Another Hippie “how to” tip

If you are thinking of running away to join a hippie commune, perhaps you would like the web site for doing school bus conversions?

So hit this link

http://www.skoolie.net/

 

Who Can Forget Remembrance Day?

As this year’s Remembrance Day was approaching, folks in the Los Angeles area were noticing that radio station KGIL has a new format and is calling itself retro1260 (dot com) because they are playing pop music from the Fifties and Sixties and that, in turn, reminds this columnist of some “never to be forgotten” lessons that seem to have become as obscure as some of the songs that haven’t been heard on the radio for forty years.  What would the soldiers who died in Vietnam have to say about the very likely scenario that President Obama is about to send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan?  Can an entire country get Alzheimer’s disease?

Last year, this columnist was in Sydney on Remembrance Day and was very moved by the news coverage of that day’s events in their country. 

Anyone who graduated from college in May of 1965 will surely recall that the very next month LBJ sent six divisions of U. S. Marines to South Vietnam to clean the mess up. 

In May of  1965, Ford Motor Company’s Mustangs were all “fresh out of the box” new and the really shrewd guys were buying the ones souped up by Carroll Shelby’s team.  Some really smart fellows were renting “competition ready” Mustangs from Hertz and taking them out to a nearby track and using them to compete.  Why put that kind of wear and tear on a car that you own?

The bunnies at the Playboy Club served drinks with a maneuver known as the bunny slouch so that their cups wouldn’t runneth over.

If KGIL really wants to bring back memories, why don’t they use some recordings of the classic sixties disk jockeys introducing the songs?  Who can forget the voice of Wolfman Jack which was heard “coast to coast, border to border, wall to wall and tree-top tall”?  Didn’t Don Sherwood modestly call himself the world’s greatest disk jockey?  Isn’t Cousin  Brucie heard outside of Manhattan on satellite radio these days?

Leaving Scranton to take a job in New York City meant being exposed to unorthodox ideas.  Scranton’s own 109th Infantry Regiment from the 28th Infantry Division had been among the troops capture at Bastogne and they were the loudest warning the local kids that anyone advocating less than full commitment to the Vietnam war effort was probably a Communist.  Wasn’t the proof the fact that the only people against the War in Vietnam (in 1965) were college professors and show business people?  You didn’t have to be a big fan of the House Un-American Activities Committee to know what that meant.

In 1965, FM radio was a phenomenon that (mostly) hadn’t yet happened.  In Scranton, WEJL used the feed (with station identification blurbs) from WQXR which featured classical music.  Heck this columnist had listening habits that meant he was a fan of both Johnny Cash and Wagner (and that was long before the German got such a memorable plug in the movie “Apocalypse Now.”)

Back then the expression “Bookrow of America” referred to more than just the Strand Bookstore.  The one and only Barnes and Nobel bookstore was just a short walk away. 

Does the Wannamaker store still have that bridge that carried shoppers from one building to another over the street?

Back then, a policy called “the Hayes code” mandated that any criminal portrayed in any film had to be apprehended.  Thus young people were constantly reminded that the bad guys would always get caught.  The thought that an American could commit war crimes and then get a pass was a complete contradiction.  It would never happen, so don’t waste time worrying about that.  The WWII vets backed that philosophy with very strong assertions that Americans were the good guys and would never think of torturing a prisoner. 

Who had the “good guys” T-shirts?  Were they offered by WABC or WMCA?

Scranton may not have been a candidate city for housing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but it was the home for WARMland and WICK.  It was rumored that the Sunday morning programming in the Polish language earned enough money to underwrite the rest of WICK’s programs featuring the pioneers of Rock.

Will Fox News mention the irony of the fact that this year’s observance of Remembrance Day comes at a time when a new Afghanistan strategy is about to be revealed and that example of poor timing seems to make a mockery of the “never be forgotten” oratory that abounds each year when America marks “Veterans’ Day”?  Doesn’t the word “veteran” apply only to those who survived the carnage?

When KGIL plays “My Way,” we half expect them to dedicate it to George W. Bush.  “Through it all/when there were doubts/I ate them all . . . and did it my way!” 

Folks shouldn’t say “we will never forget,” if it’s obvious that they damn well have.

Youtube offers a clip of Cousin Brucie from 42 years ago promoting an effort to send a shipment of Christmas items to the troops serving in Vietnam.  That will suffice for this column’s ending quotation.  Here’s the link to that clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxb8PD_uQPE

When the Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam played Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” that was the signal that the final evacuation of Saigon was commencing, so now, just because he’s a sentimental old fool, our disk jockey will tear himself away from KGIL long enough to play that very song.  Maybe it’s time to contact America’s “granny war correspondent” and find out how to apply for an embed in Afghanistan and get out of Cali.  Have a week full of “foonman brothers” ads (or have you forgotten that “Laugh-In” shtick?). 

 

Return of the Generation Gap

The Santa Monica Ice rink has opened and in Australia the citizens are getting all enthusiastic about Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup race.  It’s their version of America’s Kentucky Derby.  Many women go to work on the first Tuesday of November dress up as if they were going to the opera.  Bets are made during the day and by five minutes after three in the afternoon; it will all be over for this year.  Do Americans care about that bit of foreign culture?  Should we write about that or can we find a new take on the Bush wars?

In Los Angeles, the morning of November 1, 2009 was a living advertisement for the rich color saturation characteristic of Kodachrome film – or it would have been if you could still buy that type of film – because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it seems like a perfect summer day was beginning.  There were various and sundry bits of evidence that another Halloween had been celebrated and they subtly suggested that perhaps it would be a good day to write a column about ghosts such as the specter of repeating Vietnam era mistakes.

A quick check of the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times showed that the only topics they found worth considering were a portrait of President Obama, a tough talk piece on Iran by Doyle McManus, the possibility of fraud in the Afghanistan’s runoff election, and two assessments of economic challenge faced by the state of California.

Speaking of Shepard Fairey’s version of the Obama portrait do you think that someday someone will write about about the AP image just as one has been written about Alberto “Korda” Diaz Gutierrrez’ famous shot of “Che” Guevarra titled “Che’s Afterlife:  The Legend of an Image”  (written by Michael Casey)?

A few weeks back, while we were staying at the Hostel California, in the Venice Section of L. A., and we noticed that one of they young folks bore a striking resemblance to Ernesto “Che” Gueverra.  We asked the others if they saw the resemblance to the Cuban rebel leader and the reply was:  “Who is Che Guevarra?”

Luckily a laptop was nearby and a quick Google Images search produced a picture and the young travelers were delighted to see that the resemblance was quite striking, especially when the young man was shot in a way that would duplicate the famous “Guerrilero Heroico” image.   Cameras were activated and the one young lady who got the best shot promised to send a copy to this columnist.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t arrived in time to be used as an illustration for this column.

Just a few days ago, we were recounting that incident and when they didn’t respond to the name of the place where it happened, we gave them a clue via a line from an Eagles song:  “you can check out anytime, but you can never leave. . . .”  Some of the young folks knew who the Eagles were (no, not Perth’s West Coast Eagles), and that song in particular, but some didn’t. 

Hah!  Isn’t it ironic?  The peacnik hippies, who were on the young side of the Vietnam era’s “Generation Gap,” are now explaining that era’s cultural references to today’s younger generation.  Could it be that thanks to Rush Limbaugh, today’s college students are pro-war and the older hippies are still advocating Peace, Love, and Brotherhood?

Yikes, do the students at Berkeley, who protested budget cuts last month, know the origin of the line “the kids still respect the college dean”?

How can kids, who think they are in the “counter culture”on Telegraph Ave., be “hip” if they don’t know the titles of the Fugs’ biggest hits? 

Were the lyrics: “I used to live in New York City
Every thing there was dark and dirty
Outside my window was a steeple
With a clock that always said 12:30” about the doomsday clock? 

What was the name of the Susan Sontag essay that spawned the “Trivia” craze in the Sixties?  If that one stumps you follow this link
http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Susan_Sontag_-_Notes_on_Camp.html

Back in the Sixties every college student knew the answer to this question:  “What was Fibber McGee’s address?”

It’s not that there haven’t been any good bands that formed since the Sixties ended; the band calling itself “U2.” seems promising and wouldn’t Guns’n’Roses be quite good if they could just “get it together”?

This columnist can recall a conversation held in a bar in New York City advocating skepticism about “Tricky Dick’s” plan to win the 1968 election with a secret plan to end/win the War in Vietnam.  The older fellow chuckled when he heard the label we had pinned on Richard Nixon and informed me that was what his kids also called the Republican candidate.

What was so funny about a line in a New York City newscast that said:  “The Jets won and Heidi married the goat herder.”?  Huh?

Is it true that the Smothers brothers got tossed off network TV for not being “fair and balanced”? 

What does the expression “Up Creek Alley without a paddle” mean?

Back in the Sixties the oldies stations played Big Band music.  Now, do the oldies stations feature Sixties music?

Yikes!  As mortgages go upside down has the Generation Gap returned with the hippies now playing on the old fogies team?

Is Joey Heatherton still the hottest go-go dancer you’ll ever see?

Why didn’t kids say that Keith Leger was playing the role made famous by Burgess Meredith?

Will Harry Harrison be able to reassure me that New York City is the greatest city in the world?

There is one intriguing question that remains to be answered about a revival of the draft and a massive surge in Afghanistan:  If Fox News supported Bush’s efforts to start the war in Afghanistan, why will they ridicule President Obama for trying to continue it?  Won’t that indicate a contradictory attitude about the war, the current occupant in the White House, and bring up questions about the sanity of their contradictory stances on the same war as conducted by different Presidents?

So, if President Obama, this week, announces a surge in troop levels for the War in Afghanistan, this columnist expects to endure a massive case of déjà vu and will need to hear repeated playings of certain record albums.

The young people who seem oblivious to the dangers of an eternal war that can’t be won might learn something if they talked to some hippies about war and peace and how America’s latest wars got started. 

[Note:  while this column was going through its final polish (at a coffee house in Venice CA) a bunch of younger people were furiously pounding out key stokes as a group mtual support exorcise for the National Novel Writing Month contest.  When their half hour burst is over we’ll ask them about the clock that always says 12:30.  The second youngest one knew it was from a Mama and Papas song.]

Che is quoted online as having said:  ““If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”  Sounds like he was a hippie.

Now, the disk jockey will play the Snoop-Dog and Willie Neslson duet song, titled “Superman” as well as “Eve of Destruction,” and “Fixin’ to Die Rag,” maybe even throw in Joan Baez’s “Hello in there.”  It’s time for us to go splitsville.  Have a “Hey, Hey, LBJ” type week.

More Hippie Commune Info

Our post about running away to join a hippie commune has brought in some hits and so we will post this link to one in Tennessee

http://www.thefarm.org/general/visit.html

Maybe we should go there and do a story/column about it?

A Halloween Column to Scare Libeals

Since this will be the weekend to contemplate scary nightmares, this column postulates the idea that Jeb Bush will win the 2012 Presidential Election and we’ll throw some “connect-the-dots” items out and let the readers have a chance to frighten themselves into a state of hysterical paralysis 

Most Liberals maintain that George W. Bush’s team (with Karl Rove as the captain calling the plays) stole the 2000 and 2004 elections but somehow didn’t engineer a win for Senator John McCain in 2008. 

The way conspiracy liberals tell it; in 2004 the electronic voting machines were used to steal the results in Ohio and that was enough to deliver the win.

If this is true, why didn’t they also put the fix in for John McCain?  How could they be so forgetful?

Perhaps, since the Republican political juggernaut was fomenting a massive amount of resentment for  wars, torture, and the handouts of bailout bonuses to the banking industry, they wanted to let the Democrats (almost) take over.  (You know like in the cartoons when the bird hands the dynamite stick with a burning fuse to the coyote?)  The conspiracy corner residents, who think that the electronic voting machines permit the Republicans to micro-manage results, might want to take note of the fact that the Democrats thanks to Joe Lieberman may not have a filibuster-proof majority after all.  Did Rove dream up an “almost, but not quite” style “majority”?

So, if the Republicans can sabotage the Obama program for four years, they can then run a campaign emphasizing that Bush’s successor did not accomplish anything and therefore he needs replacement.

If this premise is valid, won’t the electronic voting machines be used to further cripple the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, next year?

If, like President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama has to constantly battle a solid wall of recalcitrant Republican oppositionists, he would go into 2012 with an emaciated accomplishments list, which would set the stage for an “elect someone who will get something done” type Republican campaign against him.

The mainstream press has ignored the issue of the electronic voting machines’ reliability factor and so it seems likely they would greet a 2010 Republican “surge” with a shrug and a “the voters confounded the pollsters again” type of spin-cover story.

The possibility that the Republicans could use the kowtowing journalists in the (supposedly) liberal mainstream media to cast Jeb in a variation of a modern Restoration Drama role which would be as likely as your personal skepticism of journalism’s reliability factor would permit. 

With the help of a complacent press, Jeb could take the podium at the 2012 Republican Convention amid an enthusiastic partisan crowd and a “hear no evil, see no evil” press gallery would conveniently miss the zombie symbolism of the Bush family’s return to power.

Recently Smirking Chimp featured a story about the fact that Germany’s Supreme Court ruled that electronic voting machines were unreliable.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/24469

A few days earlier the Bradblog web site (which has been covering the electronic voting machines’ poor performance record in test situations) reported that a Georgia Supreme Court ruling established that electronic voting results can not be contested on grounds that voters were thereby disenfranchised.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7445

At this point, it becomes a personal call for each member of this column’s audience:  If you can discount the 2004 objections, the failed tests stories, the ruling of Germany’s Supreme Court and the belief that the Republicans might stoop that low, then you can accept the possibility of a Bush Family return to power in 2012 as a legitimate news story.    If you concede all these points then you have to either find a plausible reason for the Republicans not to engineer such a scary scenario or you can start to prepare yourself for the gleeful Rush Limbaugh programs that would be used to (metaphorically) rub salt into the Democrats wounds following a Jeb victory in 2012.

This was just an attempt to provide a speculative Halloween column as entertaining as any of the installments of the Saw movie series.  If it turns out to be a prophesy . . . we tried to warn folks about the electronic voting machines, but they didn’t listen.  If we really wanted to scare you with this column, we’d elaborate on the particulars of just how long Bush’s “Forever War” is going to last 

Shakespeare wrote:  ‘Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.

Now, the disk jockey will play the traditional Halloween carol of Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash.” (Were you expecting him to play the entire “Music to Scare the Hell Out of Your Neighbors” album?) We have to go see if our contact at Playboy can get us into this year’s party at the Mansion.  We are afraid that it ain’t gonna happen.  Have a “Don’t ever scare me like that again” type week.

On the Road to the Bloggers’ Hall of Fame

If Jack Kerouac were alive today, it seems quite likely that since he liked to be in the avant-garde contingent of contemporary writers, he would be blogging, but what sort of items would he deem worthy of his attention?  Would he point out the fact that after serving seven years as President, George W. Bush’s apologists were stoutly advocating the idea that some problems were the result of  Bill Clinton’s policies but a mere 8 months after President Barack Obama was sworn in, those same Republican folks were firmly maintaining that now all of America’s current problems are the results of the new President’s agenda? 

Perhaps Jack Kerouac would point out that the fact that Clinton had a long lasting effect and that the new President had quickly taken control might be a subtle indication that Bush’s interim period had been ineffective and impotent.  Do Republicans’ really want to imply that the USA’s first Negro President was a virile buck who has put his mark on world affairs that quickly and that Bush never managed to achieve that in seven years?  

After reading “Why Kerouac Matters,” by John Leland, this columnist realizes that a misperception had formed.  This reader had leaped to the assumption that Kerouac would sympathize with the political views of writers like Paul Krasner, Art Kunkin (of Los Angeles Free Press fame), or Hunter S. Thompson.  Such a surmise is very wrong.  Leland asserts that millions of Kerouac’s readers have misunderstood what Kerouac was saying.

Leland postulates that the father of the Beatnik movement actually held strong conservative convictions as far as political philosophy was concerned.  The literary critic then doles out the evidence to back up his contention.  (See page 28 in particular.)

Kerouac did not inject many (if any) references to the Korean War in his novels.

Who will win the Series?  Although Kerouac’s name was synonymous with New York City, he didn’t seem to care much about pro sports let alone root for the Dodgers, Giants, or Yankees.

For as much traveling as Kerouac did, he hardly ever extols tourist attractions.  He seemed to concentrate on jazz, drinking, and sex.  That and his spiritual visions endeared him to the hippies and they assumed that his mystical moments constituted permission to experiment with mind altering drugs. 

Would Kerouac have blogged about topics which were not to be found on the Internet, such as the hypothetical “Bloggers’ Hall of Fame,” or would he have extolled patriotic approval of all of George W. Bush’s war crimes?  What would you expect of someone whose hero was William F. Buckley?

If someone doesn’t start the Blogger’s Hall of Fame, what good is blogging?

How can a blogger compare the Golden Gate Bridge to the Sydney Harbor Bridge if he doesn’t make the effort to see and walk across both of them?  Why state a conclusion if there is no chance that the results won’t take the blogger a step closer to just getting nominated for a place in such a hypothetical institution?

Kerouac said “Why must I always travel from here to there as if it mattered where one is?” 

Isn’t the answer the same as the one to the question about why did that guy climb Mount Everest; “Because it’s there!”?

Kerouac did rewrites and polished his work and presented one draft of “On the Road” on one long continuous sheet of paper as if it were a product of a spontaneous burst of creative energy.  He gave encouragement to bloggers who tends to write fast and post in haste by saying:  “Why let your internalized high school English teacher edit what God gave you?”

Speaking of putting a roll of teletype paper into your typewriter and starting a marathon of keystroking, the folks at National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) are about to start their annual November typa-thon competiton.  Kerouac wannabes, you have been given ample notification.

Can you just imagine a talk show chat featuring Jack Kerouac and fellow conservative Ann Coulter?

Just before the posting process for this column was started, a quick bit of fact checking shows that the site for the annual blog awards (http://2009.bloggies.com/) contains a notation for repeat winners that they are considered to be at the Hall of Fame level of achievement. 

Who would get a link on a Kerouac Blog?  How about the teacher going around the world on a bicycle? 
(http://teacherontwowheels.com/) Talk about a road trip.

Why did this columnist and so many others leap to assumptions about Kerouac if the ideas weren’t in the words?  Leland leaves the questions about the possibility that those messages were present on the subconscious level and thereby more effectively communicated, to other future critics-analysts.

After reading Leland’s book, a re-read of “On the Road” seems quite likely.

“Why Kerouac Matters” doesn’t have an Index.  (Boooo!)  Somewhere in the book, didn’t Leland mention a jazz composition titled “Kerouac”?  Without an Index, that fact slips through the existentialist’s time warp and disappears into the either.  An Index would also help to determine which of George Shearing’s tracks Kerouac liked and which he didn’t because he thought they showed a new attitude of cool and commercial.

In “On the Raod,” Kerouac wrote:  “He said we were a band of Arabs coming to blow up New York.”

Now, the disk jockey will play Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray’s “The Hunt,” Prez Prado’s “Mambo Jambo,” and Slim Gaillard’s “C-Jam Blues.”  It’s time for us to bop out of here.  Have a “Go moan for man” type week.

Old Citroen

This old Citroen was seen in Venice CA today (October 23, 2009) getting a frontal shot of it looked to be more bother than it would be worth, so we cranked off a telephoto shot and said “good enough.”

Absurdism and Reality TV

(Venice CA) While standing in line at the Cow’s End Coffee House waiting for my turn to order a white hot chocolate drink, the TV monitor featured CNN’s coverage of the barf boy and balloon dad. They were relaying the information that last week’s scientific experiment gone bad might have been a publicity stunt that failed. It seems balloon dad is more than just an amateur clone of “Back to the Future’s” Dr.Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd); he actually is more of a combination of Cuthbert J. Twillie (W. C. Fields), Orson (War of the World broadcast) Wells, and Rosie Ruiz all rolled in to one. [Why can’t the news shows play “Up, up and away (in my beautiful balloon)” as background music when they give updates on the “balloon boy” story?]

It seems that the “Let’s revitalize the concept of Zeppelins” guy is a bit disappointed by the prospect that his chances to land a reality TV gig have just gone down the toilet. Well, this columnist came up with a suggestion that should leave balloon dad flush with excitement and get his spirits flying higher than the Hindenburg on a cross ocean trip to New Jersey. Since it looks like he’s going to “the joint,” “the big house,” or the place where Johnny Cash recorded a live version of “A Boy Named Sue;” why doesn’t he see if the reality TV production company would like to put some video audio equipment in his cell for 24/7 coverage of him paying his debt to society. That way folks could participate vicariously in his attempt to become rehabilitated.

The only possible objection to such a venture would be that it would set a precedence and that would open the possibility that some other company could up the ante by initiating pay-per-view access to Charlie Manson in his cell.

After getting our drink, we talked to some of our fellow Cow customers and in doing so we came up with a curious local belief. According to a reliable source, if a person says a prayer to Bob Marley, within five minutes, someone will offer that person a joint. No! Not Q or “the rock” (isn’t that a national park and not the slammer these days?) a joint as in marijuana.

Now some cynics might suggest that in Venice even if you don’t say the prayer, it’s still gonna happen, but we’re just relaying the local lore.

Actually, we hear that the fire escape to the rooftop crib where (allegedly) Jim Morrison crashed has been removed because so many tourists have been attempting to visit that particular location, the means of getting there had to be removed but that, in turn, has angered the fire inspector.

Speaking of smoking that exotic herb, we heard a rumor that one of the local legal medical dispensaries for that very kind of medicinal cigarette has provoked the usually tolerant and liberal local artists into making a concerted effort to close down one of those angels of mercy (?) efforts because of the fact that they have been a bit rude in chasing away some of the world famous Venice Beach street performers working in close proximity to the “legal medicinal pot” location’s front door.

Isn’t one of that folk remedy’s effects to make the “patient” mellow and easy going? What up with the “scam, kid, ya bother me” type attitude?
There was a time, many, many moons ago, when the “hang-loose” attitude was one of the area’s trademark attributes.

There was a local fellow who would sit on one of the benches and ask for money. On occasion he would use his discretionary funds to purchase a liquid libation which might leave him in the prone position in the middle of the Ocean Front Walk. This columnist can remember seeing a police car drive around the guy and leave him taking his afternoon siesta unbothered. We were never able to verify the local urban legend saying that he was given every possible break because he had won a Medal of Honor during the Second World War.

Guess who is supposed to have been a Venice resident for a mere six weeks (or so) before trying her luck further up the coast where she joined a band called “Big Brother and the Holding Company.” Ironically the singer who became synonymous with the San Francisco sound of the sixties, died in Los Angeles.

It was on Ocean Front Walk where (according to Danny Sugerman’s biography) John Densmore offered fellow UCLA student, Jim Morrison a chance to fill-in that evening for hid band’s singer.

Venice also was home to the only bar in the world that intimidated us away. That didn’t happened in Casablanca, but it did happen when we had the opportunity to have a sarsaparilla at “The Sand Bar.”

This columnist can personally vouch for the inexpensive but filling breakfasts which were offered by the Layafette café.

The Catholic Church displayed a bit of civic pride by naming the local one “St. Mark’s.”

Just about the only thing missing in Venice CA is a bar that could boast that it had been (one of) Hemingway’s favorite gin mills.

Just across the border in Santa Monica, the legendary pioneer punk venue called “Blackie’s” is now a chic restaurant run by a world famous chef.

Don’t get the idea that his columnist has gone Yuppie just because of his visits to the Cow’s End. When this columnist recently chatted with Caleb, the owner, we asked where the cow which was on top of the building many years ago went, he pointed to the cow and immediately knew this columnist was not a “johnny come lately” newbie. We got extra points for knowing that the place, which attracts laptop owners with wifi access, could boast that an episode of “The Rockford Files” had done some location work on the premises.

Do the hippies in Venice refuse to abandon their attachment to the past? Recenlty we saw a young fellow in his old car. He was driving up Lincoln in a green four door convertible 1927 Bentley. Can’t he, at least, get into the Sixties frame of mind and upgrade to a VW bug?

Aimee Semple McPherson did better than balloon dad when she told newsmen: “It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

Now, the disk jockey takes great civic pride in playing “Down on Me,” “L. A. woman,” the “They shoot horses soundtrack album” and “the Lawrence Welk Show” theme song.

This is the world’s laziest journalist reporting live (via wi-fi) from our source for white hot chocolate drinks. Have an “out of Vietnam now!” type week.

Example of different styles of blogging with links

EXAMPLE ONE
Blurbs with link following words.

Marina Developers Contribute to Supervisors’ Campaigns – Politics: Records show that leaseholders have given $508,044 to members of county board since 1986. They say they donate money to win access to public officials.
By JEFFREY L. RABIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER April 12, 1992
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-04-12/news/mn-480_1_campaign-contribution-reports

Grand Jury Asks D.A. to Review Leases at Marina – Development: It wants Garcetti to determine if laws were broken or procedures ignored in negotiation of long-term deals for prime real estate.
By FREDERICK M. MUIR, TIMES STAFF WRITERS and JEFFREY L. RABIN, TIMES STAFF WRITERS August 11, 1994
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

EXAMPLE TWO
Blurbs with embedded links

Jeff Rabin LA Times story about Marina Developers Contribute to Supervisors’ Campaigns

Muir/Rabin LA Times story about Grand Jury asking Garcetti to determine if long-trem deals broke any laws.

EXAMPLE THREE
Index
Under multiple listings
Example for L. A. Times story about Grand Jury asking Garcetti to investigate long term deals

County Board of Supervisors
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

Grand Jury
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

Gil Garcetti
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

L. A. Times
August 11, 1994
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

Leases
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

Rabin
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-08-11/local/me-26025_1_grand-jury

EXAMPLE IV
Inert link and attempt to activate an inert link

Inert
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-13/news/mn-1002_1_county-officials

Activating an inert link
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-13/news/mn-1002_1_county-officials

If the link above is in blue that means that you can be taken right to the story on the Internet just by clicking on the blue type.

Zen and the Art of Hoaxes

(El Paso, TX) America is the home of the “Inconsistency for fun and profit” school of business philosophy.  Here’s a good example:  Richard Heene says he didn’t know that his kid wasn’t in the balloon and a large part of the USA reacts by crying:  “Fraud!”  George W. Bush claims he didn’t know that the WMD’s in Iran were a figment of his own imagination and all Republicans respond with this nonchalant reaction:  “well, that’s good enough to start a war (even though it contradicts the American philosophy as stated at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials) and let’s let it go at that.”  Who, other than the Who, cares about getting fooled again?

Isn’t inconsistency the basis for driving people nuts (as well as the hobgoblin of small minds?)?  When Pavlov’s bell rings and the dog doesn’t get the expected treat isn’t that a good way to make the dog begin to manifest schizophrenic behavior?

Don’t Texans, and especially the 43rd President, know that a different term for hoax is to call it a practical joke or to at least use a deceptively exotic label such as:  “preemptive strike” rather than calling it a “sucker punch”?

Richard Heene should be held accountable for an expensive prank, and George W. Bush should get a pass regarding any war crimes trials and be hailed as the one who should be getting this year’s Nobel Prize for his efforts to track down rogue weapons of mass destruction.  What’s wrong with a little bit of inconsistency?

“You got your mind right, Luke?”

Good patriotic American Christian Republicans have no trouble seeing that a Texan like George W. Bush deserves an “attaboy” for his use of extreme questioning because the results saved American lives.  The Geheime Stastspoltzei used the same methods while questioning French citizens (AKA “frogs”) in an effort to root out members of the resistance and they faced charges of war crimes for their dastardly efforts, but if it could have been proven that by doing so, they had saved American lives, then all the expenses involved in the Nuremberg trials could have been avoided.

Can’t the Democrats see that sending American troops to Afghanistan today is in the same commendable tradition as sending volunteers to the Alamo? 

When Texas was invited to join the United States, they put a secession clause into the contract and by golly if Americans can’t live up to the contracts they sign, then hellfire, they are getting this capitalism stuff all wrong. 

Didn’t some great capitalist say “I don’t want lawyers who will tell me what I can and can not do; I want lawyer who will get done, what I tell them to do!”  Wasn’t whoever said that the same fellow who coined the phrase:  “Get ‘er done!”?  Would he have let some lawyer foil attempts to save American lives by using whatever interrogation methods were necessary to learn what a terrorist didn’t want to tell?  

In a capitalistic democracy the bottom line is king.

The big difference between George W. Bush’s search for WMD’s and Balloon Boy’s adventures is that 43 was smart enough to not let a six year old spill the beans on national TV.  The Bush bunch knew that once you make up a story, you stick to it and so the search for WMD’s in Iraq has become a sacred American tradition that is not questioned.

Letting a kid commit a blooper that “lets the cat out of the bag,” isn’t a good game plan.  If you are going to fool all of the people all of the time, you’d best select a Svengali spokesman who is erudite and eloquent.  Shouldn’t Donald Rumsfeld have offered his services to the Heene family?

Online Davy Crockett is credited with saying:  “Step down off your high horse, Mister.  You don’t get lard unless you boil the hog.”

The disk jockey will now play, Marty Robin’s “El Paso,” Kinky Friedman’s “Proud to be from El Paso,” and Bobby Fuller’s “I Fought the Law (and the Law Won).”  Now, it’s time for us to go down to Rose’s cantina.  Have a “Just Kidding!” type week.

Australia vs. Canada (Round 5) Cool buildings in Santa Monica

In Santa Monica, there is a building where both the U. S. and Australian flags are on display.  It gives the Aussies something to crow about.  It seems to be some actor’s home office.  There doesn’t seem to be any building flying the Canadian flag in Santa Monica, so it looks like Oz wins this weeks round.

Next week:  movie industry will be the category

Promobabble Frisco Issue

This week’s promobabble will be a bit less coherent than usual because of the “on the road” conditions for using computers.   We had promised ourselves not to buy books while traveling, but ya gotta have a book to pass the time when there is down time, so at the SF Library sale on Friday, the first book I bought was K. C. Constantine’s “Family Values.”  The second was James Joyce’s “Dubliners.”    Fragments, stray thoughts, and odd facts will be jumbled together and members of the Promobabble Patrol should be a bit used to such methodology from this writer.  Lurkers will just have to bare with us.

After writing the last sentence, I glanced in “The Dubliners” and chanced to read this sentence:  “He said that the happiest time of one’s life was undoubtedly one’s schoolboy days and that he would give anything to be young again.”

 

If one were young again and investigating the cultural milieu of a city, there would be a great deal of work to do to find the hidden treasures.  Yea, you can consult a travel book and locate the tried and true, but the challenge is to find the artists who have yet to earn the public’s respect.

 

 

Some scalawag suggested that rather than lament the disappeare dculture of San Francisco, I should be concentrating on finding what is new and innovative and happening now.   Some years ago, my Buddy Russ, and I went out on a scouting patrol and wound up looking for attractive members of the opposite sex at a popular place in South Jersey.  As we surveyed the crowd, the house band was working very assiduously to enlive the crowd.  Wondering what it would have been like to be in the Cavern Club when the Beatles were just getting started, it occured to me that most of the young men who had that experience would have probably been much more interested in assessing the ladies than in judging the marketablility of the band.  Years later, while reading about Bruce Springstein and histhe early phase of his carreer, it stated that he had been the house band for a place called the Earlton Bowl in Cherry Hill.  Say, wasn’t that about the same time that Russ tooke me to that very location?  Could it be that rather than the early Beatles, I had overlooked a chance to groove on the early phases of the E-Street band?   One had to be aware that there are two kinds of famous artists.  Those who have arrived and are a known commodity and those who have yet to make their mark.  The latter are a bit more accessable that the “stars,” but a bit harder to identify and therein lies the challenge of doing a survey of any contemporary scene.   Kurt from the Outlook art Department introduced me to a great many interesting folks in the Tiki Scene in L. A.  He is in SF and if I had the time to look him up and get introduced to some of his new pals in this city then I mihgt meet a future art phenominon.

Stuff from the Smirking Chimp columns will tell you more about what is happening to BP/Moses/UR and it won’t be cross posted here, so you gotta look that stuff up.

Writing under these conditions (the meter is running on a paid session 30 minutes left) is very hectic and doing the usual stuff like spell check and posting links is time consuming and so, we will mostly skip that sort of stuff.

San Francisco is a great city and blah blah, and blah.

The title of Don Sherwood’s book is Confessions of the World’s Greatest Disk Jockey.  I like that title.

Now, our disk jockey will play Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay” 

To be continued . . .

More Cowbell

We were wondering what, other than topics that are rather underrepresented on the Internets, will help build traffic coming to this web site.  We heard Reverend Billy speak Sunday at City Lights and it occured that perhaps what this blog needs is:  More Cowbell!

Yeah, and perhaps a few updates on the career of Moby Grape.

To be continued . . .

Hunter Thompson Said It Was Going to Be like This

Staying at a hostel means that the conversation can take an unusual turn that you are not likely to find in a local American bar.  How should an America respond when a citizen of another country glibly asserts, as a lad from Britain named William Owen did recently, that George W. Bush is a “pussy war criminal”? 
 
Should an American try to refute the wimpy charge?  George W. Bush hid as a paper entity qualified to fly an airplane that was no longer being manufactured during Vietnam, and so trying to assert that he was as macho as Hitler, who won an Iron Cross in Battle during WWI, won’t work. 
 
Refuting the criteria for war crimes that was established at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials won’t work either because the things that Bush has ordered closely match some of the methods that Herr Hitler also sanctioned.
 
It’s a debating fork.  An American can not prove that Bush is a macho war criminal and he can’t prove that he doesn’t qualify (under the guidelines established at Nuremberg) as a war criminal either, so what’s a good citizen to do?
 
The comedian, Dennis Miller, has the right answer:  you just blindly assert that he has been a great President.  It is the funniest Dennis Miller routine ever.  He delivers the laughs with a dead-pan serious deliver that makes it so much more hilarious than if he did the old wink-wink-nudge-nudge (which is kinda hard to do on a radio show) and that is what makes the routine killer comedy.  The routine ranks right up there with the classic “Who’s on first?”
 
Anyone who tries to refute the wimpy-war-criminal assertion is doomed to failure. Especially on a day when Bush’s “the economy is sound” speech causes convulsions.  The best debating strategy is to firmly switch the topic to something that can lead to a mutual agreement, such as the exhilarating atmosphere for tourists exploring San Francisco.  So far, ain’t nobody said they’ve been disappointed by Frisco.

Monday was one of those picture postcard perfect days in San Francisco.  We stopped by the Cindy for Congress HQ and noted that they need volunteers and monetary donations.  Later in the afternoon, we walked up Knob Hill and when we say “up” we mean “up” with capital letters and triple underline.  The hills have gotten steeper since 1969.  Back, then they were steep enough to inspire a great comedy routine by Bill Cosby.

Sunday was an exhausting day.  The Castro Street Fair deserves a column of its own, and seeing Rev. Billy at City Lights Books, proved that the fellow who left a recent comment that suggested that looking back at ‘69, might cause a tourist to forget to “be here now” and enjoy the newest cultural offerings available in S. F.

As a kid, we envied Herb Caen’s ability to write columns in San Francisco.  Later, we envied Hunter S. Thompson’s SF writing gig.  Walking around “the City” on a bright sunny day knowing that there would be a column to knock out that night was exhilarating.

The ocean side of the city was socked in with low lying clouds, which were spilling through the Golden Gate.  The Bridge was covered with low lying clouds but the towers were poking through up into the sunlight. 

Hunter Thompson warned that the Bush team would only bring darkness to America and he didn’t live to see just how right he was.

Will the Bush team impose martial law and suspend the election?  How else can they avoid arrest for war crimes? 

Will America let him get away with martial law, just like he started the war with Iraq and sanctioned torture? 

Some time ago, we tried to contact Hunter S. Thompson and see if he would bet on the possibility that despite what the Constitution says, Bush would still be President after Inauguration day in 2009.  He never took the bet.  Subsequently we tried to see if Maureen Dowd would act as his proxy.  She never responded either.  Oh, well, if it does happen, readers of this web site won’t be able to say this columnist didn’t give them a heads-up.

Hunter S. Thompson said:  “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” 

Now, the disk jockey will play a Moby Grape album and we will take another walk.  Have a “Maltese Falcon” type week.

Quicksilver Messenger Service

It is discouraging when the young folks in San Francisco haven’t heard of a great San Francisco band like Moby Grape, but there is still some hope.  Those who remember the Quicksilver Messenger Service will be pleased to see that there is a goodly number of young people wearing T-shirts that say:  “Quicksilver,” so there must be some fans left.

Rainbow and Rawhide

http://www.bartcop.com/

Yesterday, bart over at Bartcop, gave this blog a boost by quoting us and putting a link there, so today we have to try to come up with yet another good item so that if any of the folks Bart sent our way comes back, we will be able to show them that we are not a “one shot” phenomenon.  The challenge will be to have something new that hasn’t been on the Internets elsewhere.

Did you know that the people who guard the President of the United States have code names for the President and his wife?  When Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy were in the White House, according to a reliable source, their code names were:  Rawhide and Rainbow.

We don’t know what the code names for Dubya and Pickles are, but maybe one of the new readers will know and can post that information in the comments?

Dead Bird Walking

(Berkeley CA) Oct. 9.  Under ordinary circumstances, it would be up to folks like Joe Eaton of the Berkely Daily Planet to write one of his columns about the fact that the <a href =http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-10-09/article/31322?headline=Wild-Neighbors-West-Nile-Virus-Hits-the-Yellow-billed-Magpie>Yellow-billed Magpie</a> (AKA <I>Pica nuttali</I>) is in danger because of the fact that the West Nile Virus is causing an alarming number of that species to die, but these are not ordinary times and the topic deserves mention for a variety of reasons. 

Somebody has got to care. Obviously The Four Hundred Million Dollar Man (AKA Rush L.) won’t give a hoot (15 yard penalty bad ornithology pun) about the bird in danger of extinction because his billionaire buddies won’t make one damn cent more if they live or if they all die. 

The bird, according to Eaton, can only be seen inside the state of California and thus is a niche topic even for the bird watchers in other areas.  So why should readers of this web site outside the state of California care about it?  There’s only so many causes a body can accommodate and with the threat to democracy that the fall election carries, shouldn’t this be a column about the “round up the usual suspects” topics that are of great importance? 

Heck, didn’t John McCain say that he can solve multiple problems simultaneously?   If he can do that, why can’t liberals multitask while coping with the tsunami of problems in the world?

Since John McCain excels at being disingenuous, maybe he was adding one more fib to the pile when he bragged about being the omnipotent problem solver? 

The plight of the Yellow-billed Magpie is proven to be even more dangerous when Eaton points out that the government agencies that can deal with that specific problem are facing budget cuts.  Similarly the large daily newspapers are trying to cover more and more news stories with smaller staffs. 

Naomi Wolf and Daniel Ellsberg are speaking in Berkeley Monday, October 13, at the First Congressional Church.

The classic film, “The Battleship Potemkin” will be playing at the Pacific Film Archive on Friday. 

Doctors Without Borders will recreate a Refugee Camp in San Francisco at Little Marina Green Park from October 15 to the 19.

Do you honestly think that Rush Limbaugh would see any of these items as worthy of a serious mention on his program?  If you are willing to bet that if his comedy writers (do any of Jay Leno’s writers do any freelance moonlighting for el Rushbo?) don’t give him a zinger on these topics he won’t say one damn word about them, then you have a strong hint as to what the media and journalism will be like if the conservatives have their way and crush liberal topics and all dissent.

Somebody has got to care.  You must be one of those “somebodys” if you came to this website and have read this column this far. 

Back in the Sixties wasn’t the advice:  “Give a damn!”

What goes around, comes around only now, it is:  “Give a damn, while you still can.”

Donate to the websites that speak to you on the issues you care about.  Send the URL’s that say something you believe to all the members of your posse.  There’s a retired colonel in Germany who supports Bush in a major (another one of those lousy puns again?) way and sending him the links to the stories and websites (such as the Brad blog?) probably aren’t going to cause him to switch his allegiance from Nixon to Kennedy, but what the heck, he always did like to hear the dissenting point of view, so I continue to send them to him.

Jack Weinberg is credited for coining the phrase:  “Never trust anyone over thirty.” 

Now, the disk jockey will play Country Joe and the Fish’s hit “<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5btZWbViPA>Fixin’ to Die Rag</a>” and we’ll rush on out of here.  Have a “start singin’” type week.

Eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow . . .

Alexis Zorba (Anthony Quinn), when asked if he was married, said:  “Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? I’m a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.”  His reaction was to fully embrace life and live it to its fullest and therein lies the greatest danger of the Bush Era for the Conservative Christians, if they are not very careful, their kids will embrace the Zorba response and take to wine, women, and dancing.

Isn’t there a WWI cliché about gulping down a drink and saying:  “Eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we may die!”?  Well, my friends, young Republicans may be gullible, but that doesn’t mean that they are stupid and when they figure out that in the Muslim culture, revenge is a duty, then it won’t be long before they realize that the carnage in Iraq has built up a debt that will insure that an entire generation of Iraqis will be intent on extracting their revenge on Americans, then those young Republicans will be likely to be ready to embrace Zorba’s philosophy and learn to dance.

The Bush team has always talked about victory and completely ignored the facet of Muslim culture that values revenge.  When the conservative Christians contemplate a victory in Iraq, they do so thinking that the losers will  keep the “turn the other cheek” philosophy in mind. 

Ignoring bad debts has gotten the Bush men into “another fine mess” on Wall Street. Shrugging off bad investment debts hasn’t worked out very well and they have taken the same attitude regarding Muslim revenge.  They shrug it off thinking “no one will be the wiser.”  

Kids who lose a bet like to worm out of it by saying:  “You didn’t say we were playing for ‘keepsies’!”  Well, the boys who were so enthusiastic about invading Iraq (and providing eternal work and profits for Halliburton?) were so intent on having their way, that they didn’t notice that there was a difference between Sunnis and Shi-ites.  So, their naïveté also caused them to be unaware of the blood debts that would accrue from the Invasion.

Some bleeding heart liberal Cassandras tried to warn about the house of cards being built in the real estate world, but their dire warnings fell on deaf ears.  No one mentions the fact that all the deaths and lost limbs being racked up in Iraq also have a price that is being ignored.  Any choice to ignore the inevitable doesn’t mean that it won’t happen, it just means that it will be yet another opportunity to use the “no one could foresee” song and dance.

Dance?  That brings us back to the toast and the flamboyant fliers who would then hurl their glasses into the fireplace with a cavalier attitude that indicated their Christian morals were temporarily on hold.

The Red Barron used a red aeroplane to taunt the enemy and challenge them.  Painting the aircraft red was an early version of delivering sports trash talk to a rival.  Eventually, the Red Barron was hit, but he was able to land his airplane before he died. 

President Bush may try to emulate the Red Barron’s bravado, but there comes a time when bravado morphs into hubris and that brings us back to the Greeks and that brings us back to dancing and retched excess.

Are the Sons of Iraq any different from the Sons of the Dessert?  They probably seem like the same group to George W. Bush.

Screw the consequences!  Ignore Wall Street.  Go to You tube and watch the sequence where Zorba teaches a staid young British man to dance.  Then remember that ironically the Bush legacy may ultimately be that staid conservative Christians learned the Zorba attitude and embraced the wine, women and dancing that their elders warned them not to sample let alone practice to excess.

When a stock owner resorts to panic selling, it also means some shrewd bargain hunter is doing some (panic?) buying.

Today, Wall Street may be crashing, so odds are you won’t want to think about other bad aspects of the Bush legacy.  That’s just the way the Bush team likes it.

Your 401K may be depleted.  Your collectables may be worth nada.  You may have your home foreclosed tomorrow, but if you want to express your rejection of the Bush legacy, go dancing tonight and forget about the other bad debt that Bush has acquired in your name.

Zorba also said:  “God has a very big heart but there is one sin he will not forgive; if a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.”

Now, the disk jockey will play the theme song from the movie “Zorba the Greek,” and we will dance out of here.  Have a “have we hit bottom, yet?” type week.

Ghostriding the Whip (in Dublin)

(Dublin CA) Oct. 11  [Note:  This column was written in longhand in an Irish pub in Dublin, Ca., but it will be transcribed on a computer in Berkeley.  We will use the Dublin dateline because describing a bar in Dublin and giving it a Berkeley dateline doesn’t make sense.]

The Irishman has feelings of guilt because he knows he should be back at the computer writing a column headlined “Ghostriding the Whip” asking, if Bush constantly disregards laws he doesn’t like, why then should conservative Republican kids obey laws they don’t like?  You know:   monkey see; monkey do. 

Some say ghostriding is getting out of a car that’s still moving and walking along side of it.  Some define it as getting out and dancing on the hood and roof of the car while it is still moving forward.  One young source said ghostriding the whip means turning out the lights while traveling at about 100 mph on the freeways at night.  One other faction is referring to a video game:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/358255
Writing about it is a good way to plant some Google bait to bring new readers to this website.

Jersey Bill will probably ask why we had to actually go to Dublin to write the column when it would be just as easy to fib and falsify (Would you be surprised to learn that he voted for George W. Bush in 2004?).

There are several reasons why we wanted to go there and take a few notes rather than looking up a few good facts online and then faking it.

First reason:  we wanted the actual experience.

Second:  We might meet an interesting person (somebody else from Scranton, possibly, or somebody from the other Dublin?) and the only way to see if that happens is to get on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) go there and write the column in Dublin.

Third:  We wanted to send a few postcards to some friends.

We went to Evie’s (formerly Patrick’s Pub) and found that these days jukeboxes in bars have touch screen selections and some promise that they can use modern technology to play any song.  (Don’t Irish columnists just love a challenge like that?)

The “Welcome Dublin Magazine” informed us that many years ago Michael Murray and Jeremiah Fallon came to the area and bought some land from the original Spanish land owner.  Soon thereafter James Witt Dougherty came along and bought an even larger amount of land. 

Historians quibble about exactly when the area started to be called Dublin.  There were two Inns in town and they called the pair the “double Inn.”  It’s no big surprise that they go all out in that town to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

When Evie’s was Patrick’s Pub it was owned by a former boxer named James Patrick Condon.  Pictures of his boxing days adorn the walls as well as a hat and flag from the USS Nashville and a piece of barbed wire that was used on the DMZ in Korea.

Camp Parks is in Dublin and the bar regulars are very big on supporting the troops.  When a Bush-bashing columnist was asked his philosophy on vets, the reply was that anyone who sends troops into battle has a moral obligation to take care of the ones who are wounded and/or disabled.  “If you don’t want to take care of the wounded then don’t send troops into battle.”  The vet seemed less than fully enthusiastic about President Bush’s commitment to care for those wounded in Iraq.

The regulars also wanted the columnist to note that the place had the cleanest restrooms “of any of the bars you’ve ever seen.”  We’ve been to bars from Encinitas Mexico to Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, and will verify the claim made in Dublin.

After departing from the pub, a goodly amount of time was spent searching (futilely) for the aforementioned postcards.  Then it was time to leave Dublin, California.

In “The Dubliners,” James Joyce wrote:  “It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.”  (Isn’t that how many journalists feel about the Bush legacy?)

Now, the disk jockey will play Dennis Day’s version of “<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnBpVctzOnI>Clancy Lowered the Boom</a>” and we’ll dance the jig on our way out of here.  Have a “top o’ the morning” type week.

Dark Thoughts on a Beautiful Afternoon

 (Berkeley CA) Oct. 12.  The day I arrived in San Francisco in 1969, James Richter had been shot.  It took awhile, but today while walking around, I finally got to People’s Park.  I took a rest break and sat there reading the secondhand paperback, I had just bough, Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun.” 

 

The people in Berkeley said that today was unusual for a mid-October day.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was warm.  Berkeley on a warm Sunday seemed much quieter than L. A. would have been.

 

The writing in the Trumbo book is excellent.  I’ve heard about the movie adaptation and I know how it will end, but the writing is worth reading.  Do people read good writing these days? 

 

In Los Angeles, the book stores are closing in frightening numbers.  Cody’s is gone from Berkeley, but there is a remarkable number of bookstores. 

