Big, Bigger, Biggest Love

Big Love started its new season Monday on HBO. I'm happy to report that our favorite polygamists are still up to their necks in intrigue with the prophet of the polygamy cult (played so slimily by the great Harry Dean Stanton), and in trying to keep themselves from being exposed as polygamists.

This all sounds familiar because I'm living right in the middle of it. The series is set in Sandy, Utah,* which is where I live. When I moved into my house in 1975 there were three polygamous families within a stone's throw of my house. At least one of the families has moved away, and I haven't seen the others for a long time, so they might be gone, also.

In Big Love reference is made to a fictitious polygamist leader who is on the FBI's Most Wanted list. The fiction is based on Warren Jeffs, prophet of the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Jeffs was caught quite a while ago in Nevada. Here's what he looked like when he was captured. He wouldn't get the job playing himself in a movie. He looks too silly to play the part of a dangerous cult leader.I love the actors in Big Love, and despite the howls from my Mormon neighbors, the dialogue rings true. Mormons really do often reference their standard works in everyday conversation, really do discuss their religion on the job, and the mainstream church has a problem with being lumped in with polygamist sects.

None of the actors are from the culture I live amongst, but they have done a good job of sounding like they are.

Bill Paxton is great in his part as the family patriarch, and each of the actresses who play the wives are perfect in their parts. When they took beautiful women like Jeanne Tripplehorn and Chloe Sevigny and made them look like women I'd see in a Sandy, Utah grocery store, I was very impressed.





I've said this before. The only thing that doesn't ring true is the family being able to keep itself from being known as polygamists. A Utah native could look across the street and with a glance know it was polygamy.

*******

I've softened my objections to the final ending of The Sopranos. I've been reading all kinds of comments, and having thought about it for a few days I'm all right with it. I think it was one of the most suspenseful, well-edited three or four minutes ever. It made me anxious as to what would happen, and then after the buildup it went to black, unresolved! Like all of the other Sopranos fans I felt betrayed, but at least I can understand the thought processes behind such an ending.

Ciao for now.

*Set in Utah, but filmed in California. Seems funny; Touched By An Angel filmed in Salt Lake City for years and the city masqueraded as many other locales, but a show set in Utah is filmed somewhere else.

Sopranos, So What?

…so this is what those of us who have watched The Sopranos for eight years have to show for our time? An enigmatic ending so open to interpretation? So David Chase can't figure out how to end it so he just cuts it off and lets us figure it out?

As far as I'm concerned, HBO has trouble with finishing off series'. I hated the ending to Six Feet Under. At least we had some warning with that, because Nate's death was set up a couple of years before with the episodes about his brain condition. Where Six Feet Under failed was having that 15 minute "closer" with all of the tricky and self-indulgent deaths of the rest of the cast.

It's like David Chase looked at that and said, "I don't want that! I don't want to show all of the Sopranos knocked off in the last episode." So we got Bobby and Silvio in the penultimate episode, and then in the ultimate we're left with an ending that is set up well, at least. The family in a diner, camera showing different guys coming in the door, us thinking, "Is this the shooter?" and then having it cut off just as Steve Perry sings "Don't stop."

Well, we've put up with a lot of crap in The Sopranos hoping some of it would make sense later. The past few episodes, with the exception of Bobby's and Silvio's shootings, and the very satisfying shot of Phil Leotardo getting whacked and having his head run over (!!!) by an SUV, have been very boring. The second -to-last season, with Tony lying in the hospital after being shot by Junior, and the dreams of himself with an identity of someone named Kevin Finnerty, was not only boring, but pointless.

The stuff about A.J. has been excruciating. Very little Meadow, but a lot of my least favorite Soprano, A.J., sniveling, whining and kvetching. I wanted his head to be under the front wheel of the SUV.

C'mon…we as fans deserved better than this. I feel with HBO series that are such fan favorites that it's better to quit them about a year before they end. That way we'd have been some good memories of them.

Hey, HBO…hey, David Chase, how about this idea? You have an "epilogue season." You bring back the cast for six more episodes, only this time the season is about Tony fighting off racketeering and murder indictments. At the end he could walk, Teflon Don-style, or end up saying goodbye to his family from the slam.

Oh, yeah…almost forgot. It's the season premiere tonight of Big Love. I apparently haven't had enough punishment from HBO. So I'll be there.

Ciao for now.

"What'd you do yesterday?" "Nothin'."

