So the FBI comes out and confirms that Sandy Hook was a hoax! Where is the outrage? What else are we being lied to about? Waco? JFK? Pff … "

Shortly after this, someone who actually reads a newspaper got Chipper off in a corner and explained how things really are.  To his credit, Jones apologized.  But it was a case in which saying one is sorry is not really enough, because it damages the survivors and families and friends of the victims, it hurts them to have it all dragged out again, and, of course, the world is full of people who only saw the original tweet and will forevermore prance around saying, "There was no murder in Newtown...Chipper Jones said so!"

“For more than two years now, my family and the other families of Sandy Hook have been dealing with conspiracy theorists,” Cristina Hassinger, 30, told the New York Daily News. Her mother was Dawn Hochsprung, principal of the elementary school, and a fatality in the shooting.

“They harass us, saying it was all a hoax. They accuse us of being in on the hoax a lot of the time. So it’s really so disappointing to see someone who is supposed to be an American role model come out and promote the Sandy Hook hoax theory.

“I know that he apologized, but it’s not enough. We were met with a brand new onslaught of Sandy Hook hoax harassment. When you're dealing with these people, and they see that blue check mark (a verified Twitter account) that’s on their side, it starts all over again ... It's unconscionable.”

If I were Chipper Jones, I would look around and see that the two tweets of apology he has sent are only a beginning for what he needs to do to make this thing right.

Sunday Rerun: Thirty-Minute Miracles

Hal Peary as The Great Gildersleeve

I am huge fan of television (and radio!) situation comedies.  Nothing can tickle me faster than 23 minutes of boffo laffs, with seven minutes of commercials and promos.  In just 30 minutes, you've had your Minimum Adult Daily Allowance of yucks, chortles and guffaws.  From "The Great Gildersleeve" to "Ozzie and Harriet" to "Two Broke Girls," the set up has been the same for over eighty years, except there are a lot more dirty jokes in the newer shows.

The show opens with a brief sketch, usually involving someone looking perplexed, and then here comes the theme song, which plays while the actors are shown spinning around, laughing and living it up.

After the commercials, the premise of the show is set up: in the old days, it was that the boss was coming for dinner and Mom burned the roast.  Today, it's that Cousin Judy is six days late and frantic.  Either way, it's a mirthfest, mirroring our own lives, in which everything is funny.  Isn't it?

Then more commercials, for cars or beer or what-have-you.  In the penultimate act, with seconds to spare, the boss walks in with a whole salami for everyone to share, or Cousin Judy's Aunt Flo arrives to the cheers of all, and just like in real life, everything works out.  

Then more commercials, and a promo or two, and then the denouement, in which Judy, her worthless boyfriend of 17 years and a couple of others sit around ruminating over life's vicissisitudes.  Boom!  Closing theme, and time for "New Girl."

And speaking of which, the other night on "New Girl," her friend CeCe played the part that has been done over and over in tv and movies, namely: the really pretty girl who loves bad boys.  One of the three great sitcom stereotypes for women, right there.  She is beautiful, all the guys want her, and would strew roses in her path for just the chance to dally with her once.  

But she only likes the guy who shows up late, and ignores her or insults her.  Him, she can't get enough of.

The other two stereotypes for women in sitcoms and movies are:

• The beautiful woman who never gets asked out because everyone figures it's not even worth it to ask her out (to the prom, the office Christmas party, the opening of a new abattoir) because she is clearly dated up through St Patrick's Day, so they don't ask, and she sits home alone night after night, wishing that new guy in Accounts Receivable would stop mooning over her and pick up the intercom to ask her out.  This role is usually played by women such as Cindy Crawford or Candice Bergen.  In the real world, beautiful women are busier than Lindsay Lohan's lawyer, and if the guy from Accounts Receivable ever did call to ask them out, the answer would be, "Who is this, again?"
• The beautiful woman married to a chubby, yet jocular, guy.  Think Leah Remini ("King of Queens") and Audrey Meadows ("The Honeymooners"). In the real world, guys who look like Kevin James and Jackie Gleason are strangers to the Leahs and the Audreys, and don't marry lovely women. Except for me!