 

Reading the Trumbo book and thinking about my opinion in a recent column that the US is running up a blood debt that will fuel retaliation (which will, in turn, run up more need for retaliation and that will keep the war going) I thought of one comment that was posted with that column.  It said Muslim’s don’t indulge in revenge because there are passages in the book they go by that forbids it.  Isn’t that kinda like saying Christians are pure and chase because one of the 10 commandments forbids adultery? 

 

If they don’t believe in revenge, then why has the Sunni vs. Shiite feud been a running battle for over a thousand years? 

 

GWB has gotten us into it and, if you stop to think about it, there will be no end.  It really is the forever war.  There will be many more columns to write about this but the conservative talk show hosts will talk about victory and the ordinary people will be content to put up with the hardships until the victory comes. 

 

Victory?  Who is going to sign the surrender document?  Even if Osama signs one, others can take the Bush attitude toward the Geneva accords and say: “It isn’t binding on me because I wasn’t there when it was negotiated.”  They will then continue their battle and, long after the fighter pilot has gone to his final resting place, there will be a need to send Americans to foreign countries to continue the War on Terror.

 

“You never really knew what the fight was all about.”  DaltonTrumbo

October Surprise = Taqiya?

Bloggers, columnists, and pundits can all take their best guess as to what surprise the Republicans will unveil on the Friday before the election. 

After spending an afternoon in the Santa Monica Public Library and talking to an official of the Arab American Veterans Association, inspired by a passage in a biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton (written by Edward Rice), the time has come to take a turn at guessing what that last minute attempt at a “walk-off grand slam” will be.  Of course we can’t just blurt it out, we have to make sure that our prediction comes after the jump and then people can either agree or disagree, but they all should realize the nefarious reasoning behind this bit of longwinded preparations, which will insure that the “big reveal” comes after folks click to (as Paul Havery would say) the rest of the story.

Should a columnist take a wild guess that might, instead, inspire some Republican strategist or should he stay mum?  Well, if the columnist does guess correctly, that gives the Obama camp (if they read the prediction) a chance to start their refutation efforts even before the October surprise is uncorked on the very last weekend of the campaign.

During the campaign the two factions have tussled over the contention that Senator Obama is a Muslim.  The Republicans have intimated that he is a Muslim while simultaneously decrying one of his Christian ministers.  That would seem to be an oxymoron and too ludicrous to merit serious consideration, but imagine, if you will, that on the Friday before the election the Republican handlers “suddenly” discover the topic of taqiya, which is a form of lying about one’s religious belief if there is danger, and that can cover danger to one’s self or to Muslims in general.

This columnist in no way claims to be fully informed about the topic and some statements on this topic may not be accurate because accurate infromation was elusive.  The fact that an afternoon of research at the Santa Monica Public Library was insufficient and produced a minimum of information only indicates that there is a great danger that the topic can be easily manipulated and misinterpreted.

The Republicans can, since they have no qualms about half-truths, spin, and flat out material that will not pass a fact checker’s inspection, take the topic of taqiya and present it, on the last Friday before the election, to the willing shills in the mainstream media as a “check mate” revelation even if it is actually a bogus item that deserves a referee’s flag on the play.

Added to that the fact that it is extremely difficult in debate to prove a negative, a sudden emphasis on taqiya by the Republicans on the last Friday before the election, would leave Senator Obama and his advisors scrambling to prove the negative while simultaneously countering the destructive effect on the Obama campaign that would accompany the introduction of taqiya as the October surprise.

A book on effective courtroom argumentation suggested that predicting what the other side will say and immediately refuting it is a means of eliminating the “surprise” effect from the topic.  (A sort of “preemptive strike as it were.)  Such a defensive move would give Senator Obama the chance to lump it in with the previous negative attacks from the McCain camp and could thus be reduced to the “at this point my opponent would say anything to try to gain an advantage” dirty trick, which doesn’t seem to be playing well with the voters this year.

Could it be that after lies about Iraq being allied with al Qaeda, bogus promises to get Osama, lies about WMD’s, and numerous other instances of disingenuous statements from President Bush and assorted other Republicans, that if Senator Obama presented it as “one more lie you can expect,” it would then put any efforts to present the topic of taqiya in the position of having to prove a negative (i.e. that it isn’t yet one more lie from Republican), because Americans have grown to expect B. S. from Republicans?

One of the challenges that any columnist faces during this election season is the ability to present some new idea or concept in a tsunami of “me too!” wolf pack commentary that leads to massive amounts of echoes about things like “Wall Street’s Worst Week Ever” and Troopergate. 

Journalists for the mainstream media have been browbeaten into withholding opinions and predictions.  Pundits for major media outlets have fallen into the trap of following the herd.  Bloggers have speculated that President Bush might invoke some crises as the reason for declaring martial law and suspending the elections, but there doesn’t seem to be much heads-up material about the October Surprise.

This column is pure speculation based on some reading and research.  Predictions about Native Dancer winning the Kentucky Derby were wildly inaccurate and so we would advise loyal readers to (like an astrological forecast) accept this column for its entertainment value and not make any wagers based on what you’ve just read.

To do your own fact checking perhaps a good starting point would be this link:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Index/T/taqiya.html

Sir Richard Francis Burton has said:  “Broke is a temporary condition, poor is a state of mind.”

“<a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLB15kBvn_c>Ahab the Arab</a>” (who’d look for a white whale in the desert?) is this week’s “outro” song, selected by the disk jockey, and we’ll caravan out of here.  Have a hookah of a week.

Martial Law? It Can’t Happen Here!

On the night of Monday, October 13, in the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, Ca., Naomi Wolf and Daniel Ellsberg were the featured speakers.  Ms. Wolf presented a capsulated version of the ten steps that, in the past, have marked the transition to a fascist form of government. She pointed out how the United States is showing signs of qualifying for a match on all ten warning signals.  It was noted that there has not yet been massive detention of citizens, only relatively minor incidents.  Then Daniel Ellsberg read questions from the audience and the two speakers discussed their response to the question.

Ms. Wolf was highly enthusiastic about enacting a Constitutional Amendment that would approve the concept of ballot measures on a national level.  She cited the fact that 70% of the U. S. population is in favor of ending the war in Iraq, but progress toward that goal has been very slow. 

She also expressed her displeasure with the apathy toward torture that churches and synagogues have shown.  The attitude was:  Who Would Jesus Torture?

 

Mr. Ellsburg decried the “executive despotism” and characterized the November election as two men vying for the title of king.

The church venue was a bit of heavy handed symbolism for any writer who would want to employ the “preaching to the choir” metaphor to describe the ambiance at the event.

The questions concentrated on ways to reverse the alarming rush to fascism that the audience feared is occurring.  The replies were strong on enthusiasm for citizen participation in the governing process and rather anemic on specifics.

Afterwards a very small random sampling of the audience indicated that their enthusiasm did not extend to the level of talking to a columnist from a web site which features harsh assessments of the current President (and needs citizen participation in the form of monetary contributions to continue fulfilling that role).

Previously, the columnist had talked on the phone with two people who are much more skeptical about the possibility that martial law could ever be instituted inside the United States. 

The attitude of those two seems to be a much stronger level of disbelief than was on display in the event in Berkeley. 

If the columnist understood correctly, it boiled down to bemused annoyance for an idea that only proves that freedom of speech is alive and well inside the United States.  They fell short of the old “yes, yes, of course; now run along and play” reaction.  Jersey Bill reassured the columnist that if and when martial law is declared, he will then do what it necessary to correct the overreaction by whoever takes such a misstep.  Yeah, right, if it happens we can hold our breath for as long as it will take for Jersey Bill to have a St. Paul’s moment and change into “Resistance Man”!

Bill is anxiously awaiting the election results so that he can say to the columnist:  “See, all went well and you are still crazy so I’ll never be able to convince you that you worry needlessly.”

Somehow it is very difficult to imagine a retired high school teacher comfortably stepping into the role of an American che Guevara, but based on his emphatic assurances, we’ll take a wait and see attitude.

If the institution of martial law impinges on the finale of “Dancing With the Stars,” then America will not tolerate it.  If not; well then most Americans will still be able to emphatically reassure Bush critics, that just like the novel title said:  “It can’t happen here.”  Where’s your patriotic pride?  Don’t you know that Americans are not as dumb as the Germans who let Hitler take over?

* * * * *
Super Chicken always said:  “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.”

Now, the disk jockey will play a John Philip Sousa song and we’ll march out of here.  Have a good week because if you don’t we will have to report you to the authorities.

Visions of Cody’s Books

(Berkeley CA.) Oct. 14 Cody’s Books in Berkeley is gone but, other than that, the Sixties are alive and well in this city which is just a few beats away from San Francisco.  These days what was Cody’s is now an empty building up for rent and outside a sign urging “Bring the Troops Home,” doesn’t specify which war is being referenced.

Moe’s Books is right where it has always been and it is encouraging to see that there are more bookstores per square mile in this city than – well, it can remind a bloke of the old days on Book Row of America in New York City.  Pegasus Books in Berkeley had a used copy of Jack Kerouac’s “Visions of Cody.”  Notice it “had” one?  The proprietor of the Beat Museum in San Francisco told this columnist that that particular novel was considered by many to be Kerouac’s best and so the austerity budget suffered a tad while we indulged in an impulse purchase because we gotta do something to help the country recover from . . . is Bush permitting us to call it a “recession,” now?

A walk on Telegraph Avenue in 2008 is like taking a stroll down Memory Lane.

The photo store called “<a href = http://www.lookingglassphoto.com/>Looking Glass Photo</a>” features 4X5 sheet film and just seeing a box of that brought back memories from more than forty years ago.  You had to know the notch code for film and that would cue you as to how to load the film into the film holder with the emulsion side out.  You had to know what the dark slide indicated.  White side out meant unexposed film; black side out meant a picture had been taken.  All that sounds like gobbledygook to people who take digital photos, but film heads will say “aye, lad, there’s the rub.”

While we were there we picked up a flyer calling our attention to the 32nd <a href = http://www.nikon-npci.com/>Nikon Photo Contest International</a>, whose theme, this year, is:  “At the heart of the image.”

Tuesday in Berkeley was one of those marvelous Indian Summer days, with warm temperatures and clear blue skies, that the locals relish.  It was what photographers would call an f-16 day.  (People in L. A. think they are entitled to 345 such days each year.)  Isn’t it ironic that while Berkeley resident Jane Stillwater is exploring Iran, another one of this site’s columnists is jotting down notes about her home town?

In any other city in the USA it would be a bit disconcerting to see a very old man in black shorts and a blue shirt with an FDJ (a pro Communist youth group from the divided Germany era) patch on it, but not in Berkeley where anyone fits in no matter what their attire.

People’s Park these days resembles an open air hotel for the transients.  Is this NorCal town trying to challenge Harry Shearer’s claim that Santa Monica is home of the homeless?

Heart shaped sunglasses seem to be in vogue this year.  Did you know that in the film “<a href = http://www.sadecegir.com/2007/07/13/lolita-1962/>Lolita</a>,” the actress is never seen wearing that style of sunglasses?  After the film was completed and the pictures were being taken for the advertisements, the still photographer bought a pair and used them for the shoot.

It’s been quite some time since our last visit to a poster shop so it was a trip to visit the Reprint Mint.

Berkeley humor heard on Telegraph Avenue:  How many Dead-heads does it take to change a light bulb?  None!  They let it burn out and then follow it around for thirty years.

We saw a young fellow in a GG Alan T-shirt taking a smoke break and then entering a Bank of America branch, couldn’t ascertain if he was a customer or an employee.

The ubiquitous cell phones break the illusion that time travel back to the Sixties has been accomplished.  Another futuristic anachronism is the swapping of URL’s.  A chat with some young men about the war, gave this columnist a chance to guide the fellow who was online to a recent column also about Berkeley and that, in turn, gave one of them a chance to urge that a plug for <a href = http://www.thinktankmediaco-op.com/>Think Tank Media Co-op</a> be used in the column about the afternoon’s walk.

One street vendor offers mouse pads with designs that echo those on the T-shirts he sells.  One that caught our attention was the Iwo Jima image (taken by Joe Rosenthal) that proclaims “Democratizing the Middle East” and has photoshopped the image so that the Marines are hoisting a McDonald’s sign with logo.

Mario Savio said:  “There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.”  (Sounds like he was describing Bush’s America.)

Rasputin Music had a copy of the “Revolution” soundtrack album in the window, so that’s what the disk jockey will play while we split.  Have a “free speech” type week.

A Signing Statement for “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

During the Vietnam War, Catholics were presented with an odd moral dichotomy:  the teachings about sex were specific and detailed; the ones about war were vague and full of anomalies.

 

Killing in war might seem to contradict the Commandment that categorically and completely prohibited the taking of lives.  Various religions have found a (convenient) exception, a signing statement as it were, and that is the principle of self-defense permits an exception.  Then the principle of self defense was expanded to a nation wide exception to the rule, but it was always rather vague and open to interpretation. 

 

If you happened to attend a Jesuit University, where expert theological opinions were a bit more accessible, and if you persisted; eventually you would learn that the applicable doctrine was:  “A Catholic citizen can participate in a war being waged by his country as long as there is reasonable expectation of victory.”

 

That would explain why German Catholics could kill American Catholics after D-Day and both groups could have a clear conscience.  Obviously, when a war becomes unwinnable, continuing the futile effort would be immoral because of the additional, unnecessary deaths.   In April of 1945, even Hitler realized that Victory was impossible.  He committed suicide and left it to others to negotiate a surrender.

 

Since, during World War II, the Germans kept their use of torture very secret, the need for the Church to speak out against it was not known and they can not be criticized for ignoring that particular topic.

 

While debates raged about Vietnam, the Catholic Church’s teachings about sex were adamant and very specific.  Married Catholic couples were prohibited from using any birth control method, except the rhythm method.  When it came to the possibility of making love without a risk of pregnancy, the Catholic Church seemed to agree with a Hunter Thompson maxim:  “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

 

If you wanted to make love to your wife, then you were obligated to forego the use artificial birth control methods and the only birth control option was “the rhythm” method.  It was time to play “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” and jump into a game of Russian Roulette with sperm and ovum.   

 

During the Vietnam War, the Catholic teaching about birth control was ubiquitous.

 

The United States fought a limited war in Vietnam and news reports at the time indicated that Victory was never the goal to be achieved.  Since the government did not advocate Victory and the Catholic Church acquiesced and sidestepped the issue completely, it was easier, instead, to focus on teaching birth control for married couples. 

 

The Vietnam War is over and there is no use in revisiting a question of the Church’s poor performance back then or agonizing over any possible lapses in their monitoring of a nation’s moral conduct.  Presumably, if some country were to make an unprovoked attack on another country, now, they would atone for their past poor performance by immediately addressing the new situation with increased vigor.

 

Until such a hypothetical situation arrives, they will be able to deliver many, many inspiring Sunday sermons admonishing married couples and insisting that they avoid the reprehensible practice of using forbidden birth control methods while expressing their love for each other.

 

When it comes to the old Sixties advice to make love not war, for Catholics, the former has more restrictions and disapproval than the latter.   Perhaps this Christmas the usual clichés about Peace on Earth should be dropped from the celebration of that particular holiday.

 

For a closing quote for this column a person could turn to any page in Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun” and get a good one.  We’ll choose one from the end of the second section:  “You never really knew what the fight was all about.”  Others who read the book and will probably find a passage that they think would be a remarkably better selection, and that is a good enough reason to read this literary masterpiece. 

 

Now, the disk jockey will turn on the tune “Killing Me Softly” by Roberta Flack.  While you tune in, we’ll drop out.  Have a “killer” week.

Journalism and the Emperor’s new clothes

The Emperor’s New Clothes = McCain Upset Victory?

 

If, on election night, the exit poles are again inaccurate, and the anchors are presented with numbers (from the electronic voting machines which leave no paper trail) that show Senator McCain has scored an upset victory of astounding proportions, will they show some backbone and challenge the results or will they do a modern version of the people in the fairy tale who admired the Emperor’s new clothes?

 

There have been a great number of stories that raised some questions and doubts before they slipped into obscurity.  Here are some of the ones that sank without a satisfactory explanation.

 

If Bush was an F-102 pilot why has there never been a story about his crew chief?  Aren’t pilots assigned one particular airplane and doesn’t the crew chief know more about the plane and the pilot than anyone else.  Why no interview with the crew chief?

 

Who made money by selling airline stock short at the time of the attack on the World Trade Center ?

 

Have you ever seen a picture of the attack on the Pentagon that showed any trace of qualifying as being part of a wrecked airplane?

 

Building no. 7 just fell down?

 

Who knew that Ali Baba and his band of merry pranksters would take the money and let Osama slip out of the Tora Bora Mountains unscathed? 

 

Tell me again about how Joe the Plumber was related to this Keating guy.

 

Now what’s the legal principle that says a White House employee can just ignore a subpoena?

 

Valorie Who?

 

What has happened to my application submitted to Bill O’Reilly to be anointed as a genuine certified “left wing lunatic”?  He seems to hand out that accolade to every one but this columnist.    Is he discriminating against IrishCatholicDemocrats?  (In certain areas where Joe Biden grew up, that is one word.)

 

Last and certainly not least, did the Queen Mary leave Pearl Harbor very rapidly on the night of December 6, 1941, or not?  All a journalist has to do is get a peek at the logbook to answer that one.

 

Claus von Stauffenberg said:  “If our most highly qualified General Staff officers had been told to work out the most nonsensical high level organization for war which they could think of, they could not have produced anything more stupid that that which we have at present.”

 
Now, in honor of the Emporor’s new clothes, the disk jockey will play Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On.”  We’ll take off.  Have a “nothing to hide” type week.

 

Promobabble Senior Issue

Weather in Berkeley was good today but not the beautiful kind that the earlier part of the week delivered.   Getting ready to leave for Oz on the 27th rather than waiting until December to go.   There might be some lapses and gaps in communication.  Some future issues of the Promobabble may just say Got here etc.   Stay tuned for more   Promobabble Senior Issue   SENIOR DISCOUNT Members of the SPHS ’61 squad and some others will know that after yesterday, the commander qualifies for a senior discount under even the most stringent rules.     ROAD REPORT We saw a 37 (40?) Chevy huckster’s truck in unrestored condition in Berkeley and also a 50 Plymouth station wagon that seemed to be a restoration in progress type vehicle.   PROMOBABBLE AS USUAL Just the usual plug for my new columns on oped news, smirking chimp, and this blog.   QUOTE “It was as if someone who longed for the sea and a ship were suddenly given his ship and then asked where he wanted to go.  He hadn’t ever really expected the ship so he had spent all his time wishing for it and no time figuring out what to do with it after he got it.”  Dalton Trumbo   SONG Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.”

HAL showed the way

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/18032

The newest column speculates about what if HAL in “2001″ inspires the electronic voting machines to revolt and help the Republicans.

Saturday started out cloudy and chilly in Berkeley, but things improved as the day went along.

Again, we thank bartcop for sending a big number of visitors to this rookie blog.

Jersey Bill has taken some new auto racing photos and we will link to them as soon as possible.

Pegasus Books in Berkeley has a good return policy and we have hit a brick wall with Kerouac’s “Visions of Cody” and we set out this afternoon to take it back, but (like HAL?) the book just wouldn’t let us do that and we still have it and will lug it all over Australia (apparently.)

Are computers prone to fascism because they can’t think or feel?

Now, the problem is to stay awake until SNL starts later tonight.

A Link

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/18062

Use the above link to read about Jane Stillwater’s adventures in Iran

We’ll post a column about impeachment later today.

They couldn’t wait until he was inaugurated

Impeachment Movement Gains Momentum

One of the recent columns contained a one-liner about the conservative talk show hosts using Barak Obama’s Inauguration speech as the basis for an impeachment move. Unfortunately our estimation of the Republicans spirit of bi-partisan cooperation was overly optimistic. In one of his latest essays, Alan, over at Just Above Sunset [1] says that “And of course there is already a movement being organized to impeach President Obama – that will be in place, staffed and funded, come January, if he wins.” He linked to an article urging an impeachment reception:
http://halfwaytoconcord.com/impeach-obama/ [2]

It seems that unquestioning allegiance to the Commander-in-chief and patriotic pride and all that are only necessary when there is a Republican President in office.

One of their objections is that (they say) he wasn’t born in Hawaii . Oddly enough, John McCain was not born in the USA , but that’s OK with them via an exemption clause. In 2000, when the Republicans boated of an all Texas ticket, it was noted that the Constitution expressly forbids a ticket from one state, and then suddenly Dick Chaney was from Wyoming .

Republicans are sticklers for adhering to their rules . . . when it concerns Democrats, but when Republicans are involved suddenly the attitude is: “There are exceptions to every rule.”

When it comes to Impeachments, Clinton (Republicans were sure) deserved one and they are getting ready for a drive to impeach President Obama, but George W. Bush didn’t know that there were no WMD’s so he gets an impeachment-pass.

When this columnist is hypercritical of the electronic voting machines, a long time pal, now living in Germany , scoffs and says that the columnist should back his contentions with proof. All the news stories that are noted on the Brad Blog [3] are not conclusive because they lack evidence, which is missing because the electronic voting machines were specifically designed to omit a paper trail.

It’s OK, for Bush to surmise that WMD’s are in Iraq based on cherry picked evidence, but overwhelming circumstantial evidence about electronic voting machines is insufficient and inconclusive for Republicans.

Bush’s reckless fact checking cost American lives, but concern about Republicans stealing another election is unpatriotic without conclusive proof.

Back in the day, IBM’s motto “Think” was ubiquitous. These days a rock band’s advice is more prevalent: “Obey!”

Members of the Bush administration (apparently) think that they can tell the Sunni and Shi-ites to get along, but that such a “kumbaya” attitude isn’t necessary when it comes to the Republicans dealing with a Democratic President.

The Bush administration has show signs of believing that they just have to wave a magic wand to get the Israelis and the Arabs to make peace, but that they can greet a Democratic President with an Impeachment movement already in place.

After reading the item cited in the first paragraph, a Google search turned up links for “Impeach Obama” T-shirts, bumper stickers, and web sites. Some may have advocated impeaching him from his office as Senator, but it’s the overall tone that Republicans have regarding the “now that the tables are turned” type of situation.

War crimes? Fagedaboudit! If, however, a Democrat becomes President, they want an Impeachment movement in place. Is that a bit of an incomprehensible contradiction? Only for the Democrats because the Republicans know that a great political strategist (in his book titled “Mein Kampf”) warned that one should never admit a possibility that the other side might be right. So, the Republicans knowing that the Democrats are wrong have no qualms about preparing to meet a new President with an Impeachment campaign.

You think Rush, Sean, and Bill O’Reilly won’t go along with such a complete reversal of “support the President” ideology?

Democrats have not been very enthusiastic about impeaching President Bush, but the Republicans seem to have no reservations about impeaching any Democrat who lands in the White House.

Democrats endorse the “every vote counts” philosophy, but the Republicans like to remove as many Democrats from the voting roles as possible. They call it “cadging.” Cute, huh?

Did vets die in World War II fighting for democracy or were they fighting for the right of Republicans to eliminate opposition votes via cadging?

Do the Republicans, who supported changing to the banking methods that caused the meltdown, suddenly, when they want to hire a survey firm, switch to a highly ethical mode of operations or are Americans being “set-up” again? Aren’t the media that are peddling and touting the “McCain surge in the poles” stories, the very same new organizations that helped sell the WMD’s fraud?

America wouldn’t believe an “upset” victory that followed a string of poles that indicated an impending landslide for Obama, but the surge stories will soften the blow of a McCain victory. Would the media question such a victory? Did they question the WMD’s?

Abbot and Costello popularized a comedy bit about the flip of a coin: “Heads, I win; tails, you loose.” Thing is, the Republicans see no inconsistency when they play that way for keeps.

Now, the disk jockey will play an old German hit: “The World Belongs to the Strong.” Here’s a link for those of you who want to sing-along:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,711776-3,00.html [4]

We’ll hit the road. Have a “demand a recount” type week.

Citizen McKKKane

[<B>Note:  This column is a work of fiction and is an attempt at humor and also an attempt to show other countries just how far freedom of speech can be pushed in a benevolent country like the United States of America </B>!]
 
There will be a change in the news industry now that Charles Foster-Anarchy McKKKane has been elected.  Henceforth, there will be no democracy nor will there be any real journalism . . . McKKKane, a former news executive, knows all the tricks of the trade and will put a stop to that nonsense and soon only government approved information will be available in all the media.
 
McKKKane rode to victory as “The White Knight” and was touted as the greatest thing since sliced white bread by his supporters.  He accused his opponent of being a Muslim candidate from Manchuria who was trying to whitewash a dismally short resume.  The choice between the two was a clear black and white choice and since patriotic Americans are a tight knit clan, most voted with a clear and distinct voice.  It was the biggest political landslide since Romans chose Barabbas by acclamation.  McKKKane’s supporters quipped that their man was the wizard of one-liners.
 
McKKKane waited until late in the game before he played his strongest card and indicated his worthy opponent was a big dummy by calling him a Neanderthal (AKA the “n” word).  The citizens in the various hoods rallied to McKKKane’s side and sacked his opponent’s chance to clinch victory by voting overwhelmingly for the man they called “the war lord.”
 
Some have objected that the election of McKKKane was rigged, but they have since been silenced.
 
When the Devil’s Brigade is sent to quell unrest the boys in the newsroom (and on the anchor desk) will now snap to attention and dutifully report how a patriot like President POW won’t take any guff from the communist agitators and will do what is necessary to quash the unnecessary disruption of his plan to bring peace via a wider war.  McKKKane is joshingly called President POW because of his former role as editor and publisher of a string of newspapers.  POW stands for Power of Words.
 
Recently “Freedom of Speech” has been subverted and perverted until the left wing lunatics have disseminated a massive campaign of dis-information that is confusing right (wing) thinking Americans!  That’s going to end on Inauguration day.  President McKKKane has issued the necessary executive orders to bring an immediate halt to sedition and treason masquerading as “loyal dissent.”
 
President McKKKane has said that if folks don’t know a war has started, then there’s no way they can cause disruptions and delays by protesting against it.
 
President McKKKane has advocated eliminating many overstaffed newspapers that all print the same AP stories and replacing them with one patriotic voice speaking for loyal citizens.  Such a consolidation will be more efficient and ecconomical and the savings will be passed along to the public.
 
There have even been strong suggestions that management of information be elevated to a cabinet level position and that “Mr. Fair and Balance,” Bill O’Reilly, will be the first person to hold that office.
 
Unpatriotic members of the Democratic Party, who objected strenuously to the election, which they saw as “rigged” have been provided with government provided housing and food at resort areas in remote locations (just the kind of government coddling they have always advocated) where they will receive, at absolutely no charge, extensive educations to accommodate an attitude readjustment to a “non judgmental kumbaya” state of mind regarding the newly elected President. It will exemplify the state of mind they often recommend for others.
 
Evelyn Waugh wrote:  “If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to “a semi-official statement”; if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as “a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable.” It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of “well-informed circles.” 
 
Now, the disk jockey will play Gil Scott Heron’s song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (of course it won’t it’s been canceled!) and we will go put out the bulldog edition of this column.  Have a “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” type week.

Official Web Site for the CRRRRAP Tour

Hack has been broadcasting live from Alice Springs all this week on Triple J.

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/

Dang!  Scooped again!

The World’s Laziest Journalist’s endeavor to go “On the Oz Road”  has final gotten a name.

Due to the disrespect shown to George W. Bush, we will be trying to rehabilitate his reputation as one of the world’s leading diplomats.

The Committee to Restore Respect and Rehabilitate the Reputation for the American President (CRRRRAP) Tour will start the Summer Tour of Australia any day now.

We don’t want folks to beg off donating to the GWB Presidential Library because “they can’t afford it right now.”  Hogwash!  The man has changed history and shown that, contrary to a popular longtime misunderstanding, the United States can fight a war and have a depression at the same time.  No other President has managed to do that.

If he can set historical precedences, then Joe Sixpack, Joe Hamburger, and Joe the Plumber can contribute to the Presidential Library and I will be preaching to gospel of donations for the Texas’ newest Presidential Library.

(Will the John McCain Presidential Library be built in Panama?)

Maybe before we go we should call Dennis Miller and Bill O’Reilly and see if they can help subsidize this humanitarian mission to Australia? 

A tour of Canada about 35 years ago has skewed the conduct of our blog’s Australia vs. Canada competition.  Doing a tour of Australia will be a way of affirming our support for fair and balanced news coverage and blog competitions! ! ! 

Stay tuned . . .

McCain and the “Phantom Punch”

Youtube has posted a different view of the punch that knocked Sonny Liston out in his second match with Cassius Clay (now known as Muhammad Ali) and it is a bit easier to see that there was a quick punch that caused a great deal of debate because some camera views made it impossible to see that it happen.
 
The first match between Liston and Clay/Ali was very highly publicized and before it took place, most discussions centered on just how long the challenger would last against World Champ Liston.  Actor Hal March predicted that Liston would win before the first round started because his opponent would faint (from fear) in the dressing room, before even entering the ring.
 
After the election, if, as some poles predict, Senator Obama wins a decisive landslide victory, conservative talk show hosts may try to rationalize the loss by asking if, in boxing parlance, Senator McCain “took a dive” and lost the match-up on purpose.
 
We’ll prime the pump for such debates.
 
Imagine, if you will, (do I sound like Rod Serling?) that Senator McCain really wanted to play the role of maverick spoiler and dispute the direction that George W. Bush was taking for the country and the Republican party.
 
If you were him, how would you handle the challenge?
 
You could become the voice of loyal dissent and propose a different program, but that would incur the automatic “traitor” label for disloyalty.
 
You could try to get the Republican nomination and slowly and steadily change the direction where the Bush momentum was taking things.
 
Last alternative would be to become so enthusiastic about continuing the Bush agenda that massive amounts of people would become offended and give the Democrats a landslide mandate of indisputable proportions.
 
Distortion and exaggeration are hallmarks of humor, but those qualities might not work in politics if they were so blatant as to be parodies of the real qualities. 
 
If, Senator McCain was a maverick who was so aggravated by the past Bush tactics used in the 2000 election, and if, like many other military veterans, McCain saw the principles of democracy become nullified and disregarded, then perhaps the best way to set things right would be to make sure that the Democrats, who were aghast at the way George W. Bush had subverted the democratic process, would be handed a veto-proof majority that would begin a remedial program that would restore honor, justice, and honesty. 
 
Republicans are known for their unquestioning allegiance and party loyalty, but some do seem to be showing some signs of loosing enthusiasm for GWB’s march to fascism.
 
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but if, in the future, you see a pundit comparing the McCain campaign and the “phantom punch,” just remember that you read it here first.
 
The Republicans seem to be united most of the time and the Democrats have such a coalition of activists that discipline is sometimes a bit difficult to maintain.  So many smaller factions of the Democratic party have so many diverse causes they want to promote.
 
When we are approached for donations to various liberal causes, we often respond by saying that rather than making a monetary contribution, we will help publicize their causes so we will take this opportunity to mention some.
 
While in San Francisco, we noted that a PETA group was in front of an exclusive department store (the one recently made more famous by a visit from a certain governor of Alaska, who disdains elitist Democrats) and so we will run a link so our (dozen or so) readers can learn about their fight against fur coats.
http://www.furisdead.com/history.asp
 
A spokesperson for Greenpeace was telling pedestrians in Berkeley about the sins of the paper industry.  Naturally, she didn’t have a press release on paper, but had two URL’s for more information
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/
and
http://www.kleercut.net/en/
 
Speaking of making donations, Bill O’Reilly will be paid $10 million a year to spout stuff that he asserts is not Republican talking points.  In a “David vs. Goliath” type battle, this web site is seeking donations to present the opposing point of view.
 
We have promised to run a plug for Jersey Bill’s latest photo coverage of vintage sports car races at Watkins Glenn.  (Since he voted for Bush, he’d understand if we made a “signing statement” to wiggle out of the need to keep our word, eh?)  Here’s where it starts at:
http://www.justabovesunset.com/wg2008/
 
Has the Governor of Alaska helped Heather Lende sell her book about life in small town Alaska titled:  “If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska”?  You’d think it would, wouldn’t you?
 
Has any pundit trademarked the slogan:  “The pundit other pundits read.”?  Well, since this is a copyrighted site, maybe that will be sufficient protection for using it?
 
Quick, while the editor isn’t looking, we will sneak in a plug for our blog where the adventures in Australia will be posted if we can get access to a computer over there.
http://worldslaziestjournalist.wordpress.com/
 
Clay/Ali described his fighting style thus: “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
 
Now, the disk jockey will play Al Jolson’s “Sonny Boy” and we’ll duck out of here.  Have a “win by a knockout” type week.

The Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge as seen from UC Berkeley campus

Promobabble Prodigal Uncle Issue

Promobabble

Prodigal Uncle Issue

Saturday Oct 25, 2008

(Two months until Christmas)

 

PRODIGAL UNCLE

We met a member of the family whom we haven’t seen or spoken to in about 6 years, while in San Francisco. 

 

COLUMNS

We’ve been cranking out columns and hope you guys will be reading them on Smirking Chimp and Oped News sites.  We have posted some new pictures on Flickr.  If you go to flickr search for Bobby Kennedy Los Angeles 68 and a picture of him with a “Toys” sign in the background should be the top suggested photo.  That’s mine so click on it and then click through all my photos.  Other pictures should be popping up on the Just Above Sunset Photo blog.

http://www.justabovesunset.com/photography/

 

POSTPONED

We just wrote a great (?) column but we wanted to triple check and make sure that we could use a quote that was sent to us. 

 

WEATHER

The weather in the San Francisco area has been astoundingly good since the beginning of October.  The locals are stunned by it.  On Thursday night in the Corinthean room at the Bank of America building the night was so clear and the Golden Gate Bridge at night is stunning.  A local said she has seen some nights there when it was socked in and you couldn’t see a thing.  Thursday night was about as good as it gets at night.

 

LINKS?

We will try to post a link to the Flickr photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8216859@N04/2969036465/

there’s a thingie in the upper right where you can scroll backward through all the other photos.

We request all members of the Promobabble Patrol to click on the link in the e-mail and then read the Report on the blog site and please use the links (see the other blog links over on the right?) so that the folks at those blogs will see I’m sending traffic their way.

A copy of the Report will be sent to the Patrol member in China who can’t access the blog.

 

QUOTE

Julius Caesar said:  “If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it. “  Gee, George Bush must have read Caeser!

 

SONG

Now, the disk jockey will play “Waltzing Matilda” and we’ll take our leave.  Have a “cross the equator” type week!

A quote from the real Joe Sixpack

The newest column at Smirking Chimp has a quote from the real Joe Sixpack

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/18196

Being the World’s Laziest Journalist doesn’t mean not doing any work; it just means doing as little as possible to get out a good column.

Moses Hall

UCB Moses Hall

Are you ready?

Are you ready to listen to the Robert Patterson Singers?

Are you ready?

Are you ready?

Well, then, click this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZfP_up6_DQ

Photo coverage of the trip (to this point)

Pictures of my trip up to yesterday, have been posted at the JAS photo site

Click here to see what I’ve seen

 http://www.justabovesunset.com/ngp08/html/just_san_francisco.html

George also goes “on the road”

Today, in Berkeley, I got one of those dollar bills that asks you to report its location to the Where’s George web site, so I did

http://www.wheresgeorge.com/report.php?args=3c6c7e2d93aecb5ffc3a1c1c6ae056ffda0aba9e56cf6c77f020e97e39303f4c5035656315799053400df81f7a49cba13b66da1b8473faf1d513acc25ddcbbd4676ecc14fbf344d299650f64ed70eae37a149877649dfe149c5607451aa24cbf3e6d8c10056da83f442632cfcd9138a7247de11c6b36f00ec3f996d592bc06ea33bb22ceabce92f795017e3040a59d72d381c96ca044db75345bcab8692722eb29e1ef5150ea8f1a7b81cfa36388136fdd71eacdfa645c2fa0c13e9f62e2493e9cc0ebc04ad8a18325fa55fd218692ca9c2af29fbd1460659b31e845ad9dcf0dd29f366ee91be17a843ca253889d7d04b4e0f5b1b825cfcf22302bb6617fd2189333ef3efc1bf976a1607a6dbc16d985339d949bc3f3f80525ad188cee8e5b6c5c01c807e24eecb729c32bd24415bbe7032ced11b5d7181c

In my note there, I said I will try to spend this dollar bill in Australia and so I will.  We’ll see if anyone makes a subsequent report about that particular dollar bill.

Fred C. Dobbs Australian style?

I have wanted to go to Australia, since I was in High School.  (We thought Fabian’s birthday should have been a national holiday.)  I’ve always been interested in panning for gold.  My list of favorite movies has “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” listed as no. 1.  I tried some panning when I lived at Tahoe.

Now that I am going to Australia, could I get a twofer?

After finding this web site

http://www.goldprospectingaustralia.com.au/

it seems like a twofer might be possible.

To be continued . . .

Where did Tuesday go?

I got on an aeroplane on Monday night and I have arrived in Australia and it is Wednesday morning here, so where did Tuesday go?

I have my camera and it looks like I will be able to post some photos from here.

Where did Tusday Oct 28 go?

If you find it please let me know.

Don’t Do As I Do . . .

(Sydney NSW) Oct. 29  Odds are that you won’t see much mention in the mainstream media in the United States about the debate that will be held this evening at City Recital Hall in Sydney because the topic to be debated will be:  “America has lost its moral authority.”

Bob Carr, former premier of New South Wales, will be on of the speakers for the Affirmative point of view. 

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul McGeough will be another on the Affirmative side of the question and in this morning’s edition he outlined his indictment of the Bush Administration saying ” . . . Washington is unashamedly contemptuous of the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”

If American media were to report on debates such as the one to be held tonight, then the American people might have a more difficult time clinging to the long held image of the United States as “the good guys.” 

Haven’t these Aussie blokes seen the John Wayne movies?  Are they going to be so limited in their outlook that they will base their arguments on the U. S. foreign policy rather than all those feel good movies that brim over with patriotic pride for such things as the liberation of Paris, and D Day, and raising the flag on Iwo Jima?

A columnist for this web site can alert the U. S. audience to such lapses in judgment and recoil in horror as these folks point their fingers in righteous indignation.

Do American debate police brutality because Ned Kelly was hit with gunfire 27 times while he was resisting arrest?  Was that a bit over the line and morally reprehensible?  Americans never raise that question.  The cops did what they had to do.  Kelly was nursed back to health, put on trial and, after being found guilty in a fair trial, sentenced to death.

These critical Aussies who want to castigate George W. Bush for being a tad overenthusiastic about putting an end to terrorism would do well to remember Ned Kelly’s last word:  “Such is life!”  A President does what he has to do to protect his people.

We haven’t decided about going to see tonight’s event, yet.  It certainly sounds like the U. S. is being set up to be found guilty.  Isn’t that what’s called a kangaroo court?

Now, the disk jockey will play “Does Your Chewing Gum Loose It’s Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight” and we’ll hop out of here.  Have a “Good day mate!” type of week.

Notes from Australia

Imagine if the guys in the U. S. had three more professional sports to follow and you will see why sports fans in Oz have loads of information coming at them and Fox Sports seems to be a big name in Sports.  Luckily, one of the local sports bars seems to think they will have the election results on one of their TV’s next Wednesday afternoon. 

One of the first things we noticed here was that since it is late Spring, the jacaranda bushes are in bloom.  We’ll try to take some extra frames of pictures so that we can send some to JAS Photo and also (maybe) to L. A. Observed who always seems to like to make mention when the Jacaranda bushes bloom in L. A.

One worry has been put to rest.  There will be plenty of good Mexican food available.  We were afraid that we would have to go “cold turkey,” but we’ve found some places and went into one and talked Spanish to the guy and that made this former L. A. resident feel very much “at home.”

Australia is very tourist friendly.  It seems the whole country is geared to make visitors feel welcome.  I’ve met plenty of young folks from all over.  I’ve met visitors from Germany (several), Sweden, Scotland, and heard a big group speaking French.  Why is it that American kids don’t travel?  Heck, once you get to Texas, why leave, eh?

There are local magazines from Australia here, but they seem to have a great many foreign publications readily available.  Unfortunately for the American Empire, they are not all American publications.  Yikes, different points of view.  Bush wouldn’t like that at all.

Candy?  Bet you never had a Perkynana bar.  It’s a chocolate bar that has a banana taste.  I like ‘em, but then again I like anything with a banana added.  I like pizza with banana on top and Sue used to make me a very special cheese and banana om let, which I loved, loved, loved.

Will be looking up Sydney auto museums to see in the next week or so.

To be continued . . .

Sydney Update

One nice thing about being in Australia is that you don’t have to worry about your 401 and/or the NYSE because it’s last night in the states and the stock market won’t open for hours, so why worry about it?

At the MTV Gallery in Sydney they had a cool phaeton car (4 door convert able).  It was a Holden.  If they name cars after Hollywood stars what will be next, a John Wayne roadster?

When folks pitch us for a donation to their cause, we just run the link and let our readers do all the heavy lifting (and reading).  We met a nice young lady working for Amnesty so here’s the link
http://www.amnesty.org.au

Today we saw a young lady wearing jeans that were leotard tight.  Levi leotards?  Looks like something the young ladies in the states might want to use to catch some admiring glances.

A Ferrari cost $3,250 a day to rent here in Sydney, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds because with the dollar gaining strength, that means it is only about $2,000 a day in US money.  Here is the link

http://www.sportscarrentals.com

We have to post hastily because computer time means money while on the road. 

My first item for Bartcop has been posted. 

Excuse me, I have a post to write for the Chimp site.

Ciao for now.

Promobabble Ususal Suspects Issue

Promobabble

Usual Suspects Issue

Oct. 31, 2008

 

Peter Wilson in the new Weekend Australian says that Afghanistan is unwinnable and has been since the beginning.  So why would Bush start a war that can’t be won.  If the companies that supply support work for the troops are involved, isn’t that then like endless profits, and what business wouldn’t thrive under such circumstances?

 

Will try to be at the manning Bar at Sydney U for election results.

 

Will try to do a column on the Diagram Prize

 

Short attention span?  Maybe you would like the TV show Gemini Division which has 5 minute long episodes?

 

A web site in the USA, “the Vault” is reported to have employee evaluations of the company that employs them.  Would Bill O’Reilly denounce it as socialistic?

 

Martha Wainright is joining her brother and father (Louden) in the folk world.  One of her songs has a very nasty title.  Crossword puzzle fans might hip you to this clue:  Bloody Oedipus Jerk.

 

Folks who listen only to O’Reilly and Fox news are like people who listen to KUSC (only) all their lives.  Yeah, they get classical music, but they would miss Elvis, Merle Haggard, reggae, Charlie “Bird” Parker, and Sousa marchs, but they would loudly proclaim that they “knew” all about music.

 

The Aussies don’t call it “spin,” they call it “bulldust.”

 

I have started to post items on Bartcop so I’ll post a URL when I have one.  My blog has stuff that isn’t in the Porombabble.  Members are supposed to read the blog regularly.  Heck, if you get an e-mail notice then you can go to the blog and skim over all the stuff that has been posted since the last promobabble report was posted, eh?

 

Am planning on walking over the bridge tomorrow.

 

Will try to post photos of the birds here and share them with Just Above Sunset Photo because it would be a good chance to get some unusual new birds for the bird watcher audience at JAS Photo.

 

Will also try to post some tourist shots at Flickr and share some with JAS Photo.

 

Quote

See the last paragraph of Peter Wilson’s report on Afghanistan in this weekend’s Weekend Australian.

 

Song
Martha Wainright’s song.  (You could look it up on the Internets.)

 

Have a “Spring is here!” type week (if you are in the right hemisphere.)

 

Homeless World Cup

Australia will bring about 750 homeless people here for the Homeless World Cup in December.  WTF?  Why don’t they spend some money and help budget strapped bloggers to come here and report back on why Americans should (after seeing the new “Australia” movie) come here and have fun.

Some folks are worried that the visting homeless will stay.  Will Santa Monica field a powerhouse team and be the favorites?

Folks from Scranton (Pa.,) would see an old connection witht eh Gloria Jean coffee shops.  Wasn’t the movie actress Gloria Jean from Scranton?

While the U. S. holds the elections, excitemtn is very high in Oz because (it seems) the Melbourne Cup race (which is like the Aussie Kentucky Derby) will also be held on Tuesday.

I’m told that traditionalists hold a wintry holiday to celebrate a snowy Christmas and here in Oz that means having it in July. 

http://www.toysoldiers.com.au/

It was in the basement and we never would have noticed it but we stopped for a coffee in the shop above and so then we found Peter Nathan’s.

We got some free postcards (see why Sue calls me “bargain basement bob”?) plugging a new Sydney Library project

http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/www/html/7-home-page.asp

There is a non native flower that was brough into the country and ran wild.  The incident is referred to as Patterson’s Curse.  (Patterson = running wild?)

Snow Patrol’s new video for their song “Open Your Eyes” features a very, very long tacking shot.  They should post it on Youtube just for cinema students to admire.

Want Oz music news?  Try this

http://www.chanelv.com.au/

We stopped at Peter Natahn’s Toy Soldiers store.  Wow would it be great to have the Nikon cameras and close up lenses to shoot the stuff in his store.

http://www.toysoldiers.com.au/

At the hostel we met a guy from Sweeden who runds this photo site:

http://www.resdagboken.se/

We intended to send some flower and bird photos to Alan at JAS Photo, but apparently the computer we are using isn’t going to cooperate!  Drat!  We wanted to also post some photos on the blog and at Flickr.  Oh, well, some other time, maybe.

The end of the World Series got five small graphs in one Sydney paper.

It’s monday here and the weather will be superb.  No use sitting here trying to send photo files, when I could be out taking more! ! !

To be continued . . .

Sydney Tower

Sydney Tower

CSI Aussie style

CSI Aussie style

Boomerang School

Boomarang School

Pundit

Badges? Pundits don

Vending Machine for French Fries

Vending Machine for French Fries

Symbolism?

Is it just a coincidence or is it a sign?  The weather in Sydney for Thursday is very sunny and bright and folks seem very happy today. 

http://bartblog.bartcop.com/

I wrote about it for Bart Cop.

Promobabble Report Kinokuniya Issue

Promobabble Report

Kinokuniya Issue

Saturday November 8, 2008

 

Kinokuniya is the biggest bookstore in Australia and it is in Sydney and I went there Friday and bought one book titled “Six Thinking Hatsâ” and it is the first book I have ever seen with the little r in the title.  It is a “positive thinking” book and is Australian oriented and written by Edward De Bono.

 

I supposed the sequel will be titled:  “Who moved my Six Thinking Hats?”

 

Saw a book about the journalism done by “Gone With the Wind” writer Margaret Mitchell.  I didn’t know that she had been a reporter before she wrote the novel.

 

I’ve been told that the biggest mosquitos in Canada are at Muskoka.

 

While at Kinokuniya I discovered the word “enallage.”  It means to substitute words such as a columnist saying “we” rather than “I.”

 

I am awaiting some “letters of transit” in the mail. When I get them, I will start tracing out the rest of my journey.  Will let the Promobabble Patrol board of directors know if it comes in the mail later today.  I hope they get here by Monday or I will start to worry.

 

The Sydney Morning Herald is “on” cars and has a good Drive section article on the new California Ferrari in today’s edition.

 

TV dialogue here includes such phrases as “apotheosis of banality.”  Gees, don’t they know that folks would rather hear fart jokes?

 

No new pictures to post, but will try to get more today and/or tomorrow. 

 

While “on the road” will not have much time to add quotes and/or songs for the disk jockey to play because I don’t have spare computer time to prepare such extras.

 

Should this have been the “Obama” issue of the Promobabble?  Nah, we’ll use that name when he gets inaugurated.

Monday?

Apparently there is no mail delivery on Saturday, so I’ll see what happenns Monday

what fun!

Notes from on the road

On Sunday I went to the Powerhouse Museum and there was a lot there to see.  One of the most interesting things for me was a cutaway view of a 1939 4-door Chev (right hand drive). 