If you've ever seen the movie, Office Space, you might remember the scenes where Peter is sleeping through Saturday while his boss leaves many phone messages asking him why he's not at work. A couple of days later his coworker asks him what he did that day and he says, "Nothing. And it was better than I thought it would be."

I saw that movie again Friday night, and decided it sounded like a good idea: a day to do nothing.

Well, no one can do nothing. I mean, you can't sleep all day because you'd have a backache. I would, anyway. Last time I slept all day was when I had a bad case of flu and sleeping seemed like a really good alternative to being awake and hangdog-sick. Even if you're staring at the wall you're doing something. So there really is no nothing, there's always something.

I went to the library and took back a book and a couple of DVD's I'd checked out the week before. When I got home I walked up the sidewalk and looked at the lawn. "Needs mowing," I said to no one.

Sally went with her lifelong friend, Kris, for a day of girl stuff. She left at 9:00 a.m. and I said, "I'll see you about 11:00 o'clock," but I didn't mean 11:00 a.m. Sally and Kris do this thing a couple of times a year and usually spend about 12 hours together, which is enough to keep them from seeing each other more than a couple of times a year.

I watched a DVD, Fiend Without A Face, a 1950s science fiction movie about invisible giant brains sucking the brains out of people.

I went into my computer room and wrote a blog. I wrote a couple of e-mails to friends. I looked up some information on Google.

I went back out in the living room and read a couple of issues of The New Yorker. Interesting articles in the May 28, 2007 issue. One is about the Belgian comic book character, Tintin, and his creator, Hergé; there's a report by author Paul Theroux on his visit to the country of Turkmenistan, whose leader is at least as cracked as Kim Il Jung of North Korea; then a story on the question of what were Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's real words when Lincoln died: "Now he belongs to the ages," or "Now he belongs to the angels"?

I never seem to have enough time to read. It's a luxury.

In the late afternoon it started to get hot in the house and my air conditioning came on. I don't remember much about the next few hours because while the a/c was on, my brain switched off. I know I watched a movie on HBO's On Demand but I can't tell you much about it. It involved shooting and a car chase.

I was in bed, reading a book, when Sally walked in the door at about 11:10 p.m. I wished her good night, turned out the light and then my own lights went out for the next eight hours.

It was a great day, my day of doing "nothing." I'm going to schedule another of those days sometime in the near future.

Ciao for now.

P.S. Sally showed me the dozens of digital photos she took yesterday while touring near Park City. Here are three of my favorites. Click on the pictures for full-size images.

Poppies

A house in Midway, Utah

The Provo River in a drought year.

Bush Is Ill, But Lincoln Is Still Dead

I saw the news story about the recently found Lincoln letter .

I wonder if anyone is checking on the authenticity of that letter? Mark Hofmann is a famous document forger who had world renown a couple of decades ago for his skill. No one would have found out about his documents had he not gotten caught after murdering a couple of people.

He mostly picked on the Mormon church, fooling many of their leaders, but also put out American history documents that have fooled experts. Among his "accomplishments" are documents with Lincoln's signature.

So, buyer beware…it's possible that Hofmann planted that document many years ago, like a time bomb waiting to go off. I would have been a little less skeptical had it not been reported that the recipient of the original letter telegraphed its contents, so while the original hadn't been seen since it was written, the text of the message has been long available.

Anything that shows up like this, any document, should be automatically checked for Hofmann's hand.

Right now he could be smirking and laughing from inside his Utah prison cell.

**********


It's been reported that Bush was sick with some stomach bug the last day of the G8 Conference.

Uh huh.

Then why is it that Nicolas Sarkozy, new president of France, is the one looking dyspeptic? Could it be because of who he's talking to?

Ciao for now.

D-Day Karma

It's the 63rd anniversary of D-Day.

With all of our WWII veterans dying off, it's more important than ever for us to remember the kinds of deeds they performed for us, in our names.

The Iraq War is immediate and on the news every night. It tends to put things like D-Day in better perspective because we're still sending soldiers into combat 63 years later. But, when you see people going about their daily lives, hardly mentioning it, I wonder how many people really care? If you asked some of the high school kids I see every day about D-Day they might conjure up Saving Private Ryan, but more than likely they'd give you a blank look. They look at World War II about the way I thought of the Civil War when I was in high school. It was a long ago event and nothing that happened then was important to me.

I thought that then, but now with age I see all of the wars which involve Americans as an ever-connecting link to the past. Lots of guys have died away from home in lonely, faraway places.