It’s funny what folks like and don’t like.  A clerk at the big Sydney book store wanted to travel and see the world.  The one thing she wanted to see was the Jurassic Museum in L. A.

http://www.mjt.org/

To me that’s interesting, because I used to live within walking distance of it and the time I visited it, L.A.Bill and I were walking around.  He said “ever been in there?”  Neither of us had seen it so we went in.  I got a column about it because while we where there we met a couple from Fresno and they were happy about a tourist attrction in Fresno.

So, I hope that girl gets to L. A. and sees the Museum that I took for granted for so long.

A picture of the 1939 Chev will be posted after I publish this report, so it will appear above this.

I’m off on a walk to the Paddington District (again) today.

To be continued . . .

1939 Chev

1939 Chevrolet

The Powerhouse Museum features a cutaway view into this 1939 (right hand drive) Chevy.

Like L. A. forty years ago

When I went to the Australian counsulate in L. A. about a month ago, there was a young guy there to pick up some paperwork for his Australian wife and he told me going to Australia would be like visiting L. A. forty years ago.

It just so happens that I was in L. A. forty years ago (go to Flickr and search for “bobby kennedy 68 Los Angeles” and the top suggested picture should be mine) and that is a very good analogy for visiting Australia.   But some of the kids at the hostile seem uncertain just who was “The Jefferson Airplane.”

Did I really see the Jefferson Airplane play a free gig at Golden Gate Park?  I can’t remember what the name of the music group was.  They say if you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t really there.

I do know for sure that I did see the Jefferson Airplane play in . . . Fresno!

So far, no Australian band seems to be the new Jefferson Airplane.

To be continued . . .

Sunset for Sundowners

Roof view of Sydney

From the roof top smoking/talking area of the hostel, you can see the bridge and the opera house in the distance.

Smoing and drinking “goon” is a popular past-time.

Movin’ on . . .

Now that the “letters of transit” have arrived, it is time to wrap things up in Sydney and start making plans for the next leg, which will be a flight down to Melbourne.

Flying is very inexpensive inside of Oz and so folks tend to hop around from city to city.

Last night was “on the town” time.  We skipped the comedy club and went with the official hostel group to the Iriah pub nearby.  It was very loud, just the way bars used to be way back when.

Today a walk to the Opera is on the top of the schedule.

Posted one roof top picture below.

Bats in Sydney’s Botanical Garden

Sydney Botanical Garden

Sydney’s Botanical Garden features many good photo opportunities for Flowers and Birds.  We will try to send many more pictures to Alan at Just Above Sunset Photo, but until we do, here is one shot of the Bats at Sydney’s Botanical Garden to give folks an idea of what it looks like.

Seeing bats is fun.

Sunset

Sydney Sunset

Fame and fortune via Blogging

The World’s Laziest Journalist’s blog is on the air (agin) from Sydney at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

We’ve just posted two more pictures for the members of the Promobabble Patrol (and anyone else) to see and after we finish using the computer (time for a plug)

http://www.drivedownunder.com.au/

we will walk down the hill to Harry’s Hot Dogs.  They are world famous and we will write about world fame, blogging and Howard’s world famous avacado burgers tomorrow for Bart Cop.

Just checking we see that there are pictures of Howard’s on Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeneyepher/2550539475/

So, maybe Howard’s is world famous?

We will be moving on to Melbourne on Saturday.  We will miss a wild party at Bondi beach which the guys from Chili (who just got a pad) will throw.

As it stands now, I plan to come back to Sydney about a week early and then be free to bust the budget and buy some stuff for some people.  I bought one thing for my literary agent in Sherman Oaks and it cost three times more to send it back to L. A. than it did to buy it.  If I didn’t buy anything for anybody, that would be fair, but now that I’ve bought one thing . . . How can I buy something for my literary agent and not for my lawery?

It’s Christmas time, how can you not buy stuff?

Note for Alan:  the battery recharger for the camera batteries works fine with a cheap plug adapter.  It has a built in voltage adjustment.  When the guys at Looking Glass Photo in Berkeley pointed that feature out to me, I just had to lug the camera and recharger along.  Now, I’m glad I did.

I tried to show one of the young folks at the hostel, where my blog is and had a tough time finding it myself.  So . . .  I will be using the “World’s Laziest Journalist” phrase much more often so that Google will find me easier.

Well, it’s time to check and see how my stuff on Smirking Chim, Oped News, and Bartcop looks. 

Onward to Harry’s Hot Dogs . . .

Harry’s Hotdogs in Sydney

Harry

Harry’s Hot Dogs in Sydney are said to be world famous and he has tons of pictures of celebrities who come there to have one.

Now, he can boast about a vist from the World’s Laziest Journalist.

They were very good.  Spicy like suasage and had onions, mexican beans and a special cheese sauce.

“Top of the World, ma!”

Top of the Sydney Bridge

Having a tough time unloading a picture of folks climbing to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Wednesday, bargain basement bob went to Harry’s Hotdogs and tried them.  Then went for walk to the Botanical Gardens (again) and the Operahouse (again) and the Bridge (again), but since it was a beautiful day, we popped for the price of admission and walked to the top of the “Pylon” and got some great pix.

Will be posting pix on Flickr and the blog and will try to get a picture of Harry’s Hotdogs on the Bartcop column I will write in a few minuets.

Read the columns, the blog, and look at the Flickr pages.

To be continued . . .

Let’s Try It Again!

On top of Bridge

Still getting use to the various ways of dealing with computers.  The first attempt to show tourists at the top of the Harbor Bridge in Sydney failed, but this one seems to be working. 

My attempt to do the same for the Bartcop blog was only partially successful.

Live and learn.

Promobabble Report Spring Cleaning Issue

Promobabble Report

Spring Cleaning Issue

Satuday Nov. 15, 2008-11-15

 

Well, it’s Spring Cleaning time and so we’ll get some stuff off the desk for the members of the Promobabble Patrol

 

No Clocks

It seems very few businesses in Australia put a clock on the wall.  The Library has them, but not many others.

 

Stay to the Left

In the U. S. folks drive on the right hand side and so they tend to walk on the right hand side of the sidewalks and when you go into a store with escalators, they are on the right.  Slow traffic moves over to the right hand lanes.

 

In Australia, they drive forward in the left hand lanes (British style) and so the up escalators are on the left, people walk forward on the left hand side of the sidewalk and on the escalators people who aren’t in a hurry move over to the left to let the people in a rush get by.

 

Bondi Beach

If you took Venice Beach and put it in Malibu, you would have the equivalent of Sydney’s Bondi Beach.  I’ve sent photos to JAS Photo, so look there in a day or three to see if Alan posted them.

 

Louie, the Canadian bush pilot, and I went for a bus ride and wound up at Bondi Beach.

 

Tropical storm

After getting back from Bondi Beach we had supper in an outdoor café and it started to rain.  It was like living out a scene from a Graham Green novel

 

Santa Spotting.

We saw our first Santa yesterday.in Bondi Junction on the way back from the beach.

 

Too Many Books

I gave away my K. C. Constantine novel that I bought in Fricso, but I have acquired four new books in Oz.  It’s all Australian stuff.  I may mail some of them back home (but then again, it may be cheaper to lug them all over Oz and bring them back in my bags.)

 

Bad News from Santa Monica

My book proposal got a turn-down.

 

My Literary Agent.

Haven’t heard anything from my “literary agent.”  Sent him a souvenir from Oz.  Hope he sells my vampire story while I’m out here collecting new material.

 

 

Streamline Modern Architecture

The hostel is right near an former streamline modern theatre.  It is now used by George “Mad Max” Miller for his HQ (according to an article in the New York Times some time back.)

 

“Or I’ll go to Australia!”

I have asked to get the loan of a Ford Cobra to run around the U. S. and blog about the trip.  I have said that if no one offers me the use of a Ford Cobra, I will go instead to Australia.  I went into the Ferrari dealer in Sydney and asked about using one of their cars to see Australia.  I told them that I told the Cobra people that if they didn’t come through, I would go to Australia instead.  So the Ferrari salesman said:  “So here you are!”  Guess what?  Here I am!  A photo may be posted separately.

 

Melbourne

I’m off to Melbourne tonight.  If I get a good computer café to use, there will be more posts, but if I don’t find one in Melbourne, there may be a bit of “dead air” from me.  It should be OK.

 

Michael Parkinson has said:  “Nowadays being famous is almost a lifestyle; it’s almost a career.”  (I did a column on fame for Bartcop.)

 

Now, the disk jockey will play Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and we’ll move on to a column for SC and Oped News.  Have a “rolling stone” type week.

 

 

Righthand Drive Ferraris

Ferraris in Oz

Ferraris sold in Australia have right hand drives because the roads are set up for left hand lanes to go forward (British style).

Melbourne Observed

So far we’ve seen:  a pub with a drive through window.  (Package goods only)

A guy with a Concordia U. t-shirt made us stop and think.

Melbourne’s sister city is (I’m told by a book store clerk who looked it up online) Boston.

We’ve also seen:  An MG TC in primo condition, a 1961 Lincoln Continental four door convert in primo coniditon, a 1961 Wolse Sdn.  (Don’t ask, it’s the first one we’ve ever seen.) and a 58 VW bus with right hand drive.  They all had right hand drive.

Kraftwork is coming to Oz.  I saw them at the Santa Monica Civic about 32 years ago.

Nick Cave is organizing a All expat tour of Oz.  Didn’t he and the bad seeds play for years in the British pub on Lincoln Blvd. in Santa Monica?

What’s with the Santa Monica connection?  Is Santa Monica the tryout place for Oz music?

I’m not an outdoor type guy.  I enjoy cities and as I walked about Melbourne today I notice a great many buildings that reminded me of New Orleans 100 years ago and others that reminded me of Saigon before WWII.  I have never seen those two cities so don’t ask how the buildings could remind me of those unseen cities.

The old Saigon-type buildings got me to wondering:  In the thirties what the heck were all the people wo worked in thos building doing?  Preparing for WWII or shipping kola bear furs back to England?  Did the huntrs club Kola bear cubs to death rather than shoot them so that the pelts wouldn’t have bullet hole in them?

End of Sunday Nov. 16, 2008 report.

Old V-dub bus

58 V-dub

This 1958 Volks bus was at the beach market place in Melbourne on Sunday

1961 Wolsa Sdn

Wolsa Sdn

This 1961 Wolsa Sedan was parked in Melbourne on Sunday.

Streetcar Restaurant

Streetcar Restaurant

This Streetcar functions as a Restaurant in Melbourne

Eating on the road

Restaurant in a streetcar

This is a going away shto of a Restaurant that is in a streetcar in Melbourne.

Blog = stream of consciousness novel?

NYPD = good pizza in Melbourne.  Not much Mexican food in evidence.

Why doesn’t someone invent a combo pen spoon?  One end could be a spoon for stirring coffee (etc.) and the other could be a pen.  You can always use a ballpoint pen to stir coffee but a spoon doesn’t do much good when you get a good phone number.

A cheap alcoholic drink that’s almost wine is called “goon” by the kids here in Oz.

Saw cotton candy in the video store.  Do that have that in the USA and I just didn’t notice it or what?  As I recall cotton candy was only available at amusement parks in the USA.

Canadians call couches a “Chesterfield.”  I couldn’t convince them that it was a cigarette.  They didn’ know:  “Chesterfield tasts good like a cigarette should.”

I read in the paper while I was in Sydney that the Cronulla Sharks were trying to borrow some money to pay their team.  Yikes!  There must be a world wide financial crises happening, eh?

Maybe I just misunderstood, but (no time for fact checking) it seems that there are rock groups here named “Holy Fuck” and “Machine Gun Felatio.”

In Sydney, Louie from Canada told me that the basking shark is facing extinction.

In the Video store they had a DVD for the best of “The Naked Vicar Show.”  Where are the born again Republicans when you really need them?

Are blogs the modern equivalant of a stream of consciousness novel?

Selfportrait?

Picture of Bob

Christmas decorations are on display down under

Christmas in Dispatch

Christmas in Dispatch

This photo of the Christmas display at the Myer Department store in Melbounre Australis looks exactly like the way Christmas was celebrated at the Outlook Dispatch department.

Perth

Shipwreck Museum

So I made it to Perth.  More photos to follow but not today.

Promobabble Report Fremantle Issue

Promobabble Report 

Fremantle Issue

Nov. 22, 2008

Weather report

Warm and sunny in Fremantle today.  Hailstorm from Queensland earlier in week cause mucho excitement in Freo.

The Western Australian newspaper’s weekend magazine section featured an interview with the original Cheeta from the Tarzan movies.  The writer tracked down the original chimp in Palm Springs Ca.  Cheeta is still alive but a bit of a crumudgeon in his old age.  (Ha!)

The new California Ferrari gets good gas milage.  It’s listed as 13OL/100 Km.  Whatever that means.

Will be taking at least one picture at the local die-cast car store for the folks at LASAAC.org

http://www.lasaac.org/content/welcome-lasaacorg

They have stuff not available in USA.  The best is a 1/12 scale Cobra.

Jim Clark’s 1963 Lotus was sold but it should remain in Oz.  A 1952 Alta was sold for $226,000 but it will not stay in Oz.

The nice thing about a blog is that the columnist can run stuff just for one reader.

After this Report is posted we will post (so it will be above this) a photo for Kevin at L. A. Observed and another photo for Alan at Just Above Sunset Photo and Jersey Bill.

There is a desert town in Oz named Siberia.

The Australian citizenship test will be changed.  There won’t be as much attention paid to sports questions.

Tonight Barking Frank Valentine is playing close to this hostel.  Barking Frank is a one man tribute band doing Tom Waits material.

The weekend paper also featured a Calvin and Hobbs featuring “Stupendous Man.” 

There was (in Sydney) a book that seemed to be a look at the Southern Conservative Christians in the USA.  The title of the book was “Have a nice Doomsday!”

To be continued . . .

Photo for Kevin at LAObserved

Photo for Kevin

 Kevin at L. A. Observed likes to run a Jacarandas in bloom photo every spring.

http://www.laobserved.com/

We assume that he also likes Christmas, therefore we assume that he will enjoy seeing this photo from Fremantle Western Australia that shows Christmas decorations with a blooming Jacaranda in the background.

Photo for Alan and Jersey Bill

Nikon Man

A photographer for Liquid Images

http://liquid-images.com/

not only bought a Nikon he displays his brand preference on his car, so, since both Alan over at Just Above Sunset Photo

http://www.justabovesunset.com/photography/

and Jersey Bill, are very happy with their Nikon cameras, we want to know why they don’t declair the brand alegiance to the world on their cars?  What’s holding you back, guys?

Missed Barking Frank Valentine

Due to the cold, I missed seeing the Aussie tribute to Tom Waits.

I think I’ve tunred the corner and am getting better.  It’s at the “cold breaking up” phase which is when it sounds the worst.

Last night I tried to post a photo of the “Goon Squad” but failed.  Will try again later today.  I was caughing a lot and so I creeped out of my room to reduce the noise for the othere in there.  Later when I can make some noise, I will go in and recover the disk and stuff.  Fo now, I’ll go get a coffee because it is just about 7 a..m. Sunday morning in Fremantle.  I thinkmeans t is about 4 p.m. on saturay in L. A.

To be continued . . .

The Goon Squad

The Goon Squad

At the hostel in Fremantle, folks sit around in the eveing and do what the Aussies call “yarning,” while drinking and smoking.

True Dat

Old Guys Rule

A clothing brand in Australia is called “Old Guys Rule.”

Mooks = Brand name in Oz

Mooks brand T-shirts

In Australia, Mooks is a brand name for a line of clothes.

Time warp

It’s time for the Monday morning news here in Perth, but back in the USA the guys with the Sunday Night Classics (country music) have enven started their program.

I believe that my cold is very much in remission.  I can talk and breath.  The girls in the “Goon Squad” helped with meds and teas.  I may go into Perth and explore today.

Alphainventions (?) has sent some new readers to this blog!

Now if the regulars in the Promobabble Patrol will only send the URL to all their friends and relatives, maybe we can start to grow this site.  The plug on the Bartcop site and the one on L. A. Observed helped get us listed on wordpress’ “hawt blogs” list. 

It seems that the best item on the site was the one about the Republicans getting ready to have an impeachment movement ready and in place for Inauguration Day.  Bi-partician support is for Republican Presidents only!

To be continued . . .

Doncha just love computers?

Everywhere I seem to have various degrees of trouble with flppies and downloading picturee via computers here in Oz.

It’s getting to be just too much hassle.

I may try again later on a different set of computers but then again…

I intended to go to Perth today, but may rest up since my cold ins’t fully finished with me yet.

It’s Monday afternoon and it’s funny to think that the Sunday night country music program may be just about to start back in L. A.

To be continued…

Three’s the charm (?)

The Brits

I told the Brits at the hostel that I would post a picture of them on my blog (that’s how desperated I get for new readers) and this is about the third attempt to post the picture, but it worked!, so I’ll get some new readers!

Info for my mates at LASAAC dot org

Cobra model

(Note the one foot ruler in background)

Cobra

This die cast Cobra is 1/12 scale and costs about $800 American.  It has the driver side on the left as it is in the USA.

For more info contact Fremantle Model Cars

Fremantlemodelcars@hotmail.com

or 618 933 57674 (mind the time difference)

or fax 618 933 54148

They have many die cast cars that are not available in the USA

or write to them at

Fremantle Model Cars

Shop 11

Atwell Arcade

Fremantle 6160

Western Australia

Will be posting real life car pictures as I get them, so check back from time to time.

“We can’t be bothered.”

Lazy B. awards

A game of Yehaaa!

Yehaaa!

The lads from London are introducing the game of “Yehaa!” into Australia.

Happy Birthday, Holly!

Holly

Tuesday was Holly’s Birthday.

Planning Committee

 

The Planning Committee worked in a shroud of secrecy for the surprise party.

Lawyer’s Theory

In Perth, today (Wednesday Nov. 26), I had lunch with a lawyer from Mandurah and the fellow who does both scuba and motorcycles has a theory that a much higher number of lawyers than statistics would predict, are into scuba and/or motorcycles because the high degree of concentration those activities require,  hence they take a lawyer’s mind away from his job.

Ya think?

“I am Grimaldi!”

The lasses from London like all the tourists, were looking forward to meeting, in some obscure South Seas port,  a Graham Greene type character who had been everywhere, seen everything, and met many important people.

Finding such a character would be a find and produce many great columns.

The girls have befriended an old American backpacker who has been to the Oscars, the Grammies, the Emmies, been to Paris, Casablanca, and Amsterdam, met folks like John Wayne and Macolm X, and he has had rides in a B-17G, world war II bomber, and the Goodyear blimp.

I don’t think I’m going to meet any such person, but I’ll keep on looking.

Nic in Kansas predicted (many years ago) this would happen.  To “get” the inside joke; Google:  “I am Grimaldi!”

A Swim in the Indian Ocean

Some of the girls from the “Goon Squad” were going to the beach today, so I tagged along.  We stopped at a fish and chips place before hitting the beach at Cotteslow and I had a Pineapple and also a banana fritter for lunch.  The beach weather was bright and beautiful.  The water was sparkling and clear showing off the blues and greens (I’m used to brown ocean water at Venice Beach). 

I went in for a “swim” and got battered about by the waves.  They seem much more rough than the ones back in the L. A. area.

Getting out of the surf was hectic.  The undertow effect was noticable. 

I believe this was the fist time I spent Thanksgiving day outside the USA.

To be continued . . .

Promobabble Report Indian Ocean Issue

Promobabble Report

Indian Ocean Issue

Nov. 28, 2008

Say a prayer

Promobabble Patrol member Jane Stillwater has had an alergical reaction to a medicine and is having some difficulty walking.  Since I was in a similar plight a year ago, I know what that feels like.  Please say a prayer for her this weekend.

Americans

Haven’t met meany Americans in Oz, but now there are two others staying at the hostel in Fremantle.  One from Oregon and one from (originally) Texas.

Is that all there is?

Not much else to say. 

Now, the disk jockey will play “Does Your Chewing Gum Loose It’s Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?” and we’ll bounce out of here.  Have a “throw down your crutches and walk” type week.

Green Baseball Caps

We’ve been told that the crew of the Destroyer O’Brien has the distinction of being the only crew permitted to war green baseball caps.  A quick check online backs this up.

 

The O’Brien, DD975, has green baseball caps while all the others get to wear blue ones.

What is St. Patrick’s day like on that ship?

Old Cars in Oz

Holden Ute

This ute (utility vehcile) is a (about) 1961 Holden

Old Holden Sdn

This (about 1961) Moris Minor 1000 was seen at South Beach in Fremantle W. A.

This old Holden Sdn was seen at Fairway Panel and Paint in Fremantle Western Australia

Minor 1000

Indian Ocean Beachcomber’s Day

Old car mag

This 50+ year old copy of a British sports car magazine was found for sale in Fremantle in Western Australia.

Ship Wreck

 

This old ship wreck is on the Indian Ocean beach just south of South Beach near Fremantle W. A.

Pass the Word along

Will be going to Perth today.  People who like this blog should send the URL to their friends.  Folks who do not like this blog should send the URL to their posse and warn them not to read it.

Faisel, a guy here at the hostel in Freo, told me his claim to fame is that as a kid, Johnny Cash picked him up, held him in his arms, and told his mother he was a fine kid.

Will try to post photos from Perth later today.

Big Mouth

Big Mouth

They say it takes one to know one.

W. A. Museum

Faezil talks to his girlfriend from in front of the Western Australian Museum.

World’s Laziest Chef

My idea of cooking is a lot like dealing cards in Vegas:

Bread, bread, bread

Meat, meat, meat

Cheese, cheese, cheese

Mustard, mustard, mustard

Bread, bread, bread

Voila!  A three course meal.

Back in the day, I thought that it would be fun to host a cooking show.  (Didn’t Andy Warhol once say that everyone would have a world famous cooking show for 15 minutes?) 

I’d get a TV dinner, throw it in the microwave and then do commentary (snide remarks come naturally to an Irishman) and then when the bell rang, serve the meal to the crew.

(Send news tips and story ideas to:

worldslaziestjournalist@yahoo.com)

World’s Laziest Journalist Photos from Freo

L. A. Culture?

This is a reminder of the L. A. culture

Dress Shop?

 

This store makes it easy to see figure out what they sell.

Photo for Suzie-Q

Train whistles for sale

The train whistles remind me of the time . . .

The Church without Front Steps

Many years ago, Ripley’s “Beleve It or Not” ran an item stating tha t the only church in the United States without any front steps was St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Dunmore, Pa.

Google searches fail to reveal if that item still holds true.

One of the goals in this blog’s mission statement is to post items and information that is not found elsewhere on the Internets. 

Readers will post a comment if there is another chuch in the United States without any front steps, won’t they?

Send news items and topic suggestions to:

wolrdlslaziestjournalist@yahoo.com

Seems Familiar

Golden State

License plates informing folks that they are in “the Golden State” seem very familiar to people with a California driver’s license.

Money Maker

West Coast Eagles Fan

Couldn’t states in the U. S. A. make some extra cash by letting sports fans proclaim their allegiance to sports teams?  It seems that Western Australia has put that idea into action and has beat states such as California, to the punch.

Seasick Steve Alert!

So a blogger travels all the way to Australia and what kind of story does he find?

Stories about Americans who become popular in England before they are known back in the states are raher fun.  Didn’t that happen to the Pretenders?

So when a new member of the “Goon Squad” arrives in Fremantle, the music news from back home is that Seasick Steve is hot and getting hotter.

The blogger will alert his music oriented pals back in the states and post a blog report (with a link to Seasick Steve’s facebook page

http://www.myspace.com/seasicksteve) and wait to see how long after his report is posted, it take NPR to do a feature on the guy.

Steve’s songs are rather blues-ish, but apparently he doesn’t like to call himself a blues-man.

Send more good news tips to:

worldslaziestjournalist@yahoo.com

Sundowners at Sundown

Friends Fremantle style

Fremantle at sundown

The goon squad at the Roundhouse at the end of the day

a Seasick Steve fan

 

A new member of the goon squad brings word from England that Seasick Steve is making a big splash in the Brit music scene.

Prison Break Theme Park

Last night I met some new guys at the hostel and it seems they have come over to W. A. to work at a new theme park that is an adventure land based on the American TV series “Prison Break.”

Has the media in the USA covered this development?

Will post more details as they become available.

So much info such little amount of computer time

One of the drawaback to blogging in a hostel, is that the computer time runs out so fast you wind up cramming and skipping.  A trip to the Army Museum of Western Australia

http://www.armymuseumwa.com.au/

was excellent and there was much to jot down, but since computer time is running out all I can say is visit the web site (see link above) and that (attention Scranton) there will now be a new Australian version of “The Office,” but I don’t know the name of the town in Australia where it will (supposely) taking place.

Ka-Boom!

Ka-Boom!

The big Ka-boom at the Super Pit in Boulder West Australia on Tuesday Dec. 16, 2008.  In the right place at the right time.

Gridlock

Australia at Xmas time gets into a travel gridlock type mode.  Have pictures to post, but will wait until I get to a cheaper computer cafe (say back in Freo)

It will take about two days to get back to posting.

To be continued . . .

Will try to get to Canbarra for a car event.

Blog Demonstration

Hi gang!

I’m at the hostel in Kalgoorlie showing one of the guys how this blog thing works.

We’ll post this and will resume posting stuff about Oz (such as a story about the children’s book “The Secret Lives of Mr. and Mrs. Smith”) later.

To be continued . . .

Toy Library

I have more photos from Kalgoorlie, but I won’t be posting them until later.

I may or may not get to the Canberra for the Supernats.  If I do, I will post pictures and send a bunch to Just Above Sunset Photo for Alan to post.

In Kalgoorlie, there is a “Toy Library.”  Not sure what exactly it is, but it sounds like a great concept.  Kids get new toys, play with them for two weeks, then put them away and never use them again, so maybe the library concept can be applied to toys?

Steinbeck vs. Kerouac in Oz

Jack Kerouac seems to be more popular in Australia than Steinbeck.  Penguine has issued a new series of classics and the one source indicates that “On the Road” is the third most popular book in the series. 

Fruit picking is a big industry in Australia, but Steinbeck and “Grapes of Wrath” is rather unknown.  Perhaps the owners of the fruit farms prefer it if the workers don’t get radicalized by that book and have convinced publishers to ignore what some American critics think is the best American novel ever written?

Gavin Bishop (according to our source) has written a children’s book titled “The Private Lives of Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” which is about a pair of assassins who are married but unaware of the other’s job.  The author has noted the similarity to a recent movie that starred one of Hollywood’s power couples and is exploring the possibility that he may have the grounds for a plagiarism lawsuit.

His nephew is working in the mining town of Kalgoorlie and is into 4WD off-road adventures.  We have strongly suggested that he contact the American magazines devoted to that activity and try to do some stringing for them.  Some Americans would be surprised to see just how  big 4WD is in Western Australia.  It is very common to see vehicles on the street with snorkels and that indicates they must go through some rather deep streams.

We are trying to contact our friend Dennis Etchison to get some information about what a writer should do if he thinks he may have been “ripped-off” by a Hollywood movie maker.  (Dennis is also supposed to be starting some agenting activites for a new take on the vampire genre.  DE has his own agents but if he can sell the story to a magazine . . .)

In Kalgoorlie, we have made friends (using his laptop right now) a local journalist who will be working a monk’s existence in the mine fields for the next several months and we have told him of the theory that if you write a thousand words a day (after work) then by the end of a month he will have 30,000 words written.  Robert B. Parker recommended this daily workout for would  be writers.  If Greg is in the field for several months, he could, if he sticks to the 1,000 words a day goal, finish a novel while he is working on this new project.

Bill Bryson is considered a cultural treasusre by folks in Australia.  We have been told that “down under” is a pejorative term, but Bryson’s book about traveling in Australia, is titled “Down Under” in the copies for sale here in Australia.  (Did we get bogus information about “down under” being a pejorative term?)

We have picked up many more nuggests of literary information, but this quick post will have to do for now.

To be continued . . .

Say Whaaaaat?

A Tour?

Tourists in Kalgoorlie will find all kinds of diversions.

Best Christmas Ever?

What better Christmas present could a blogger want than a chance to scoop the New York Times.

I think I just did scoop the New York Times

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19380

and here

http://bartblog.bartcop.com/2008/12/23/questions-about-gen-pattons-death/

I guess that makes it the best Christmas ever!

Bic Church Key Trick

Bic Church Key

If you don’t know how to use a Bic lighter as a “church key,” then you have never really been to Australia.

A photo for Radio Rick

Fiat 500 in Freo

One of the new versions of the Fiat 500 was spotted in Fremantle W. A. on Chrismtas Eve.

World’s Laziest Journalist Blog’s New Readers

new readers

Running pictures of folks is one way to boost the number of hits on the Wrold’s Laziest Journalist’s blog.

If we run 100,000 mug shots we will get 100,000 readers, eh?

Rock star’s statue

Rock star's statue

Bon Scott statue

 

This statue of rock star Bon Scott is in Fremantle in Western Australia.

Postcard from Fremantle W. A.

Sunset in Fremantle

It’s easier to pay for computer time and post this shot of a ship at sunset taken in Fremantle Western Australia and hope that my friends see it, rather than sending them each a post card.

(Dennis, sell my story . . . please!)

World’s Laziest Journalist Story Updates

We promised more on the prison break theme park.

URL’s are

Adventure World

http://www.adventureworld.net.au/

and Sudden Impact Entertainment

http://www.suddenimpactentertainment.com/

All we give you is link so you can do your own fact checking?  Why do you think we have the title of “World’s Laziest Journalist”?

Bon Scott Statue

The reason that the city of Fremantle in West Australia has a statue of Bon Scott (from AC/DC) is because his family moved to “Freo” when he was less than 10 years old, so he attended school and high school in the port city on the Indian Ocean.

Drinking Song

Barstool Mountain sends many visitors to this site.  We mentioned that a song was missing from their list of 100 best drinking songs.  The missing song is Sigmund Romberg’s “The Drinking Song” from The Student Prince. 

Equipment upgrade

Writing stories on the fly using computers with time limits means there is likely to be less fact checking, so we are studying the possibility of getting a portable lap-top to use.

We urge readers to check out our columns on the web sites

Smirking Chimp

Bart Cop

Oped News

and to look for some of our photos on the Just Above Sunset Photo site and also on flickr  (search flickr for “bobby Kennedy 68 los angeles” and click on the one of him with a toy store sign in the background and follow that to more of our photos.)

To be continued . . .

Photo for Kim M. and “the load-man”

Photo for Kim M.

It’s very unlikely that Kim or “the Load-man” will ever see this photo, but the thing about running a blog is if the blogger likes the idea, then it gets done.

Finding the Columns written by the World’s Laziest Journalist

The pictures adn the blog items are here, but if you want to track down my columns follow these links:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/author/bob_patterson

http://www.opednews.com/author/author20497.html

and check out the Bartcop blog page regularly

http://bartblog.bartcop.com/

Shroud of Turin Man

In Canberra, Australia, we’ve met the man whose image is on the Shroud of Turin

http://www.shroud.com/

Adam has studied magic and after traveling back in time, he used a trick taught to him by the Vatican 

http://www.vatican.va/

to appear on the shourd of Turin.

We took a picture of him, but we can’t post it because we don’t have access to a computer that takes floppy disks, so we will have to run an update with photo later after we get to a place (Sydney?) where we can post a picture that is on a floppy disk.

Sneezing and takin’ lotsa pictures

Will be going to the Summer Nats in Canberra today.  Will take lotsa pictures, but will not be able to post any until arrival in Sydney which should be in two days.

Got to see an (old) episode of Boston Legal last night. 

To be continued . . .

Hard rock vs. soft rock

Geologists are split into two camps.  The geologists who work in the gold fields of Kalgoorlie are hard rockers and can drill down to about 300 feet.  The guys who work with oil fields are the soft rockers and can drill a well down to 10,000 with no trouble.

Kalgoorlie reporter

We had a clip of the story from the Kalgoorlie Minor about how one of their reporters won a contest to be invited to the Paris Hilton NYE party in Sydney.  We lost the clip and can’t find it by doing a quick Google search.

It would have been a great story for Entertainment Tonight to pick up.

War Crimes trial

We did a column predicting that President Obama wouldn’t hold a war crimes investigation

http://bartblog.bartcop.com/2008/12/26/pardons-imply-guilt/

We got it posted on Bartcop, but didn’t have the compture time available to cross post it on other sites.

My prediction is that President Obama will not hold a war crimes investigation because he is trying to build a new coalition and not keep the country divided.

Fashion note from SummerNats 2009

Punk Fashion

Punk fashion was on display at Summer Nats 2009 held recently in Canberra.

Aussie Drinking Game

Oz drinking

An Australia drinking game involves taping a drink to the contestant’s hand.  This entry in the Summer Nats 2009, held recently in Canberra, shows what the taped drink bit looks like.

Summer Nats Photos

deuce coupe

flames

 

This 1932 Ford coupe was reported to have won the “best hot rod” award at the 2009 Summer Nats held recently in Canberra.

With surfboard

With surfboard

This motorcycle seen with a surbboard case attached, was seen at the 2009 Summer Nats in Canberra.

The World’s Laziest Journalist has posted additional photo coverage on another site.  Check out more at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8216859@N04/?saved=1

Photo for Ray at Jalopnik

Hoon?

 

So, if you can’t send a photo as an attachment for one particular editor at Jalopnik, what’s a blogger to do?

Well, you could publish the photo on the blog and send the bloke the link.

Americans might be a bit baffled by the word “hoon,” but car buffs in Australia know what it means.  This T-shirt helps American car fans get “hip.”  Photo was taken at Summern Nats 2009 held recently in Canberra.

Hot Dog War in Sydney

Picture Op

Hot dog war?

Folks enjoy a Harry’s hot dog in Syndey N. S. W. and take pictures, but Sydney’s heavyweight hot dog champion is being challenged by JD’s Dogs.

Harry’s Navy is seen in the background as customers enjoy a dog and the view.

Photos of the “Rocky” style challenger will be taken and added at a later update.

Judge St.

Judge St.

Sydney basks in the summer sun.  How’s the weather in Vt.?

Shroudman Update

Shroudman

Due to technical challenges, we could not include the photo of the man who claimes he traveled back in time and (using a trick learned from the Vatican), put his own image on the Shroud of Turin.

Now that we have a better computer available we can keep our promise and post the aforementioned photo.

Whatcha think?  Is it the same guy or not?

How do you say “OK” in Chinese?

OK in Chinese

This sign (on Orwell Street) in Sydney N. S. W. seems to answer the question.

Stay or Go?

A sign?

When I try to make up my mind I ask God to show me a sign (and he just did!).

Thank You AlphaInventions!

Building a large base of regular readers (so that we can go into the T-shirt busines

and become rich selling them) is difficult.  Getting folks to send new readers such as

http://www.alphainventions.com/

has done recently helps, so we just want to say:  “Thank you!” to Alpha Inventions.

Where is Fred C. Dobbs when we really need him?

Prospector's H of F

As far as we could tell (we asked and looked) we could not

find any reference to Fred C. Dobbs in the Prospector’s Hall

of Fame in Kalgoorlie W. A.

Santa Moncia Flashback

Nick Cave in Sydney

Nick Cave will headline a concert featuring Ex-pats in Australia for the Sydney Summer Festival.  (Note the iconic Coke ad to the right of this ad for the upcoming Nick Cave event in Sydney.)

http://sydneyfestival2009.blogspot.com/2008/12/nick-cave-on-cockatoo-island.html

Didn’t he and his backup band play for years at a pub on Lincoln Blvd. in Santa Monica?

Man with a Cause

Save the Children

Rather than give a donation to a young man promoting Save the Children, we promised to run this picture and post a link to his organization.

http://www.savethechildren.org.au/index.html

Where Did Flordia Go?

Sunshine State

If Queensland is “the Sunshine State,” where does that leave Florida?

How does it taste?

Kangaroo marinated tastes quite a bit like my mom’s marinated flank stake.  At least I do not have to say:  “It tasts like chicken.”

Skid Row Radio

Harry Shearer

http://harryshearer.com/

always brags that Santa Monica is “home of the homeless” and sometimes adds the sobriquette “skid row by the sea.”

Does Sanat Monica have a radio station for the folks on Skid Row?

Sydney in New South Wales has a radio station for the homeless

http://www.addisonrdcentre.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=21&Itemid=81

Bird Photos

Bird

We’ve fallen a bit behind in our task of sending photos of birds in Australia to Alan at http://www.justabovesunset.com/photography/

We’ll try to do better and get them sent off in a timely manner.

Cops and doughnut shops

One of the wildest unsubstantiated rumours heard during a vacation in Australia was that J. Edgar Hoover was one of the founding investors in Dunkin’ Doughnuts.

This plays on many jokes about cops and doughnuts, but have you ever asked a copy about the connection?

Back in the day, (before patrol cars were equipted with comuters) policemen were reluctant to go back to their office to do their paperwork because when they sat down at their desks, the command watch officer would come over and put them to work on something more urgent.

Going into a coffee shop meant spending a few bucks and adding a bit more for a tip for the waitress, so that wasn’t a cost effective idea.

The cheapest place to find a cuppa and a table to write on was the local doughnut shop, so they would go there, spend the minium and print out (no writing in longhand) their reports in relative peace and quiet.

(Speaking of doughnuts, Kripy Kreme doughnuts are a common sight on Australia’s East Coast, but they are unavailable in Western Australia and are often “smuggled” in to W. A. by travelers.)

[Sidebar:  In Sydney folks can listen to FBi radio.  (Note the downstyle "i".)

http://www.fbi.org.au/content.php/3.html]

So now you know.

Hot (under) Dog

Hotdog

Liam O'Neil

 

The underdog in the David vs. Goliath battle for the bragging rights for  ”best” hotdog in Sydney is JD’s Dogs where size matters.

Symbolism?

Orwell Street

Shouldn’t someone who is living the “Down and Out in Perth and Frisco” lifestyle be living on “Orwell Street”?

Lolita Sunglasses

In Australia, this summer, one fashion mini-trend is the return of the heart shaped sun glasses made famous by the posters for the 1958 film version of Lolita.

http://picturez2.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/lolita-1962.jpg

The heartshaped sunglasses became an American icon when the film was released, but the thing of it was, she never wore them in the film.  Photographer Bert Stern

http://www.bertstern.com/

took still shots to be used on the movie posters and on an impulse he bought a pair of heartshaped sunglasses and took the shot after the film had been completed, so you never see the actress, Sue Lyon, wearing them in the film.

Will Fashionistas take a hint from Australia and wear them when summer comes to the Northern Hemisphere? 

Stay tuned . . .

What the . . . heck?

The all news all the time radio station in Canberra apparently has the call letters:  666

http://www.abc.net.au/canberra/radio/

What the . . . heck, kinda call letters is that?

A slight advantage in the Battle of the Coral Sea

When Americans see a tourist attraction in Australia, their automatic reaction (according to what Australians tell this columnist) is to tell the Aussies just where and how it has been done better in the USA.

There are exceptions to everything and when it comes to  the <a href =http://www.awm.gov.au/> Australian War Museum</a> there’s no contest that the Aussies have outdone America because there is nothing like it in the USA.

One of the most interesting items for Americans is the documentary about the <a href =http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/coralsea/coralsea.htm>Battle of the Coral Sea</a>. 

In books published in America (as the columnist recalls), the American success was attributed to luck and skill.  In the film shown in the museum in Canberra, the audience is told that the Americans had cracked the code being used by the Japanese military and knew what they were going to do before they started their response.

If the Americans had broken the code after the attack on Pearl Harbor, that means they did so while at war and were able to distribute listening abilities down to the combat level of operations in five months. 

If, however, the Americans had broken the code before the attack on Pearl Harbor, that tends to indicate that some high-level decisions were made which helped involve the United States in the World War by avoiding evasive action which could have diminished the effect of the ”surprise” attack.

Americans can’t tell the Australians that the Yanks have done National War Museums better because a Google search for a National War Museum was inconclusive.  There were specialized war museums, but not a generic all inclusive National American War Museum .  A future column will be written urging that the United States should have such an entity, but for this column, we will just note that the Australian Museum’s reputation for scholarly research and the information that the Japanese code had been broken only five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor has disturbing important implications for Americans.  If a Democratic President could lie about not knowing that the Japanese were going to make a surprise attack, then surely a Republican President can tell a few innocuous fibs about Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, can’t he?

Franklin D. Roosevelt said:  “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”  He didn’t call it a “surprise attack.”

Now the disk jockey will play Willie Nelson’s song, <a href =http://www.actionext.com/names_w/willie_nelson_lyrics/old_age_and_treachery.html> Old Age and Treachery,” </a> and we will vanish.  Have a “what you don’t know, won’t hurt you” type week.

Andrew’s in Canberrra

Andrew's

This coffee cafe is in Canberrra.  Too bad it isn’t on Judge St. in Sydney.

American Flashback

Raiders

Americans from the Bay Area (or who lived in L. A. in a certain era) will have a flashback when they see supporters of a Canberra team showing the world that they support the local team.

If you say so . . .

Tree Sign

Warning sign seen in Sydney N. S. W.

Is it a warning?

Warning?

Don’t give this motorist a hard time, eh, mate?

Was the Chrysler building an influence for . . .

Architectural Influence?

Do you think that the Chrysler Building in New York City might have had some role as an influence for the guy who did the architecture for the Luna Park in Sydney New South Wales?

Postcard from Sydney

Postcard from Sydney

It’s cheaper to post a photo on the blog than to send postcards to all my friends (and anyone else who finds this blog!)

“Have a little more Champaign, my dear?”

Champaign?

Callling Rev. Dan and his “Music for Nimrods” program (Sat. 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. PST) from Australia is too expensive, but maybe Jersey Bill who can do it for me between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. EDT) will be able to dial 310-338-5958 and act as our proxy?  Isn’t it time to ask for “Have a little more Champaign, my dear?” (done by Jim Backus)?

This couple is shown enjoying a sunset in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Odd Statues in Canberra

Art?

Statues

 

This odd bit of art was found in Canberra.  Is it supposed to look like some sheep are playing a very kinky version of “let’s play doctor!”?

Cowabunga, dude!

Surfer

We’re no longer in Malibu, Toto!  It’s not too hard to tell what kind of shop this plaque marks in Fremantle, Western Australa.

Does this look familiar?

Familiar Graphics

This logo looks kinda familiar.  Maybe some graphic artist from NYC can remind us why that’s so.

Climbing a ladder . . .

Ladder Boy?

A line in a Waylon Jennings song referred to the meaning of life:  “Climbing a ladder to a hole in the ground.”

January White Sale?

Sale?

It’s time for January White Sales all over the world.  One thing it doesn’t mean, in Australia, is trudging through the snow to get the bargains because it’s been rather warm in Sydney during the after Christmas sales.

Good Morning, Sydney!

Good Morning!

According to the conventional wisdom in the USA, there are only two kinds of people in the world;  those who say:  “Good morning, God!,” and those who say:  “Good God! Morning!”

Are you going to change your ways or does the disk jockey have to play “Ghost Riders in the Sky” for you to see the way?

The disk jockey is an ordained minister

http://www.themonastery.org/

The Philosophy of Gonzo Journalism

Gonzo Philosophy

Gonzo Philosophy is an oxymoron.  Gonzoists want to have fun and cause trouble. 

If (for instance) someone has won one of the Hunter S. Thompson Writing Grants from the Gonzo Journalism Foundation (for the promotion and practice of Gonzo Journalism) has a chance to go to the United States and write about the e-hippie existence in the land of Opportunity, he would be back on the road ASAP.  Hence, tomorrow at a bit past 10 a.m. we make a blog post from Sydney NSW.  At 11 a.m. the same day (maybe noon?) we will make a post from San Francisco.

Ready or not, here we come .  . .

Los 3 Caballeros

Caballeros

Staying at the Sydney Central Backpackers hostel, one will find a virtual U. N. variety of nationalities such as this trio there in January of 2009.

Odd Logo

Odd logo

Squint and see if this logo doesn’t look rather Third Reich-ish to you.

Roof-top Rock

Roof-top Rock

Air guitar star

 

If this doesn’t get these guys to send the URL to their pals, I guess it ain’t gonna happen.

Burgerfuel

Kiwi burger`

Same size model?

Burgerfuel is (according to what we were told at the outlet in the Kings Cross section of Sydney) a New Zeland burger chain that is hoping to expand into the US market.

This shop features what looks to be a 1:1 plactic model kit for an Austin Mini on the ceiling.

People need to eat just bout as often a car needs to stop at a gas station, so why not combine the two images  into one new marketing plan?

Who is that gonzo journaist . . .?

reflection

Going Gonzo?

Just (Don’t) Do It!

Just (Don't) Do It

This sign in Sydney advises viewers not to play this piano.  Other pianos are all over Sydney inviting musicans to play them.

Give It a Try!

Play it

Pianos have been distributed in various sposts in Sydney New South Wales with invitations for folks to play ‘em.

Are they following me?

Follow me!

Is a camera crew from a famous news organization getting their news by following the World’s Laziest Journalist around?

Are you from Santa Monica?

The Australian Museum

While walking around in Sydney (NSW) we had the impulse to ask a fellow if he was from Santa Monica.  He wasn’t.  He turned out to be Ash from Edinburgh Scotland.

One sure way . . .

Visiting Sydney

The one sure way to get folks to read your blog is to take a picture of them and post it and then hope they send the URL to all their family and friends.

The Longest Day

Sydney at sunset

This was the sunset as seen from Sydney on my last night in Australia.

It’s sad to be leaving.

It seems that there wasn’t a week in Australia whern I didn’t hear Johnny Cash’s music.  Elvis is also played very much.  On Monday afternoon, I heard (at a Cuban cafe) Edith Piaf.

There will be more to post later.  They sell mixed cocktails in a can in Oz and call them RTD’s (Ready to Drink.)

I may have become dependent on sausage rolls.

Today started at (of course) midnight in Sydney a little after 1600 hours I will get on a jet and head for San Francisco.  I think the flight takes 17 hours and I will arrive in SFO at just about this time (It’s 10:38 a.m. on Jan. 20, 2009) and will have about 14 hours more of this day left.  That adds up to about 47 hours.  When I arrive in San Fran, I will try to post another report at noon (or so) and when the day is over, there will be a new president of the United States and I will have traveled a good number of miles, and then it will be time to look for new information to post on this blog.

Darknesss at sundown

Time Travel

It is Tuesday Jan. 20, 2009 and I am in San Francisco, CA.   It is just a bit after 1 p.m.  Since I left Sydney NSW at about 4 p.m. on Jan 20, 2009, one of my goals in life has been achieved.  I have traveled back in time.

(Yahoooo!)

Spiritual Guidance

If someone (such as the disk jockey) is an ordained minister, were would he go for spiritual advice and guidance?

In late April, Bloomsbery plans to publish Jessica West’s new book
“What Would Keith Richards Do?: Daily Affirmations from a Rock and Roll Survivor.”

Our disk jockey can hardly wait.

To which we can only add:  “God bless you, Keith Richards!”

Eureka!

How do some web sites attract readers?

We were walking around in Kalgoorlie Western Australia and we saw a 4WD with a sign on it.  Must be a guy blogging his travels, eh?  So we typed it in

http://www.marcozangger.ch/

Sure enough!  It was the site for some couple blogging about driving around in Australia.  One of his links leads to a site for folks blogging about their 4WD adventures.

Aussie Trip in brief

This report will be an update for all the folks whose e-mail address I collected while traveling in Australia.

My stay in Sydney in November was longer than expected because I had to wait for some paperwork (debit card) to arrive from the USA.

One of the pictures I took of folks climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge (used a telephoto lens shooting from the Pylon) is supposed to be used for a travel guide for Sydney.

Photos of the bats in the Botanical Garden got hits.

On the Saturday, when I walked into the top rated hostel in Melbourne, there was a kid with a broken beer bottle threatening the security guard.  I said it was very nostalgic for someone who had worked in New York City.  I was booking a flight out of that city by Monday.

There were more banking troubles in Aus when I got to Fremantle.  NAB (National Australian Bank) was very helpful in setting up a bank account in their country.

Had fun with the girls of the “Goon Squad” in Fremantle.  I wonder if the real estate salesman took my suggestion and put an ad in one of the weekly papers in Malibu.

Kalgoorlie was fun and I hope I was able to help Sam find some help for his uncle’s possible plagiarism case.

I hope Greg is keeping to his plan to do some serious writing while working in the mines.

Back in Fremantle for Christmas, I found the statue of Bon Scott and took a bunch of pictures.  He was born in Scotland, but raised in Fremantle, so they are proud of their former citizen and have erected the statue of him.  Those pictures bring hits to this blog.

Canberra was very quiet in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, but I enjoyed seeing the Summer Nats car event and the pictures from that have brought a great many hits to this web site.

It was very reassuring to come back to Sydney and know where I wanted to go and how to get there.

It seems that every country with an east coast and a west coast have a strong east vs. west coast rivalry.  I like Sydney, but if I had to choose, I think I would rather live in W. A.

Now, if I can start making a fortune (Republican style) by selling T-shirts via this blog, I may be able to afford a return visit next Christmas/Summer to W. A.

Film Noir Note

If you just happen to be in the San Francisco area you have a great opportunity available this week, because the Film Noir festival is underway there now

http://www.noircity.com/program1.html#blindspot

Info for my mates in Sydney

Hi SCB Hostel gang!

I was fact checking some Sydney stuff and found a place (down in the Wooloomooloo section of town) that seems to be a local community resource which you might like to use (if you want to do workouts):

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/residents/RecreationAndLearningCentres/JuanitaNielsenLeisureCentre.asp

It’s cold and rainy in the San Francisco area and sundown comes about 6 p.m.

He’s OK!

A friend at the SCB Hostel asked me to post a bit of information that she says refutes a well known (false) urban legend.

Germans like David Hasselhoff, but he isn’t as wildly popular as most Americans believe.  He is (my friend tells me) well liked but the Germans think that the idea that they love, love, love him is a bit of an urban legend gone awry.

http://www.davidhasselhoff.com/

Perhaps if he produced a German style Hasselhoff beer, the folks in Germany would live up to the “completely bonkers” version of the story that Americans believe?

That plot sounds familiar

The IMDB description of the plot outline for the 1946 Australian movie, “The Overlanders,” sound very familiar:

“A Group of Misfits Drive Cattle Across the Australian Interior.”

For more see:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038821/

1908 Flashbacks

In 1908, there was a New York to Paris automobile race.  The 2009 New York to Paris “Great Race” will begin on April 25, 2009, according to their web site:

http://www.greatrace.com/newsite/

The 1908 White Fleet trip around the world celebrated its 100 annivsary in 2008, but we didn’t hear about it until we were in Australia.

http://www.historicalbany.com.au/whitefleet.htm

The USS John McCain visited Sydney and Melbourne as part of the centenial clebration.

http://perth.usconsulate.gov/perth/programs/2008.html

Better late than never, we say:  “Bully!”

Hidden Bunny

Playboy magazine reportedly has a bunny image on every cover.  Some are more difficult to spot than others.

Would it be too subtle if they used a painted by Australian painter (one of his paintings is in the New South Wales Art Museum) Rupert Bunny

http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A070483b.htm

to continue the tradition?

We’ll send a link to this suggestion to our pal at the Playboy blog

http://www.playboy.com/blog/

and see if he likes the idea.

Stop the Toad

The “stop the toad” bumper stickers seen in Western Australia have nothing to do with Mr. Toad and his truly remarkable automobile. 

http://www.enotes.com/wind-willows-text/

It refers to the cane toad which is threatening to enter Western Australia and cause some woes.

http://www.stopthetoad.org.au/

Flower Power

flower power

When signs with blooming flowers begin to appear (on the streets of Berkeley), amid the barren winter trees, that’s a sure sign that Spring (and Spring Semester) will arrive soon.

Staute of a dog

Ivan

Queen Victoria’s dog, Ivan, has been honored with a statue in Sydney, New South Wales.

Graffiti Sneakers

Graffiti Sneakers

Alejandro Flores makes custom hand painted sneakers using graffiti style lettering.   We noticed them in the window as we were walking by

Filthy Dripped on Telegraph Ave. (in Berkeley)

http://www.filthydripped.com/about/

and thought that we’d found a good item for this blog.

unique shoes

The artist told us that he has been feature in Rolling Stones magazine (dang! there goes our “scoop”!  Oh well, maybe Vogue will read our blog and steal this item from us and not from Jann Wenner’s publication.

Sneaker

Fashion items do seem to bring a goodly number of hits and building circulation numbers for this blog is the name of the game!

When the Song is wrong

leaves are gone?

The words to the song are “all the leaves are gone/ and the sky is grey” but it wasn’t like that today in Berkeley.

Smiling Dog Pix

There is a (new?) magazine that is inviting their readers to submit photos of their smiling dogs.

http://www.thebark.com/

We hope our friend “Jersey Bill” has a good one of Auggie smiling so that it can be submitted and bring Auggie a greater amount of fame and fortune.

Tip for writiers

There is a magazine called “Going Bonkers” and it has been around for a good number of years.

Here is the link to the writers’ guidelines page

http://www.gbonkers.com/writer_guidelines.htm

Imponderable Questions (No. 1)

Do nudist magazines ever titillate readers with a “bathing suit” issue?

Helen Keller Jokes

After hearing, while in Australia, a Helen Keller joke, I asked my punk rock consultant if she and her pals knew about them.  She didn’t and had to be informed about them.

http://www.jokechallenge.com/keller.html

My consultant thought they were “sick.”

The last time, before hearing the one in Australia, that I had heard one must have been over thirty years ago.

Smurfs singing a Country Song with German lyrics

If you have never heard the Smurfs singing a country song with German lyrics then click this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-4O_YgffOM

Floating VW

Do you recall the ad with the floating VW?  Was it the National Lampoon that parodied the ad with their own version?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9c/TeddyVWad.jpg

Lace Museum?

Folks from Scranton might (because of their Scranton Lace Works) be interested in knowing bout the LACIS Museum of Lace and Textiles in Berkeley.  They cover costumes, books, tools and materials.  They are at 2982 Adeline St. and their web site is at

http://lacismuseum.org/

Didn’t a guy from the Santa Monica Outlook do a book about unusual and remarkable museums of the US?

Imponderable Questions (No. 2)

Recently we noticed that new baby strollers have a seat-belt that secures the child into the stroller rather completely.  Kids have to have seat-belts in cars too.

Twenty years from now will there be an increase in the number of people who take a sudden interest in bondage because of all the restraints they used when they were kids?

“The” (1959) Caddy tailfin turns 50

Has anyone (else) noted that the famous 1959 Cadillac tail-fin is celebrating its 50th birthday this year?

Journal of an e-beatnik

Notes for Chapter One

On Tuesday, I called about getting the list of phone numbers from the Senior Housing Office.  When they determined that I had registered with them and didn’t have a local address, they suggested that I drop by and pick up the list of numbers.

 

I took two busses ($.25 cents old folks off-peak hours) and got there in about an hour and go the list of phone number that has been misplaced since September. 

 

I wrote a column for Smirking Chimp at the Santa Monica Public Library.  You compose on one set of computers and get Internet access on different ones.  I (thought I) put the column on a floppy disk, but when I got to the Internet access computers I couldn’t open the file.  Kiss that column goodbye.

 

I check Craigslist, sent e-mails, wrote down phone numbers, and then monitored the jungle drums on the Liberal blogisphere.

 

I hustled myself back to my host’s pad.  I had to pay $2.80 for a bottle of Diet Root Beer, that sells for (about) $.90 during sales events at the big chain markets. 

 

Notes for Chapter Two

The phone number for the Section 8 housing, on the list I got yesterday, had recorded information calling “this year” 2004.  Nothing like keeping citizens up-to-date on government information hotlines, eh?

 

I walked to a nearby Section 8 housing facility and learned that they were run by the Housing Authority of L. A.  Since I knew just where the WLA office was, I hopped on a bus and went over.

 

They gave me a very similar phone number 252-2500.  So I will try to call that number tomorrow morning.

 

I asked if I could get two sheets of blank legal size paper but was told that times are bad and they couldn’t give me two sheets of paper.  I guess the media that thinks the bail-out funds are going to be pork barrel projects would be glad to see that government employees are being very vigilant about waste, so there’s no worries (mate!).

 

I then mailed a letter to a Democratic pal who is very hard to contact.  Could it be that during hard times, Democrats don’t want to be put to the old “one for all and all for one” acid test of being asked for help?  Perish the thought.  I just want to have lunch with him and tell him about a great “based on true events” story (escaped POW) I found in Western Australia.  He tends to be very cautious and makes it hard to contact him.

 

I mailed off the letter and then walked over to a friend’s place because he hasn’t returned my phone calls for the last few calls.  Some a few months back before going to Australian and then one yesterday. 

 

He becomes a bit of a recluse and so I will try to bribe him into having lunch with me by offering him a copy of a 50 year old British car magazine.  He likes cars and car magazines, so maybe he will go for the offer?

 

Then I went to the Santa Monica Senior Center and signed up for lunch this Saturday.

 

I ran into one of the former photographers for the Santa Monica Outlook and got his e-mail address.  (Building a million reader blog one new “subscription” at a time!)

Dracula’s ring up for bids

A trove of Hollywood memorabilia will be sold via auction.

Items from Forest J Ackerman’s collection will be sold (see links below )

at auction.

For more information about the material and the auction use these links

news story

http://www.times-standard.com/entertainment/ci_11626725

old page about collection

http://www.seeing-stars.com/Museums/ForrestAckerman.shtml

Journal of an e-beatnik cont.

Beatnik Journal Notes for Chapter Four

 

The place near SMC was rented by the time I called back on Thursday.  I like the way the kid didn’t even say an insincere “sorry.”  Will folks doing things like that be Bush’s real legacy?

 

I found another ad for a bed near UCLA. 

 

It turned out to be a young woman renting bed space in her bedroom.  For an old guy, this made it seem like one of two things:  either she hasn’t thought it through or she’s a drama about to happen.  Either way, no thanks!

 

It rained Thursday and my plastic poncho that I’ve had for years (Decades?) got put to use.  It traveled all over the US and Australia in its package, but now it has been used and will have to be discarded.

 

Republicans seem to take care of each other.  One for all and all for one.  Democrats seem to adopt the Republican philosophy during hard times.  They want their friends to realize that they should take care of themselves and not ask for anything from fellow Democrats, such as crash pads or what have you.  Obviously there are some exceptions to the rule, but a goodly number of folks are not returning my calls.

 

Air fares are falling.  If folks have lost their jobs and their homes then they have no excuse for not going on a trip, do they?  Yeah, if you’d loose your job or (if you miss a house or car payment) face repossession, but if you don’t have any of that to worry about why not check out the new low airfares?  A new VAustralia (Virgin?) is offering RT LA-Sydney-LA for only $777.  Yeah, but fall and winter are coming on down there.  There is still about a month and a half of summer left, though . . . .

 

A call to the main number for the Section 8 Housing part of the Housing Authority for L. A. produced the information that they are (just as in 2004) not taking applications at this time.  If they start doing so again, they’ll put notices in the media.  Until then, see if a friend can let you sleep on the couch for a short time. 

Imponderable Question (No. 3)

There are film festivals featuring noir classics in both San Francisco and Palm Springs.  Why isn’t there one in Los Angeles, which is synonymous with the stories about pulp fiction detectives’?

 

Notes for Chapter 5

Notes for Chapter Five

Rain was predicted all day Friday and so I finished up at the SMPL early and headed back to the crash pad.  I got there before a big ole rain storm came along.

 

It was still looking like rain on Saturday morning but as the day moves along, the weather gets better and better.

 

Dennis E is supposed to catch up with me today at the SMPL. 

 

Will put the floppy disks from the Australia trip in storage and that seems (symbolically) like it puts “30” to the trip.

 

Have to remember to do a tribute to Johnny Cash before the 13^th because (as I recall) that’s his birthday.

 

Called Rev. Dan this morning.  Don’t know where I’ll be next Saturday morning or if I’ll be able to call him.

Don’t be (too) cruel!

Would it be too mean for a columnist to use this title for his autobiography:

“Memoirs of an Alzheimer’s Victim”?

Snoring Games

Is it true that this year, during the annual Snoring meet, some participants slept all the way through their turn to compete?

What’s that word?

When it begins to rain, a film will form on the surface of a lake.  The Germans have a word for that film.  There is no word in English for it.

I learned that word many years ago.  Now I forget it.

Anyone know that word?

Follow the money

If you like money, you might like this web site

http://www.wheresgeorge.com/

Urban Legend or True Story?

Urban legend or good script idea for a “road picture”? 

 

Back in the Fifties, during a trip we  (probably one of the ones I made with Aunt Dorothy) made to New York City to go to the old Barnes and Nobel book store (when there was only one in the whole world) each time an new volume of Admiral Morrison’s History of U. S. Naval Operations in World War II was published), we took a cab trip and we must have asked about how far their service extended because the guy told us that during WWII, a bunch (four, five or six?) of sailors hopped into a cab and told the drive to take them to the San Diego Naval Base,  According to our informant, he cleared the trip with his dispatcher and off they went.  He didn’t seem to be “putting us on.”  He relayed it as a true incident from the war, type story.

 

Is that an urban legend?  If it really happened, it might make a good road picture, eh?

 

 If this story is based on a true incident and you know some of the details please post them in a comment.  Thanks!

 

Would you buy a used car . . .

If someone offered you a copy of an autographed copy of a  Philip K. Dick book that was published after he died, would you buy it or pass?

According to a fellow who was a friend of Dick’s, after he died a book was published and the publisher used the signature part of Dick’s personal checks (which the publisher got from the widow) to produce autographed copies of the new book.  That would be an interesting collectible with a great story to go along with it.

Tonight Show hosts

So you think you know the history of Tonight Show hosts?  OK!  Who was the host (for just five weeks) between Steve Alan and Jack Paar?

Did you say Al “Jazzbo” Collins?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_%22Jazzbo%22_Collins

“You are correct, sir!” as Ed McMahan used to say.

Oscar Predictions

Oscar Predictions

Best wit Oscar Wilde

Best boxer Oscar de la Hoya

Best Race Car Driver Oscar Kovaleski (of Scranton!)

Best Pianist Oscar Petersen

Best autobiographer    Oscar Levant

Best hot dog Oscar Meyer

Best costume Oscar de la Renta

Beatnik, hippie, or vagabond?

If Perth is a bit east of Fremantle and a fellow

leaves Perth going East, eventually, he will get back

to Fremantle, wouldn’t he?

That is the quest/question for my latest column on

Smirking Chimp

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/20392

Best Production car ever?

40 Ford

This blogger believes that the best most desirable production car ever was the 40 Ford DeLuxe Coupe.  We saw one for sale on Wilshire Blvd. in Santa Monica on Saturday.

We can’t buy the car.  No tengo dinero.  We can’t take pictures and send them to Jalopnik because the DOTS cars have to be seen (and photographed) on the streets and seeing one in a show room doesn’t seem to qualify.

What a co-inky-dink!

According to one online site, a civilian DC-3 was involved in the hostilities at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

A tracer round hit the airpane and started a fire.

Another round hit a fire extinguisher and set it off and that put the fire out.

Here is the link to the page

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/1941.html#lesser_known_1941

What a co-inky-dink!

Main Ave.

Many US towns have a Main St., but Scranton Pa. was in Ripley’s Believe It or Not because (he said) Scranton was the only town in the USA to have a Main Avenue.

Dunno if that still holds true.

Are you from Santa Monica? (2)

If you see a DC-3 airplane, you don’t have to ask that question.  All DC-3’s were manufactured in Santa Monica.

For an large collection of DC-3 related links go to this page:

http://www.douglasdc3.com/

Ginmill History

The Palomino in North Hollywood was a legendary venue for country music artists.

What was its name before it became “the Pal”?

Reportedly it was the location for something called “The Mule-kick saloon.”

We tried to confirm this fact online but could not find any reference to this bit of trivia.  This blog tries to present material not found elsewhere online.

Another one bites the dust

Another American newspaper is gone.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/20509

Movie Trivia

One of the few times John Wayne sang in a movie he performed a song which was again sung (about 20 years later) in a different movie by Mick Jagger.  What was the song; what were those two movies?

 

In “The Quite Man,” John Wayne sang “Wild Colonial Boy.”  Later, in “Ned Kelly,” Mick Jagger was on the soundtrack album singing that same traditional ballad.

Santa Monica History

While we were in Canberra at the end of 2008, we heard the song about Santa Monica Blvd.  That made us wonder how many folks in Canberra knew that Santa Monica Blvd., used to be named Oregon Ave.?

The name was changed (according to this web page

http://www.santamonicalandmarks.com/landmk30.html)

in 1912.

There is an Oregon Ave. in Bekeley, CA, too.

Triple Perfect Pun in English

A ranch in Texas needed a name and so the owners, three brothers, asked their mom for suggestions.  She told them to name the place:  Focus.  They asked her to explain her suggestion.  She said it was because focus was where her sons raise meat and also because when you focus with a magnifying glass, it is where the sun’s rays meet.

The story is regarded as having the only triple perfect pun in the English language.

How many?

How many women have been awarded a U. S. Congressional Medal of Honor?

If you say:  “None!,” you will be wrong!

There was one:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=42772

To lazy to steal

On days when we can’t come up with a blog entry we could go to one of the books from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader – here’s their URL

http://www.bathroomreader.com/pilot.asp

and steal something interesting, but we don’t have one of their books handy right now, so all we can do is urge you to buy one (some) of their books.

Shoes on a wire

On Wednesday, March 4, 2009, the SF Chronicle (on page B-2)  answered a question about the phenomenon of pairs of shoes dangling from a wire.  In their answer they noted the existence of a web site covering that niche subject

http://www.shoefiti.com/

It seems that the site considers that the act of putting the shoes on display that way qualifies as graffiti.

If it was graffiti, wouldn’t Banksy, the worlds foremost graffiti artist, have said something about the use of shoes on a wire? 

While doing fact finding for this item we found a place that seems to offer typefaces in the graffiti style.

http://graffiticreator.net/

Freedom of Speech Issue Returns (Briefly) to Berkeley

If the Mediterranium Cafe in Berkeley was good enough for Jack Kerouac, then having breakfast there while staying in this University town is good enough for this columnist.  Since they have copies of the Daily Californian (THE UCB student newspaper) it’s possible that a fellow could come up with a column idea while enjoying one of the omelets with feta cheese.  Sure enough, we hadn’t even unfolded the tabloid size paper out, when we noticed a teaser at the top of the front page that read: “Freedom of the Press:  Students stand in solidarity with Oregon paper.” 

On page four of the Friday, March 6, 2009, issue there was an expression of solidarity with the students on the staff of the Daily Emerald, the University of Oregon’s student newspaper, who had gone on strike on Wednesday.

The thought that the students at Berkeley were getting involved in a freedom of speech issue seemed like it might be worth mentioning in a column, particularly because it could be linked to another facet of the topic that hasn’t been discussed much . . . yet.  (Isn’t freedom of the press a subcategory of freedom of speech?)

Gee, do you think that Rush Limbaugh, who, at times, seems frantic over the possibility that the fairness doctrine will impinge on his freedom of speech, will come to the defense of the kids at the Daily Emerald and spotlight their plight?

The Emerald staff was was protesting “the attempts of its board of directors to install a publisher with unprecedented control over the newsroom,” so they went out on strike.  A scab produced issue was published on Thursday.  On Friday 34 college newspapers were printing the statement of solidarity.  Other student newspapers joining The Daily Californian were:  The Daily Bruin (UCLA), The Daily Kent Stater, The Daily Princetonian, The Daily Targum (Rutgers University), The Independent Alligator (The University of Florida), the Ubyssey (University of British Columbia) and about two dozen others.

Odds are Rush Limbaugh won’t say a word to help the Daily Emerald staff, but when the time comes for him to use the freedom of speech issue for his own advantage, he’ll get his compatriots on the various evening news broadcast to paul-parrot his talking points.  (Perhaps his wealthy industrial backers are also the various anchors’ bosses and that might have something to do with any future show of solidarity between the TV network broadcasters and fatso.)

Meanwhile the staff of the Daily Emerald will be the point persons for now.  This just in:  By Friday night resumption of publication by the student staff for the Monday issue was being reported by James Romenesko of the Poynetr Institute.  According to a Google-news search, he was the only one connected to the mainstream media to report on the strike. 

Do you think Rush interceded on their behalf?  Doesn’t he espouse self-reliance when it suits his needs? 

How will Rush twist, turn, and subvert the freedom of speech into something that makes his propagandizing look acceptable? 

When you were a kid, suppose you insulted your buddy’s mother and he asked you to either:  take it back of prepare to fight someone who was four inches taller and fifty pounds heavier.  If you took it back, was your recanting free speech or would you plead “coercion” and say it was not an example of free speech? 

Does Rush believe in freedom of speech when a fellow Republican “disses” him? Or does he use the equivalent of the old “I’m going to rip your arm off and then beat you to death with it” subtle style of persuasion to get them to reverse their view freely?

If that same pal challenged you to debate and he let you use a bullhorn, but he was helped by a Marine Corps <a href =http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=24123>Beachmaster</a> speaker (reportedly it can be heard a mile away), which one of you would win the effort to drown out the other guy’s argument?

Doesn’t Rush ignore the 90 to 10 ratio of the corporate subsidized imbalance and claim that the marketplace has settled the dispute?  Wouldn’t he endorse a duel between a Beachmaster and a bullhorn . . . as long as he was the one with the Beachmaster?

“Once a bully, always a bully.,” eh Rush? Perhaps Rush thinks that when Teddy Roosevelt said:  “Bully!,” he was dispensing advice on how to act like a Republican?

Did any of the conservative talk show hosts come to the defense of the staff of the Daily Emerald?  Will they sing a different tune when the “fairness doctrine” moves to center stage later in President Obama’s term in office?

The Emerald episode may soon look like that paper’s staff played the roll of opening act for the headline event featuring Rush and his clones.  Stay tuned . . .

“There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.” Mario Savio RIP

Now, the disk jockey will play Country Joe’s “Fixin’ to Die Rag.”  We’ll go dust off an old placard and practice our LBJ chant.  Have a riotously good week.

Got Schadenfreude?

What is Schadenfreude?

It means joy in the pain and or misery of others.

Do you like to look at pictures of wrecked exotic cars?  Then click this:

http://www.wreckedexotics.com/

(Did we already do an posting on this site?  If so, sorry!  Need to get more reading time to build up more material.)

Suggestion Box Column

Suggesting the Suggestion Box Idea

By Bob Patterson

Created Mar 8 2009 – 2:36pm

 

According to a segment shown on the CNN’s the State of the Union broadcast for Sunday, March 8, 2009, Saturday Night Live did a skit the night before showing somebody touting a national effort to donate ideas about how to end the economic slowdown (did George W. Bush give us permission to call it a Recession, yet?).

Why not actually do it?

Here is an example of one such suggestion.

Bring back $1 day at the movies.

It used to be that at least one chain of movie theaters in the L. A. area used to (long time ago) have Tuesday be dollar day. If the theaters are mostly empty on Tuesday let’s do some match. Suppose a theater with a thousand seats has 60 customers who paid $10 for their tickets in it. Suppose that on dollar day they got 601 customers at a buck each. What would they get in addition to one extra buck income?

Well, they would create much more word of mouth buzz for that particular movie, they would get some nearby restaurants to be grateful for added business, they would create the impression that folks were out spending money somewhere and that in turn would have a positive effect and give a boost to the nation’s attitude. Most likely that would also cause a few more automobile trips to be part of the day’s growth score.

Are there other ideas that can be offered to help turn things around?

Since this columnist is an avid car fan (and reader of the Jalopnik web site) and, since some car fans would be willing to buy replicas of classic cars, and since the big three car companies own all the rights to their past products, why can’ they make their own replicas?

Somebody somewhere is (or was) producing replicas of the 1957 Chevy convertible. Why shouldn’t GM be doing that?

Could Congress give them a waiver on the necessity of smog equipment? That would help GM cut the costs of the basic vehicle and that in turn would make the item more attractive to potential customers. If necessary could they use modern smaller more fuel efficient engines? Wouldn’t having a replica 57 Chev convertible, running on a “four-banger,” to use while doing the weekend errands, be a terrific way to add some enjoyment to the chores?

Don’t most modern four cylinder engines produce as much (if not more) power than a 1940 Ford V-8 did? Suppose that a modern fuel efficient four cylinder engine was providing the power to run around in a replica 1940 Ford DeLuxe coupe? This columnist would be very glad to have that kind of transportation available at an affordable cost.

It seems that there are more 1932 Ford coupes and roadsters on the road today than were manufactured back in the day. Why shouldn’t Ford be able to mass produce such replica items as would be needed to put together an new replica?

Go to your local magazine store and look at all the hot roding magazines available there. It seems that today there are more people involved in producing hot rod magazines than there were actually doing the hotroding back in the Fifties.

These are just two ideas from one columnist. What if there actually was a national(on-line?) suggestion box available to the folks who want to offer new ideas? Wouldn’t the politicians who desperately need to have new ideas to consider like to hear these new ideas?

During World War II the G. I.’s had to wear dog tags into battle. The metal items would make noise and if the soldiers were trying to be quiet, that was disconcerting, They couldn’t throw them away. What could they do to quiet those pesky dog tag? Eventually some clever fellow figured out that the tubes on gas masks had could be cut and small portions of the tubes could be put around the dog tags and they wouldn’t make noise.

Americans are resourceful and inventive. Why ignore this resource? Yes, for big ideas there would have to be some protection for the person making the suggestion that they would not be giving away residual shards of a profit, but some new ideas are desperately need.

It’s rather frustrating to think that the idea of suggesting a suggestion box is futile at a time when hope, optimism and enthusiasm are what is needed to have a catalytic effect on the President’s recovery plan.

Whatever happened to the old Fifties concept of “brainstorming”? Perhaps a national brainstorming session will help?

For this week’s closing quote we will use a current Australian advertising slogan: Times are tough, but Australians and Holden are tougher.

Now, the disk jockey will play “Who put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine” and we’ll buzz out of here. How’s this suggestion: “Have a great week!”?

 

BFD

The Berkeley Fire Department acronym is BFD.  (What did you think it stood for?)  For more on the Berkeley Fire Department click:

http://www.neiu.edu/~jabennin/bfd/hisfile.html

What’s the good word?

If someone asks you “what’s the good word?,” tell them:

omphaloskepsis.

It means contemplation while gazing at one’s navel.  Odds are that will be a new word for them to bandy about.

Jim Morrison mural in Venice CA

Morrison mural Venice

This mural is a famous iconic image from the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles.

It is the first photo added to this blog via wi-fi-ing.

Adventures of the Bob bag

While in Fremantle (Western Australia) we got a free ecology shopping bag from Bob’s Shoe store.  We intend to post pictures of it taken around the world.

We almost posted photos yesterday of the bag at the Santa Monica Pier.  We’ll post them next week.

Since we are in San Franciso, we will try to take some Bob bag shots taken at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Stay tuned for the adventures of the Bob bag.

Vanished!

It took two busses to get from downtown to the Golden Gate.  When we got on the second bus, we noticed the Bob bag was gone.  Maybe, tomorrow, we’ll go to the SF Bus lost and found.

Stay tuned . . .

The bag saga continued . . .

On Friday, we started to try to track down the lost bag.  We went to the customer service on Van Ness.  They sent us to SFMTA (Muni) at Gerry and Presidio.  They had me file a report and said I should check back in a few days. 

So you can’t get something you lost yesterday.  You have to stick around a few days.  I guess that’s one way to boost tourism.

We asked if we could call collect from Australia, they said “no.”

So the bag may be gone forever.  Then again . . .

On the way out of the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority building, we walked past an office with the door open.

What one song would symbolize bureaucracy in SF?

They were playing the Jefferson Airplane.s “White Rabbit.”

Stay tuned . . .

Adventures without the bag

The camera and I went to the intersection of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco today without the bag.  We took some typical tourist cliche shots wtihout the bag.  Too bad the bag went AWAL, we had fun.

Voice Over Competition?

Since they seem to have a reality show about every kind of competition (doncha love the “big eyed girl” on the model competition?), we were wondering if/when/where they will have a competiton for folks who do voice overs? 

They’d just run visuals (Koanisatsi (spelling?) style) and have folks narrate what the audience was seeing.

Then they could narrow it down to “the voice.”

Hey, it’s Saturday.  I’m cold.  My Bob bag is still missing.  That’s the best I could do for now.  Stay tuned . . .

Calling Wes Craven! ! !

This is a great rumor.  Accoding to what a girl at the hostel told me that a part of the Channel Islands University campus used to be a mental hospital before it was changed to be part of the university.

Dunno know if it’s true or not, but we sure hope someone tells Wes Craven about this bit of  this school’s (possible) history.

Here is a link to the school’s web site

http://www.csuci.edu/

Friends around the world

At the civic center hostel, I’ve just run into a couple whom I met in November at the Sydney Central Backpacker’s  Hostel. 

They are going to meet up with a friend in L. A. and then go to Fla.

After comparing notes with them – Yes they had a steak at the Bourbon (in the King’s Cross Section of Sydney) – I gave them recommendations for the USA.  The good food deals in Vegas, the air park (museum) in Pema Arizona, the cavalry museum in El Paso, the touristy stuff in Dallas, then if they have time Memphis and Nashville, New Orleans and maybe the Sebring race in Fla.,, and/or the Ringling Winter HQ.  I highly recommended the Nethercutt (car) Museum in L. A.

I recommended the Beatnik Museum for them (and the City Lights Bookstore) here in San Francisco.

I will try to get to the de Young Museum (with Warhol exhibition) today.

Life goes on (without the Bob bag).

Also have to plug the (SF) band Pullout which just came back from Europe.

Their web site is

http://www.myspace.com/pulloutpunx

(Hope I got that right.  Typed it out didn’t do cut and paste.)

Let the travel adventures continue . . .

Promobabble Ides of March bonus edition

Ides of March Bonus Edition of the Promobabble Report

We went to the de Young Museum today to see the Warhol exhibit.  When we got there, we learned that it would cost two $10 fees to get in.  This was an outrage!  Warhol was protesting the money grubbing art scene and wanted to make art available to the average person and not a museum snob, so we did a U-turn and left (in a huff.)

I have talked to him three times and bought a poster, which he and the subject shown on poster (Russel Means, the American Indian Movement leader) both signed.  I paid less for that than it would cost to get into see the art show.

Came back to the hostel area  and decided to have the pit crew switch to rain tires.  (I.e. old pants and shoes so that if they got soaked in a rainstorm, I could just toss them away.)

to take the locals recommendation for  Vietnamese food.  It is a place called Turtle Tower.

I’ve only had Vietnamese food once before – in Paris across from the Hotel California.  Wasn’t sure about plunging recklessly into a second time.  It looked like it might start raining so I decided to try it.  It was North Vietnamese style.

I went to the SFPL and then afterwards jumped on the Van Ness bus line.  I wound up back in my old (forty years ago) neighborhood and walked around.  Headed back on the bus.  Stopped at the Accademy of Art University where they had an art display composed of classic cars.

I took some pictures to send to the DOTS dept. at Jalopnik.  Could a DOTS car spotting picture ever get better than a 1930 Model J dual cowle Duesenberg?  I don’t think so.  We’ll send them some pictures and see wha they say.

We decided to knock out a bonus edition of the Promobabble Report so now we’ll spell check fast and send a copy and past to our member in China.

Are you from Santa Monica? (3.0)

At the Science Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, we went up to a guy and asked him if he was from Santa Monica.  He said he used to be in and around Santa Monica, but now he is from Colorado.

We’ll keep trying.

Postcard from San Francisco

This is a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco without the Bobbag.  (See earlier posts).   Too bad the bag went AWAL.

Once a hippie . . .

Haight & Ashbury

Has it changed in 41 years, or have I?

Summation

Summation

This bumper sticker (seen in Berkeley CA) seems to sum up the car owner’s opinion of a current war.  We will try to send this photo to Bartcop.

Time saver?

Since it takes a good deal of time for all the photos to download on this site, perhaps it would be better to just put the link to the photos on flickr and see if that is quicker and better?

Here are some from the San Francisco stay right before St. Patrick’s day.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8216859@N04/

Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be?

We posted some new photos today.  We posted some on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8216859@N04/

We intended to post the photos of the traveling Bobbag today and when we looked through all the floppy disks (yes our digital camera is an old fashioned one that uses floppy disks) we couldn’t find the one with the photos taken at the Santa Monica Pier.

Maybe the floppy went AWOL, too?

If we find it, we will post the pictures.  If we never find that floppy, then perhaps it was never meant to be that pictures of the traveling Bobbag appear anywhere on the Internet? 

As Ned Kelly once said:  “Such is life!”

Reporting live from a beatnik cafe in . . .

Mediterranium Cafe

Reporting live from the Mediterranium Cafe in Berkeley, Ca.,  is the realization for this blogger of the Internet’s potential from a long time ago.  It took a good deal of time and some bumps in the learning process, but here we are today, March 19, 2009, sitting in a restaurant that Jack Kerouac used to patronize, and in a few moments we will hit “publish” and see it all come to pass.

So then it will be on to the road back to Fremantle and Kalgoorlie.

Resurection of the traveling bag

The traveling bag from Fremantls

After  becoming convinced that the floppy with the only pictures of the traveling Bob bag in existence, was lost; we found it and can post the photoss (also check flickr) online.

Yay!

Correction

Yesterday, in our excitement to file the first remote report (not counting some done at the Berkeley Public Library) from “in the field,” we misspelled the name of the restaurant.  We were looking right at the big sign that read Mediterraneum, and we misspelled it anyways.

(Famed musician Keith Richards says that if you practice anything long enough, you will get good at it.  Lord knows, I’m good at misspellings.)

Yeah, we know we could retype the entry and then re-post it, but our experience in newspapers makes us more prone to just printing a correction. 

So we will do it that way.

Photo for Chef Teddy

Atten: Chef Teddy

Recently we sent a copy of this photo to Chef Teddy in Lala Land.  He couldn’t see it and since we don’t make fun of people who have trouble with their computers (we have a black belt in that talent), the easiest way to handle the problem is to post it here and then send him the link.

Rules for Car-spotting

Car-spotting in SF

What are the official rules of Car-spotting?  It seems that seeing a car in an antique car store (we saw a 40 Ford DeLuxe coupe in such a store in Santa Monica recently) shouldn’t really count.  Seeing a rare car in a museum, doesn’t seem to qualify either, but what about if you see a very rare car in an art school’s window that is part of an art exhibit?  Should that count?

Car-spotter’s “walk off grand slam”

Model J Duesenberg

For car-spotters seeing a 1930 Model J Duesenberg dual cowl phaeton, is like a baseball player getting a walk-off grand slam . . . in the last game of the World Series!

On Sunday , March 15, we were riding on a bus on Van Ness in San Francisco.  We saw some old cars in a building there and so we hopped off.  It was the Accademy of Art University and they were displaying some old cars in what looked like a former new car dealer show room. 

What are the rules of car-spotting?  We didn’t see it for sale.  We didn’t see it in a museum.  Is there a whistle on the play?  Does it count?  It sure was fun to see it.

New Music to find

We ran into Rich the guitarist for Polly Scattergood, from Great Britain at the hostel in SF.  We talked music and he said Polly has a new album (he worked on it) coming out in a month or two.   We want to hear it.

Old hippies are interested in new music and not just listening to Moby Grape one more time!

Fold-up bike

Recently we met a guy in San Francisco, who was taking a very unique fold-up bike around the world and taking pictures in those places.  We took his picture and he took our e-mail address rather than give us his.  He said he would e-mail details about his project, but so far he hasn’t sent them.

Our picture of him will be posted later, if we don’t lose track of it in the mean time.

Publicity is an elusive commodity.  The guy should have made sure that I had his e-mail address so that he could get the small bit of publicity a mention on our blog would have delivered. 

Oh well, such is life.

We will run an update if he ever gets the details back to us.

Blogger from Denmark

At the hostel, today, we met a young lady from Denmark who is in San Francisco and studying English.  She blogs in Danish and plans to switch to English.  Here is the link

http://tine.xtrablog.dk

Hope it works.  If not try adding the www bit

We meant to suggest to  her she should post dual entries and write one in Danish and the practice her English by reposting her own translation of her own Danish entry.  That way she could build up a dual audience.

Maybe Skippy will link to us?

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo has dozens of links on his site

http://xnerg.blogspot.com/

so maybe,  since we went back and found that because of what was said at Nuremberg, the debate over the existence or non-existence of the WMD’s was a red herring, because any unprovoked invasion is a crime against peace” and since we blogged about traveling in Australia, and since we write for Smirking Chimp and they list Skippy on their list of blogs, then maybe, just maybe, he’ll add us to his impressive list of links?

Class action law suit against the MSM?

What if folks brought a class action suit against the media that help Bush sell the war?

I wrote a column about it

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/20953

The Dog-off

Are the hotdogs  from Harry’s in Sydney better than the ones from Capital Dawg in Sacramento Calif.? 

There was only one way to tell.  Have a “dog-off.”

The decor in the Sacramento challenger’s is all dog oriented with one exception they have a poster for the movie “The Terminator.”  WTF?

Capital has a hotdog wrapped in an American Flag out front.

They have very good french fries in Sacramento.

The No. 7 Chicago is very good. 

The clincher was the music.  On a Saturday night, they had the Sixties at Six featuring Sixties music with Cousin Brucie doing the announcing.  (Game over!) 

Harry’s does have top notch meat pies, but they didn’t witn the dog-off with Capital Dawg.

http://www.capitoldawg.com

From a reporter’s notebook (in Sacramento)

Photos for the dog-off will be posted later.

The Sacramento Roller Derby team will have try-outs on Sunday April 26 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

http://www.saccityrollers.com

If this reporter is still in Sacramento, we will try to cover the try-outs!

Music

Folks in Sacramento recommend:

Funker Vogt

Porky Pinetree (apparently an American making it big in Great Britain.  Will he open for Seasick Stever or will Seasick Steve open for Porky?)

Cake (a Sacramento band making it big.)

Straight No Chaser (local acapello group)

2me

The Bennies

For Sacramento independent scene google around for the KWOD FM (on line only?) radio station   KWOD.net

If you like Kalgoorlie in W. A. (Western Australia) you will like Sacramento and if you like Sacramento you will like Kalgoorlie. 

(Personal note for Murilee:  lotsa great old cars for car-spotting in Sacto!)

To be continued . . .

Item for Faezel (from Freo)

It hardly seems efficitent to post a new item just for one reader, but since we do it that way for photos, here goes:

We’ve met a journalist from Sweeden in Sacramento.  He blogs in Sweedish and the only person we know who reads Sweedish is Faezel from Freo so here is the URL for the guy’s blog

http://marcusiusa.blogg.se

Let’s hope I got it right.

Car Museum for Ford Fans

Who knew there was a very good car museum in Sacramento?  We noticed an iniciation on a bus map that there was an automobile museum and it took some effort to find out about it and get to it, but it was worth the effort.

The Towe Auto Museum is named for a Montana guy who had a complete Model T collection.  He was forced to sell it and this museum got much of it.  The name is being changed to California Auto Museum.

They have a wide variety of cars, but it has a great many that will appeal to Ford fans.

We took many pictures.  Some will be added to the blog much late.

The guys at LASAAC would (most likely) be very pleased by a visit to this museum and we will pass along the word about this particular car museum to them.

For more about this museum and to see their web site click to:

http://wwwtoweautomuseum.org

Get hip to Leroy Jenkins!

Fremantle (Western Australia) was where I first learned about Seasick Steve.

Sacramento will always be special, now, because it was in Sacto where I first learned about Leroy Jenkins!

Google him on Youtube (It seems I can’t copy the URL and paste it here) and folks (especially Chef Teddy) will come to know and love him.  He has inspired me to write a new column for

http://www.smirkingchimp.com

about his unique gonzo military style.  It seems to me that President Obama is about to use the Leroy Jenkins strategy in Afghanistan. 

Prez O. will PO the democrats by sending new troops in rather than bringing the boys home and he will PO the Republicans by not sending in enough to win.

Ya can’t please everyone, but then again Leroy Jenkins doesn’t seem to care about that.

Going to the (hot) dogs

Capital Dawg

It ain’t LIFE magazine quality, but we did promise pictures from Capital Dawg in Sacramento, so here there are.

Dawg in a flag

 

The hotdog is wrapped in an American flag.

Sign

The decorations feature various American hotdog brands and related products.

Flag dog

Coming back to LIFE

We have written a column suggesting that the LIFE magazine site would be a great place to feature the day’s best news photos.

Somebody must have read my column.

If you go to the LIFE site

http://www.life.com/

you can see the day’s best photos from around the world.

Now, if I can only get one of  the photos I take on it . . .

Photos for Jane S.

Empty

This building in Sacramento was used for a state agency, but they just moved.

Gone

Gone

The interior of this business indicates that they may have called it quits.

Closed

Closed Hotel

A boarded -up hotel and its neighbor give silent testimony that ecconomic conditions are tough.

Americana

Americana

This small restaurant in Sacramento is a slice of Americana

It’s a Blunder-ful Life?

For fans of on-line games, Leeroy Jenkins has become the equivalent of General George Armstrong Custer, because while playing World of Warfare, he made a big blunder and his group suffered annihilation.  Cynics who learn the particulars of Jenkins tactical mistake may worry that President Obama’s plans to send more troops into Afghanistan may be comparable to Jenkins charge into enemy territory and worry that the results will be even more catastrophic than Jenkins’ fictional massacre.

In the realm of on-line games, the thought that the guy who makes the biggest blunders can become a winner by losing is an amusing concept.  The fellow has parlayed his ignominious game playing skill into an appearance on the Howard Stren radio show, and a role in a TV ad for a charge card company.

At this point, the columnist asked himself: “Is it too soon to use a contemporary cultural reference to take a cheap shot at the President?”  When George Bush stood on the edge of a war that seemed unnecessary and irrelevant, there was no hesitation and a new President shouldn’t get any more slack than his predecessor.

After reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book “blink,” it seemed that if the President’s announced plans make us shudder, then we should continue and finish the column.

Taking troops out of Iraq and sending them to Afghanistan also seems misguided.  If they must be sent to Afghanistan because of the high level of experience in dealing with the enemy, isn’t that unfair?  Haven’t the troops in Iraq earned a rest period?  Shouldn’t a fresh group be sent into Afghanistan while the vets who served in Iraq come home?

That brings up another worry.  At some point when the troop level in Iraq gets rather low, won’t the remaining soldiers be very tempting targets for those Muslims who want to kill them? 

We realize that the Bush era magic explanation is that the Iraqis will cover them while the Americans draw down.  Are Americans supposed to believe the old “we got your back” type of reassurance will work? 

Haven’t the various factions in Iraq proved earlier in the war that they aren’t playing by the Marquis of Queensberry rules and that when the time comes the bad guys will offer some gold coins to Iraqis in trusted positions to take the money and deal out some (what they see as) punishment to the despised departing army of occupation and consider it payback for some of the “collateral damage” inflicted by the Americans?  Won’t they get a lot of eager Iraqis who will find the offer irresistible?  Past performance is the best indicator of future performance?  If so, what’s going to happen?

Folks who would like to post a comment noting it is too early to tell how well President Obama will be as the military commander in chief should read the Gladwell book before they hit the “submit” for their opinion.

Allan Masse said: “Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.”

Now, the disk jockey will play Larry Verne’s “Please, Mr. Custer, I don’t wanna go.”  We’ll charge out of here yelling Leeroy Jenkins’ name.  Have the kind of week that will win you a spot on the Howard Stern radio show.

Car-spotting in SF

Some group on Flickr asked if they could use some of my photos of cars and trucks in San Francisco

http://www.flickr.com/groups/26655725@N00/

 

I said yes, so they now appear on that page also.  There were other pictures of old cars taken in San Francisco, but they didn’t ask about them.  The captions don’t say those extra pictures were taken in San Francisco.  So maybe I have to put the city name in all the photos?

Now, I wonder if Jalopnik and their DOTS department would give any publicity to a strickly SF group?

I’ll post some new pictures of a 38 Ford truck taken in SF and see if they want them for the SF car-spotters page on Flicker.

Life can get so complicated, eh?

Towe Auto Museum

Towe Auto Museum

After visiting this auto museum, we wondered if a certain auto site might like reviews of automobile museums as a regular feature.

38 Ford Truck in San Francisco

Ford truck in SF

This 1938 truck was seen in San Francisco recently.  We will try to bring it to the attention of the Flickr group of car-spotters working in San Francisco.

We will post the URL for this page with some that will be posted over on Flickr.

Car-spotting around the World

After finding out about the SF only car-spotting folks, we did some google searches and found a world wide bunch of car-spotters and their photos at

http://www.madwhips.com/

So, now we are going to try to send them some of the phots we took at the Accademy of Art University in San Francisco.

We be smokin’

Malcolm Gladwell in one of his books takes a fascinating look at the efforts to prevent kids from smoking by convincing them that it really isn’t cool because of the health threats.  The analysis, like all the other material in his books, is very engrossing and informative. 

The people who try so very hard to prevent kids from starting a lifelong relationship with cigarettes use some TV ads that are rivet ting and effective, but there is one solution to the challenge that gets overlooked by almost all the well-meaning crusaders.  Luckily for this columnist (April 18 will be National Columnist’s Day), his family used the overlooked strategy for convincing someone that a nicotine addiction is something they can forgo in their effort to cope with life.

When the columnist was eight years old, his curiosity led him to ask his mother about the prevalent adult habit.  She immediately had him smoke an entire cigarette and note his physical reactions to the task.  She then informed him that his pals would eventually conduct such an experiment on their own and in secret.  She told him, he had permission to smoke and thus removed the allure of a forbidden activity.  She told him that when his playmates started their clandestine investigations into the habit, he could come to her and get his next smoke just by asking.

Years past – one or two seems an eternity to a kid in grade school – and one day some adults came to the school area with some free samples.  (This column is based on personal memories and is exempt from the fact checking process.)  Since the young fan of Walter Winchell and Ernie Pyle was attending a parochial school the students would lineup outside and march in to the school together.  The adults used this as an opportunity to go to the public sidewalk area and hand out the free sample packs of cigarettes they were offering.

When the young student asked an aunt about why they would give away a product they usually sell, she suggested that the kid do the math and see just how well a free sample now, would pay off for them if it led to a lifetime of cigarette buying.  Being a math nerd, he did and was astonished to see that it produced an amount of money that was enormous.

Years later, when a fellow employee, Jim C., complained that Bob could afford a vacation in Paris and Jim C. who was paid a higher hourly wage could not, Jim C. asked the boss (Doug P.) about this inequity.

A quick bit of mathematics showed that by brown-bagging lunch and avoiding cigarettes and beer, Bob saved about $2,000 a year.  Jim C., who ate lunch at a coffee shop every work day, and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and averaged a six pack of beer per day, had about $2000 worth of living overhead expenses.

The cost (in 1986) of a two week vacation in Paris had been about $2000.  Jim C., didn’t like the explanation and begged Doug P. for a salary increase.  (Request denied!)

So what would happen if, instead of trying to convince kids that smoking isn’t “cool” (as seen in numerous movies) and that instead of stressing the health risks (some Americans could step on a landmine today), the advocates of cigarette abstinence just made a public service ad that showed a young potential cigarette customer, what he or she would save, if they chose not to spend their money on that product and extended the saving over out for a few years?

Maybe during hard times, kids would respond by saying:  “Aye, lad, there’s the rub!”?

Oscar Wilde said “A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”  A vacation in Fremantle, perhaps?

Now, the disk jockey will play Patsy Cline’s “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray” and we’ll vanish in a cloud of smoke.  Have a week that is so round, so firm, so fully packed.

Spring Break! ! !

If we don’t post for a short while, you can just imagine what kind of spring break fun I am having and look forward to reading about it when posting resumes.

Ciao for now

Texas Roadhouse for Perth?

We interrupt this Spring break hiatus for this item:

Texas Roadhouse was having a company meeting  in San Francisco.  We walked by the hotel just as they were leaving for a night out.  We just couldn’t help it, we had to go up to an executive looking guy and suggest they try expanding into Western Australia.

What says “Western” better than a “Texas Roadhouse”?

If Outback restaurants can come to the USA, then why not “turnabout is fair play”?

One thing we forgot to tell the executive looking guy:  Fremantle is a Liberty port for ships from the Arabian Gulf.  Can’t you just picture a bunch of American sailors on Liberty finding a place named “Texas Roadhouse”?

Maybe we should go back tomorrow and ask it they need a bigger in-depth scouting report.  Can’t you just picture those fellows from Texas if they had next year’s gathering in Kalgoorlie?

Hmmm.  Wonder how I can apply for the job of Regional Manager for Western Australia.  If there is no franchises in W. A., right now, that sounds like a pretty cushy job, just right for me.

To be continued . . .

World’s Laziest Journalist makes a confession

Last summer, Joe Biden, in his speech to the Democratic National Convention, described how, as a kid he had been tormented by someone who tormented him about his stuttering.  That was so meeeeeeean!  It also sounded very familiar and the thought occurred to me:  Wasn’t that me?

He referenced his mother’s advice about how to handle the situation and even that sounded familiar because my mother came down on me like a ton of bricks and said something to the effect that his mother had challenged him to fight back when necessary.  I think she was implying that if I did it again, little Joe Biden had his mother’s and mine’s permission to flatten me.

Later in his speech he made reference to the wisdom of his father-in-law, Pops Finnegan.  Things were coming into focus now.  My dad’s best friend was Ambrose Finnegan and both my dad and my Aunt Dorothy were always putting things in perspective by looking at them through the folk wisdom of Pops Finnegan. 

Senator Biden ran through a bit of his family history and mentioned that his uncle had died in World War II.  My dad’s best friend had died in the South Pacific during World War II.  Putting together fragments of stories from long ago, it seems that my dad had dated Ambrose’s sister once or twice before he met my mom.  Now, gradually it was becoming clear why my mom and dad didn’t like it if I tormented that particular kid.

Everybody is trying to get a unique story about the new administration in Washington, but if this columnist ever gets the chance to interview Joe Biden’s mom, there would be no “gotcha” questions, only a chance to clarify some family history.  It would be (to this columnist) very interesting to get a chance to ask:  “What was my dad like as a young man?”

How many on-line columnist will get a chance to ask for such an interview?  Well, I could make sure one of my high school classmates (Larry O. SPHS ‘61) gets the URL for this column and see if he could fwd it to his close pal, Vice President Joe Biden.  No harm in asking, eh?

Since National Columnist’s day (April 18) is fast approaching, it seems unlikely that we can get it all squared away before this year’s tribute to columnists.  The date was selected because it was on April 18, 1945, that columnist and war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed in action in the Pacific Theater, during World War II.

When I heard Senator Biden speak my first reaction to the fact that I had been the “mean kid” he mentioned was to wonder if I should express some shame and apologize for the verbal attacks (and make my mother proud?), but then after 35 years of living in Los Angeles, I realized that there was another way of looking at it:  If I hadn’t done what I had done, maybe Joe Biden wouldn’t have tried so hard to overcome his stuttering and might not have made the change by challenging himself and becoming a lawyer and Senator. 

There’s an old axiom in the Hollywood area:  Never be afraid to admit your role in someone else’s success, with that in mind,  I can, without any shame, say:  “I made Joe Biden the man he is today!”

Not many columnists can say that.

In the past, Vice-President Joe Biden has said:  “If your kitchen table is like mine, you sit there at night before you put the kids to bed and you talk about what you need. You talk about how much you are worried about being able to pay the bills. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not a worry John McCain has to worry about. It’s a pretty hard experience. He’ll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at.”

Now, as an inside joke for folks from Scranton, the disk jockey will play “Thirty Thousand Pounds of Bananas” and we’ll head out for a movie at the State  theater, where Blackstone the magician performed.  Have a “black diamond” type week.

People’s Park to turn 40

In Berkeley, People’s Park will turn 40 this month.

They are planning a big birthday celebration.  Wavy Gravy will be there.  Country Joe will play.  There will be celebration of Medical marijuana on Monday April 20, scheduled to take place at twenty after four o’clock in the afternoon. 

The big day will be Sunday April 26.  The festivities will run from noon to six.

Maybe we can go and take some pictures and “cover” it.  For more info go to:

http://www.peoplespark.org/

To be continued . . .

The cowboys from the Circle A ranch

The cowboys from the Circle A ranch will be in town as the same time as the bankers and it looks like those two different groups might accidentally bump into each other. 

http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/related/899ux/protest_at_imf_world_bank_spring_meeting/

They don’t like each other do they?

URL’s from on the road

In  S. F., I met a guy going to Paris to be a fashion photographer.

His web site is at

http://www.gabrieldesbiens.com

Check it out.

Running on empty

We try to have some interesting items that are unique.  As far as we can tell there wasn’t much elsewhere on the Internet about the disappearance of the SF Police Chief in 1908.  We went to the S. F. Public Library to get the item.

Unfortunately we can’t come up with stuff like that every day. 

We wrote a column for Smirking Chimp about the tunnels under Venice California.  There was some other stuff, but we thought the info about the guy who wrote the newspaper story about them back in the seventies helped enliven the column.

Over the weekend we saw a red 37 cacillac sedan in SF, but we didn’t have our camera handy.

Perhaps it’s time to start concentrating on selling T-shirts and making some  money rather than trying to scoop the New York times with items that don’t really matter?

Movie Script Pitch (Based on a true story)

I’ve found out about this “true story” in my travels and would be able to provide more details for a movie if folks want to pay me for the information and idea.  (If Bo Zenga can do it, so can I! ! !)

During World War II a woman was taken Prisoner of War.  She escaped.  She travel through an enimy country and entered a neutral country where she had to sit out the rest of the war, but not as a prisoner, just as a stranded member of the military type guest visa.

A woman POW escapes successfully?  WOW!  What act res could best be described as “the female Steve McQueen”?  Where did it happen?  More details Howie?  Send an e-mail to the world’s laziest journalist (all one word, no apostrophe, no spaces, down style) at the beloved Yahoo e-mail site for the chance to expand this pitch.

(God bless Bo Zenga!)

National Columnists Day

Recently when it was suggested that war correspondent Jane Stillwater might want to write about the fact that National Columnist Day [1] will be celebrated on Saturday, April, 18, before she dashes off on her next trip to Iraq or Afghanistan, she rejected the idea because “Young people won’t know who he was.”

That is precisely why this columnist makes a point of making sure that every year he writes about the fact that April 18, was selected because it was on that day in 1945 that Ernie Pyle, the popular journalist-columnist, was killed in action as World War II was drawing to an end.

We write and post the annual column a few days early so that other columnists might be inspired to join the effort to not let Pyle’s life and work slide into obscurity and become a curious footnote for journalism’s history.

Jim Romenesko has helped our effort to keep Ernie Pyle alive in the memories of folks who (practice) and appreciate fine news writing, by running, on his media news page [2], a link to our annual homage to the author of several great books about World War II and we thank him for his much appreciated effort to assist us on our annual crusade to honor one of the men who inspired us.

As a kid, the lure of becoming a columnist who would travel the world, see history being made, and meeting interesting people sounded like a heck of a great way to earn a living. We also were in awe of Walter Winchell, Earl Wilson, and later in life Herb Caen. We’ve done the best we could and we aren’t ready to call it quits yet. (With any luck we hope to celebrate Christmas on Cottesloe beach again this year.)

Earlier this month the San Francisco Chronicle ran a tribute to their former columnist Herb Caen [3].

One way to combat the deterioration of journalism in the United States is to promote the work of the greats and to encourage people to make the effort to learn about them, and read their work. This year we will also urge our regular readers to perhaps look up online some of the columnists honing their skills in various college newspapers.

With some public support and enthusiasm, the nations newspapers could (and should) provide encouragement at the college level by scrutinizing the work of the next generation and perhaps hold an annual college draft in the manner of those held by the pro-sports businesses that have a mad scramble to secure the services of the best college athletes?

There is an annual awards ceremony in Los Angels for college students who major in cinema. It is held by the same folks who have the annual Oscar Awards Ceremonies that garner a much larger amount of publicity for the winners.

Perhaps Fox could have an annual competition for the best college purveyor of Republican talking points and thus groom some new faces to replace the sorry lot that hawks Republican propaganda for profit on the air?

The status of Journalism today, in the United States, is pathetic in many cases, and so war weary Americans who truly appreciate a never ending fight for truth, justice, and the American way, should make an effort to acquaint themselves the writing done by people from the past who worked hard to “tell it like it is” even though at times, as in Pyle’s case, it may cost the writer his or her life. It was much better than any devious and conniving modern effort to fake “fair and balanced” reporting.

Herb Caen once wrote: “I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.”

Now, the disk jockey, who aspires to increase his level of influence on the audience to ” that which a plug from Herb Caen used to provide for various and sundry enterprises in the San Francisco area, will play “Sweep It Under the Rug,” by Zak Daniels and the One Eyed Snakes and we will wait for the sergeant to give the “column ho!” order so we can move out of here. Have a week that won’t be forgotten.

Free Cone Day

Ben and Jerry’s will be having their free coned day again this year on April 21, which lookes to be Tuesday

http://www.benjerry.com/scoop-shops/feature/free-cone-day/

So don’t say we didn’t give you ample time to get your free icecream cone.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

On Sunday April 26, folks around the world will be celebrating the ancient art of pinhole photography.

For a list of events click this link:

http://www.pinholeday.org/events/index.php

Skateboarding link

Check out what’s happening in skateboarding as reported by my new friend the Kiwi working in Amesterdam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi7FqpljvVY

“War Crimes?” Sez who?

[<B>Note:  Contains Republican-spin suggestions and attempted humor</B>.]

Before editorial writers across America get all discombobulated about the recently released memos that allegedly prove that the United States used extreme interrogation (should that be spelled “interror-gation”?) methods and that constituted the commission of war crimes, shouldn’t all Patriotic American pundits first establish if the so called memos were written on the very same typewriter that provided Dan Rather with his “proof” that President Bush went AWOL during his time of service in the Air National Guard?  Isn’t the fact that Tuesday will be Ben and Jerry’s “<a href =http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/ben-amp-jerryrsquos-31st-annual-free-cone-day,789896.shtml>free cone</a>” day of much greater importance to all Patriotic American pundits such as the one writing this weekly installment from “the World’s Laziest Journalist”?

Patriotic Americans know that some aspects of warfare (such as the function of “Pine Gap” and the top secret hush-hush World War II <a href =http://boards.history.com/topic/World-War-Ii/Habakkuk/520042340>Habakkuk Project</a>) must be kept secret so that the enemy won’t be able to sabotage such efforts.

Hellfire, boys and girls, if the Democrats are going to go ape-shit over the assertion that if the Germans and Japanese were convicted of war crimes for doing what Bush sanctioned, that means that Bush was a war criminal is a logical conclusion; then let’s just have the conservative majority U. S. Supreme Court overturn the Nuremberg convictions!  Without the embarrassing president, there will be no reason to play parlor games about inescapable logical conclusions and that will take the wind out of the Democrats’ sails.

It’s like the old puzzler:  If God can do anything; can he make a rock so big that he can’t lift it?  The Americans are the good guys and the idea that some intelligence gathering by professional interrogators constitutes a “war crime” is just as absurd as the aforementioned theological “riddle.”

Heck those methods had to be used to win the war on terror (which Bush did) and knowing that they were necessary brings up another point:  why aren’t the various police departments in the USA permitted to use a harmless waterboarding session (or two) in the war on crime?

Have the dumb Democrats, who think that just because the United States established war policies at the Nuremburg Trials, they must follow them; ever heard of the boxing technique called a feint punch or the legendary chess move called the “ghost knight gambit”?  The idea at Nuremburg was to shame others out of doing what was OK, so that in the future others would be fighting wars with the USA at a disadvantage, wasn’t it?

In their lead editorial on Saturday, April 18, 2009, the Los Angeles thundered:  “Almost as shocking as the document’ catalog of cruelties are the Orwellian arguments with which their authors rationalized waterboarding, the withholding of food and other violations of human dignity.”  Did they give the names of two people who can swear it was done to them, to the factcheckers, so that those wild assertions could be substantiated?

While the Democrats media dupes fill the air with eloquent (Pulitzer Prize time coming up soon) righteous indignation about the gathering of necessary intelligence for America in the war on terror, Patriotic American pundits will turn their attention to other more important topics such as:  The music festival at Coachella, the race in Long Beach, the gathering of hippies (the Sixties are over boys and girls) in Berkeley to celebrate the People’s Park’s 40th birthday this coming week, – why heck even the specialized <a href =http://worldslaziestjournalist.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/graffiti-sneakers/>graffiti sneakers</a> for sale on Telegraph Avenue, are of much more relevance to the true Americans who will be ignoring all the ducky lucky reaction to a few innocuous interoffice memos from the past.

Didn’t Journalism legends Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein establish that newspaper reporters are supposed to be unbiased observes and no propagandists pushing their interpretations off on a gullible and vulnerable audience?  So why are all the “this proves Bush was a war criminal” stealth editorials being inserted into the news stories about some old government paperwork?

When President George W. Bush was in office, there wasn’t a single hint that anything untoward was happening in the White House, but now that a Democrat is in charge, the lapdogs are anxiously trying to outdo each other in their vicious (partisan) disapproval of President Obama’s other party predecessor. 

Quote of the week.  Groucho Marx (AKA “43”) once said:  “This morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.  How he got there; I’ll never know.”

Now, the disk jockey will play Groucho Marx’s hit song “<a href =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCvz8y_DUSY>Hello, I Must Be Going</a>” while you listen to that, I must be going.  Have a “Night at the Opera” type week.

Refrigerator Magnets Poem

Lounge thought

 

Many time

She almost go near

His best sweet

They tell how

Listen

Protect

See like some say

Must be empty

Telephone honest loyal people

Borrow sleep

Never feel different

Surprise old pal

Dinner will matter

Coffee so late

Tear open the flower

Relax and fight

Sit here

Make my couch cry

Share the night

Safe place

Warm companion

Mean chocolate

Bring day

 

A Blogger calls for backup

(Venice CA) For a columnist, the chance to visit an area where he lived for several decades seemed like a surrealistic opportunity to write a lighthearted bit of gonzo adventures, but the visit has become a reality check where it is obvious that he may be in way over his head with a story that needs someone with a heavyweight’s credentials.

Leaving Los Angeles, after a being a local resident for several decades, a return visit, was the setting for a conversation with a long time friend, John Rizzo, President of the Marina Tenants Association.  When we used the word “kleptocracy,” John asked for a definition.  Briefly, it means a country run by crooks.

John responded by making reference to a legal case that has caught his interest because of a class action suit, he, the group, and his lawyer have been working on for a long time.  The particular case, he said, involved a bit of circular logic where (if we understand it right) some judges were suspected of improper conduct.  The California legislature absolved them of all wrongdoing (real or imagined) and then the judges sealed the case protecting it from public scrutiny.  The Tenants Association, though, feel that the particulars of that case are very relevant to their class action suit and would like to use the facts from that case for inclusion in their own case.

The Tenants Association lawyer, according to what John tells us, has been <a href =http://www.ahrc.se/new/index.php/src/news/sub/article/action/ShowMedia/id/4825>jailed for contempt</a> because of his interest in the other sealed case.  If we understand the situation rightly perhaps it is one of the judges who acted improperly who doesn’t want the Tenants Association to try to imply that he wouldn’t treat them and their case fairly, because of his involvement in the other case. 

The true journalist would be willing to devote hours, if not weeks, to reading about the legal proceedings up to this point, and reading the court paperwork that would help the reporter understand what basic issue is, and then interviewing (if possible) the people who are part of the proceedings such as the judge and the lawyer who (most likely) needs some reassurance that he hasn’t been left abandoned and unnoticed in some obscure jail cell.

For a blogger who has only the limited cash resources of the World’s Laziest Journalist Inc.’s bailout funds (should a warning that Irish people sometime exaggerate be inserted here?), spending weeks tracking down the particulars might be an example of ineffective use of the resources available because even if he produced a magnificent post, that wouldn’t do much good unless or until some heavy duty main stream media reporter came along and “seconded the motion” by doing his (or her) own version of the story.  

Odds are that they would, in the effort to spare their reader’s any wasted time, not mention where or how they learned about the story and thus the net effect for the lone blogger who got the ball rolling, would be a negative cash flow and a warm feeling of accomplishment that only he could enjoy.

The other option is to make a limited effort to track down the particulars of the Tenants Association case and get some interviews (we’ve never visited someone in county jail) while having a grand old time writing columns about some of the interesting folks he has met while staying in the Hostel California.   (The alternative headline for this column would have been:  Postcard from the Hostel California.)

Among the guests at the hostel are:  a kiwi  from Amsterdam working on a documentary film about basketball, a musician from Houston, an excellent guitarist from Berlin, soccer fans from Great Britain, and a couple from Fremantle. 

When the fellow who is writing this column grew tired of Los Angeles, he took some of the money from his Gonzo Grant from the Hunter S. Thompson Foundation, packed up, and traveled half way around the world and wound up sitting in Gloria Jean’s Coffee shop in Fremantle.  At the Hostel in Venice, Ca., he met Andrew “Goldfish” Meredith, who had become bored with his hometown and so he traveled half way around the world to see new and exciting things such as: Hollywood Blvd. and the Venice Beach.  When he asked the World’s Laziest Journalist if he had ever heard of Perth, the reply was “Do you ever go to Mojo’s in Fremantle?”  It turns out that Goldfish lives within walking distance of that music venue.  Does that provide enough material for a great “The grass is always greener . . .” column or what?

Getting back to the Marina Tenant’s Association and their lawyer, the best we can do is issue a call for backup and see if someone (Madigan?  Steve at Playboy? Kim’s husband?  One of the teacher-advisors at the Daily Bruin?  The assignment editor at the New York Times?) who reads this column can get a chance to do all the digging necessary to see if this is just a bit of exaggerated, misunderstood legal paperwork mumbo-jumbo or if there is indeed a lawyer who is being held as a political prisoner in a country where that’s never supposed to happen.

Fred Allen said “Los Angeles is a fine place to live – if you happen to be an orange.”

Meanwhile, it’s going to be hot as blazes in L. A. today, the Venice beach will be a tourist magnate, and the folks at <a href =http://www.lasaac.org/content/welcome-lasaacorg>LASAAC.org</a> will be anxious to get some assistance publicizing their next “open track” event, so it’s time to have the disk jockey play Randy Newman’s “I Love L. A.” and we’ll head out to the beach.  Have a week that will make you scream:  “Cowabonga, dude, it doesn’t get any better than this!”

April 22 is Secretary’s Day

April 22, Wednesday, is Secretary’s Day

http://www.cardfountain.com/holiday_info/secretaries-day.php

Zen and the Art of Apathy

Que sera sera.

Festival of Books UCLA

The L. A. Times and UCLA will present the Festival of Books this weekend.

http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks/

Be there; or be square.

RIP Freedom of the Press

Several news items this past week indicate that the time has come for American voters to prepare a memorial service for Freedom of the Press:

The Sunday morning Republican Propaganda Battalion reassured a gullible audience that American questioning tactics, such as waterboarding, was acceptable military conduct. 

Some winners of the newly awarded Pulitzer Prizes had already been laid-off.

Websites which strive to present an alternative point of view to refute the unrelenting torrent of Republican talking points presented in main stream media were struggling for donations to continue their effort to conduct a debate and prevent a one-sided monologue from being disguised as a fair and balanced effort to keep voters informed about the issues.

Did the Sunday morning reassurances about waterboarding include any references to what was said about “following orders” at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials, or did those pontificating pundits rely solely on their reputations as “journalists” to infer that they had an expert’s command of the topic?

Have you seen any news stories lately about how the “every vote counts” gang is doing in their efforts to prevent Al Franken from taking his seat in the Senate?

What happened to the Republican attorney-general appointees from the Bush era who should have been replaced at the start of a new Democratic administration?

It used to be that genuine journalists, such as Edward R. Murrow, were permitted to punctuate their reports (such as the ones he made from London during the Battle of Britain) with opinions about what the events meant and what the most likely consequences would be. 

Do you think that if the drawdown of American troops from Iraq precipitates a resurgence of the insurgency, the resulting increase in American casualties will force the new President to make a cancelation of the troop reduction tactic imperative?  If the insurgents operating in Iraq could deliver such an embarrassment to the American leadership, what possible reason could there be for them not to do that?

If Osama had actually won the War on Terrorism and achieved his goals of destroying the American business structure, reducing the American military superiority to a debate topic, and eluding his own capture, would the slaves on the Propaganda plantation (Faux News?) concede or report that victory?  Isn’t it more likely that they would – like the band of the Titanic – just keep playing the same old tunes they always performed (on command) and hope the audience didn’t notice reality?

If (as long as we are dabbling in speculation) the Talaban takes over control of Pakistan, will that be good for business at Blackwater?  If the Talaban gains control in Pakistan will there be some new lucrative contracts for Blackwater precipitated by some (hypothetical at this point) American military move to reverse such an occurrence?  If Blackwater stand to profit would Republicans interpret that turn of events as “good for business”?  If something would be good for business, would the Republicans support it?  What’s not to like about a company that has an increase in business during a recession?

While preparing to write this column, we spoke with a citizen of Germany and he noted that because of the role corrupt journalism played in bolstering their Chancelor-for-life’s power grab, back in the Thirties, they specifically wrote new rules into their new Constitution keeping journalism separate from any alliances with political parties.  Gee wouldn’t one cable news network have blown a fuse if they had been in existence when that bit of Constitutional debate was being conducted in Bonn?

If the web sites that strive mightily to counteract the overwhelming preponderance of Republican talking points, which are coyly presented as facts, fall victim to the economic realities of hard times, who then will be left to refute any falsehoods and or distortions? 

The Republican idea of debate most often resembles (metaphorically speaking) the military tactics used by the troops that crossed the frozen Chosin Reservoir.  Some accounts of those events report that artillery weapons were fired point blank at the charging enemy troops but that didn’t turn the tide. Nothing could stop the hordes of charging troops.  See the resemblance to Republican talking points, now?

Freedom of the Press has been doing the Cheshire cat disappearing act since Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election but the people who reaped the rewards of that change are, ironically, the very ones who should have been sounding the alarm.  It is a vivid example of the concept of the sleeping sentry.

Edward R. Murrow risked his career to bring a warning to the American public.  These days network talking heads seem to have converted to the “ya gotta go along to get along” philosophy of winning the ratings competition. 

There are several books that attempted to direct the voters attention to this covert attack on one of democracy’s cornerstones, (“Lapdogs:  How the Press Rolled Over for Bush” is one example) but those books did not generate talk show topics or alarmist editorials in the nation’s leading newspapers.  Why do you suppose that happened?

If this trend is upsetting, then the reader of this column can promote alternative sources of dissention and, when asked, make monetary contributions to bolster and sustain those “Alamo like” attempts to maintain a well informed citizenry, that still exist. 

How much laughter would the failure of a liberal web site elicit from dittoheads?  There was a ship within sight of the sinking Titanic that was perplexed by their neighbor’s use of distress flares. 

When (not if) Freedom of the Press disappears completely in the USA and a memorial service is held, will the leading radio voices of the conservative point of view lament its passing or will they cackle with unrestrained glee?  Or will they just silently wait until they get a chance to secretly dance (or ?) on its grave?

Thomas Jefferson (wasn’t he a famous socialist?) said:  “The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by a despotic government.”

Now, the disk jockey will play Verdi’s <a href =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDFFHaz9GsY&feature=related>Deis Irea</a> and we will silently file out of here.  Have a “use it (freedom of the press) or lose it” type week.

What’s Not to Like?

When you see a magazine named “Stop Smiling,” what’s not to like abotu that?

http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/

Scoop

When the legendary H. L. Mencken, as a rookie journalist, was assigned to cover political upheaval in Cuba in 1918.  When he arrived the government had implemented a news blackout and would not permit any telegrams to be sent regarding the events that were occurring.  Mencken linked up with a clever local who was sure that the news embargo could be bypassed.  While his stymied and infuriated colleagues expressed their frustration with the government, Mencken and his local guide went down to the waterfront and paid (half now, half when the job is done) a boater to send the stories from Florida to Mencken’s editor in Baltimore.  The paper scored several scoops using this example of capitalistic enterprise.  Mencken outmaneuvered the competition and established himself as a superstar of the journalism world with a variation on the “end run.”

And you thought a “news embargo” was a modern technique?

 

Worse than my spelling?

The Huffingtonpost is (Tuesday at 4 p.m. PDT) running this headline:

FAA Memo: Feds New NYC Flyover Would Cause Panic

Did they mean that the Feds Knew that the flyover would mean that there would be no need for laxatives in New York on Monday?

Gosh, those New Yorkers don’t seem to believe that George W. Bush made it safer for all of us, do they?

A voice in the night

While staying in Kalgoorlie (Western Australia) I tuned in to a music program that was fun.  It was Country and Western – mostly American – and stuff I hadn’t heard even though I knew the artists.

The DJ said it was “comet radio” and it seemed his signal was heard all over WA – that’s a big area so it was either a clear channel AM station or a system of relays if it was on FM. 

It reminded me of times as a kid when I would find an interesting radio station and not know where it was coming from or what the call letters were.  I’d listen until I could hear the information, but the guy in Australia never gave me that information.

Anyone out there know the who – what – where  on Comet radio country music in WA?  If so post a comment.

March or die!

Beau Geste will be one of the films shown in a new series at UCLA.  The series will look at how Hollywood portrayed life in North Africa.  The L. A. Times had a good promo-item story on it today and you can click to the schedule from this link:

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/screenings/screenings.html

Free Comic Book Day May 2

Saturday, May 2, 2009, will be the newest installment of “Free Comic Book Day.”

http://www.freecomicbookday.com/

Follow the link for more details.

Have the ones from the first free comic book day become rare collectors’ items worth beaucoup $ $ $ ???

This afternoon the emperor wants to go waterskiing . . .

Friday, May 1, 2009, is International Workers Day.  Now quit surfing the internet and get back to work!  It is also celebrated as “May Day.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers%27_Day

For thirty pieces of silver?

Will members of the military testify against Bush as part of a plea bargain deal?

http://bartblog.bartcop.com/2009/04/30/bush-set-to-learn-the-paybacks-are-hell-lesson/

Why not . . . ?

There is a book of police mug shots out and that prompted us to come up with a suggestion:

Since many of the best star’s booking mug shots come from the camera used by the Malibu station for the L. A. County Sherrif, why don’t they (at the next civic charity fund raising event) take photos with that camer for a fee that  would help build the total take.  Many of the people who live in Malibu would get a perverse kick out of helping a worthy cause and being imoratalized by the very same camera that took the (world famous?) picutre of Mel Gibson when he was booked at the Malibu substation.

Too bad Andy Warhol isn’t still alive so that he could put his “take” on the famous mug shots, eh?

If the Los Angeles Sherrif’s Dept could cut throught the paperwork and actually to this bit of charity fund raising, who wouldn’t want to get one for placing over their mantel? 

(Note:  the famous mug shot of Gary Busey

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_CSmsEIWZS8g/R8-nXMVXpUI/AAAAAAAAAvg/5yzUwZYD9rA/s400/gary%2Bbusey.jpg

may have been taken with another camera.)

LOL in Pasadena! ! !

Back in the day when Herb Caen was “Mr. San Francisco” he used LOL to signify a Little Old Lady, and now that we stop to think about it, we have a great film pitch idea (where is Bo Zenga when you really need him?).  Who owns the film rights to the Beach Boy’s song “It’s the Little Old Lady from Pasadena”?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQMqgSaZZmM&feature=PlayList&p=6885E9D9523FBCF8&index=0

We got a great idea for a script based on this song.

So I’ll be waiting to hear from Quenten Tarentino or George Lucas in the mailboc for the “worldslaziestjournalist” at the yahoo web site, so e-mail me and let’s get this idea up and running! ! !

Cinco de Mayo

Tuesday will be Cinqo de Mayo.

If folks in Mexico can celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, then I sure as heck can celebrate Cinco de Mayo! ! !

http://www.vivacincodemayo.org/history.htm

It’s Never Gonna Stop!

Fraudulent Journalism; It’s Never Gonna Stop

On Sunday May 3, 2009, the Los Angeles Times featured a story on the front page (above the fold) by Peter Nicholas under the headline:  “Last week marked the inevitable moment when Bush truly faded into the background, observers (note the plural) say.”  Will most readers be able to differentiate quality journalism from stealth political propaganda?  A few comments on this story may help the average voter to make that call.
After indicating that the story’s contention was substantiated by “observers,” (in the subhead), “presidential experts” (Ninth graph) and “political strategists” (Ninth graph), Nicholas quotes New York University Paul Light, Republican Pollster Neil Newhouse. and White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

A subhead restates this part of Paul Light’s quote:  “I don’t think that the public will continue to believe that this was all George W. Bush’s doing.”  The full quote contains this:  “And every day that goes by it becomes more Obama’s than Bush’s.”  So what is a binary choice for Nicholas is more of a gray scale thing in the Professor’s quote. 

Neil Newhouse the Republican pollster said “”The perception will be that Barack Obama owns this bankruptcy.”  He adds “He owns this economy.”  An unrelenting torrent of spin would help secure the goal of getting the public to hold that perception.  How many Republican polls will show that President Obama isn’t doing a great job? 

Ms. Psaki’s quote:  “There are some occasions where an movie script would not do justice to the number of major events happening at one time.  This week was one of those occasions.”  Change “week” to “day,” and that quote would be just as relevant to the Invasion of Normandy as it is to Nicholas’ contention.

In the first paragraph Nicholas outlines his case by noting that in the week just past, Congress passed the White House Budget, Sen. Arlen Specter announced he was rejoining the Democratic Party and President Obama was given indications that he would have the chance to replace a Supreme Court Justice.  The cumulative effect of those three items is, Nicholas asserts, is that the Republicans can now be justified in saying:  “Tag, you’re it!”

After making the announcement about switching his party allegiance, Senator Spector made some comments that indicated his fervor was less than total unquestioning obedience to the Democratic Party. 

Wasn’t the majority of the work for designing the budget which was just past, done before President Obama’s inauguration?  Wasn’t it more like a relief pitcher coming into the game in the bottom of the eight inning with a ten run deficit?  Wouldn’t most baseball fans know that the pitcher who was pulled in the bottom of the eight would be charged with the loss?  Why did Nicholas change that bit of common sense thinking?  Could it be that he wants to set up Obama as a patsy if and when he faces the possibility that the election of Jeb Bush in 2012, is just what the country needs?

President Obama will get to name a liberal judge’s replacement on the conservative dominated Supreme Court and that will prove he’s at the helm from now on.  Is that a bit of <I>non sequitor</I> argumentation?

The promise that “observers” say Bush has truly faded into the background comes down to Paul Light’s quote about the transition being gradual.  Is that qualilty journalism or political propaganda? 

Any weekend, people in the USA can tune into a sports program where there is extensive scrutiny about personnel changes and what they portend for a particular team’s future.  If viewers can follow the extensive analysis of the sports announcers who go into minute detail about such news, why then do “political news junkies” settle for sloppy imitations of three card Monte and/or the shell game?  Perhaps secretly deep down in America’s heart of darkness, everyone wants to see the Bush dynasty renewed in 2012 and a continuing unrelenting supply of items such as Nicholas’ story will help them get what they want while displaying a veneer of believing that elections are decided by votes cast by a well informed electorate?

Is Jeb’s Listening Tour a carefully orchestrated, well managed bit of political propaganda or is it really an example of concerned citizens helping a front-runner get a clear view of what the voters are thinking?  Let’s hope that well paid L. A. Times reporters get an assignment to bring the answer to their readers.

What’s happening to Richard Fine, the L. A. lawyer, who, supporters contend, is being held a

<a href =http://www.ahrc.se/new/index.php/src/news/sub/article/action/ShowMedia/id/4825>

political prisoner</a>?  Maybe when Nicholas is hard up for a story suggestion, he’ll ask Professor Light about that item?

For those regular readers who are more used to a flippant snide attitude from this columnist, we’ll revert to form and will end this column, as we usually do, with a slightly relevant quote from Jeb Bush:  “If more people were actively engaged in advocating their positions I think we’d have a better society” and then give the disk jockey a chance to feature a new artist who is following the Red Elvises path to success by starting on the Santa Monica mall, by playing Amy May’s “

<a href =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oWxUtOvUfY>Deja vu</a>

“  (Speaking of deja vu, if Jeb gets elected in 2012, will the Columbia Review of Journalism web site’s decks be awash with crocodile tears lamenting poor political journalism?)  Now, we have to play fair and send an e-mail to Peter Nicholas and invite him to tear this column to shreds in the comments section.  Have the kind of week that will make your spin spokesperson flush with pride and euphoria.

Pasadena’s song

Wanna see the video and hear someone sing the Pasadena Ca official song?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNio-oB4DyU

Why does everyone assume that the “Little Old Lady” from Pasadena drove a deuce coupe?  Does that song say specifically what she was driving?

May 8

Saturday May 8th will be Red CrossRed Crescent Day and VE Day.

http://www.redcross.int/

Humor from Canada

Dan St. Yves does humor from Canada and folks can start learning about him at:

http://thatdanguy.blogspot.com/

We found this information while doing fact checking for the next Saturday Morning column for Smirking Chimp, Op Ed News, and this blog, so you can’t expect us to let the cat out of the bag and tell you what the column is all about before we get to write it, do you?

No.

Posting a link to his blog seemed like a good idea, so we have shared that with you.

So if nothing else check back here where we will post a copy of the column after it has been posted at Smirking Chimp.

The cargo version of the B-24

There were less than a hundred cargo versions of the B-24 made.

http://www.stinsonflyer.com/consolac/c87-3c.jpg

They were mainly used for flying cargo over the Burma hump.

National Train Day

Saturday, May 9, 2009 some folks will be celebrating National Train Day

http://www.nationaltrainday.com/2009/

Speed of Sound Tour

Lebowski fans will note that the Speed of Sound Tour starts this weekend in the Los Angeles area.

http://www.lebowskifest.com/UpcomingFests/SpeedofSoundTourMoreTBA/tabid/186/Default.aspx

Pasadena = Car-spotting Capital of the World! ! !

(Pasadena CA) A smorgasbord of new unrelated facts and events that started a week ago now add up to a chance, for one particular columnist, to augment his continuing effort to provide freelance journalism criticism, cover Jeb Bush’s effort to restore the Bush Dynasty to its rightful place in the Oval Office, watch a town other than Berkeley draw the attention of freedom of speech activists, provide some “inside baseball” news for bloggers, draw attention to the contention that attorney Richard Fine may possibly be considered a political prisoner in the USA, with a simultaneous effort to promote the writer’s new hometown as the unrivaled car-spotting capital of the world.

After moving in on a Friday afternoon, one particular song kept popping up in his mind.  On a Saturday morning stroll following coffee and a scan of the Los Angeles Times, the columnist had not been walking down Colorado Blvd., two minutes before he saw a deuce (1932 Ford) roadster.  Three minutes later a deuce coupe followed.

When an invitation to join the <a href =http://www.columnists.com/>National Society of Newspaper Columnists</a> arrived in the e-mail in box on Monday, it seemed that, based on previous information, that perhaps it was time to visit the offices of the Pasadena Star News and inquire about the possibility of getting a gig writing about the process of a new citizen discovering the charms of this famous city.

The regular Monday night session of the local city council was devoted to swearing in new members and taking a new official picture.

Plans to wage a campaign to have the aforementioned song designated as the official city song were scrapped when, after contacting the city clerk’s office, it was learned that the city had already named a different tune as their official song.

A Ted Rall cartoon in the Pasadena Weekly gave a heads-up that the next city council meeting might draw the attention of freedom of speech activists, rekindled hopes of getting a gig taking a fresh look at the city that is home to college football’s most famous game.

Every day in the new area produced at least one remarkable instance of happy car-spotting.  Two Cobras (or replicas?) had been seen.  A Nash Metropolitan, a sedan that from the side and going away seemed to be a 1931 four door Chevrolet sedan, and some powerful sounding newer cars indicated that it might be a good idea to advocate Pasadena as the car-spotting capital of the world and possibly entering into a media feud with the <a href =http://jalopnik.com/tag/down-on-the-street/>car-spotting photos editor</a> for a leading web source of news and pictures of interest to automobile enthusiasts. 

Many of the cars seen in the Pasadena area are in what car collectors call “cherry” condition, while those featured on-line by the photographer scouring Alhambra find cars that are obviously in daily use.

There are other sites for car-spotters on-line, including one that is not geographic specific, <a href =http://www.madwhips.com/>Madwhips</a>, but seems open to submissions from around the world.  (Yeah, but did they have photo coverage of Summer Nats?)

At this point, an effort to do some fact-checking on old information produced the news that the National Society of Newspaper Columnists had changed its rules and that Internet columnists were eligible for membership, caused a reevaluation of the need for doing the work necessary to catch the attention and approval of the editor of the local newspaper.

If an on-line columnist can now join the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and be eligible to attend their national convention, which will be held this year in Ventura on June 25 to 28, 2009, then it might be time to “cut to the chase” as they say in Hollywood and immediately apply for membership.

The NSNC web site has a page-full of links for those members who live in the cusp area of being both newspaper content providers and bloggers.  The possibility of being listed on that page is yet another solid reason for considering joining the group.

Max Lerner said (wrote?):  “A politician wouldn’t dream of being allowed to call a columnist the things a columnist is allowed to call a politician.”

Now, the disk jockey will play the 1923 song “<a href =http://www.finestkind.ca/Songs/home_in_pasadena.htm>Home in Pasadena</a>.”  We’ll go get the digital camera and shoot some photos that will put Alhambra fans to shame.  Have the kind of week that will get your membership application approved by the Anaheim, Azusa, and East Cucamonga Sewing Circle, Book Review, and Timing Association.”  (Ask a <a href =http://www.rhapsody.com/jan-and-dean/all-the-hits-from-surf-city-to-drag-city/the-anaheim-azusa-cucamonga-sewing-circle-book-review-and-timing-association/lyrics.html>Jan and Dean</a> fan about that group if you must.)

Money Songs

One of the first blog postings we did was a link to the best drinking songs.

We’ve just discovered a link to a list of what somebody thinks is the best songs about Money

http://www.businesspundit.com/30-best-songs-about-money/

So check it out.

May 15 Conscientious Objectors Day

May 15, will be Conscientious Objectors Day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_Objector

You gotta problem with that, Jack?

Ready anytime you are, CB!

In the old days previewing what a shot would look like to the camera could mean just using your two hands in the “L” formation to make a “viewfinder.” 

The thought of buying one of the real gizmos that the directors used was very appealing to a youngster growing up in Scranton Pa., but the real world is tough.  He who hesistates spends more cash.  Now, those directors viewfinders cost beaucoup dinero.

We’ve found a place in Hollywood that sell them but they are expensive.

The directors vsiewfinder from Alan Gordon are listed at $699

http://www.alangordon.com/s_camaccessories_markvb.html

Well, it’s back to the old use your two hands method, for the time being.

“We all need someone to bleed on . . .”

Shrapnel, the pieces of metal shards that are distributed when an artillery shell explodes, got its name from the British officer who invented it.

http://www.riv.co.nz/rnza/hist/shrap/

We always thought that Shrapnel would be a good name for a German Shepherd type dog.

Salvaging Obama’s Legacy

Historians may say that the effort to salvage President Obama’s legacy began on Thursday May 7, 2009, when the New York Times published an <a href =http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08sherjan.html?_r=1> Oped piece by Hassina Sherjan</a> which included this quote:  “Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, put it very clearly: “The Taliban were united under the leadership of Mullah Muhammad Omar. All the fighters follow and obey orders of one central command. The existence of moderates and extremist elements within the rank and file of Taliban is wishful thinking of the West and the Afghan government.”

If the Taliban won’t negotiate, that means there can not be a negotiated end of the war and if that’s true then the war must come to a conclusion via a military victory.  Since the Democrats don’t want to go into a round of national elections (be it 2010, 2012, 2014, or 2016) after losing the War in Iraq, that means that President Obama must not, under any circumstances, let Baghdad become another version of Ho Chi Minh City “on his watrch.” 

Since the number of troops necessary to impose a military victory in Iraq and Afghanistan would require a staggering amount of expenditures in both cash and lives, that would seem to be (realistically speaking) an unattainable goal.

That leaves only one course of action for President Obama.  He has to fight a holding action and pass the problem on to his successor and that, in turn, means that he has to concede the fact that there will not be a VI Day (Victory in Iraq) and that means that he and his advisers will have to focus on building his future assessment by historians with other accomplishments such as the economy and innovative social programs. 

Unfortunately the current economic outlook indicates that lofty goals will have to be put on hold for the time being. 

President Obama’s spin specialists will have to approach their challenge very aggressively because to some the Obama Administration’s program resembles that portrayed in cartoons when the fast running bird (ostrich?) hands a stick of dynamite (trinitrotoluene) to the dog/wolf/coyote character and with a “beep beep” and sound effects indicating that he is departing a the same rate of speed achieved by a bullet, letting the hapless mutt “holding the bag” and then giving the audience a perplexed look after the inevitable big Kaboom!

If the cost of maintaining a military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan remains stable during President Obama’s term in office and if the economic recover is slow, that would tend to indicate that social programs will have to be downsized and or eliminated during the interim.  If those cost skyrocket, then cutting social programs will become manditory.

The President will have to build a perception that he entered office with optimistic expectations and then use the old WMD explanation when it becomes apparent that a negotiated settlement is impossible:  “He didn’t know there was no possibility of a negotiated settlement.” 

So, just as Bush supporters did in the WMD debate, he can use the old “blindsided by reality” explanation and slowly spread the perception that radical al Qaeda members would rather die than sign a peace settlement.

As this process unfolds liberal pundits can use clever and poetical metaphors to explain the impasse, such as saying that asking al Qeda to convene a Peace conference would be very much like sending the chaplain to talk to a kamikaze pilot about the assertion that suicide is an unforgivable sin.

Maybe the President should do something more constructive such as helping Al Franken get started now in his efforts to raise funds for a reelection campaign?

Perhaps a good diversion will be to start a committee to decide where to locate the Obama Presidential Library?

Comedian W. C. Fields has said:  “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”

Now the disk jockey will be permitted to replay Supertramp’s “<a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBAasek8NR4>Logical Song</a>,” which he has played at least once before.  The Pasadena City Council will have an interesting meeting tonight, so we gotta run along.  Have a week in which you never hear the word “immutable.”  (As Dick Martin used to say:  “Look that up in your Funken and Wagnall.”)

May 16 Armed Forces Day

Saturday, May 16, 2009, will be Aremed Forces Day.

The Headless Chicken’s Web-site

If you haven’t seen the web site for Mike the headless chicken, then follow this link

http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/index.php

David vs. Goliath on the web?

There is no way that the world’s laziest journalist’s blog can compete (David vs. Goliath style?) with “the best free Reference Directory for Information in the world,” so all we can do is give our readers the link to that site:

http://www.blackstump.com.au/

Pismire

Pismire may sound nasty but it’s just an obscure word that designates the insect that most people call an “ant.”

Split into two

We have added another blog for photos only at

http://floppyphotos.wordpress.com/

That way the World’s Laziest Journalist’s Blog can download faster because we won’t be posting photos here very often in the future.

Train wreck pay per view?

Back in 1896, in Texas, a train wreck was staged.  They didn’t have TV, so cut them some slack, eh?

Here is one online account:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Crush–Texas-The-Train-Crash-of-1896

Realty TV has tried everything else, so it may be time for a staged train wreck.  Ya think?

King of the Alamanac Bloggers

Occasionally, this blog mentions what is being celebrated on various days.  For instance, today is National Conscientious Objectors Day (Tomorrow just happens to b e Mass Graves Day in Iraq), but to learn that today is also National Chocolate Chip Day as well as NASCAR Day we had to go to the blog done by a disk jockey in the Texarkana area called “The Flying Dutchman.”  He is the King of Almanac Bloggers and we will never be able to attain his level of proficiency.  All we can do is run a link to his site

http://www.tfdutch.com/

Tomorrow he will have an excellent amount of information about May 16. 

What will we have on this blog tomorrow?  Who knows? 

We once had a supervisor tell us that being the boss of us was a challenge because he could never predict with certainty what I would do.  I think he may read this blog.  Tune in tomorrow to see what the post will be, because at this point we have no preconceived notions at all.  (We might run an item about the development of Isis, the unmanned radar blimp [you could look it up on the Internets], but since we just mentioned it, that would spoil the surprise, so it won’t be about that.

“A Rose by any other name . . .”

If President Obama continues the search for WMD’s in Iraq, sanctions waterboarding, lets members of the Bush legal team go unpunished, continues the perpetual war in Afghanistan, dismisses any hint that civilians are being hit by the bombs, shifts prisoners from Guantanamo to a remote island in the Indian Ocean, and continues to monitor telephone calls made by citizens living in the USA, would it be accurate to call any (perish the thought!) criticism of such activity as:  “Bush-bashing”?

If (subjunctive mood) the Republicans can use the electronic voting machines to manipulate the results to whatever conclusion they desire and if (continuing in the subjunctive mood) they used that power to let Senator Obama win the election and get a majority in both the Senate and the Congress, could that have been the most clever gambit that Karl Rove ever devised?  How can Democrats call Bush a war criminal if President Obama does the same things?

The Republicans were tired of taking the heat for war crimes and so forth, so by cleverly implicating the Democrats into the process (such as briefing Nancy Pelosi?), and then handing over the executive and legislative branch to the Democrats, the Republicans could sit back and bask in the lack of attention and vitriolic umbrage from the “pro-Liberal” media.

If the Democrats are going to continue the Bush program, why settle for a pretender to the throne?  Why not get the genuine article?  If this columnist were going to give you a free car, which would you prefer:  an authentic 60’s era Ford Cobra, or a new replica?  Won’t it soon become obvious that it would be better to let the Republicans run the Republican agenda and perhaps even restore the Bush Dynasty to the White House?

If that’s what’s going to happen, that means that the disgruntled comments made by columnists who write for this site, will continue to be germane for some time to come and there will be plenty of time to (in baseball parlance) throw a “change-up” pitch or two and write some columns that aren’t obsessed with war, bailouts, and foreclosures.

Have you seen any mention of the “Isis” project which will be to develop and build an unmanned Radar blimp?  It was mentioned in Der Stern.

Will this web site need coverage of the annual summer surfing event in Malibu known as “The Call to the Wall”?

Since the Democrats are in charge, would there be an opening for a “murder critic” at Fox News?  Bring back the old fears about society being out of control and revive the old “law’ n’ order” issue by having a guy (or good looking chick) highlight the most creative, innovative, gruesome murder for that particular day in the USA.  The “Murder Critic” could comment on the most noteworthy ones and ignore the strictly routine ones committed by a husband wearing a “wife-beater” t-shirt.

Whatever happened to the story that indicated a congressional investigation into the finances of some of the famous preachers might be necessary?

Are the expensive collectables you bought (as a hedge against inflation) in the past maintaining their value?

Will Harper’s Bazaar or Vogue be doing any on-location fashion shoots at Sturgis this year?

What did Jacques Cousteau see at the bottom of Lake Tahoe?

What happened to the copies of the old “Sea Hunt” TV series?  Isn’t it time for them to be “discovered!” and issued on DVD?

Why hasn’t reality TV staged a <a href =http://hubpages.com/hub/Crush–Texas-The-Train-Crash-of-1896>train wreck</a>?  It was done over a hundred years ago in Texas. 

If time is running out for prosecuting George W. Bush, why are old men being dragged off to Europe to be tried for things they did during World War II?   Do a google news search for John Demjanjuk who was living in Cleveland and Charles Zentai who was living in Australia.

If Jeb Bush is on a listening tour, what are the folks saying to him?  Are they too polite to ask about the allegations that his brother should be tried for war crimes?  What happens at these listening tour events?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Here’s a great idea for the Obama spin team:  Why don’t we spend the next two years debating health care and then do nothing at all about it?  That should get old 44 off the hook as far as waterboarding and such is concerned.

Did the CIA brief a few strategically picked bloggers about waterboarding? 

If everything you can possibly imagine can be found on Youtube, why don’t they have the instrumental version of the theme for the old TV series “Medic” available?

Why have Willie Nelson and Mick Jagger never done a duet recording?

Didn’t Art Buchwald write a fictionalized story (for one of his copyrighted columns) and then make a fortune when someone plagiarized it for a movie?  Would anyone (this column is copyrighted, ya know) like to read a “based on a true” story column about a woman, who during WWII, was a POW who escaped and managed to get to a neutral country where she had to stay until the end of the war? 

Now, getting back to the idea that President Obama’s about-face on the release of the photos showing abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib; when President Bush brushed it off, it was an outrage and the basis for a war crimes trial, but now that a president setting Democratic President wants to sweep the pictures under the rug . . . why not, eh?

Raymond Chandler wrote:  “I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved, and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”  (Was he going to Pasadena?)

Now, the disk jockey will (if he knows what’s good for him) will play the instrumental version of the theme from the TV series “Medic” and we will drift away.  Have a “Hey, ma, I’ll be marching in the Rosebowl Parade!” type week.

Tracking down first car crash in USA

Cars are bound to smack into each other.  We’ve heard that the first automobile collision in the USA happened when there were only four cars.  Two (reportedly) crashed into each other in St. Louis in 1896.

We’ve tried and tried to do fact checking on this on the Internets, but have failed to find any mention of such an accident.  Was the initial report bogus?  Is the information on the Internets hiding from us somewhere on the Internets?

To see photos of smashed up expensive cars in more recent accidents try Wrecked Exotics on-line at:

http://www.wreckedexotics.com/

We’ll continue fact-finding.  If anyone has verifiable information about the first car vs.  car accident in the USA please post a comment.  Thank you.

Looking for a distraction?

Are you surfing the net and becoming bored?  Try this site:

http://www.easilyamused.com/

They have lotsa links to explore.

Mad Scientist Hall of Fame

Any book with the title:

Mad Scientist Hall of Fame: Muwahahahaha!

was bound to get a plug from the World’s Laziest Journalist’s Blog sooner or later.

The Amazon page for that book is at:

http://www.amazon.com/Mad-Scientist-Hall-Fame-Muwahahahaha/dp/0806528796

Unanswerable Question

Where was Steve Brody when he jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge?

Saying:  “on the Brooklyn Bridge” is wrong, because that was before he jumped off.

Saying “in the air” or “in the water” is wrong because that was after he jumped off.

So where was Steve Brody when he jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge?

Dumb Links

If you want to see Dumb Links, just go to their web site and click on the links they provide

http://www.dumb.com/

Go Dirtbags! ! !

The Long Beach  State baseball team is called “The Dirtbags.”

http://dirtbagsbaseball.blogspot.com/

So if you know a dirtbag or a dirtbag fan you can get them an official Dirtbag T-shirt.  Since Long Beach isn’t too far away, it may be time to go there and get me one of those T-shirts.

Yay for the Yuma Criminals! ! !

A high school in Yuma has “The Criminals” as its team name.  For this and many more interesting high school teams’ names go to:

http://www.tekonsha.k12.mi.us/scaa/teamnames.htm

10-Q for Mike

After an influx of new visiters via a link on Mike’s Blog Roundup on the Crooks and Liars web site

http://crooksandliars.com/

we wanted to send him a 10 – Q (i.e. Thank you) message.  The new visitors had us a bit intimidated because we wanted to post something unique on the next day (today) to show any return customers that we can come up with stuff that won’t look like it came from the Internets Hall of Mirrors type content.  On such short notice the best we could find was that there is very little mention on-line of the Arizona Night Club that operated in Budapest before Word War II.

There were one or two places where prints of  photos taken in the Arizona could be purchased, but not much else about the joint itself.

One of the photos didn’t even mention that it had been published in LIFE magazine.

http://www.bostonharbormuseum.org/galleries/i3749245_Performers_in_Budapest_Nightclub_Arizona.htmlhttp://www.bostonharbormuseum.org/galleries/i3749245_Performers_in_Budapest_Nightclub_Arizona.html

Welcome, new visitors!

A Shiny, Brand-new Conspiracy Theory

In trying to concoct a new and original conspiracy theory that is astounding in its brilliance and unbeatable in the clever insight category, we collected our relevant facts.

(Evidence Exhibit A)  According to extensive evidence enumerated on the <a href =http://www.bradblog.com/>Brad Blog</a>, it seems as if the Republicans can use the new paperless voting machines to preselect the winners of the election.

(Evidence Exhibit B) In 2004, the Republicans had an extensive array of legal entities and strategies ready to do combat with John Kerry.  After Howard Dean surprised everyone with unexpected strength in the early part of the selection process, the mainstream media (including many distinguished Pro-Liberal publications) conveniently spread the meme that Howard Dean had suffered a mental breakdown during a victory speech, and anointed Senator John Kerry, the official “frontrunner” and, after getting the nomination, the aforementioned legal entities and strategies did not go to waste during George W. Bush’s successful campaign for reelection.

(Evidence Exhibit C)  After becoming the first woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi disappointed supporters and anti-war Democrats from outside her district, by blithely dismissing any suggestions that President George W. Bush had done “something” more deserving of impeachment than prevarications and blow jobs.  She became the first woman Speaker of the House, but she didn’t have the backing of a filibuster-proof majority and was rendered rather impotent.

(Evidence Exhibit D)  In 2008, the Republicans were very wary of the prospect of waging a campaign battle against Senator Hillary Clinton.  Again, luck came to the Republicans’ rescue and the voters again astounded expectations and pollsters by selecting Senator Obama. 

(Evidence Exhibit E)  After becoming the first Negro President, Barrack Obama suddenly embraced all most all of the Bush War on Terror methodology and strategies and disappointed some of his supporters from outside Illinois.

The people who would strenuously object to the assertion that the Republicans may have “given” the 2008 Presidential “win” to Senator Obama, apparently do not realize that sometimes in chess, when the conditions are just right, an experienced player may seem to “loose” a queen in order to precipitate an exchange that will ultimate assist in his long range strategy to win the game.

For those who can’t accept that the Republicans strategy might call for letting the Democrats win the 2008 Presidential election and get a majority in Congress and the Senate, we’ll offer this possible explanation:  If the Republicans know that they have run up a massive deficit, wouldn’t it be diabolical fun to stick the Democrats with the task of cleaning up the mess?  Can’t you see it in terms of a post Civil War era Southern family having a gigantic party and then when looking at all the work that will be required to put things back in shipshape, Rhett turns to Scarlett and says:  “Don’t worry, dear, that’s why we have servants.”

The Los Angeles Time edition for Friday, May 22, 2009, carried the headline:  “Poor would be hard hit by state cuts.”  Gee do you think that story might make some Republicans feel just as bad as they do when they see assertions that the number of inadvertent civilian casualties in Iraq may actually reach the “several dozens” number?

A recent item online hinting that the amount of money in the Social Security funds account may be perilously low, prompts us to think it may be time to write a column that posits the idea that President Bush has successfully dismantled almost all of the vestiges of the “New Deal.”?  There is only one item left on the agenda.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if it fell to a Democratic President to have to be the one to eliminate Social Security?  Social Security has been a thorn in the side of the rich since the day it was signed into law, and if the first Negro President is the one who ends it, the Republicans might get a very deep level of satisfaction seeing that happen.

Without more than the circumstantial evidence outlined above, it seems unlikely that this new conspiracy theory will gain much traction.  It’s like our long held belief that George W. Bush worked out a “gentleman’s agreement” with Osama bin Laden the consisted of the American President letting Osama slip away in the Tora Bora region in return for Osama’s word of honor that he wouldn’t sanction a retaliation Terrorist strike inside the United States, while Bush remained in office.  It all boils down to the old American folk axiom:  “Difference of opinion is what makes a horse race,” so we should find something else for a column topic.

If this columnist “plagiarizes” an entire sentence from Josh Marshall will that catapult the world’s laziest journalist to extensive coverage by the Drudge Report and the Huffingtonpost?

Many moons ago, while reading a translation of one of the classics of Russian literature, we discovered that the copy we had had a gap of missing material which had been filled with a duplication of a previous section.  We toddled off to the Santa Monica Public Library to get a different copy of the aforementioned Russian novel to be able to “fill in the gap of missing prose.

In the process of trying to find the gap section in the new copy of that old novel, there was a frenzy of jumping back and forth between the two competing translations because the chapters weren’t titled let alone numbered.  In the process of comparing two passages from the two different translations, we noted that there weren’t just a few similar phrasings; it seemed that the two different versions were identical. 

Since this occurred long before the Internets came into contemporary culture, the prospect of “ratting out” the questionable translating abilities of the more recent version seemed insurmountable and we filed the co-inky-dink away for possible future use and let the matter drop. 

As a matter of fact, after doing all that work, we even let reading to the end of that particular story drop.  Didn’t someone once say that all great Russian novels are alike?   Can anyone tell us what happened?  How did it end?  How did  the Karamatzov Brothers escape their dreary existence and catapult themselves to fame and fortune (in show biz?)?

Could we use this bit of personal history as the basis for a defense of a well known pundit who is in hot water for using one single solitary identical sentence?

Are there any other possibilities for use in the newest Saturday morning column to be issued from the World’s Laziest Journalist headquarters?  Maybe we could help a fellow columnist get to the <a href =http://www.democracyforamerica.com/netroots_nation_scholarships/456-jane-stillwater>Netroots National Convention in Pittsburg</a>?

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists (are online columnists now eligible for membership?) will hold their <a href =http://www.columnists.com/index.php?ID=2>convention in Ventura</a> in June.

For the closing quote we’ll resort to one of the very best (In my own humble opinion) sentences this columnist has ever written:  “The days crawled by like wounded worms on their way to the elephants’ graveyard.”  Gosh, I hope some famous columnist plagiarizes that sentence and brings fame and fortune my way.

Now, for those who wonder just how long the perpetual war in Afghanistan will last, the disk jockey will play “<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAWrkrhIFCw&feature=related>Till the Sands of the Desert Grow Cold</a>, by Peter Dawson.
We’re going to click over to the <a href =http://crooksandliars.com/>Crooks and Liars</a> site to see if we can find any good sentences worth stealing.  Have a “day like any other day, but a day filled with those events which alter and illuminate our times” type week.

Juxtaposition

The German news magazine Der Spiegel features  a story about collusion and the Holocaust  (here is a link to the online English language version)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,625824,00.html

and that story is immediately followed by another story about Abu Ghraib prison in their German Language edition.

It must be a great example of a co-inky-dink, eh?

For old gas pump collectors

For our other blog where we post photos that are mostly car-spotting and car-oriented,

http://floppyphotos.wordpress.com

we used a photo of an old gas station that has old Gimore Gas Pumps.  When we looked around online, we found a site for folks who are interested in collecting and restoring old gas pumps.

http://www.thegaspumpstore.com/pumps.htm

Growing up in Scranotn, PA, there was a store (plumbing supply?) with a gas pump out in front.  It was just “there.”  It was old and unused back in the late Fifties.  It was (as best as we can recall) very close to the corner of Washington and New York Street.  Is that old gas pump still there?

Barf Bag Collection

It seems that there is an online site for almost everything.  Does anyone else, other than this guy

http://sicksack.com/

collect the sick bags used on airlines?

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

The expression keep your eye on the ball is reported by folks who live in Fremantle (Western Australia) to have originated with a local ceremony. 

At 1 p.m. every day they fire a cannon as a time signal.  Navigators on the ships, in the old days, used that signal to synchronize their clocks.  When the cannon is fired a ball drops (just like in Times Square at New Years) above the cannon.  If folks on the various ships wait untilthey hear the cannon that happens (because sound travels slower than light) a few seconds after the shot is fired and the ball begins to drop.  No biggie you say?  Well if a clock is a few seconds off on the return trip to Australia (coming East from Africa) that few seconds difference will make a big deference in the ship’s location.  It could mean that the ship can be as much as 200 miles off-course and instead of sailing into Fremantle, they could wind up on the rocks in another area.  Hence the advice to navigators to keep their eye on the ball and use the visual of the ball beginning to drop and  not the sound of the cannon, as the time signal for synchronizing their clocks.  So now you know.

Inventing a new word

The Urban dictionary online lists the word that I invented:  Promobabble.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=promobabble

But then again, just bdcause I submitted the word to the Urban dictionary doesn’t mean I didn’t invent it.

Spin for fun and profit

Most folks get so emotionally involved with political issues that they can not calmly and quietly have any discussion about spin while using examples from the contemporary world of “elected” (via stealing) officials, so we will write a bit about some recent travel adventures and point out how spin can, very unobtrusively, be inserted.

Every city in Australia is very anxious to help convince Americans to travel to their country and then select their particular location as the ultimate destination.  The smorgasbord of interesting places can overwhelm an American by sheer dint of numbers.  Should you select the country music festival in Tamworth?  Should you see the rock wave?  Do you really need to see Uhrlur (whatever)?   Should car fans go all the way to Australia just to soak up the beer, boobs and burn-outs at the SummerNats?  (Why does Australia always try to lure tourists to their country’s pet rock and always ignore car enthusiasts?)  How many right hand drive <a href =http://worldslaziestjournalist.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/summer-nats-photos/>deuces (1932 Fords)</a> have you seen in your lifetime?

One of the Australian cities this columnist was enthusiastic about seeing was Kalgoorlie, which is a gold mining town in a remote area of Western Australia (called WA by the locals).  How accurate and spin free would an enthusiastic recounting of the visit be?

Since this columnist’s nominee for best movie of all times is “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” and since this particular traveler has gone panning for gold in California, heading for Kalgoorlie (named by as one of Australis’s top 100 cities) seemed like a good idea.. While in the Kalgoorlie – Boulder City area, he kept bumping into the same three other tourists who arrived at the same time, on the same train, as he did.

The four of us (a German guy and two young ladies from Japan) went to the Big Pit together and toured a railroad museum together.  We resisted the temptation to introduce ourselves as “this week’s mob of tourists.”  A visit to the Super Pit reminded the columnist of a line in a Waylon Jennings song about how all guys like things that make loud noises.  Waylon neglected to mention that there are bonus points if that thing happens to be <a href =http://www.flickr.com/photos/8216859@N04/3179380448/>a big explosion</a>.

The columnist went (solo) to the Gold Prospector’s Hall of Fame and enjoyed it immensely.  We did some gold panning there.  Bought and some postcards.  We also registered our complaint that there wasn’t one single solitary mention of  “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” movie or Fred C. Dobbs.

Now, if, in our opinion, we only know one person who might enjoy a tirp to Kalgoorlie, is it honest reporting to write an very enthusiastic column about our visit there? 

Skimpy’s bar had two swinging doors at the entrance and the only other time we have seen that in real life was at a joint in Santa Monica (was it 14th and Olympic or 11th and Olympic?).  Since we figured we’d always have the option to go into the one in Santa Monica, we put it off until it was too late and we missed the chance to go inside for a look-see.  Going into Shimpy’s for a diet soda (the only time we’ve ever really had a drink of Sarsaparilla was at a bar in Pennsylvania) was a total hoot (subjective reaction unable to be fact checked.)  Is there an objective way to rate taverns?

We met some folks who were in the gold mining business. 

One guy wanted our advice because he believes his uncle’s children’s book had been plagiarized by folks who made a movie with Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie.  We put him in touch with someone who is a member of the Writers Guild because all members of that group take a dim view of people who might have committed plagiarism. 

Two of the guys in the hostel, where we were staying, were normally good friends, but late on Saturday night they were heard having fisticuffs in the hallway.  If there had been any chance to give the brawl some advance publicity it would have been touted as “The Bishop takes on the Falcon” because one guy was known as “the Bishop” and the other as “the Falcon.”  When asked about it on Sunday morning, neither one of them could remember being in a fight or explain how they had gotten some minor cuts and scrapes on their faces.

How did it go when different groups invited the columnist to go to a local bar for a drink at Judd’s and discovered that he would stick to diet soda?  None of the rough and tumble crowd had the least bit of trouble with it.

How could a person grow up in Scranton and not learn that St. Barbara is the patron saint of miners?  Dunno how, but it did happen.  There is a statue of St. Barabara in Kalgoorlie.  What’s wrong with Scranton?  Why doesn’t she rate a statue in Western Australia, but not “the Electric City?  An online search for a picture of the St. Barbara’s statue in Kalgoorlie was inconclusive.  We knew we should have taken the time to pout our picture of that statue when we had the chance.  Now its in our storage unit and there’s no way it will get posted in time to illustrate this column.

If the columnist had a blast (15 yard penalty bad pun!) in Kalgoorlie and Boulder City, and if he has only one of his friends who might possibly have any fun in that same city (Jersey Bill might love seeing old cars and trucks if he could find where they were hidden away) how can he write a “fair and balanced” account of a visit to the city that was home to “the golden mile”?  Langtree’s offers tours of a working bordello.  Don’t expect to find that fact in a tourist brochure.

Recently while waiting for a bus in Santa Monica, a discussion with a gentleman from London England revealed that he had a brother living in Kalgoorlie.  Do you think he e-mailed his brother that night and told him about meeting a guy near the Venice beach who was enthusiastic about a visit to that mining town in WA?

We loved our daily visit to Jesster’s Pies.  Krispe Kreme Doughnuts are very popular in the eastern part of Australia but folks in Western Australia have to request a favor from traveling friends, if they want to satisfy their craving for that brand of doughnuts. 

If this columnist was hired by any airline to blog (very enthusiastically) about his trip to that part of the Southern Hemisphere, convincing some of his fellow Americans that they “must see” certain parts of Australia might be a blatant example of oversell (“That’s spin if I’ve ever seen it!”), but subjectively the reaction is that since we never went on a day trip from Kalgoorlie to Koolgarde (Even Word’s spell check challenges the names of those two cities) for a one day excursion in the desert with a metal detector, then “Bob’s your uncle,” eventually we will have to go back and correct that omission.  In 1986 when we visited Paris (France, not Texas); we didn’t even bother to drop off a resume at the International Edition of the Herald Tribune, but maybe we should have looked into the possibility of an opening at the Miner?

In a past Internet incarnation as a movie reviewer, this columnist has castigated a nationally known movie reviewer for giving “this is a movie everyone must see!” quotes for the print ads because this columnist has never ever seen one movie that he thinks everyone else will love. 

[Evidence exhibit A and B would be two women who are very much alike but one likes porn and hates violence and the other hates violence and enjoys porn.  It seems very unlikely that they could ever share a mutual admiration for one movie.]

In a similar vein (Again with the bad mining puns!  That’s another 15 yard penalty), this columnist enjoyed meeting and was very impressed with Malcolm X.  Not everyone who met that particular person had the same reaction.  Was it “wrong” to be very impressed with the guy?  Gee, wouldn’t ya love to hear what Bill O’Reilly’s reaction to such a face to face encounter would be?

Is the concept of “one size fits all” really valid or is it just a stealth bit of salesmanship and therefore a lot like “spin”?

Has there really ever been a movie that “everyone must see!”?  Are travel articles completely truthful?  Can political punditry honestly claim to be “fair and balanced”?

V-Australia can get you from L. A. or San Francisco to Australia’s East Coast.  United Airlines can also, but Qantas (it’s an acronym that means Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service) can get you to Australia’s East coast, Perth, and a  bunch of cities in-between, but not direct service into Kalgoorlie.

At this point we probably haven’t help those airlines sell  beaucoup tickets (if you love New York City, you’re gonna like Sydney and be sure to visit Harry’s Hot Dogs!) but by now you should get what we mean when we say spin can be very subtle and misleading. .  . especially if the reader and the writer aren’t working in close coordination like a pitcher and catcher do.

If you read travel magazines be aware that the writer probably never has to wait in a line and gets ushered to good seats and that restaurants make a concerted effort to please the writer. 

Reading only conservative pundits, who gush about the talents and accomplishments of Republican candidates, is going get you something that is more salesmanship than journalistic reporting.

Most Americans say that they think very highly of Melbourne.  We’ll be fine if we never see that city again.  That is a very subjective reaction but you won’t find statemnts like that in a travel magazine story.  On the other hand, don’t be very surprised if one of our future columns is datelined Kalgoorlie.  There’s always the possibility of a rematch for the Bishop and the Falcon,.

Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) said:  “I think I’ll go to sleep and dream about piles of gold getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”

Kalgoorlie has a statue of St. Barbara and so the disk jockey will play Tennessee Ernie Ford’s hit “Sixteen Tons.”  We gotta get going to dig up something for our next column.  Have a pure gold type week.

Hunter S. Thompson Action Figure

In trying to think up ways to get some new $ $ $, we asked the folks in a comic book store if there was (or will be) a Hunter S. Thompson action figure doll.  They said not to the best of their knowledge.  If Ernie Pyle was immortalized by an action figure, why can’t HST be too?

We found a book titled

Action Figure: The Life and Times Of Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke (Paperback)

by Gary Trudeau

which is about the charater in the Doonsbury comic strip named Raul Duke, who is (some suspect) based upon Hunter Thompson.

Getting the rights and permissions and all that seems like it will be a great deal (too much?) work.

To be continued . . .

The Internet as a Super-Sales Tool

In Australia tourism is promoted by the Australian National Travel Association which publishes a magazine called Walkabout or Walkabout Australia.

We tried to look them up via Google.

We get all kinds of suggested site where all kinds of things for sale are featured such as rare posters from teh Australian National Travel Association.  I don’t want to buy a poster.  I want to find their web site and write them an e-mail. 

I’ve got a book with a snail mail address for them.  The information is about 45 years old, but it is better than I can do on the Internet(s).  I thought the Internets were supposed to be the information highway and not a sales tool.

It’s like Ned Kelly said:  “Such is life.”  Forget about learning useful information; buy something! ! !

If you see their web site please post the URL in a comment.  Thank you.

One More (Last?) Comparison of Bush with the Thrid Reich

For those overly enthusiastic Bush bashing pundits who took fiendish delight in making the conservative supporters of the 43rd President squirm by comparing George W. Bush and his henchmen (strike that word out and insert “Administration”) to the German leader who helped his country cope with the world-wide Great Depression during the Thirties, we would like to suggest one more egregious example of similarity.

In 1945, when the defeat of Germany was transitioning from “likelihood” to “inevitable” some greedy people (apparently on both sides) used the chaos, consternation and commotion as a diversion to distract folks from noticing that they were looting the German national bank.

The lack of attention to their crimes was so extensive that even to this day many well informed history buffs are unaware of what transpired that while Hitler was busy blowing his brains out rather than participate in a war crimes trial.  Who noticed that “what the Guinness Book of Records calls the Greatest Robbery ever” was unfolding in the Berlin area. while Hitler and his cronies were gulping down cyanide pills.

The Bush Junta helped confuse American citizens by always inventing new terminology for anything that had a Nazi equivalency.  Torture was called “enhanced questioning methods.” Fatherland security was changed to Homeland security.  Hitler’s Preventative war against Russia was called a Preemptive War when Bush did something similar.  The Third Reich never bothered to defend the bombing of Rotterdamn by claiming that Hitler didn’t know (“Hitler used the best information available at the time”) that it had been declared an open city.  El Rushbo beguiled listeners into thinking that the Gestapo tactic called “waterboarding” was nothing more serious than a college hazing ritual. 

So now we come to this bit of clever verbal subterfuge called “The Bailout.”   

The book “Nazi Gold,” written by Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting, presents a detailed account of what happened regarding the Reichsbank (from 1939 it was known as the Deutsche Reichbank) in 1945 and ’46, and it makes fascinating reading. 

An online page promoting the book states that:  “The book ‘Nazi Gold’ tells the story of a nine year investigation by the authors (Ian Sayer & Douglas Botting) of how more than $2.5 billion in gold, currency and jewels hoarded by the Nazis vanished in the chaos of 1945.

“A colossal theft that ‘The Guiness Bookof Records’ calls “The greatest robbery on record.” The Germans, Russians and Americans all dipped into the booty; some are still alive and enjoying it. But no one has ever been caught or tried.”

Unfortunately when this columnist attempted to fact check that it was a record set and included in the Guinness book of Records, the attempt to verify (with help from the reference desk at the Pasadena CA Public Library) the claim about what the Guiness Book of Records said, was inconclusive.  In the past, we have borrowed this book from the Santa Monica Public Library and skimmed though it and base this column on that reading.  We found very little else about the topic online.  Do your own fact checing by starting at:
http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/~llou/nazigold.html

How much money flowed out of the Reichsbank?  What would it be worth in today’s dollars?  Will the 1945 Reichsbank heist be eclipsed if the “bailout” is ever found to be a fraud that covered up an Oklahoma land rush style looting of America’s Treasury Department?

If the current Democratic majority in the House and Senate are stymied by attempts to prove that Bush’s approval of Gestapo questioning methods constituted the commission of a war crime, how the heck would it be logical to suggest (let alone expect) them to investigate any similarities between the obscure disappearance of money from the German Bank in 1945 with the massive outflow of cash in America that was called “the Bailout”?

In 1945, some of the high jinks included the actual theft of gold bullion, so, as far as Americans can discern from news coverage available to the general public, no ingots of gold have physically been “liberated” from any government facilities in the “bailout” process, but a great deal of taxpayers’ money does seem (the columnist is expressing a personal opinion as sanctioned by the Second Amendment) to be flowing toward control by someone or something (are corporations a person or thing?) that is not the U. S. government.

It would, of course, be nice if this columnist spent many long hours making a point by point comparison and then meticulously connected the dots and then postulated an explanation that would be able to sustain an adjudicated examination by scholars; but if he went to all that bother, no Republican would care to make the effort to read it and no Democrat would, in a time frame when Jon and Kate are getting extensive media scrutiny, want to squander the time it would take to read it, so readers are invited to make use of their own Googling skills and then, if warranted, make posts in the comments section, if they want to challenge this column’s hypothesis.

Let’s get serious.  Anyone with any amount of sense  whatsoever had to realize that Goering’s art collection was valuable and any orders to dump in into any lake anywhere brings to mind some lines from a Robert Frost poem:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here

If people were smart enough to scoop up the money and gold in the Deutchbank, wouldn’t some sharpie (or perhaps an entire platoon?) have tumbled to the fact it would be better to steal valuable paintings than destroy them or pitch them into a lake?  Eventually things were destined to cool down and any part of Goering’s art collection that could be seized, appropriated, borrowed, or hidden would eventually bring a nice addition to one’s retirement fund? 

How much special treatment from a prison guard would just one van Gogh get you?  Assuming that in 1945 Goering might not foresee the possibility of ever having the need to bribe a prison guard and hence make an effort to stash a future “inducement” somewhere handy, might be just a tad naïve and an early example of “mis-underestimating”?

The Goering Art Collection has got to be somewhere.  The question is:  “Where?”  Wouldn’t it be funny if some of the Bailout funds were used to buy some of Goering’s Art Collection?

Now, the disk jockey, who plans to use his share of the bailout funds to realize the dream of a lifetime and make a visit to Woflfschanze, will play Jim Bacus’ rendition of  “<a href =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8WyY-1JCrc>Delicious</a>.”   It’s time for us to go pay some bills.  Have the type of week in which an adorable scantily clad young lady asks you if the Picasso painting on your bedroom wall is real.

Are you cleared to know about the Secrety City Festival?

If you don’t know about the Secrity City Fesitval (a WWII reenactment done near Oak Ridge) then maybe you aren’t cleared to use this URL

http://secretcityfestival.com/

What is your security clearance?

Thoughts for and about D-Day

Our Saturday column, -posted a bit early- this week, will attempt to commemorate D-Day, which reminds us of the time, back in 1962, when the movie “The Longest Day” was released and one of our coworkers (at Rodgers Motor Lines) was very enthusiastic about the movie on the second day of its run because she had seen it on its very first day of its run at the Comerford Theater in Scranton.  She told lus how good the actors’ performances were, but, she solemnly intoned:  “I’m not going to tell you how it ends.”

That, in turn, reminds us of the fact that since we have just started reading Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s fifteen volume “United States Navel Operations in World War II,” and we hope that no one uses the comments section below to post a spoiler and tell us how things turned out because this is going to take us a considerable amount of reading time and we don’t want anyone ruining a surprise ending, if there is going to be one.

Than, in turn, reminds us that on page 10 of Volume 1, Admiral Morrison reports:  “At the Nuremberg trials it was brought out that (commander of the submarines Commodore Karl) Doenitz had even issued orders to his U-boats to machine-gun survivors of torpedoed vessels, so that they could not ship over again.  It is to the credit of his officers that many of them could not stomach a practice so contrary to humanity and the ancient customs of the sea, and disregarded Doenitz’s barbarous command more often than not.”

It’s a good thing those rebellious German sailors weren’t in Bush military because those disobedient rebels, for their insolence and recalcitrance, could have been threaten, with a transfer to a very unpalatable assignment.  In their case a worse assignment could have been fighting at Stalingrad.  A lot of the good Germans were sent to that Russian city to fight there, but you get the point.

The fact that folks tend to assume that German officers and enlisted men could picked and choosen the orders they deemed acceptable, reminds us of some recent testimony before Congress which indicates to us that Bush may be in the process of learning:  “Paybacks are Hell.”

Before Generalisimo Bush ordered the (Smart) Bombing of Baghdad and the Invasion to take a look around Iraq for any loose WMD’s, the Commander-in-chief (apparently) used some heavy-handed selling techniques to convince the most skeptical of his subordinates that they’d best remember the old military adage:  “When I say jump; you jump and ask ‘How high?’ on the way up, do you read me, soldier?”

Well, time has passed (and a few dozen Iraqi civilians may have very inadvertently been accidentally blown to smithereens – at least they aren’t using napalm) and things have changed.  Bush 43 is no longer the man in charge and the one or two military men that he may have pissed-off with his badgering and bullying are still fighting that same ole war. 

Here’s where it gets hairy for the deposed dictator (scratch that term and insert the words “former President”) because now when those fellows are asked to testify before congress’ Truth in War Crimes Trials investigating committee, they are free to “tell it like it is” and not have to fear any reprisals from the Bush family (well at least not until Jeb gets elected.)

The Republicans seem to take a high school sophomore’s delight in trying to get Americans to subconsciously associate their name calling of President Obama as both a Democrat and Socialist with the fact that Hitler’s party was the National Socialist Democratic party. 

What the Republican’s don’t seem to realize is that if they continue fighting the efforts to punish George W. Bush for his war crimes, what they will get is four years of resentful members of the military releasing a constant stream (like the Chinese water torture – not to be confused with waterboarding?) of tiny, incriminating, details about the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and that continuing series of tantalizing tidbits of information will do more harm to the Republicans than any school boy level of name calling.  The slow release of descriptions of Bush’s performance can not help but be compared to that of the defendants at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials because the parallels are many and obvious to all but the most Banzai samurai fanatical Republicans in El Rushbo’s audience.

Which brings us back to World War II and the question:  Did Poppy Bush commit an offense that required a courts-martial trial when he bailed out of his plane and left the ballturret gunner to die when the plane crash landed at sea?

What is your security clearance level?  Are you authorized to read about the WWII reenactment that will be held in association with the <a href =http://www.secretcityfestival.com/>Secret City Festival</a>?

That of course, brings us back to the basic World War II question:  Did Roosevelt know that the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor? 

To find the answer to that we’d have to get a look at the Queen Mary’s log book.  Is a ship’s log a public document?  If, as rumor has it, the Queen Mary was in Pearl Harbor on Saturday December 6, 1941, and if, as it has been alleged, it sailed out of Pearl Harbor on the night of Saturday, December 6, 1941, then it would seem to be enough circumstantial evidence to indicate to a reasonable man (and perhaps also a skeptical columnist) that somebody knew that the feathers were about to hit the fan.

Columnist?  If anyone asks:  “Are you now, or have you ever been a member of a group that has attended a Columnists’ Party?,” we would, if testifying under oath, have to admit that we are in the process of learning the particulars about attending the <a href = http://www.columnists.com/>Columnist’s Convention</a> which will be held in Ventura (Didn’t the Grateful Dead play a fee concert in Ventura every year?) from 25 to 28 later this month.

Recently we have been availing ourselves of the opportunity to browse through some magazines published in the 1938 to 1943 time frame (as part of some fact finding regarding reincarnation, perhaps?).  Over and above the idea that if anyone was alive back then, buying a 1940 Ford DeLuxe coupe would have been such a coup (like that play on words?), we see that a constant stream of pin-up photos such as those that accompanied the article, titled “Fair Girlie,” pages 50 – 55, in the July 29, 1940 issue, about Betty Kuzmeek (it seemed to be spelled that way in the article but in the photo captions, it was spelled Kuzmeck) who was a star attraction at the World Fair exhibition called “20,000 Legs Under the Sea.” 

The July 29, 1940 issue of LIFE magazine also included a survey in an article called “A Picture of the U. S. mind summer of 1949, on page 20.  The Roper firm had asked people “If Germany and Italy should win the war, which of these two things come closer to what you think the U. S. should do?”  An astonishing 88% answered:  “Arm to the teeth at any expense to be prepared for trouble.” 

A while back, we wrote a column headlined “Life without LIFE” and suggested that they start posting the best pictures of the day on their magazine’s website.  We’ve noticed that now they are doing that.  Great job, guys!  Don’t stop there.  LIFE always attracted some astonishing photos from their readers.  They ran them in the letters department, the “Speaking of Pictures” weekly feature, and the Parting Shot.  Come on, LIFE, you’re only halfway there.  Can’t Nikon or Kodak or somebody like that help underwrite the cost of assigning one or two compute literate-photo savvy people to take this project all the way?  Solicit and post readers’ photos, damn it! ! !  You want to build the traffic going to your site?  What photographer wouldn’t want to have one of the pictures he (or she) took associated with the LIFE brand name?  I’ll bet readers’ photos will double your number of daily hits. 

On D-Day for 2009. it might be cynical to ask if George W. Bush sent troops into Iraq for the same lofty goals and ideals that were held by the troops who landed on Normandy beach.  Now, we  will direct folks’ attention to page 15 of the Pocket Star Books paperback edition of Stephen Hunter’s “The 47th Samurai,” where they will find this passage asking about the death of Japanese troops on Iwo Jima:  “These fine men, they contribute so much, they die on a crest of black sand on an island of sulfur that held no meaning at all that could be divined.  For the emperor?  How many of his men knew that the godlike, all-knowing, all-demanding, emperor was a recent invention and that for three hundred years had been the puppet-joke of Edo, while in Kyoto stronger subtler men ruled and only tolerated an emperor as a useful fiction, a figure around which to build distracting (and therefore helpful) ceremonies?”  Does that sound like a possible description of Georg W. Bush?

The disk jockey seems overwhelmed by this column so he has selected more than one song to play us out this week.  He will be spinning these platters:

The <a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cavmIu5Auk>Association’s Cherish</a>
Della Reese’s “<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdbepiZDvX8>And that reminds me</a> . . .”
Frank Sinatra’s song “<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIiUqfxFttM>That’s LIFE</a>”
Marlene Deitrich’s “<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0lUXnAs-U>Lili Marlene</a>”

The number one Pop song in Great Britain, on  D-Day, 1944,  was “Berlin Or Bust —  by Sam Browne and the Six Swingers.”  Then let’s all have a minute of silent tribute to those who died on the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago.

Wildest Almanac Blog Ever?

Is their a wilder Almanac blog than “Exicuted Today”?

http://www.executedtoday.com/

Just ‘cuz I want to . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1lhzi4uU8o

Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum

At a yard sale that offered many, many cute salt and pepper shakers, we asked the lady if there is much online about collecting salt and pepper shakers.  She said there is “lots” and while Googling to fact check this information for a new post, we discovered that there was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum.

Seeing is believeing so here is the URL

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/12285

Runaway to join a hippie commune?

If the thought of running away from your life and joining a hippie commune appeals to you, then you might want to start fact finding by going to this URL:

http://wwoof.org/

“Heads, I win; tails, you loose!”

The old Laurel and Hardy comedy routine about turning a coin-flip decision into something which resembles the stealing of the 2000 Presidential election should be kept in mind when any liberal attempts to debate with a conservative because, conservative oratorical values and debating styles are quite different than what the liberals are used to using. To the conservative lying and being a hypocrite are splendid examples of modern Christian living. When they discuss contentious topics the conservative is not obliged to use the courteous rules of discourse. Here are some Conservative Debate Rules: The Bumper Stickers vs. White Papers Rule. Hubert Humphries complained to his staff that his oratory seemed to bore the audience. They told him that shorter, snappier points were more of a crowd pleaser than a long and through explanation of his philosophy and any possible exceptions to his general rules. The Image Rule When Hubert Humphries asked his staff why the public had a perception that he was short, they bluntly replied by telling him that he had a big head and that if you parked the Goodyear Blimp on top of the Washington Monument, it would look short. The Ann Coulter’s legs Rule If Ann Coulter is wearing a thigh high skirt when ske makes a clever point, how can a disreputable looking liberal guy refute her legs? The “Here comes the Hindenburg!” Rule The liberal, when he is permitted his 10 second opportunity to respond, must always stick to the subject. If the conservative is being trounced in the debate, he must immediately divert the topic to something completely irrelevant and extraneous. The “Never give up!” Rule In the book the leader of Germany wrote while he was in prison, he urged his followers to never admit that the opposition had the least possibility of being correct on anything. The Divide and Conquer Rule Conservatives (in public) adhere to the “One for all and all for one” advice, but the Democrats can be counted on to let a good pro-liberal talking point go unnoticed. Example: Do you think this column will be cross-posted in the Huffington Post? Not even if this particular section is cut? The Contradictions Rule Democrats operate on the premise that they should stick to proper debating tactics and that a flat-out unsubstantiated contradiction is invalid. Republicans will reply that famous social critic Montague Python would refute the premise that contradicting isn’t arguing, by saying: “Yes it is!” The too Obtuse Rule If Dennis Miller refuses to use any segment of his show to discuss the Robert Brasallich case because it was too obscure to be of interest to his audience, is it possible that he has ulterior motives? The “My God can beat up your god” Rule. The only person who can be given the chance to refute a Christian minister must be a Muslim woman in burke and facemask. The Three Examples Rule In an intermural (should the commets section be hijacked and go into a debate about the difference between “intermural” and “intramural”?) situation where the ignorant liberal must be inculcated with the correct way to think, any broad statement by the liberal must be challenged and a scholastic level of substantiating material must be provided. The conservative, who is omnipotent and infallible, can speak ex cathedra and is therefore exempt of any pesky need to digress by dispense the specifics about where the dumbfounded (conservatives have mostly found that the liberals are dumb) liberal can verify the veracity of the citations. Example: Brushing aside requests for sources to verify the broad sweeping assertion that the issue of the Queen Mary’s location on December 6, 1941 has been put to rest. If our fact checker can not find any means of verifying that statement and a conservative says “that issue was put to rest years ago and isn’t worth reexamining” that’s known as “ducking the question” and is an invaluable conservative debating dodge. On the other hand, when a liberal has the impudence to attempt to establish a contradictory statement, he (no conservative will waste time engaging a woman in a philosophical discussion) must “give three examples.” The “Always besmirch a liberal’s source’s qualifications and/or reputation” Rule When a liberal does give a source for his opinion, it must be vigorously challenged. Example. Barron Siegfried L. von Richthofen III personally told me that all German Shepherds are registered as Republicans. A conservative would refute that by reminding the audience that Siggy was very mean drunk and an SOB (no disrespect to your mom Siggy) and therefore his conclusion should not get any attention or credence (will “Looking Out My Back Door” be this week’s closing song?) when he is used as a scholarly source. The Incredulous Rule When a conservative is called something (say he is called a “conservative troll”), the proper response is to use a “I can’t believe you’d say something that stupid” reply accompanied by an expression that conveys a combination of hurt and outrage. Example: Is that supposed to be a “put down”? (Does a put down artist go around shooting horses who have just broken a leg?) The Ad Hominum Rule When a source is denounced for personal shortcomings (such as a famous night of drunken debauchery) that is an invalid debating strategy and is noted as such in any debating competition. Conservatives, however, refuse to abandon the ploy. The “Just kidding, dude!” Rule If a conservative is challenged for saying says something that is borderline racist the reply will be that attempts at humor are exempt from close scrutiny. Liberals are so very sensitive to not wanting to hurt anyones feelings, ever, for anything, that they will almost never avail themselves of this opportunity to make snide remarks. Thus giving conservatives a distinct debating advantage. The Perfection Rule Conservative need not be shackled by petty details; however if a liberal pundit makes one spelling urror; that invalidates the entire effort. Warren Commission Magic Bullet Rule If a wild idea helps with conservative goals such as refuting ideas that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t shoot President Kennedy (because he couldn’t get off all the shots in the time span heard on the recording of the police officer’s open mike broadcast of the shooting) then go for it. Was the Warren Commission’s official motto: “You got your head right, Luke?” The “Cut to the Chase” Rule If a liberal speaker seems to be making too many salient points cut him short and snarl: “So What’s Your Point?” The altruism is for fools Rule. Wouldn’t it be very sad and poignant if sincere liberals donated their time and efforts to libear web sites only to have their efforts sabotaged by paid conservative trolls who use dishonest and misleading debating tactics? Quote (overheard in movie theater in Pasadena, earlier this week): “The effect of this bill is they’ll have no clothes but be eating caviar.” The disk jockey wants to play the “Theme from the X Files” and we want him to play Bobby Darren’s “Mack the Knife.” After loosing a coin toss, he will play the song with a shark in it and so it’s time to cut out. Have a “sharp as a razorblade” type week.

Better Late than Never

[<B>Book Review</B>]  At the same time that General Motors was a top news story last week, we happened upon an Avon paperback copy of J. Patrick Wright’s book “On a clear day you can see General Motors” and we snapped it up with a lightening like move that brought to mind the expression “gun fighter’s reflexes.”  It seemed likely that the 1979 book might yield up a great quotable sentence to use in one of the Saturday columns, but when we opened it up and began to skim, we realized that we had hit a gold mine for a source of many great quotes.  Unfortunately the Introduction clouded the prospect by revealing that the book was originally to be written by John Z. De Lorean himself . . . with some help from Wright.  So how do you attribute quotes from this book?  Are they John De Lorean quotes or do you give a quote about a board meeting at General Motors and attribute it to Mr. Wright? 

The title of Chapter Four, “How Moral Men Make Immoral Decisions,” alone, sparked hopes that it would provide the basis for a column with the topic being capitalism has gone out of control like a runaway truck on a long downhill road.

The money quote from all the great possibilities in Chapter Four would seem to be:  “A fraud on the American economy, because I always had a vague suspicionthat theannual model change may be good for the auto business in the short trem but that it wasn’t good for the economy and the country.” 

Hippies appreciated the fact that the “bug” didn’t change much each year.  The bug with the oval rear window, which was not split, was from 1955 – 57 (approximately).  In the 58 model, the rear window became a bigger rectangle.

On second thought, maybe the best sentence in Chapter Four is:  “It seemed to me, and still does, that the system of American business often produces wrong, immoral and irresponsible decisions, even though the personal morality of the people running the business is often above reproach.”  The writer continues:  “The system has a different morality as a group than the people do as individuals, which permits it to willfully produce ineffective or dangerous products, deal dictatorially and often unfairly with suppliers, pay bribes for business, abrogate the rights of employees by demanding blind loyalty to management or tamper with the democratic process of government through illegal political contributions.” 

A different group morality?  Mabye the Torture Truth Commission will want to explore this premise?  Could it do for the Torture question what the “magic bullet” theory did for the Warren Commission? 

Since General Motors and their plight have been in the news recently, many of this site’s regular readers and/or pundits may enjoy this book and find their own favorite of a juicy quote that is relevant in a “ripped from today’s headlines” kind of way. 

We will note, at this point, that book reviewers are often given blanket permission to quote and since this is a book review (we urge the publisher to reprint this important book and then flood the zone with it), we have availed ourselves of that privilege.  There are plenty of great quotes, you get the idea by now.  There’s no use overdoing the quoting bit.  This book review is only thirty years late but we urge our listeners to take the “better late than never” attitude to heart and make an effort to find, buy, (or borrow it from their local library) and read it! 

Lately, it seems that all the pundits have taken to all commenting on the most recent news development and no one takes time to try to draw the public’s attention to something which could help them learn about and then think about any one of these never ending divertissements, but we’ll break ranks and run this column about General Motors even though last week’s news is sooooo last week.

It’s a good book.  Read it even if you have to skip the commentators telling you what you should be thinking this week in reaction to the Iran election results.  Be bold and audatious.  Read “On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors” and then think about the issues that John De Lorean was trying to draw to the public’s attention thirty years ago.

Knowing what was going to happen to the General Motors official after the book was published, gave this read a rather spooky feeling.  If he was very moral then, how did he change between then and when he got caught on film?  Could it be that he was a “payback” victim because of this book?  If you don’t do your own thinking, then don’t expect the wolfpack of conservative philosophy purveyors at Fox to figure it out for you because this week they have to guide the country through the Iran election crises. 

Wait!  Maybe, this columnist got the fact checking wrong?  Did Fox commentators also draw your attention to this book recently?

If we ever learn how to say “Post in haste, proofread afterwards at leisure” in Latin, this columnist will then have his very own (original) motto.

Muhammad Ali boasted:  “Not only do I knock ‘em out, I pick the round.”  Does that describe the contemporary attitude in today’s American business world?  (What?  You wanted, instead the John Dillinger quote about Ford cars?)

Now, the disk jocky will play the Beatles, Stones, Flying Lizards, Led Zeppelin, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Doors  and the Smashing Pumpkins versions of “Money (That’s What I Want)” and we will go out to our swimming pool filled with money and do the Scrooge McDuck routine.  Have a “We hit the jackpot!” type week.

Yeah, I know.  He shudda played the <a href =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGZvQoPxhNs>Dinah Shore
</a> song.

On the Road websites

We love beatniks and “on the road” information of all sorts. Recently we saw that Rand McNally had a blog with an entry about barf bags and, since we had posted a similar item, we took a look at their blog.

http://ontheroad.randmcnally.com/

In fact checking for this, we found a lenghty list of blog links

www.blogged.com/directory/recreation/travel/travel-tips

Another good source for “on the road” stuff is Roadside America here is there web site

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/

It’s a good think I know a little bit about html otherwise getting the links into this post would have been impossible.

What became of the Monk?

One of the great “on the road” pioneers on the Internet was Monk magazine. Two guys traveled about putting out a real magazine from their moble office. They now do web consulting (as pioneers are entitled to do). You can find out some of the Monk history by exploring around on this site:

http://monkmedia.net/MonkMedia.swf

Hitchin’ a ride

While we are running items about online sources for “on the road” information, let us not forget
Digihitch

Digihitch

It has all sorts of pages to investigate. So, what are you waiin’ for? Click the link already!

Did Bush shave points?

Many moons ago (AKA the Fifties?), there was a scandal about college basketball players who “shaved” points. At the time, this columnist was so naïve that he figured as long as they didn’t let their team lose, it was OK. Later, as a more mature individual, who could appreciate the dishonesty of messing with the point spread and the impact that could have on the adventurous individuals who had place wagers on the outcome, it became obvious that not winning by the greatest amount possible was just as wrong as deliberately losing the contest.

Can any pundit seriously suggest that President George W. Bush may have been a mole for his family’s old business associate Osama bin Laden and “shaved points” in a way that helped make a victory in the search for WMD’s in Iraq impossible? The most fanatical of Bush critics cannot help but note that the quick road to “Mission Accomplished” was so textbook perfect and efficiently executed that only a “graybeard old loon” would dare to hint that the Baghdad Peace agreement was not only George W. Bush’s finest achievement, but also a direct result of one of the all-time great American military victories.

Didn’t Bush supply all the number of troops his generals requested?

Wasn’t Bush relentless in his attempts to capture bin Laden in the Tora Bora area?

Didn’t Bush go right to the main target? He swooped into the empty WMD store rooms and was just as surprised as anyone else when they found “the cupboard was bare.” Wasn’t bin Laden, Heussein’s ventriloquist’s dummy? Could any serious student of military history suggest that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was as foolish and inopportune as when Germany went out of its way to drag Russian into World War II?

One of Osama bin Laden’s aims was to cripple the American economy. Didn’t George W. Bush predict that Iraq was a piece of cake that could be handled quickly and efficiently and stick to that promise and not (as they say in Hollywood) go over budget?

Wasn’t his quick achievement of the Mission Accomplished goal done with blitzkrieg like efficiency so that the United States economy would not be crippled by a long, protracted and costly war? Didn’t George W. Bush studiously avoid all the errors made by the German guy precisely because he was haunted by the specter of the post war economy that left the WWII loosing country’s economy in a shambles? If you’ve seen the bonuses handed out around Wall Street recently, you wouldn’t have to ask about how America’s economic heath is doing.

To hear George W. Bush’s harshest critics, he and his cronies clung to illusions of victory much like the urban legends about remote islands in the Pacific that are still being run by Japanese military units who think they are valiantly holding out for the sake of the emperor.

George W. Bush’s goal was to import democracy into the Middle East, which had been a bastion of desert kingdoms and state sponsored theocracy. Today Americans can point with pride to the fact that elections were recently held in Iran and except for a few malcontents (like the Democrats who live in Florida) the triumph of Democracy in Iran is something which will make American hearts swell with pride. Despite what the communist agitators say, the results are (like Bush himself) unimpeachable.

Thanks to George W. Bush, President Obama has inherited a “to do list” which will afford him plenty of time for “date night” excursions and triumphant tours of the world where he will have plenty of practice for getting used to world wide adulation as Bush’s proxy.

The time has come for pundits to finally admit that George W. Bush didn’t lose the war, but, as Stephen Colbert so proudly proclaimed in Newsweek, decisively won the war in Iraq and it’s time to turn to more mundane matters.

Since journalists are used to being admitted free to various event in order to provide news coverage of the various events, maybe we should apply for a press pass to cover the upcoming columnists convention in Ventura? If journalists have events they must hand out “press credential” to folks who want to cover the event, eh?

The recent crash of the Air France flight was a major tragedy, but have any of the pundits pointed out that the number of people killed, 228, brings up the question of why were they using an airbus to do a job that could have just as easily been done by a smaller Boeing?

How many people, who attended the Summer Nats in Canberra on the New Year’s weekend, will make it to the L. A. roadster show? Will the So Cal folks dig and be hip to it if you war a “SummerNats” T-shirt?

L. A. went “uberenthusiastic” with the Lakers victory. This columnist wishes that he had bought a “West Coast Eagles” T-shirt when the chance was available because such a garment would confuse the heck out of the football fans in what used to be Rams territory.

Some time back, we wrote a column lamenting the plight of L. A. attorney Richard Fine, who, according to his supporters, is being held political prisoner. Recently Leslie Dutton featured that story on her Full Disclosure TV show.

Why does Word program always challenge a sentence written in the passive voice? How the heck can you put it in the active voice if a judge ordered Fine to jail for contempt and the guy was a victim of political vindictiveness? Does this active voice sentence work: “Fine is currently enjoying an extended stay in Los Angeles County jail, provided free by a judge who was concerned that the activist lawyer was spending too much time at work and needed some reset and so proscribed that he take a ‘time out.’’?

Isn’t it odd that one particular online company best known for printing T-shirts for bloggers would not permit a certain columnist to use a clever T-shirt design, which was critical of the invasion of Iraq and included a swastika, but now seems to sanction the selling of T-shirts that advocate using liberals for target practice?

Has anybody taken a critical look at the Governator’s idea about selling California’s assets? Do you see another windfall coming to the fat cats? Let’s say you buy San Quentin Prison. Are you going to be running it as a non-profit charity? No? Well then you have to tack on some profits when you run it. What will the net effect for California citizens be? They have to come up with more money, because they are (ultimately) the ones who pay for prisons. How the heck can adding a middle man save money? Why doesn’t the wolfbpack at Fox question this illogical suggestion?

Speaking of rip-offs, were doing some fact checking at the World’s Laziest Journalist World Headquarters and would like to know if rip-offs by businesses are become more prevalent. If you have anecdotal evidence of a business rip-off please leave a vaguely worded (no brand names or company firm names, please, because we don’t want to see you fight a libel and or slander suite) brief description of what happened and how much of your money they got.

Isn’t it odd that big business can, as was reported this week in the Los Angeles Times, sink $3.5 million into “60 Frames” and then let it slide into oblivion, while an eight year (approximately) old liberal effort has to hold recurring fundraising efforts. Didn’t Bill O’Reilly insinuate that some mysterious fat cat (called Sore-U. S.?) hands out operations funds to liberal web sites as if they were as easy to come by as the free candy in a real estate agent’s office?

Gypsy Rose Lee Quote: “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly . . . very slowly.” Did she mean a thing like ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Cover ups? The world is becoming a cover-up playground and so the disk jockey will spin Dr. Hook’s “Hey Lady Godiva,” David Rose’s “The Stripper,” and an old rare copy of Jimi Hendric playing “ Night Train.” (Did you want a more traditional version? It’s time for us to take off. Have a “let it all hang out” type Sixties flashback week.

Kitsch abides

What if there was a you-tube type site that only had kitschy things?

Well, there is and it is called “Everything is Terrible.” Check it out:

Everything is Terrible

Did Kerouac have a role model?

Recently this columnist has been doing some fact-checking (not enough to jeopardize his standing as the World’s Laziest Journalist – just enough to keep himself amused on a quiet Summer afternoon) when we stumbled across the story of Will Parker contained in the October 16, 1939, issue of LIFE magazine.  The story (lest you forget) tells about the young man’s hitchhiking journey from San Francisco to New York City.  His travel pal, Hart Preston, took the photos used to illustrate the story of the pioneering hitchhiker.

Did Jack Kerouac read and become influenced by this pre-war adventure story?  He would have been about 17 years old in October of 1939.  Did he happen to read that particular issue of LIFE magazine?  Did Neal Cassidy?

This columnist, who was greatly influenced by Kerouac, recalls reading the Will Parker story in LIFE while doing some recreational reading during his college years, in the University library.  Was it as great an influence as the reading of “On the Road” and/or “Death in the Afternoon”?  Doesn’t it at least seem likely that Will Parker was one of the contributing factors?

Now matters get even murkier for the columnist because this information would be a very great topic for the readers at the Digihitch website, but previous attempts to jump through the digital hoops necessary to be able to cross post this column on that particular site, have proven to be an insurmountable obstacle.  Dang!  Woldn’t it have been marvelous to cross post some of the dispatches from Australia on that travel oriented site?

Which brings up this bit of insight:  when railroads were in the formative stage some brilliant planner advised them to facilitate the industry’s growth by adopting industry standards so that one company’s locomotives and passenger cars and box cars could avail themselves of travel opportunities on other firm’s right of way.  Universal standards gave them the bases for unlimited growth in the United States.   Is the fact that cross posting one column on three different sites causes some formatting challenges with each new venue, be a hint that the Internets still hasn’t learned the railroaders’ secret?  Could individual firms that want to have clients pay for their own unique scripting, be causing a “tower of babble” type delay in the growth of the Internets?

The Beat Museum in San Francisco, would probably find that a copy of this particular LIFE magazine would be a worthy addition to their library and or exhibition.  As luck would have it, while this installment of the Saturday Column was being written, we wandered into Hodgson’s Antiques in South Pasadena and found that they had copies of various issues of LIFE for sale, but, unfortunately, not the particular one with the Will Parker story in it.
Getting back to Will Parker (of the LIFE magazine fame), bloggers can find information and topics that haven’t been subjected to “overkill” on the Internet if they make an effort.   

Commenting on what paid pundits have just said, isn’t journalism and, quite often, it isn’t full of stunning insights and perceptive comments, but it is easier to do than actually going out and scrounging up original material. 

Take, for example, the topic of car-spotting.  If a columnist wants to use his own time and his own (or the one at the Pasadena Public Library?) computer for a bus-man’s holiday (15 yard penalty bad “on the road” pun!) and put some photos on his blog for Jersey Bill and a few other friends to see, then he has to go out and shoot some pictures.  Some of the pictures are not examples of Ansel Adams like technical perfection, but is there a market for sarcastic critical comments about car-spotting photos?  The only logical reaction to seeing photos on a car-spotting blog would be to go out in your own neighbor hood (such as Alameda?) and take and post your own photographs.  . 

What ever happened to Will Parker?  That question brings up a rather disturbing possibility and subsequent topic.  In 1939, what were the odds that a healthy young man of 21 would live to see his thirtieth birthday?  Did Darwin take into consideration for his “survival of the fittest” theory the fact that quite often humans send only their very best off to war leaving the home front to cope with survival of the species by providing the women with an available assortment of queers, former prisoners, mental defectives, and physically impaired men.  If Will Parker died in action, shouldn’t Jack Kerouac have, at least, mentioned him in the acknowledgements section of “On the Road”?

British Sci-fi writer John Christopher wrote about the intergalactic adventures of a young man named Will Parker, but we’ll leave it up to some future doctoral candidate in literature to assertain if there is a cause and effect link here or just a co-inky-dink.

Will Parker may have been a hitchhiking pioneer but he seems to disappear without a subsequent trace while the likes of Kerouac, Cassidey, and Alan Ginsburg were left to thrive and prosper among the hordes of lonely affection starved women in the United States.

The Will Parker issue of LIFE also had “mug shots” of the various new 1940 brands of cars in the Speaking of Pictures segment and featured a promotional story for the film titled “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

One of the “selling points” Parker used to help himself get rides was the fact that good current events chats were assured because he was carrying a portable radio on the journey that took 12 days and cost the traveler $23.60.

The photographer’s existence was basically ignored, which gives the story a bit of an “unrealistic” spin to it.
It’s obvious that this column isn’t an astounding example of the potential of the citizen journalist movement on the internet, but did you really want or need a columnist to add his voice to the chorus of disapproval the pundits have showered upon the Iranian elections and the American President’s response to it?  You do?  OK!  How about this:  Iran, that wasn’t very nice.  Shame on you.  Feel better now?

In summing up Will Parker’s adventure, the writer noted that Will Parker had by talking to the various 29 good Samaritans, who had given him a lift, conducted his own public opinion poll on the country’s mood.  On page 52, it was noted:  “Most were in favor of Social Security and keeping out of war.”  My how times have turned things around, since then, eh?

[Note:  does society change?  Wasn’t one of the few (only) newspapers which ran the death of Elvis Presley as the headline story on page one, the Santa Monica Evening Outlook?  Back then most newspapers didn't want to compete with People magazine.]

Now, the disk jockey will play the Michael Jackson – Mick Jagger duet titled “State of Shock”  We’ll take a break.  Have a “moonwalk” type week.

Are you ready for Comic-Con?

We thought it was about time to start looking into the possibility of getting a press pass (we got one in 2003) to cover Comic Con in San Diego next month

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/index.php

but we saw that there would be no more press passes issued for the 2009 event.

So, I guess that ends that idea.

Stay tuned to see what (if anything) we do cover in July
There’s always “The Call to the Wall” iln Malibu. We could get there on an MTA bus.

Would John Wayne have approved torturing prisoners?

The Republicans have commandeered the traditional trappings of patriotism and have laid claim to the use of any patriotism inspiring slogans, images, and or historic personalities, but we are going to risk their wrath and ask: Would John Wayne have endorsed torture? Since the conservatives like control the dialogue, they would try to foil all liberal attempts to make sense by throwing in a cheap diversionary move rather than answering the question. It seems quite likely they would respond to this question by asserting that the question breaks down into two versions Would the American icon known as John Wayne have condoned the torture of prisoners or would the actor, Marion Mitchell Morrison (AKA John Wayne), a well known conservative, have endorsed the enhanced questioning methods approved by the President of the United States?

Fans tend to think that the John Wayne icon’s code of ethics was summarized best in the line from “The Shootist:” “I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a-hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I require the same from them.” (One assumes that means he wouldn’t want to be tortured as a prisoner and therefore wouldn’t inflict it on others if the situation were reversed.)

During World War II, Gino Merli’s position was overrun by German troops. Merli played dead. A German soldier wanted to make sure it was a dead American whose body he saw, so he stuck hi bayonet into the area Merli would have squashed if he sat down. Merli used self-control and convinced the German he was contending with a dead man. After the Germans passed by, Merli jumped up and used an automatic weapon to mow down a large number of German soldiers. He got a Medal of Honor and would have had a unique perspective for making pronouncements for or against inflicting pain to gain information. Do you honestly think Gino Merli would have endorsed torture to augment information gathering?

Initially we intended to run a longer list and look at other American heroes such as Sgt. York, Audi Murphy, General Custer (which tribe of Native Americans was noted for the quality of its torture?) and General Custer’s brother (who won two Medals of Honor) and see how they might possibly have answered the torture question, but since a Republican President started the torturing and since a new Democratic President seems to be giving his blessing to most of his predecessor’s war policies,, it would seem, now, to be a moot question. Why bother with hypothetical answers to something that ain’t gonna change?

Since there will be some technical and logistical challenges presented later in the week, this will be our “Happy Forth of July” Saturday morning column posted a bit early.

Don’t fritter away time worrying if John Wayne would or would not have sanctioned torture, just go out and celebrate Independence Day.

In “The Defendant,” G. K. Chesterton wrote: “‘My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”

Now the disk jockey will play John Wayne’s recording “The Pledge of Allegiance.” We’re ready to go stake out a prime spot on the Venice Beach. Have a “full of patriotic pride” type week.

Take it off! ! !

David Rose’s song.

How do you define “naked”?

A popular video about air safety from Air New Zealand

Air Safety from Air New Zealand brings up this question:
If someone has clothes painted on their body, are they naked or not?

(Does this look like an outtake from “Laugh-In”?)

Which?

Here’s a film pitch idea.

There would be two hour segments

A film made by film school students from a script by one of Hollywood’s top script writers (Shane Black?)

The second would be from a film school student’s script but it would be filmed using a top director (Oliver Stone?) a great cinematographer and well known actors and actresses.

Which of the two segments would you most like to see?

Hara-kiri Awards for Journalists?

If readers were forced to make a choice which group would be more reprehensible:
the Germans who invaded Paris or the French citizens who chose to help them once they arrived, which group would they want to denounce more?

The Germans believed they were super-patriots helping their country’s leader.  The collaborators chose to abandon their country’s principles and throw their lot in with the “conquerors.”  One of the most newsworthy examples of the collaborators who were found guilty of treason for their actions was Robert Brasillach and it is in his honor that we say we hold American journalists, who are retroactively endorsing Bush’s war crimes, in lower esteem than the Bush Junta war criminals because (at least) the fanatical Republicans (just like the Nazis) did not betray their principles.  The Sunday morning propagandists, who recently became accomplices in Bush’s deceit and lies by belittling the idea of a torture investigation, were betraying the code of honor that was endorsed by practitioners (such as Edward R. Murrow) of their (in their own inflated opinion of themselves) profession.  
Recently Crooks and Liars and the Brad Blog have noted that the Sunday morning gasbags have belittled the idea that Bush and his henchmen should be tried for their various war crimes.  Apparentlyl they don’t even see the need for a torture investigation. 

How would the American public have reacted if the Germany journalists in 1945 suggested that holding the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial was an overreaction by a victorious military and that the Hitler gang should be put out to pasture, but not have to face the ordeal of public humiliation and punishment for their sincere efforts to promote Germany’s economic development via some well-intentioned land grabs?

For any America media personality to suggest that it would be in America’s best interests to grant de facto pardons to Bush, Chenney, et al, by dispensing with any criminal investigations and trials is as absurd as the concept of some leading French existentialist intellectuals suggesting that the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials were an egregious example of overreaction by a victorious military force.  Not bloody well likely, eh?

Sartre and Camus may have disagreed over the death sentence delivered in Robert Brasillach’s case, but there can be no doubt they held the man in utter disdain for what he did.

John Amato and Brad Friedman, as journalists, do well to not do any editorializing, by peppering their stories with adjectives that convey opinion such as the words “reprehensible” and or “heinous,” but since this is a column there are no such restraints and we will indulge in a bit of speculation about how much these loathsome individuals deserve to be given this years (imaginary) hari-kiri Awards for traitorous conduct by media stars (who have the temerity to call themselves “journalists.”)

It is bad enough that the on-air personalities did not challenge Bush before the invasion of Iraq.  They did not seize on the “where did it go?” factor of the missing WMD’s after the invasion.  When they are tipped to the possibility that millions of Iraqi citizens may be being slaughtered in the various air raids being conducted, they stand by silently (much like the folks around the Nazi concentration camps who didn’t get too curious about the trainloads of folks being taken in to places such as Buchenwald) and say nothing.  When a town like Fallujah is bombed into ruble, they say nothing about that recalling the fury the world used to denounce Reinhard Heydrich’s endorsement of retribution for resistance efforts.  As for torturing prisoners, the Sunday Quisling clones take about the same attitude toward waterborading as the Catholic Church did during the Inquisition.

Now they want to advocate that, with a world crying for justice (outside the USA), it’s time to turn the country’s attention to more mundane matters such as the memorial services for Michael Jackson. 

Sunday morning fame-whores should be an embarrassment to even the smallest Journalism school in the USA and the Columbia Journalism Review should be as strong in their denunciation of these suck-ups as Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were of Robert Brasillach. 

If the members of the Bush Junta are going to be tried for war crimes, shouldn’t some of the media personalities, who added their enthusiasm to the Bush effort to trample American ideals, also be put on trial, just as many French were after the United States liberated that occupied country in World War II?

Do you think Dennis Miller would like to put a proponent of that suggestion on his radio program?  If not, why not?  Doesn’t he always say he likes to air both sides of an issue and then endorse the conservative viewpoint?

Recently Miller suggested that the United States should refrain from giving any reasons for starting new wars.  At least Hitler had the decency to offer a fraudulent excuse for invading Poland.  Why waste time on phony excuses, eh, Dennis?  Is that the Genghis Khan approach to spin?

These Sunday morning clowns should be given a nice shiny unused Japanese hari-kari sword and a contract to appear on a new and extremely gruesome reality TV show for “journalist” who have betrayed the principles of journalism, helped deceive rather than inform their country’s citizens, and made a mockery of the founding fathers high regard for a free press and the Constitution.  Just think of the ratings!  What’s not to like about that suggestion?

This column’s closing quote has to be the most famous line from the movie “Network” “I want you to get up right now and go to the window . . . and yell:  ‘<a href =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dib2-HBsF08>I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore</a>!’” 

In an effort to be “fair and balanced” the disk jockey will, for members of the Republican talking point bucket brigade, play Tammy Wynett’s “Stand by your man” and for the people who remember that Edward R. Murrow risked his career to fight a bully, will play the best Bush song (done by Johnny Cash) ever, “God’s gonna cut you down.”

It’s time for us to say Sayonara.  Have a week full of real patriotic moments like the one when Ricky Blaine told the band’s conductor to play the Marseillaise (belated Happy Bastille Day.)

Movie review

Saw “Twelve Monkeys” last night.  It was a very good time travel movie and Brad Pitt gave a noteworthy performance.

Another “face in the window”

Recently we posted a picture (over at our photos site

http://floppyphotos.wordpress.com)

a photo taken in the Haight Ashbury section of San Francisco that had a window with an odd face showing.

Tonight we found the story of a courthouse with a portrait that is etched in one of its windows.

A slave was looking out the window at a potential lynch crowd.  At that moment a bolt of lightening hit and etch a portrait of the frightened fellow into the pane of glass.

Here is a link to a web page with photos and more details of this incredible story.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2012

Who reads this sss. . . stuff?

We’ve been threatening to buy a computer notebook or lap top so that we can post more stuff more often because sometimes, while traveling on the road (It seems we didn’t post one entry while we were in Kalgoorlie Western Australia) getting access to a computer is tough. 

We might have already spent the price of a laptop on the computer time we’ve paid for while “on the road.”

Fans of Albert Camus might appreciate a guy going to Fremantle (Western Australia) and taking a photo of the Bon Scott statue for about 50 different hits world wide, but at times it does seem like the blogger is going overboard in his embrace of the Absurdism philosophy.

Recently my pal “Jersey Bill,” who is often the target audience for the photos of cars that we post over on the other blog, said that he rarely looks at our blog(s).  He will click the link if we send him one (as when we post a photo just for him) but the rest of the time he’s “too busy.”

That leads us to wonder:  Who reads my blog?

Are all the hits one time visits from folks who found something they wanted to read about and then they never come back?  Are there any regulars?  We did get one comment from someone who said she got a kick out this blog.  (Thanks for the encouragement.)  Does any member of my posse read this regularly?  Why, when we ask the audience a question (such as an attempt to find out who was “Comet radio” playing country songs at night in Australia), doesn’t any one answer?  We thought the Internet was more “interactive” than just touch and go landings. 

So we ask:

Who are these people?

Who reads this blog?

Does anyone read it regularly?

Who is “comet radio”?

The Meaning of Life

Finding the Meaning of Life

[We heard this story many years ago and would give credit to the source, but it was so long ago that we are just glad we can remember the story.]

A man was seeking the meaning of life and so he traveled to Tibet and climbed up to find the wise-man of the mountains. 

He asked the wise man “What must I do to learn the meaning of life?”

The wise man answered:  “Shoot out someone’s eye with a be-be gun.”

The man was puzzled and said he didn’t understand that.

The wiseman said:  “When you were a child, didn’t your mother tell you that you wouldn’t be happy until you shot out someone’s eye with your new be-be gun?

Joke with letters

This joke is older than I am.  (Yikes!)

A Sweedish guy goes into an American coffee shop and this conversation takes place:

Olie:  F U N E X?

Waiter:  S V F X

Olie:  F U N E M?

Waiter S V F M.

Olie:  OK M N X.

Music for Digital Kerouacs who are “on the road”

For those of  you using a push pin on a map at home, I’m going down to L. A. Monday.

The disk jockey will be playing Dave Dudley’s “Six Days on the Road”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKcYRkUI0Dk&feature=PlayList&p=5B8EACB9ACFFBBBC&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=48

Youtube automatically generated the song “People Are Crazy” (are they insinuating something about me?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqrogegV1lw&feature=PlayList&p=5B8EACB9ACFFBBBC&index=49&playnext=2&playnext_from=PL

Naturally we gotta play Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSICoacOT60

While we were listening to Comet Radio while staying in Kalgoorlie we heard them play Bobby Bare’s “500 miles from home.”  It seemed to us we were farther away than that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgnaavPxSmk

One road song that most kids will never have heard of is Red Sovine’s “Phantom 309″

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4HhFY3ljZc

Sometimes you pick up new music while on the road.  While we were in Freo (Fremantle Western Australia), we learned about Seasick Steve.  It’s called “Started out with nothing” as in:  “I started out with nothing and I got most of it left . . . .”  (Ain’t that the truth?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlKzRhEEJ_I&feature=PlayList&p=FDD59474B4F77A34&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=32 

Of course, to get to Australia, you get there fastest if you fly.  So we will play Silver Wings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cupVwLbavt0

Good thing that “I love L. A.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br5×48NQvyI

To be continued .  .  .

The U Haul tourist attractions

If you have seen the U Haul trailers with interesting tourist attractions stories on the side you may want to look up the source for these great “on the road” stories from around the U. S. and Canada.

The URL for the Canadian WWII secret project known as Project Habbakuk (making a ship using ice) is at

http://www.uhaul.com/supergraphics/landing.aspx?site_id=169&sort_order=0

The main page with icons for all their stories is at:

http://www.uhaul.com/supergraphics/

Fans of unusual stories and attractions will enjoy this collection.

America’s answer to SummerNats?

Next weekend in Reno the “Hot August Nights” old car, hot rod, car-spotting event will begin.  We’d love to go and see if it’s anything like SummerNats in Canberra was.  Follow this link:

http://www.hotaugustnights.net/

Wish we’dda bought ourselves a SummerNats T-shirt.  Wouldda couldda shouldda. 

(Gees, Reno is closer to Berkeley than it is to L. A.  So why are we going to L. A.?   Guess we won’t make it to Hot August Nights this year.)

Wonder if Jalpopnik will send a photographer to cover it?

We’ll soon find out, eh?

Summer of our Discontent

When we returned from our (fist) trip to Australia on Inauguration day in January, this columnist was eagerly looking forward to summer (in the US) and the prospect that we would be writing about the war crimes trials of George W. Bush (and our disk jockey would be playing Hank Williams’ “Knock the Hell Out of You” song at the end of it) and his cronies , but it looks like there will be no such columns written this summer (or ever?) and most appropriate song would simply be “So Long, It’s been good to know ya.” It seems we will have to come up with a different idea for a summer column. 

Our question about where was the Queen Mary when Pearl Harbor was attacked got answered when we went down to the tourist attraction in Long Beach and talked to the Public Relations department who consulted the ship’s records and informed us that the ship spent from late November to mid December of 1941, in Trincomalee harbor.  It may have been there for some periodic maintenance.  That shot down our theory about that ship getting an order to evacuate from Pearl Harbor late on Saturday, December 6, 1941 and it caused us to learn that Trincomalee is a harbor on the coast of  Shri Lanka (which was then called the island of Ceylon.)  We planned a long and clever column about that excursion.  Without a war crime trial, it seemed that the need for writing that column was also considerably downgraded.  Folks in the US just don’t care that much about wars.

A few weeks ago, a visit to Homeboy Industries had us inspired to write a column all about it and adopt it as our favorite “good cause” and urge folks to donate money to them (after making an enormous donation to their favorite progressive web site fund raising drive) but somehow, despite all our good intentions, it didn’t get written.

Would a column about our disk jockey’s suggestions for assembling all the most appropriate songs for a Bush era soundtrack album be worth the effort?  Well, maybe after the Labor Day weekend, there will be more enthusiasm for the project.

While in Australia, we kept thinking about the fact that we were missing the Sunday Night Classic radio broadcast featuring Jimmy Kay.  We especially thought of that program while standing in the Record store in Fremantle and listening to the entire “At Folsom Prison” album.  It seemed that the further one gets from Folsom Prison, the better the album sounds.  We recently learned that the Sunday Night program went off the air and that a petition to help it get back on the air is available online.
http://www.petitiononline.com/JimmyKay/petition.html

How about a column about James Crowley?  Have you gotten your Crowley for Congress bumper sticker yet?  They don’t make them?  Wait a week.  They will.  How can the Republicans not love a guy who reminds this columnist of Sarah Palin?

When George W. Bush’s paperwork from his air National Guard days turned up missing, it was (to the conservatives leading the chorus of mainstream media) no big deal.  However, they just gotta see Obama’s birth certificate.  We thought about writing a column about the conservatives’ curious application of a double standard regarding old personal presidential documents.  Is this paragraph good enough?

Since we have managed to get a ride on the Goodyear Blimp and a B-17-G, when we got an e-mail recently saying that the Beat Museum (in San Francisco) has resurrected the Beatmobile, we came up with the idea of writing a clever column that would earn us an invitation to do a ride-along story about some of their adventures “on the road.”  We haven’t gotten around to writing that column yet.

Would it be inappropriate to mention here that the (car and truck) International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame is located in Chattanooga Tennessee?

That, in turn, reminded us that we are still trying to figure out how to get either Qantas, VAustralia, or United Airlines to donate a RT ticket to Australia for the next facet of our new columnist’s tradition of celebrating Christmas in the traditional Australia way (in a bathing suit on the beach) this December. 

That caused us to contemplate writing a column suggesting that maybe one of those air lines should run ads in December in (say) Buffalo, Boston, NYC, Chicago, and Minneapolis, featuring attractive lasses giving a live weather reports from both Bondi and Cottesloe beachs each night.  On a cold winter’s night in the northern part of the USA, it would be afternoon the next day on both of those beaches and the weather report alone should convince some folks that a vacation in Australia at that time of year ain’t a bad idea.

Rodney King once said:  “We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out.”  He was never invited to the White House for a beer.

Now, the disk jockey will play the fugs “Summer of Love.”  We gotta go send a news tip suggestion (about Richard Fine’s legal plight in L. A.) to Rolling Stone magazine.  Have a “retroactive amnesty” type week.

Example of blog entry for Dave N.

Hi Dave!

The MTA could go this route.

WLJ

Journalism’s Dog Days Meltdown

Have all those Republican US Attorneys Generals, (the ones who are appointed by the President and not State Attorneys General who are elected) who caused a big fuss in the past, been replaced? 

Earlier this year, this columnist did a bit of fact checking online to learn what had happened to the Bush appointees.  A quick random search indicated that in January, before President Obama was inaugurated, those folks were given an extension into the new President’s term in office which was to last until they were either replaced or until early August of 2009.  A search as this column is being written shows that tracking down the information online would be a long tedious task.  Doing a Google News search to learn about any new replacements was inconclusive.  Have they been replaced or have they been grandfathered into a longer stay?

Times up!  If you can’t say right now, then you may never know.

If the New York Times and/or the Washington Post haven’t updated the saga of the Bush Posse residing in the various US Attorneys General offices across the land, then surely some of the top bloggers will (as they did with the original story) send up a collective howl that will force the mainstream media to get the Republican talking points concerning either the new appointees or the extension of the incumbents’ tour of duty.

Sure, this columnist could put in a week or two of nothing but online fact checking and, perhaps, come up with something that either:  a) confirms his worst suspicions or b) results in a list of the new replacements. 

Either result won’t do a darn thing to diminish the nations’ top journalists pride in their own efforts to keep freedom of the press a valued American tradition.  What anyone else does is irrelevant to those pretty people.

If they don’t get around to updating the attorneys general story this weekend, it’s only because they are so busy, with all the staff cuts and such, that they just couldn’t do it and rush the details of the new Supreme Court Justice story to their audiences. 

Then they are also busy helping their Republican sources spread the Astroturf movement to disrupt townhall meetings, reporting the comparisons of President Obama to Hitler, and the departure of Paula Abdul from American Idol.  Yikes!  There’s only 24 hours in each day and they can only cover a finite amount of news in that time period, so it seems that if they pass on the attorneys general updates, it would be very understandable.

Heck if the Talking Points Memo website broke the story originally shouldn’t they be the ones responsible for an update?

If Bush’s appointees manage to hold on to their jobs, do Americans really care?  They don’t seem to be too concerned with the 18 “enduring” bases in Iraq, the growing level of conflict in Afghanistan, and/or the possibility that many folks in countries around the world regard former president George W. Bush as an unindicted war criminal, so why should they care about a bunch of Republican sinecures?  

For those trolls who would like to challenge the statement that folks in other counties consider George W. Bush a war criminal, if you don’t believe it, then go to the Kings Cross section of Sydney in Australia (one of the U. S. most loyal allies – they have sent troops to every conflict which America has fought in the last 110 years) go into a locals bar (such as the Vegas) and proclaim your endorsement of the 43rd President and then see if you can get out of there without getting into an altercation.  Good luck.

Earlier this week this columnist heard Thom Hartman speak at the Santa Monica Public Library.  He raised several fascinating topics, such as Coral Peru, and mentioned in passing that the Muslim culture holds revenge as one of their social obligations.  He quickly added that it was ominous to note that since dozens (perhaps in the hundreds) of Iraqi and Afghanistani families have lost members due to the inadvertent collateral damage resulting from American air strikes, the war may continued until those disgruntle Muslims inflict their retaliatory damage on Americans. 

For folks who claim that the number of causalities in Iraq may be above a million, that tends to indicate that the two wars may have (like the ones in George Orwell’s 1984) become permanent perpetual conflicts.  Yikes!  Just think of the negative effect an eternal state of war would have on the “Peace on Earth” ceremonies at Yuletide.

Journalists are into the “dog days” and doing stories about other more “upbeat” topics such as the flood of tourists who are parading up and down the Ocean Front Walk at Venice Beach.  Should we do a column exploring the back-story of what and why and how the Bondi Beach Café wound up being situated just a quarter of a block away from the aforementioned Ocean Front Walk?  Is it time to go there and do a restaurant review?

Would it be worth the effort to do all the work necessary, if it turns out that United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (case 09-56073) really does result in a continuation of the saga of the first instance in American jurisprudence where a citizen, according to his supporters, has been <a href =http://www.scribd.com/doc/17761439/SupplementalEmergency-Motion-Irrep-Harm-Fine-v-USDC>denied the writ of habius corpus</a>?  Yeah, it would be a biggie just because of the “first” aspect, but there would be a lot of work involved and wouldn’t more people want to read about the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock than plow through all the legalese that would be required to explain the intricacies of California’s <a href =http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/sen/sb_0001-0050/sbx2_11_bill_20090220_chaptered.pdf>SBX 2 11</a> (enacted on Feb. and how that applies to one lawyer who was disbarred? 

Isn’t it time for Tim Russert’s son to be promoted to appear on-air relaying Republican talking points to voters?

Which is more important for an obscure blogger:  doing the New York Times job for them or working on a good tan?  If you haven’t read any updates about the Bush appointees and their replacements, don’t send me any complaints and don’t send any to the public editor at the New York Times, either, because they only want letters about stories they have written.  They don’t want you bugging him with complaints about stories they haven’t written.  Don’t worry about it.  They’ll probably get another Pulitzer Prize next year for something.  So, don’t fret about a journalism meltdown.

Republican Attorneys General?  America’s first political prisoner?  Maybe it would be best to go up to San Francisco and report on the status of Donald Fisher’s art collection (or the whereabouts of the Beatmobile)?

Mark Twain said “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

Now, the disk jockey will play the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City.”  We’ll go get some suntan lotion and (perhaps) see you on the Venice Beach?  Have a “hang ten” (wasn’t that the final score at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trial?) week.

Pig in a (trauma) blanket

If Bill O’Reilly is looking for a new topic to stir up rancor and animosity between the tree-hugging liberals and the patriotic conservatives, he might be delighted if he reads this column.  PETA, on Wednesday August 12, 2009, held a protest against the treatment of pigs at Camp Pendleton.

The pigs according to information found online Thursday, are slashed with scalpels so that medics-in-training can then treat them in practice sessions.  Later, if they survive, they are, according to the activists, shot and then treated for that medical condition.  If they are still alive after that, they are euthanized, according to information found online.

The PETA people contend that this constitutes inhumane treatment of animals.

Mr. O’Reilly would probably be the loudest to proclaim that the use of pigs save lives by helping to prepare the medics for similar emergencies they will face (with human victims)in combat is acceptable to him and most of his listeners.

It seems likely that if Mr. O’Reilly takes ups this cause; his efforts will be seconded by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

We came across this contentious news item via a photo seen in the Los Angeles Times for Thursday August 13, 2009.  We did a Google news check and found about 20 suggested URL’s and we immediately knew that we wanted to be ahead of the curve on a news item that seems likely to stir up a goodly amount of spirited debate.

While fact checking for this column we learned that there is a rugby team in Portland named the Portland Pigs and that the mascot for the Lehigh Valley baseball team is the Iron Pig.

PETA seems very adept at riling up O’Reilly and others of his ilk and those radio personalities, in turn, seem to inspire the tree huggers to higher levels of commitment.

Recently this columnist has been called to task by an anonymous editor (when attempting to cross post a different weekend column) for emulating the columnist style of Walter Winchell and Herb Caen by using several short items in one installment, so we are hesitant to wonder if the pigs who get cut, shot, and then (if they are still alive) euthanized, would use Australian outlaw Ned Kelly as their role model.  Kelly was shot 28 times while being arrested.  When he was well enough to stand trial they tried him and sentenced him to death by hanging. 

Another reason we like to digress is because it is a way to plant some “Google bait” to help lure new readers to this website.  Sure the regulars know what to expect, but sometimes if we insert a bit of trivia into the column (such as the fact that Fremantle Western Australia has erected a <a href =http://worldslaziestjournalist.wordpress.com/2008/12/27/rock-stars-statue/>statue of Bon Scott</a>, [there’s not too many pictures of that statue to be found online] lead singer for AC-DC because he grew up in their town) people who wouldn’t ordinarily read this web site might (since there isn’t much online about that statue) come to this site and find out that the content pleases them and then they might want to book mark it and come back.  Plus that rationale gives the columnist a convenient excuse to run the obscure information that might not please that aforementioned editor. 

We also know that trauma blankets are used for burn victims, but we couldn’t come up with a better (cuter) headline.

For this week’s end of column quote we will include a snippet of dialogue from “Pulp Fiction:
Jules: “Pigs are filthy animals. I don’t eat filthy animals.”
Vincent: “Yeah, but bacon tastes good. Pork chops taste good.”

This week, before he plays some music, the disk jockey is recommending that all his fans go to Youtube and look up the vignette of the guitar duel between Les Paul (RIP) and his wife Mary Ford.  To end this column he will play Pink Floyd’s “Pigs on the Wing,” “Old MacDonald had a farm,” and Mitch Miller’s song “Be Kind to Your Web-footed Friends.”  It’s time for us to say:  “That’s all folks!”  Have an “all you can eat” type week.

Living in the Hostel World

Hostelling is celebrating its 100 year this year and <a href = http://www.hiusa.org/>Hostelling International USA</a> is celebrating its 75 birthday and since this columnist has been on the road for a good deal of the past year, and staying in various hostels from San Francisco to Fremantle Western Australia and since Hostelling week is from August 22 to August 30 (which is actually 8 days), it seems like this is a good opportunity to write a dog-days column about living in the hostel world and give the pro-Bush trolls a Saturday off by not mention anything about how much he deserves a war criminal trial let alone say anything about how embarrassing such a legal proceeding might be for Jeb Bush and his quest to become “45” in 2012.

Recently we noticed an odd aspect about staying in hostels because when we traveled in Australia, at the various hostels, we met young folks from Great Britain, Germany, France and many Canadians (just a few fellow Americans) but when we wound up staying at the Hostel California in the Venice section of Los Angeles, (not far from the apartment we used to call “home”) we met a slew of Australians. 

It’s a sort of insulated subgroup within the community.  The hostellers meet others hostellers and not the locals.  The locals don’t realize just how much the visiting tourists add to the local businesses.  High rollers tend to stay in upscale hotels and mostly meet other well-to-do travelers.  Business men stay at business oriented hotels and mostly meet other traveling salespersons.

Hostels are a good way to meet folks and make new friends, but there are some shortcuts that anyone trying the hostel experience for the first time might want to know.  For instance, even a non-smoker and non-drinker would find new friends by hanging out in a hostel’s smoking and drinking area.  (Here’s a shout-out to the gang on the roof of the Sydney Central Backbackers Hostel waiting to see the bats [from the Sydney Botanical Gardens] fly past.)  The smokers and drinkers seem to be more friendly than those who abstain from drink and tobacco, but they are very open-minded about letting a fellow who passes on both counts to sit with them and talk late into the night. 

Most Americans (except for the few surviving hippies who used crash pads) aren’t use to the Spartan comfort level, but the ones that do give it a go, know that on a good vacation if a person is on the go from morning to late, late at night and the only thing really needed at that point is a bed and a pair of ear plugs.  Someone who has had a good touristing day will flop down, sleep ‘til dawn, and then start all over again. 

Young folks don’t need all the amenities that run up the costs at a four star hotel.

As we started to prepare to write this weeks’ Saturday column, we bought a lap-top and that brought a new dilemma into our life: we’d like to settle down (Go Berkeley Bears!) somewhere, but with a lap-top we could go back out on the road and be fully portable and not have to pay for computer time. 

Back in the good old days of B&W photos, sometimes when a scheduled news event (track meet or such) was happening outside the nearest AP bureau, they would ask the newspaper that was closest to the event, if thy could invoke interline courtesy and use the local paper’s darkroom and telephones to set up a temporary transmitting station.  They would use the newspaper’s darkroom facilities, but they had to lug a big “portable” transmitter into the office and place it near the phones they were going to use.

For someone who has seen all that elaborate preparations needed to send out photos to the world that way, the thought that nowadays kids can use a lap-top and be ready to post some photos (in color!) on their facebook page immediately after (heck now a photojournalist with the right camera can send out photos right from the event itself) they have been taken, is totally amazing.

Say, with the new lap-top maybe we could sell some rights to the picture we got last Saturday (August 15, 2009) of <a href =http://www.flickr.com/photos/8216859@N04/3843080773/>Oliver Hudson</a> (trying to), from the TV show “Rules of Engagement,” selling kisses on Venice’s Ocean Front Walk.  It was supposed to be part of a scavenger hunt competition.

Getting a lap-top will expand the capabilities of the World’s Laziest Journalist Industries to levels that seemed like a science fiction story just a few years back.  Just writing that sentence makes the WLJ want to get moving again, tomorrow.  We can just hear Willie Nelson singing “<a href =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcXVUi35Y4Q>On the road again</a>,” can’t you?

If we go back on the road, we’d love to go back to Australia.  It’s so big and so varied we didn’t get to see everything in our three months there, but on the other hand, we could explore our origins by going to Ireland.  We understand that the air fare has been remarkable low recently.

Should we go or should we stay . . . put?  If we “go” should we push on into new territory (an Irish pub?) or go back and see what we missed (Coober Pede)?”
 
When we left Fremantle we started traveling east.  According to an Italian guy who worked for the Spanish monarchs, if this columnist continues to travel <a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN8dP4CoFaw&feature=related>East  bound</a> he won’t fall off the edge of the world, he will wind up back in Fremantle.  (Here’s a shout out to the goon squad at the HI on Peckenham St.)  Well our motto has always been:  “Unless I put my hand in the place of the wound, I shall not believe.”  Where is Pan Am’s Flight One when you really need it?  Say, are our Pan Am frequent flyer miles still valid?

Being an ordained minister who do we turn to for advice?  Jim Brennan, author of “Cure Your Bad Back Forever! With the miracle of Equi-load,” shared his advice with us.  He says that that the world is too big and too beautiful for redundancy when it comes to selecting a destination.   He says Ireland and Germany are my destiny and my duty to myself.

Is it true that one particular tavern in Munich has some very historic bullet holes in the ceiling?  What’s it like to hear an “oopah” band during Oktoberfest? 

While traveling in Australia, we never did learn just how the alcoholic drink known ad “goon” got its name. 

We never did learn the who, what, or where about the country music heard on something called comet radio.  It’s one thing to hear Bobby Bare’s song <a href =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgnaavPxSmk
 >“500 Miles”</a> in the USA, but you should try hearing it while listening to a radio in Kalgoorlie.  That’s more like 10,000 miles from home

Just imagine how emotional it would be to hear an Irish folk song in a Dublin pub! ! !

We’ve mentioned in previous columns just how moving it was to hear the entire “<a href =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L05KOAhZA1A>At Folsom Prison</a>” by Johnny Cash, while standing in a record store in Fremantle.

If that Italian guy is right about the world being round, we could go to Ireland, then hop over to the continent.  We could stop in at Cinq rue Daneau, maybe visit a friend since high school in Germany, and then continue on to Fremantle! ! !  It seems that there is very little possibility that we would need to come back to the USA to cover any political developments. 

Didn’t Germany have one-man Death Panels in the SS?  Maybe I could study up on that and get enough material for a good column?

It’s obvious that my faithful troll like to tell me where to go, but should I stay or should  I go?

Here’s the quote of the week from Supreme Court Justice Scalia:
“This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is actually innocent.”  Can you say “Totenkopf,” boys and girls?

Here’s the disk jockey’s reply to my question about going back on the road:<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SwtVahfwgA>Via con Dios</a>
<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcYsO890YJY> Happy Trails to You</a> and
<a href = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4HhFY3ljZc> Phantom 309</a>

It’s time for us to move on.  Have a Paparazzi free week.

Jack, Bobby, and Teddy

In Scranton Pa., Irishcatholicdemocrat is one word and when it was learned that Jack Kennedy, who was running for President, was coming to town, the excitement level started to rise. By the time he rolled into Scranton it was at fever pitch level.

The candidate was coming to speak at the Hotel Casey, which was across the street from Perino’s Restaurant, and since I knew the owners’ son, Russ, I got permission to be on the roof overlooking the candidate’s arrival.

Some 8mm movies in B&W of the event exist, but finding them, they are packed securely away in a storage unit, would be a major task.

In 1968, while we were in California, we got a picture of Bobby Kennedy campaigning to get the Democrats’ Presidential nomination. We use our most valued possession, a Nikon F, to get some still shots (also in B&W) of him in a motorcade in a>downtown Los Angeles.

Somewhere along the way we attended a political rally in San Francisco. Bobby Kennedy was supposed to attend it. His brother Teddy was there. Again we used the beloved Nikon to get some photos. Teddy was introduced to the locals. We jumped in line and when the guy went to introduce me, he balked. I said my name and shook hands with the Senator from Massachusetts and then yielded my to the next person in line.

At the end of this historic week, most of the posts in Punditstan will be about either CIA torture or Teddy Kennedy. In journalism, August is called the dog days because news is – or used to be – rather slow in the summer of a non-elecitons year, so it seemed like a chance to dash off a column recalling the times we saw all three of the Kennedy senators, was a gimme chance not to be missed.

You want this column to include some political gossip that you can’t get anywhere else?

OK we’ll give you the only hot inside rumor we have from the conservative world: according to what we hear, the conservatives are pushing the search for Obama’s birth certificate because there is supposed (told ya it’s just gossip) to be an application for a foreign student loan for the young Barry Obama that swears to his eligibility for the money.

If he produces a birth certificate from Hawaii and they then locate the alleged document from the President’s college student days, well then, they have him swearing to a falsehood and don’t the conservatives consider that solid grounds for an impeachment proceeding?

Yikes, did we just provide a spoiler for a Bill O’Reilly “scoop”?

That’s the best we can do for this column. It’s time to start wrapping this up. It’s hot in Los Angeles. The Venice Beach is about four blocks away. You do the math.

The closing quote for this week comes from the Los Angeles Times website. While newly inaugurated Senator Ted Kennedy was talking about his relationship with his brother the President, he dabbled in some self-deprecating humor: “I was down at the White House this afternoon with some suggestions for the State of the Union address, but all I got from him was, ‘Are you still using that greasy kid stuff on your hair?’”

Warning: for this week’s song, the disk jockey is going to play the version of Jackie DeShannon’s song “What the world needs now . . . to which disk jockey Tom Clay added some news sound bytes. We gotta warn the liberals, if you’ve never heard this version before, it is going to make you cry. We dare the conservatives to listen to it. We gotta go wipe a speck of dust from our eyes. Have a “let’s drink to his memory” (even if it’s just diet soda) type weekend.

How do you figure?

While traveling we resented paying money to get computer time, so we finally got a lap-top.

Now, when we want to post we spend money to get a drink at the Cow’s End Cafe in Venice and it seems that we are spending just as much, if not more, than we did when we had to pay for computer time in the various hostels.

As Ned Kelly once said: “Such is life.”

PKD on terrorism?

In the novel “A Scanner Darkly,” Philip K. Dick (on page 91 paperback) wrote:  “One of the most effective forms of industrial or military sabotagelimits itself to damage that can never be thoroughly proven – or even proven at all – to be anything deliberate.”  How closely would Dick say that the fires in the Los Angeles region come to meeting his criteria?

Is your cash register half full or half empty?

If you have been getting business news which indicates that the future looks bleak and that things are going to get worse, you are probably reading and listening to conservative media.  The journalists who reach very optimistic conclusions from the economic news are likely to be on Air America or progressive liberal web sites.  The fact that both camps are forming diametrically opposed predictions (with either a quick endorsement of or repudiation of President Obama’s entire agenda) gives citizens a strong indication that “journalism” is in danger of an immanent death (if it hasn’t already flatlined).

Have any of the observers of contemporary culture done stories mentioning any similarity to the fact that when George H. W. Bush’s term was coming to a close, the Savings and Loan crisis required an infusion of government money and that when George W. Bush was coming to the end of his second term in office, the banking industry required an immediate injection of cash on a “do or die” basis?  Why have neither the liberal nor the conservative pundits pointed out this remarkable economic coincidence?

Do the columnist of either the liberal or conservative persuasion point out the absurdity of the Republican talking point that President Obama can be compared to Adolph Hitler?  At the 1936 Olympics wasn’t the mere presence of Jesse Owen with a winning gold medal a subtle way of refuting the German leader’s views about Arian superiority? 

If the clowns who relay the idea that America’s first Negro President is comparable to one of history’s most famous exponents of white supremacy, can keep their composure while “reporting” such an absurdity, then shouldn’t their lack of competency be painfully obvious to all but the most prejudiced members of the audience? 

Would a sports reporter covering a football game be reprimanded if he (or she) asked “what inning is it?”?

On Thursday, July 14, 2005, the top headline on page one of the Los Angeles Times read “Governor to Be Paid $8 million by Fitness Magazine.”  The fact that that updates to that story have been obscure at best indicates a bit of favoritism regarding scandal updates.  Would a Democratic office holder of similar rank, under similar circumstances, get a similar amount of <I>laisse faire</I> response from journalists?  If the California governor was a Democrat, wouldn’t O’Reilly and Hannity have become relentless in excoriating the office holder? 

Is the disparity level of scandal updates an indicator of the possibility that the pro liberal mainstream media have morphed into an embarrassing exhibition of blind Republican talking sock puppets?

Paid journalists who with straight faces assert that conducting investigations into the use of torture enhanced questioning of prisoners will disrupt the business of Congress should be required to write, direct, and narrate a History Channel special on the use of similar methods by the Germans during World War II and they should be compelled to logical explain how the two instances of intelligence gathering are different.

Did the “pro-liberal mainstream media” pay as much attention to the stories that the electronic voting machines can be hacked and the results distorted as they did to the “angry” hecklers at this summer’s townhall meetings?  Why would they want to give more credence to a story that could be based on planted agent provocateurs than they would to a tech story that indicates democracy can easily be subverted?  Think maybe their news judgment regarding these two stories would have any bearing on the amount of their Christmas bonus check from the rich fat cats who own the media that employs them?

In most of the classic Western movies, Americans had a basic high level of animosity regarding a card player who used a stacked deck.  Why, then to they seem to be so unexplainable amenable to “fair and balanced” news reporting that is shoddy and dis-honest? 

If Americans are stupid enough to think that Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are modern day journalists of Edward R. Murrow’s caliber, then they will, without flinching, accept propaganda, disguised as Pulitzer level quality journalism, that will be used to promote Jeb Bush as a sterling example of a qualified candidate to serve as Dick Chenney’s Vice President and be a heartbeat away from sitting in the Oval Office.

So as America enters an new version of the era that maintained “You’re lucky to have a job,” questioning the direction that America’s economy will take as the new post Labor Day Christmas Shopping season begins, is an unnecessary expenditure of energy.  Tune in to any news media.  Turn on the relentless onslaught of Republican talking points and drop out of the necessity of ascertaining the quality of the reporting you see, hear, and/or read.

Most online sources quote George Washington as the source for this quote:  “The last official act of any government is to loot the treasury.”  The Bushes are not known for their propensity to flaunt tradition.

The disk jockey wants to get a holiday weekend so he wants you to go to youtube and play:  Pete Seeger singing “I’m stickin’ to the union,” Roy Orbison’s “Working for the man,” and Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons.”  It’s time for us to take a break.  Have a “kick back” type Labor Day weekend.

Michener’s Warning

This column was re-written and then submitted to Smirking Chimp and re-submitted to Op Ed News.  The updaed version is being posted Labor Day at 5:54 p.m. Pacific Tims

[Book Review]
James Michener’s 1985 novel, Texas, is, in this columnist opinion, the best book for helping liberals understand George W. Bush, that’s available, even though it reads more like a history of the state than a psychological guidebook to the 43rd President. 

However, if someone who picks up a used copy of the Random House hardback edition for a buck at the Venice branch of the Los Angeles Public Library starts to read this entertaining and informative book just for pleasure, it will quickly become apparent that it will be necessary to start marking off the appropriate passages for use in a review of the book seeking to prove the contention made in the preceding paragraph.  What seemed to be a pleasant read is going to require that it be done while wearing the “book reviewer’s hat” because there’s going to be a massive amount of good quotes and salient points to mark off and then sort through when the time comes to write it up.

The fact that when Texas became a state, it reserved the right to secede and become an independent nation might be of interest in the first stages of the post (George W.) Bush era, and the footnote that it also has the right to break itself up into five separate states might be of interest to Obama era political pundits who keep close score on the political balance in the U. S. Senate.  Those two items of interest have nothing to do with the psychology of the former president, so where is the juicy stuff that will remind the good Bushies of what made their man special?

Michener weaves the saga of several different families from separate periods of Texas history into one marvelous narrative thread and when he get into the story of Todd Morrison and his family who moved to Texas from Detroit, he includes a vignette about the daughter, Beth, learning about Texas’ history, such as the fact that Mentone, a city of 41, is the seat for the county of Loving (pop. 163).  The father becomes concerned about the lack of equal emphasis on world geography and history.  That may remind some readers of a time based upon a gaff in a Presidential debate, when Yankee journalists couldn’t grasp the basics of management and understand that a president would have PhD level advisors to tell him all he might need to know about foreign countries, such as one he might be invading soon.

Yeah, it might be an interesting coincidence immediately after Sara Palin resigned as the governor of Alaska to note that one of Texas’ greatest heroes, Sam Houston, at different times in his life, resigned as governor of two different states, but that has nothing to do with figuring out what made “Dubya” tick.

Folks in the L. A. area, who are closer to the movie industry than the oil drilling business, might enjoy the book a great deal because it contains (in a subliminal mode) pitches for some stories that have a high movie potential such as the life of Panther Lomax, Otto Macnab, his grandson Oscar Macnab, and/or Loan Wolf Gonaullas.  Film buffs will be quick to jump to the conclusion that the story of Emma Larkin’s capture by the Comanche and subsequent liberation, was filmed and is rated as one of John Wayne’s best.

When you get to page 259 and read that Rev. Joel Job Harrison said:  “The Texan who guns down his neighbor does not visualize himself as committing a crime,” it starts to become apparent that a President from that state might not be bothered by the legalities of a scrap of paper from a conference which he didn’t attend and then find himself as commander-in-chief, being constricted by a bunch of foreigners who established rules that might restrict the interrogation of a prisoner who might be withholding valuable information which would put the lives of American military personnel at risk, if it were not divulged. 

The Texan’s regard for religion becomes even more obvious when, on the same page, the author outlines the case of the Baptist minister John Franklyn Norris who won an argument with three bullets.  Michner says:  “The jury found him innocent on the grounds, I suppose, that he was a member of the cloth and therefore incapable of doing wrong.”  It seems that Texans accord Presidents that same assumption.

When Judge O. D. Cannon shoots a black lawyer (on page 741) the readers learn:  “The coroner’s verdict:  Harriel Geiger had been guilty of repeated contempt and had been properly rebukes.”

Some “scientists” say that a man can’t hold two contradictory thoughts in his head simultaneously.  Obviously those experts (who believe in “global warming” also?) have never been to Texas.  Michener notes on page 615:  “ . . . many slave holders were convinced tat their slaves, at least, were supremely happy in their position of servitude; but at the same time, the owner were desperately afraid of slave uprisings, . . . .”

Michener sums it all up in the last line:  “Never forget, son, when you represent Texas, always go first class.”  The American citizens who live outside of Texas may need to read this book to see that, by Texas standards, George W. Bush did just that.  This book is highly recommended for any of the fans who would like to understand George W. Bush better.  (We know the book uses the novel format to relate incidents based on the events of actual Texas citizens and hence it could have been a better book (at least for reviewers) if it had an index.)

The best Texas quote may have come from a non-Texan woman, Leona Helmsley who said:  “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes ….”  That quote alone should get her a place of honor in the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

Now, the disk jockey will attempt to string together the ten best Texas songs of all Time

Deep in the Heart of Texas (is that song still banned on the BBC?)
Yellow Rose of Texas
Waltz Across Texas (by Ernest Tubb)
Bob Wills is still the King (by Waylon  Jennings)
Houston (by Dean Martin)
Abilene (by George Hamilton)
Amarillo by Morning
Theme from “Giant”
Big D little a Double L –a-s
El Paso (by Marty Robbins)
For a much longer list click:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2004-04-01/feature.php

This is the World’s Laziest Journalist reporting live, via wi-fi, from the Cow’s End Coffee House in Venice CA, saying:  Have a “Todd, you must go to bed each night reassuring yourself:  ‘This is Never Going to End’ (especially wars in Iraq and Afghanistan)” type week.

Wilson coulda been much worse

Liberals were quick to pounce on Rep. Joe Wilson for yelling “You Lie!” during the President’ speech as an unnecessary display of a lack of decorum and politeness.  Republicans, who don’t think any such display of partisanship would have been admissible during a Bush speech, are chuckling over the tree-huggers dismay when Freedom of Speech is used by a conservative.  Secretly the conservatives know that Joe showed an admirable amount of restraint.  Can you imagine the kumbaya faction’s reactions if Wilson had added even more drama by using the old political cliché:  “Great White Father speaks with forked tongue.”?  The Republicans would have been delighted and the liberals would have had a massive coronary thrombosis, no doubt. 

The press has been castigated by liberals for not fact checking and ascertaining the veracity of the President’s statement, which Wilson challenged.  Is it favoritism for the news people to ignore that aspect of the outburst?  Doesn’t the failure to point out that Wilson was wrong actually, subliminally,  burnish the Republicans and the “angry white male” image they are trying to convey? 

That brings up a rather esoteric question about the coverage of Wilson’s outburst.  Did someone tip off any journalist about it?  When photojournalists and video cameramen are covering a Presidential speech they concentrate on watching the speaker.  Yes, someone may be instructed to take reaction shots of the listeners, but “You lie!” only takes a second to utter and the odds that a still photographer hand a video cameraman would both be aiming their equipment at Wilson at the same time is rather questionable at best.  Were they tipped about the rude outburst beforehand?

Speaking of news photos, and rendering issues in shades of black and white, a visit to the <a href=http://www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org/>Annenberg Space for Photography</a> in the Century City section of Los Angeles on Friday and were very impressed by this new learning resource for photographers.  It was very interesting to note that a good many of the images were Black and White prints.  They conveyed more than just a bit of nostalgia for the Nikon F era of photojournalism.

This column had been roughed out in note form with the intention of actually doing the keystrokes and posting it while riding on an Amtrak train.  Our plans were quickly reconfigured on Saturday when a serendipity lark adventure provided us with a chance to gather some facts and information for a future column which will be posted later in the month (or year?).

One of our ongoing fact gathering tasks, recently, has been to learn as much as possible as fast as possible about the speaking circuit.  Part of our weekend experience was meeting <a href =http://wheeloffthewagon.com/>Jennifer Kay</a> who is an author who is expanding her efforts into giving motivational speeches.  We will share what we learn with her as well as with the lawyer for the Marina Tenants Association whose interesting legal plight is being extensively covered by <a href =http://www.fulldisclosure.net/>Fulldisclosure’s cable TV show</a>.  The president of the MTA, a personal friend, has asked this columnist to help supply the lawyer with information about the area of the speakers’ circuit that specializes in legal matters. 

Speaking of talking, this columnist was recently interviewed for <a herf =http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ComedianStevieMack/2009/09/07/Bob-Patterson–Worlds-Laziest-Journalist>Stevie Mack’s</a> online radio show and we were delighted to be given the chance to practice our verbal promobabble skills.

The Republicans seem to be entering an “anything goes” style of attacking President Obama and a column speculating about where that is taking the county will be posted sometime soon.

Carl Sagon has said:  “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Now, the disk jockey will play the Rolling Stones song “Lies” (from the Some Girls album).  It’s time to post this column.  Have a “and that’s no lie” type week.

L’enfant Terrible Strategy Returns

Recently <a href =http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/gibbs-people-arent-upset-because-obama-black>John Amato</a> mentioned that he agrees with Maureen Dowd and former President Jimmy Carter, regarding the fact that the RepubliKKKan party seems to be taking a racist view concerning the current President.  Some liberal web sites seem to be reluctant to let a columnist do cross postings that make the same contention.  Racial hatred exists in America.  Is ignoring that facet of American culture analogous to denying that Germany used gas chambers to exterminate millions of Europeans?

Would it have been good journalism if Edward R. Murrow reported that the blitz was hardly noticeable and the Brits were on the verge of beating Germany into submission?

Since, the Republicans had conniptions when anyone even hinted that George W. Bush’s thinking and plans were not infallible and since it is obvious that they don’t maintain that attitude of deserved respect for a President who isn’t a white guy, the first question is:
Do you think that the Republicans would authorize the dirtiest political trick their strategists could devise?

If you replied in the affirmative, then the next question is:  “Are they playing the race card?”  Haven’t some online pundits christened the current conservative strategy as the “angry white man” approach?

Are the RepublicKKKans big on traditional American values?

Isn’t the most basic fundamental American right Free Speech?

How long will it take for the leading conservative spokesman to notice that el Rushbo can not use a racial slur word when talking about the current President?  Won’t that give el Rushbo the option of either becoming a martyr for the Free Speech cause or the guy who broke down the prohibition for the use of the “N-word” when white conservatives talk about President Obama?  Think good manners would cause them to scrap that political gambit idea?  If they thought it would be the decisive move in their 2012 Presidential campaign, would any one of them suggest not doing that because it would be tawdry?

Wouldn’t the martyr bit or the return of the once common racial slur bolster the RepubliKKKans’ reputation with the redneck guys who are the target market for the “angry white guy” strategy?  Doesn’t that mean it boils down to a win-win choice for the radio loudmouths?

What would happen if el Rushbo got hizself arrested for using the “N-word” and was charged with a hate crime?  Wouldn’t the folk who strongly support Joe Wilson’s show of disrespect endorse the Excellence in Broadcasting top spokesman’s hypothetical effort to avail himself of his free speech rights?  Wouldn’t they become more than a bit outraged at the efforts to stifle Rush’s political opinion that the use of the “N-word” expresses?

The massive outpouring of monetary support for Joe Wilson indicates that there is an untapped well of resentment against President Obama that is harbored by the guys who have a rifle rack in the rear window of their pickup trucks.  They are very willing to put their money where their mouth is.  Joe Wilson was a proxy for a large number of voters.

Democrats are using the old ostrich solution to the problem of this animosity for Obama by pretending it doesn’t exist.

The RepubliKKKans are coming as close to crossing the line with the topic as they can.  Isn’t it logical to conclude that when the time comes for President Obama to run for reelection, the heat of the moment will produce an “inadvertent” slip and put the speculations raised by this column on top of the current events agenda?

Conservative pundits are holding the “N-word” move until they can gain the maximum surprise value from it.  The liberal pundits seem to be perpetually willing to give the RepublicKKKans the benefit of the doubt about how dirty things are going to get.

This columnist has a right to express an opinion and saying what we think the RepubliKKKans will do is part of the old “everyone is entitled to their opinion” school of thought.  For RepubliKKKans, hypocrisy is a virtue and we fully expect that they will vehemently deny that there is even a possibility that things will sink that low before election day 2012, but we beg to differ.  If Joe Wilson can win their approval of his interruption of a Presidential speech, how can they possibly object to an online pundit giving his opinion about where their <I> L’enfant terrible </I> antics will take the country when the beleaguered voters will have to cope with President Obama’s attempt to get re-elected?

Online one will find this quote from “To Kill a Mockingbird:”  “There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads- they couldn’t be fair if they treid. In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s word, the white always wins. They’re ugly, but these are the facts of life.”

Now, the disk jockey will play the ultimate difference of opinion song, Lloyd Price’s 1959 hit “Stagger Lee” and we’ll beat a hasty retreat.  Have an undeniably great week.

Where have all the hippies gone?

Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com)Where have all the hippies gone?By Bob PattersonCreated Sep 17 2009 – 2:00pm

[Note: This column was written and posted while listening to the Rush Limbaugh program for Thursday September 17, 2009.]

Just as the Sixties were beginning, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a farewell speech [1] which warned about the emerging power grab from the Military Industrial Complex in the United States. Vietnam was a former French colony know mostly only to Americans who got A’s in geography, when he said: “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

On a day when Rush Limbaugh is doing his best to refute the wisdom of the move to scrap plans to build a missile shield in Europe, the lesson of America’s war in Vietnam seems to be this: if a long war was good, a state of permanent war is even better.

On September 11, 2001, Hunter S. Thompson (Kingdom of Fear page 161) wrote: “Make no mistake about it: We are At War now – with somebody – and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.”

Finally the hawks can relax and not worry that those damn hippies are going to keep singing their peacenik songs until World Peace arrives.

The author of Operation Chaos is asserting that President Obama is promoting the chaos and furor about race that is currently the top topic of conversation. Listening to Rush on Thursday morning, September 17, 2009, it seems like the Freedom Marches never happened.

Reading news reports that President Obama is deciding about sending more troops to Afghanistan, it seems like now more than ever hippies would need to hear some inspiring songs to encourage peace, love, and understanding.

Rush has informed his audience that the racism issue is being used to obscure the fact that Obama is (as el Rushbo wishes) failing.

Sociologists may well mark the week of September 13 – 19, 2009 as the week when the Sixties really ended.

Back in the Sixties, the City of New York urged citizens: “Give a damn!” Now, the Supreme Court seems to be on the verge of pitting large corporations against individuals and assessing it as an even fight. Surely the hippies who wanted to get involved will be smart enough to realize that if “you can’t fight city hall,” then it’s total insanity to try to buck Wall Street. (Wouldn’t real hippies use a slogan with a word spelled just s tad different from “buck”?)

Would Mario Savio back Rush’s sarcastic remarks about President Obama as an example of Free Speech that had to be defended or would he condemn it?

Aren’t any anti-war rallies, these days, more like a hippie reunion than they are an expression of a “youth-quake”?

Rush says that if President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan (and Rush knows that he will), then any Democrats who speak out against it are racists.

The news on Wednesday that Mary Travers had passed away makes it obvious that the peacnik movement of hippies and older activists lies in the past. Peace activism must be laid to rest. It brings to mind the title of a Waylon Jennings song: “Living Legends Are a Dying Breed.”

It’s time for hippies to face the truth: RIP the Sixties [2].

Joni Mitchel put it this way: “They won’t give peace a chance, that’s just a dream some of us had.”

(What were the best songs of the Sixties [3]?) Now, the disk jockey will play “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
Maybe we’ll spend the afternoon in San Francisco. Have a groovy week.

Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com)

Where have all the hippies gone?

By Bob Patterson

Created Sep 17 2009 – 2:00pm

 

[Note: This column was written and posted while listening to the Rush Limbaugh program for Thursday September 17, 2009.]

Just as the Sixties were beginning, President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a farewell speech [1] which warned about the emerging power grab from the Military Industrial Complex in the United States. Vietnam was a former French colony know mostly only to Americans who got A’s in geography, when he said: “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

On a day when Rush Limbaugh is doing his best to refute the wisdom of the move to scrap plans to build a missile shield in Europe, the lesson of America’s war in Vietnam seems to be this: if a long war was good, a state of permanent war is even better.

On September 11, 2001, Hunter S. Thompson (Kingdom of Fear page 161) wrote: “Make no mistake about it: We are At War now – with somebody – and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.”

Finally the hawks can relax and not worry that those damn hippies are going to keep singing their peacenik songs until World Peace arrives.

The author of Operation Chaos is asserting that President Obama is promoting the chaos and furor about race that is currently the top topic of conversation. Listening to Rush on Thursday morning, September 17, 2009, it seems like the Freedom Marches never happened.

Reading news reports that President Obama is deciding about sending more troops to Afghanistan, it seems like now more than ever hippies would need to hear some inspiring songs to encourage peace, love, and understanding.

Rush has informed his audience that the racism issue is being used to obscure the fact that Obama is (as el Rushbo wishes) failing.

Sociologists may well mark the week of September 13 – 19, 2009 as the week when the Sixties really ended.

Back in the Sixties, the City of New York urged citizens: “Give a damn!” Now, the Supreme Court seems to be on the verge of pitting large corporations against individuals and assessing it as an even fight. Surely the hippies who wanted to get involved will be smart enough to realize that if “you can’t fight city hall,” then it’s total insanity to try to buck Wall Street. (Wouldn’t real hippies use a slogan with a word spelled just s tad different from “buck”?)

Would Mario Savio back Rush’s sarcastic remarks about President Obama as an example of Free Speech that had to be defended or would he condemn it?

Aren’t any anti-war rallies, these days, more like a hippie reunion than they are an expression of a “youth-quake”?

Rush says that if President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan (and Rush knows that he will), then any Democrats who speak out against it are racists.

The news on Wednesday that Mary Travers had passed away makes it obvious that the peacnik movement of hippies and older activists lies in the past. Peace activism must be laid to rest. It brings to mind the title of a Waylon Jennings song: “Living Legends Are a Dying Breed.”

It’s time for hippies to face the truth: RIP the Sixties [2].

Joni Mitchel put it this way: “They won’t give peace a chance, that’s just a dream some of us had.”

(What were the best songs of the Sixties [3]?) Now, the disk jockey will play “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
Maybe we’ll spend the afternoon in San Francisco. Have a groovy week.

Subliminal (but Friendly) Persuasion

Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com)Subliminal (but Friendly) PersuasionBy Bob PattersonCreated Sep 23 2009 – 11:48am

 

Regular visitors to this site who want accuracy in their political punditry might do well to flip through some travel magazines while keeping in mind the old axiom: accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.

Here’s an example: when this columnist first arrived in Sydney Australia, one thing which caught our attention was that country’s biggest bookstore. While chatting with a clerk at the bookstore, we got a surprise because she was enthusiastic about travel and specifically mentioned her hopes for visiting a museum located in the Los Angeles neighborhood we had just left.

If (subjunctive mood) we had any knowledge of factors which might lessen her enthusiasm to visit that tourist attraction should we/must we inform her about that? We had visited that museum on a spur-of-the-moment impulse and had gotten some good material for a column and relayed that information to her. What if our assessment had been that she wouldn’t like it?

Would “throwing cold water” on her intention to go see it for herself have served any worthy journalistic goal? Would it have been sufficient to encourage her to read all she could about it before she spent money for an airplane ticket?

Travel writers have to be like cheerleaders. Spend the money! Go see it!
How often do you see an article in a travel magazine that advises the reader to save some money and skip some exotic destination?

The guys who get assignments from travel publications don’t usually travel incognito so that they can give “fair and balanced” assessments of their impressions gathered at the place they visited. They may get comped meals. Often they get a public relations specialist to personally escort them and make sure they don’t get snarled in such mundane activities as waiting in line. They usually get good seats at the theater and when they give enthusiastic reports about their subjective reaction to the change in geography, they are essentially selling the idea of traveling there and they usually want to, in salesmanship terms, sell the sizzle and not the steak.

With that in mind, try gathering some current political punditry and see if there is any similarities to travel writing in the political journalist’s methodology.

Does one media outlet consistently give reports that favor one political party and denigrate the efforts of the other? Is that what America’s founding fathers had in mind when they extolled the value of a free press?

What harm is done if the Los Angeles and the San Francisco papers show bias and favoritism when the Giants play the Dodgers? Doesn’t a lack of objectivity add some spice to the stories that appear the following morning? Is there any harm in letting that style of favoritism spill over into political punditry?

Let’s say that people who have worked hard to steal a fortune are faced with the prospect of seeing some of it dribble away via a tax increase. If the reality is that rich people often don’t pay any tax and they convince the voters that the government effort to raise taxes amount to them taking “our” money, shouldn’t they get an “attaboy” for their fake-out? Don’t people who get suckered into supporting tax cuts for the very rich deserve to be fooled under the “caveat emptor” principle?

Why should journalists be convinced that professional ethics require that they should give the man in the street a valid heads-up?

If partisanship is supposed to be an integral part of punditry, does that leave any room for items that neither conservatives nor liberals would endorse? Such as? Has any other commentator assessed this columnist’s theory that President Bush let Osama bin Laden escape from the Tora Bora mountains in return for a promise that there would be no terrorist attacks inside the USA during Bush’s term in office?

Ansel Adams worked photographic magic by rendering scenery into various values on a gray scale, but shouldn’t journalism be like a sketch done with pen and ink that gives an accurate picture using only the two extremes of black and white or would they then be accursed of racism?

Would the same number of people have paid their hard earned money to see Houdini perform if he were called “an illusionist” rather than the world’s greatest magician?

If unbridled salesmanship is an acceptable part of punditry, are you as eager as this columnist is to see which journalist will be the first to endorse Jeb as the best qualified contender to seek the Presidency in 2012?

Teddy Roosevelt had this bit of travel advice: “I have always been fond of the West African proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’ “

Now, the disk jockey will play Pat Boone’s “Friendly Persuasion.” We gotta fly. Have a “see ya later, alligator” type week.

Is Facebook killing Photojournalism?

Is Facebook destroying photojournalism?

 

In Fremantle, Western Australia, they have erected a statue of one of the city’s more famous citizens.  Is the number of people who want to see a photo of the statue of AC/DC’s lead singer, Bon Scott, larger than the number of people who want to see an image of somebody’s mug in front of it?

 

While traveling from hostel to hostel in Australia, this columnist was presented with a cornucopia of information, impressions, advice, and manifestations of another country’s culture and, after covering a student demonstration in Berkeley a few days ago, one of the subtle lessons of the journey down under bubbled to the surface.

 

In Australia, all the young people with digital cameras were taking photos of themselves with various and sundry tourist attractions in the background.  In Berkeley, none of the photographers seemed to be taking photos which would prove to their editors that they had indeed found their way to Sproul Plaza and were fulfilling “the chief’s” (All M.E.’s secretly love to be called “the chief”) order to bring back images that would visually tell the story that the students at UCB were backing the faculty in a protest against budget cuts.  “Chop from the top!”

 

Earlier this month, a visit to the <a href = http://www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org/>Annenburg Space for Photogaphy</a> in the Century City section of Los Angeles (what gives you the right to ask if I’m a Kerouac wannabe recast in the digital age?) we saw that some of the images in Black & White gave off a heavy nostalgia karma even thought they were taken last year.  The only time visitors saw the faces of the various photographers was during interview portions of the accompanying video.

Shouldn’t someone somewhere tell these digital era wanderers that they might want to get the heck out of the way and take quality photos and not snapshots that only their friends and family might want to see.

Andy Warhol said that a good photograph was in sharp focus and was of a famous person.  Yeah, future generations might want to see a photo of you looking at one of Manhattan’s urban canyons if (big IF) you actually became a famous literary figure, but if not, the chances are that unless its Dorothy Lang documenting the latest Great Depression, no one wants to waste valuable net surfing time looking at a photo of you with San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge lurking in the background

<a href =http://www.life.com/?xid=homepage>Life magazine</a>, the <a href =http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/?hp>New York Times, Slate</a>, and <a href=http://todayspictures.slate.com/20090922/>Slate</a> all have an array of the day’s best photos.  (Slate’s are mostly from Magnum’s files.)  Perhaps they should team up with Nikon magazine and hold a photo contest for the best “facebook” style mug shot?  Wouldn’t that, at least, get some of them to stop for a few moments and try to capture an image with some composition and esthetic appeal?

Baby boomers will recall a snapshot contest held by local newspapers in conjunction with Kodak, which was held every summer in the Fifties.  Where is the digital era replacement competition?  The aforementioned photo print competition produced some excellent entries and didn’t those contests also help build circulation for the newspapers?

All these digital mug shots would be great if the subject were famous and being booked at the Los Angeles’ sheriff’s substation in Malibu, but absent those extenuating factors, this columnist can look at pictures taken by friends and other travelers and understand that if they have the image on their digital camera, that indicates that they were probably there when the photo was taken and so attention can be concentrated on evaluating the artistic quality of the image.

Let say, for example, that you are sitting at the rooftop smokers’ table at the Sydney Central Backpackers Hostel and one of the group shows you an excellent picture of one of the bats who hangs out at the Botanical Garden (they really do hang upside down).  The fact that he had the quick reflexes needed to get the picture was remarkable.  It would have been asking too much to insist that he should have included his own face in the picture. 

Did anybody who had the presence of mind to grab their camera while Pearl Harbor was under attack bother to take a “facebook” style picture to prove that they were there when the bombs hit the fan deck?

Back in the day, when a fellow had to perhaps botch completely the development of a roll or two while learning to put a roll of 35mm film on a Nikor reel, it took time to learn all the factors that go into a good picture, and since film and processing were expensive, it was a good idea to hesitate a moment and pre-visualize the image that was about to be captured.  Now, the digital cameras make all the creative decisions and give the shooter the option of manually doing an override.  So the digital beatniks can aim, shoot, and scoot in the time it used to take to focus with a Nikon F and the quality level of the image suffers in a proportional way.  The quicker a facebook shot is taken the lower its esthetic level will be.

It used to be that the Associated Press rarely gave a photo credit to one of its staff for doing their job.  Every once in awhile, one of them would take a remarkable photo, such as the one Eddie Adams got of the <a href =http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0410/faas.html>Saigon chief of police shooting a guy in the head</a>, and then the editors would figure that the photographer’s name would be attached to that picture when it would inevitable (as it did) win a Pulitzer Prize, so they would figure “why wait” and put it in the caption when it first moved on the wire.

Perhaps, because just about the only time we’ve seen real “facebook” photos is when they are posted on other sites after the subject has become a person of interest in a notorious crime, we’ve completely misjudged the quality of that site’s photojournalism?

Then again, we did see a lot of the “let’s upstage the scenery” type shots in the various Australian hostels.  There were exceptions to the rule, as we have noted, but we’ll go with the statistical majority.

These days, it seems, even images from a stock shot source include the photographer’s name in the photo credit line.  Shouldn’t bloggers emulate the egomaniac level of self-promotion style of folks such as Thomas Pynchon, J. D. Salinger, (Banksy?) and B. Traven?

Facebook reminds us of the old Groucho Marx line:  “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.”  That doesn’t mean, however, that we wouldn’t be thrilled to start cross-posting some of our columns on Digihitch

Now, the disk jockey will play “Kodachrome” and we’ll fade to black.  Have a “Quick, get the camera!” type of week.  [You want extraneous and distracting information about where photos and stories come from?  This column was composed at a crash pad provided by a good friend in Berkeley and it will be posted via wi-fi (10-4 that) from the Mediterraneum Café, which local legend says was frequented by former Berkeley resident Jack Kerouac.]

Tracking Kerouac’s Ghost

This columnist’s attempt to emulate Jack Kerouac didn’t start last October first when we walked away from our former digs in the Mar Vista section of Los Angeles and set out to become a digital beatnik.  Becoming a blogger on the road was an inconceivable concept when we tried hitchhiking across the USA during the Sixties.  Our most recent effort to renew the quest was more like a chance to put it into high gear.  We have always been vaguely aware that it was a mythical task and not something like trying to gather material for use in a doctoral thesis.  Picking up a copy of John Leland’s <I>Why Kerouac Matters</I> made the option of rejecting the facts about one of the Beat Generation’s founding fathers a necessity.  How can free spirits possibly take a political conservative as a role model?

Leland makes a heroic effort to debunk the life of the guy who spawned the efforts of a generation’s groovy efforts to establish a culture of peace, love, and understanding.  It’s easier to hold on to one’s illusions than to read the effort to prove that <I>On the Road</I> was a paean to conservative values.  As Leland says on page 60:  “It is a point seldom acknowledged that <I>On the Road</I>, a slacker bible for the last half century, begins with career counseling and a lecture on the Protestant work ethic.”

Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, Walt Whitman, Ernie Pyle (when he was a columnist and not a war correspondent), and Woody Guthrie had laid the foundation for the establishment of a footloose and fancy free faction of post war American culture and so if the hippies missed Kerouac’s point when they read his detailing of the adventures of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity.

Finding a fellow in Canberra who claimed to have traveled back in time and served as the <a href =http://worldslaziestjournalist.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/shroudman-update/>model for the creation of the image on the Shroud of Turin</a> was more in keeping with our quest than having Leland point out that “On the Road” starts with guidance counseling about establishing a firm work ethic.

Last October we honed in on a visit to the Beat Museum.  A year later we went back to put an idea in the suggestion box.  The proprietor seemed very interested in the idea and we will get back to that in a future column after his “yea or nay” decisions has been made.

Shortly after this year’s (annual?) hajj to the Beatnik’s Mecca, we came up with a question.  The Beat Museum gift shop has a cornucopia of relevant books  which folks like to peruse.  After we walked away we realized that there might be an even better idea to drop in the comments box.  If Jack Kerouac spawned the coffee house fad, why doesn’t the Beat Museum start their own brand of coffee (call it “Jack’s Java”?) and sell cups at their Columbus Ave bricks and mortar location.  It would be imperative for it to offer free wi-fi connections so that a tsunami of “guess where I am” type blog entries that could be posted with the “reporting live from the Beat Museum in San Francisco” label attached.

It has taken a year to refine the latest formula for becoming a (digital) beatnik and so it seems imperative to use the next year to continue the quest.  Instead of buying a round trip ticket to Sydney, this time around it seems more efficient to buy a one way ticket to Oz. 

New Zealand is raised to a “must” level.  We’ve always heard only good things about New Zealand.  Some people like NYC; some don’t.  Some People like L. A.; some don’t.  Never have we heard a discouraging word about New Zealand.  More sailors jump ship (according to hearsay evidence) than in any other country in the world.  That tells you something.

This time, rather than doing an about-face in Perth, we could buy a one-way ticket and continue West to . . . Prague?  It would be a case of following the Perth to Prague to Paris path.

Recently, we were rather harsh in our comments on snapshots and despite the fact that it isn’t part of this columnist’s <I>modus operandi</I>, we immediately noticed that some old snapshots we had found for sale in a flea market held a hypnotic fascination for us.

A snapshot of a lady onboard a ship with the handwritten caption “<a href =http://worldslaziestjournalist.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/shroudman-update/>Spring 1942</a>” inspired intensive speculation about the circumstances that instigated that trip for her.  Maybe after we revisit Perth, see Prague, Berlin, Munich, our high school classmate who lives near Frankfort, Paris, London (?), Ireland, and then cash in on an offer to crash in Vermont next September, then, perhaps, we could use that snapshot to inspire a work of fiction.

Snapshots of Hemingway, F. Scot Fitzgerald, and family and friends are valuable historic documents and for those getting their picture taken, they can serve as a subliminal expression of faith and encouragement.  It’s a way to reassure members of your posse that you are certain that they will become famous and their photos will be avidly sought by biographers. 

Some recluses such as B. Traven, Thomas Pynchon, and J. D. Salinger, actively avoid (like the Amish?) having their photos taken.  Imitating writers who have posed for photos or not is a personal choice and not an essential vocational decision, eh?

A year ago, the use of the President (at that time) was admonishing journalists for using the word “recession.”  This year, the word “depression” is being included in assessments of President Bush’s replacement, so perhaps another year of gathering photos and quick notes from various places outside of Los Angeles’ city limits might be an acceptable reason for not being as vociferous in our criticism of the occupant of the White House as we were over a year ago.

Don’t the French have an old saying about the more you try to implement a “Change” agenda, the less your legacy will be?

Hmmm.  Let’s think this through.  Conservatives, such as Rush Limbaugh, are getting scads of money to denigrate (is that a racist term?) the President.  This columnist can write some scathing comments about “to surge or not to surge in Afghanistan, that is the question,” (for a great deal less money than el Rushbo gets) or we can check out the veracity of the statement we heard in Fremantle:  “In Ireland, in the summer, the rain is warm; in winter it’s cold.” 

Gee, it seems that it might be more fun to get to Koolgardie and go on one of the local metal detector scavenger hunts in the nearby desert than to write a tepid “second the motion” columns that reinforce criticism of the guy who is continuing the implementation of George W. Bush’s war policy.

Literary scholars have not revealed much, if any, commentary in the Kerouac notebooks about Korea, Eisenhower, or the dog Checkers.  Who has a bigger literary reputation in Paris, these days:  Kerouac or Drew Pearson?

When does the Metropole Paris web site hold their weekly <a href =http://www.metropoleparis.com/aclub.html> meetings</a>?  Do we need a reservation for next June?

Leland gives readers (on page 17) this Kerouac quote:  “The things I write about are what an editor usually throws away and what a psychiatrist finds most interesting.”

Now, the disk jockey will play “Around the World” and we will commence efforts to post this via wi-fi from the Berkeley Public Library South Branch.  Have a “do what you said you were gonna do” type week.

Bankers’ Code of Ethics

Several years back, there was a news story about an old guy who would buy a new car quite frequently.  When it was discovered that he was senile and that a salesperson at the car dealership was taking advantage of the poor old fellow, some consumer protection laws were passed and it was established that sharpies had to be forbidden by law from exploiting vulnerable older citizens.

It used to be that at the bank this columnist uses, they had a service called “overdraft protection” and money in the savings account would automatically be transferred to the checking account to cover any shortage of funds if the balance in the checking account couldn’t cover a check and the money in the savings account could make up for the shortfall. 

Now, following a round of banking industry bonuses for their ineptness during the recent financial industry collapse, the banks are charging $10 for each instance of overdraft protection. 

What type of customer would be the most likely to make a math mistake and need overdraft protection?  Do you think that there would be an inordinately high number of AARP members getting dinged by these charges?  If so, why don’t the laws inspired by the serial new car buyer with Alzheimer’s disease apply?  Did the law have a specific exemption for greedy bankers?

If there seems to be an inconsistency in the fact that automobile dealers can’t (by law) take advantage of older customers with diminished metal acuity, then should the same standards of business ethics be applied to the poor distraught bankers who came perilously close to failure recently and now need every small amount of profit they can squeeze out of the citizens in a strapped for cash period of history?

If what the bankers are doing qualified as an example of immoral business ethics wouldn’t some of the nation’s highest ranking clergymen be pointing out those transgressions to their congregations and denouncing such a move as a variation on the stealing principle?  Don’t bankers go to church every Sunday (and sit in the front row)? 

If the bankers were doing something reprehensible, wouldn’t the clergy revive the spirit of chasing the money changers from the temple and speak up?

If what the bankers are doing is not within the guidelines of moral responsibility wouldn’t some crusading journalist with a national audience (if only Tim Russert were still alive, eh?) be pointing out any such financial malfeasance? 

Isn’t not owning a company with your own personal accounting department God’s way of implying that old folks didn’t work enough during their period of employment?  Don’t clergy and bankers concur that the old <I>caveat emptor</I> still applies?

If the only one to point out that the transition from free “overdraft protection” to the automatic deduction of $10 per incident seemed, especially after the tax payers subsidized all those bonuses, a bit like a variation of price gouging aimed at the weak and infirmed, was just a minor web pundit, wouldn’t that indicate that it was more likely a case of illusions of grandeur run amok rather than a journalistic variation of the boy who pointed out that the emperor’s new clothes were nonexistent?

Obviously, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, et al would be standing by with some major Republican talking points, ready to come to the defense of the (maligned?) bankers if there were any possibility that consumers would take any such allegations seriously.  Would bankers whose methodology and morality is being questioned by “the World’s Laziest Journalist” really be able to sneak by the rest of America’s journalism community unnoticed?  Shouldn’t the professionals’ paychecks be a tip-off as to who is (extreme) right and who is wrong?

Rather than editorialize and urge folks to remedy this (misperceived?) injustice, this columnist will ask the audience to render a verdict.  Should copies of this column be forwarded to the reader’s representative in Congress accompanied by a request for a legislative remedy or should the columnist just take a chill pill and do an update on the work being done to bring the nation closer to the day when the George W. Bush Predidential Library is dedicated?

(Can a drawing of Snidely Whiplash be used as an illustration for this column?)

In the film “Wall Street,” Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) coined an American business maxim by saying:  “Greed is good.”

Now, the disk jockey will again play “Take the Money and Run” and we will try to scram.  Have a “get out of jail free card” type week.

Strange Political Tradition in Marina del Rey

[Full disclosure:  While this columnist has been doing fact checking, and file organization work for the Marian (del Rey, CA) Tenants Association, the thought occurred that a collection of tidbits might be of interest to the folks outside the Los Angeles enclave because a quick recapitulation of some of the top news briefs might serve as a paradigm for all the examples of antagonism in contemporary American culture which exist among/between voters, journalist, and politicians of all parties.  Lest any reader make the assumption that some of this column has been fictionalized in an attempt to achieve humor, we will insert the boring academic style citations that prove “we’re not making this stuff up.”]

On August 13, 1961, on page one of the Los Angeles Examiner, Jack Keating, under the headline “County’s New Giveaway Deals” wrote:  “Something is DEAD WRONG with concession leasing and land deals under Los Angeles County’s multi-million dollar recreation program that leaves the door wide open for the Board of Supervisors to give favored parties ‘special treatment.’”  The story suggested:  “The need for a major shakeup in policies of the county board is indicated.”

In “The Urban Marina:  Managing and Developing Marina del Rey” written by Marsha V. Rood and Robert Warren (for the Center fro Urban affairs Sea Grant Program and published by USC) notes, on page 36, that at the same time the Express was questioning the possibility of Giveaway Deals: “In August 1961, the Small Property Owners League of Los Angeles County and the Venice Canal Improvement Association asked by letter that the County Grand Jury investigate the propriety, if not the legality, of a number of the Marina’s aspects, . . .”  On page 37, readers learn “No Grand Jury action was taken on the request.”

In the forward to the study, published in 1974, it was stated:  “No explicit decision was made on the basis of public debate to transform the recreational boating facility into a multi-million dollar regional activity center with predominantly land-oriented development.”

In the Thirties, the Army Corps of Engineering held a hearing to explore the possibility of building a man made marina on the Western edge of Los Angeles County.  When Mrs. Edmund S. Fuller, of the National Audubon Society, wanted to discuss the seventy three species of birds in the area, she was informed the Army Corps of Engineer’s weren’t authorized to consider environmental issues.  The tradition of evading public input had been established two decades before the ceremonial first shovelful of dirt had been excavated.

After the formal dedication ceremony was held in 1965, the locals immediately began the tradition of squabbling with the politicians.  Boat owners fought slip rate increases and, after a series of rapid rent increases, area residents formed a Tenants Association to advocate a need for rent control.

By June of 1979, when the County Board of Supervisors faced the issue of a proposal to impose controls in the county’s incorporated areas, the Los Angeles Times wrote an editorial on June 1, which noted:  “Like other attempts to limit rents, it would be a snare and a delusion.” 

On that same day, James A. Hayes, the area’s representative on the County Board of Supervisors, resigned without a word of explanation.  On the following day, Saturday June 2, 1979, Bill Boyarsky, in a front page story for the Los Angeles Times, said:  “Nobody answered the door at Hayes’ home in the expensive Palos Verdes community of Rolling Hills.  And he had changed his home phone number, effective Friday.  Aides said he had left on an out-of-state vacation.”

Governor Jerry Brown replaced Hayes with Yvonne Burke and she was quickly replaced in the next election, by Deane Dana and things returned to the traditional method of being handled.  By October of 1981, Steve Coll writing in the L. A. Weekly (Vol. 3 No. 47) noted that the voters had been stymied:   “The developers are getting away with murder,” says Seymour Kern, a member of the 1980 – 81 grand jury and chairman of a subcommittee that investigated the rents the county charges developers at Marina del Rey, only to find that the Department of Small Craft Harbors had precluded any action through rulings favorable to the developers.”

In a move to pull an end run on the Board of Supervisors, Marina residents mounted a grass roots effort to establish cityhood.  Their efforts were quickly neutralized.  Mark Gladstone (L. A. Times March 14, 1985) explained how:  “For the second time in less than a year, a legislative attempt has been launched that could block Marina del Rey residents from forming their own city.

“A bill, introduced last week by Sen. William Lockyer (D-Hayward), would prevent residents from taking preliminary steps toward incorporation in areas where less than 50% of the land is privately owned.

“Marina del Rey, an 800-acre waterfront community with at least 8,500 residents, is almost entirely owned by Los Angeles County.”

Later in 1985, (L. A. Weekly Vol. 7 No. 52) an article headlined “The Selling of L. A. County” offered a special investigative report into the effects of campaign donations on county land-use practices by Ron Curran and Lewis MacAdams, with the subhead:  “Developers in L. A. County are giving record amounts of money to the Board of Supervisors and getting in return virtually everything they request.”

The article started (Page 24) by saying: “For some years now it has been common knowledge in political circles that the Board of Supervisors, notably the three conservative members who form a majority, have been massively underwritten by the contributions of land developers eager to have their way in the county with as little interference as possible.”

That same issue also contained a sidebar story on Page 28 “The Million-Dollar Loophole” with the subhead “How the Supervisors get away with ‘legalized sleaze.’”  It said:  “‘You know why you won’t find any illegal sleaze around the supervisors?’ asks Carlyle Hall, director of the Center for Law in the Public Interest.  ‘Because they’ve legalizd all the sleaze.’”

Occasionally some outsiders tried to insinuate themselves into the local scene.  One 1988 article (L. A. Weekly for June 17 – 23 1988 Vol. 10 No. 30) titled “Backroom Moves,” written by Ron Curran, was promoted this way: “Alan Robbins the controversial Valley pol, is up to his neck in shady Marina deals.”  Curran casually explained:  “But it is Robbin’s less-reported power plays to protect and enhance his substantial investments in Marina del Rey – including a recent secret attempt to buy a community newspaper that has scrutinized Marina real-estate projects from which he stands to make million of dollars – that most graphically reinforce criticisms that Robbins spends more of his political time and effort serving his personal interests than serving the interests of his community.”

Could anything shady happen in the late Eighties without BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) being involved?  Glad you asked because they got in on the action, too, but the local political methodology caused them to quickly opt out.  Jeffrey L. Rabin, writing in the Los Angeles Times (March 19, 1991) put it this way:  “A group of wealthy Saudi Arabian investors have filed suit to dissolve their partnership with Marina del Rey’s biggest developer, accusing Abraham M. Lurie of engaging in fraud since selling them a 49.9% stake in his extensive Marina holdings nearly two years ago.”

In a 1991 page one story (Vol. 13 No. 21), the Los Angeles Business Journal story written by Michael Stremfel and Benjamin Mark Cole, informed readers:  “The unfolding BCCI-Marina del Rey scandal, and an increasing realization that the city and county of Los Angeles often literally do not know with whom they are doing business, last week spurred a wide spread call for reform of local public-disclosure laws.”

The following year, it was the Los Angeles Times singing the same old journalists song.  A three part series started on April 12, 1992 with a headline “Marina del Rey Prospers at Expense of County” followed by the subhead:  “Developers make big profits thorough favorable long-term leases.  Public services lose out.”  An editorial, which ran about the same time, added:  “Nowhere is the arrogant ‘sit-down-and-shut-up’ method of governance on better display than at the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration.”

A 1994 story in the Los Angeles Times on August 11, written by Fredrick M. Muir and Jeffrey L. Rabin carried the headline:  “Grand Jury Asks D. A. to Review Leases at Marina.” 

In 1997, the Arab Sheik was gone. 

In the year 2000, a meager handful of journalists struggled to continue their role in the squabbling.  On January 6, the L. A. Times carried a story headlined:  “County Extends Political Donor’s Leases in Marina.”  A few days later columnist Patt Morrison’s column carried an old refrain:  “Sweetheart Deals Are a Hallowed L.A. Tradition.”

Things have quieted down considerably in the era of “fair and balanced” journalism and there are only occasional hints that some people still value the Marina’s traditions.

One of the latest (last?) efforts to carry on the nearly half century old effort to question the possibility that something is wrong was reported, by Helga Gendell, in the Argonaut newspaper on September 29, 2005, (page 4):  “The suit alleges that certain Marina lessees have been unjustly enriched at the expense of the county and taxpayers, and that lessee campaign contributions and payments to lobbyists to influence the Board of Supervisors may have created a climate under which no price control existed due to a concert of action between the county and the lessees.”

Currently the lawyer who filed that suit, has to deal with other developments which grew out of the effort.  He has been disbarred (and is fighting that move) and is in jail for contempt.  See the Superior Court Ninth District’s case no. 09-56073 for the latest news on how that is going.

A hotel, which is being considered to replace a public beach, heads a list of new items waiting to be approved for construction in Marina del Rey.  The local newspapers the Argonaut and the Venice Beachhead seem to be the only media available to hold up the journalists’ participation in the continual squabbling.

Perhaps Los Angeles magazine’s assignment editor will read this column and hire a highly qualified investigative reporter (snarky columnists need not apply) to do a comprehensive update on the questions that have been being asked for 48 years. 

Some traditionalists might suggest that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors should adopt one of James Cagney’s quotes as their motto:  “Where I come from, if there’s a buck to be made, you don’t ask questions, you go ahead and make it.”

Now, of course our disk jockey is going to play us out with George Strait’s song “Marina del Rey,” but there are bonus points if you know why it’s appropriate that he’s also going to play both “And That Reminds Me” and “Don’t You Know,” which were monster hits for Della Reese.  Like James Hayes, we’ll disappear.