In 1970 a woman struck up a conversation with my friends and me about some things that now would be called New Age: mystical, hippie things that were common then, like astrology. At that time the Vietnam war looked like it would never end and we got onto that subject. I said I'd been lucky: at the height of the Vietnam war in 1967 I was sent to Germany to the peacetime Army. I wondered at my good fortune. She said, "Maybe it wasn't luck, maybe you are reincarnated from a soldier who died on a battlefield at one time, and your karma kept you away from this war."

It sounded funny at the time but it's interesting how what she said has stuck in my mind all these years. I'm not going to go all New Age on you and say I think it's true, but in it's way it made me think of the traditions of men marching off to war as has been done since the dawn of time, and since the founding of our country. It made me feel more connected to them, much more so than any lectures I got while in the Army about the history of wars we have fought.

Every so often that thought comes back to me. While watching Saving Private Ryan, still the best movie about war ever made, I thought, maybe I was one of those guys, coming off the landing craft, hitting the beach, getting the shit blown out of me by German artillery or machine guns. Then I had a mental note of whatever gods of karma there might be sitting around making notes on me in 1967, saying, "Hm. Postino has been drafted. He got killed last time around, so let's see he avoids it this time. Have the Army send him to Germany."

Hey, it could happen!

The cartoon above, from the book Up Front by Bill Mauldin, copyright 1945, is the image that future generations may always have of the Everyman American G.I.

With A Little Help From My Friends

Can it really have been 40 years since the original release of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album? Memory plays tricks. Things that happened a couple of years ago seem far away and lost in time, but the Beatles are always fresh in my mind.

In 1967 I was in the U.S. Army, serving as a clerk in an artillery battery stationed just outside of Nuremberg, Germany. It was my first real time away from home, my first for-sure time outside of the country. My life was made just a little bit easier by some new friends I'd made, some white, some black. That didn't seem strange to me, even then, because I've never been a bigot, but then I came from a lily-white community where I didn't have an opportunity to be a bigot.

That year was a tough one in the United States (what we GI's called "The World"). There were race riots, and civil rights marches, and political and anti-war demonstrations. We were far away, but yet close enough by our ties as fellow Americans. Armed Forces Radio was heavily censored so we couldn't get much news from them. We could pick up the BBC, and we could hear the then-pirate radio station off the coast of England, Radio Caroline. That was where I first heard songs from Sgt Pepper.

I went to the post PX and picked up the British pressing of the album--I remember paying $2.50--and took it back to the barracks. I'd just bought a small Phillips portable record player which sounded awful, but it was the only thing I had to listen to records, so many of us in the barracks had them. At night you could hear all kinds of tinny-sounding music up and down the hallways of the barracks, soul, white pop, country and western. I didn't announce to anyone I had the album, just went back to the room in the barracks I shared with a couple of other guys, sat on my bunk and started playing the record. Within a short period of time there were several other men in the room, both white and black, listening to Sgt Pepper. None of us said anything, we just listened, right through to the sustained piano note in "A Day In The Life."

I wish I could say I was prescient and thought this was the absolute best thing I'd ever heard, or that I felt transcended in some way, but actually there were cuts that disappointed me. I thought George's "Within You Without You" with its prominent sitar was a waste of vinyl, and didn't care much for Paul's "She's Leaving Home," which I thought at the time was sappy. It took a few more listens before I got into the total groove of the album, but it happened. After that first hearing, when the record was over the other guys left the room. One guy stayed behind to talk about it. My black friends had listened in silence as we all had, but nowadays I wonder if it was a racial thing: that they were listening in on what white boys liked so they'd know what cultural forces were at work in the white community. As an African-American friend once explained to me, "Black people know more about white people than you know about blacks, because we are always paying attention." Or maybe they liked the Beatles, too. They never said.

That was 40 years ago. A whole lifetime. Later there were the albums The Beatles, commonly called The White Album, from which Charlie Manson heard things none of the rest of us did, and has some of the Beatles' finest songs. Then what I considered the Beatles greatest album ever, Abbey Road. I believe both of those albums owed their greatness to the groundwork laid by Sgt Pepper. But they came later, when my Army stint was over. What I most remember about hearing Sgt Pepper for the first time that June of 1967 was that in my barracks room there were 12 ears listening silently and intently to every word and every note that came out of that cheap Phillips record player.

Ciao for now.

A Man Is Obliged To Look

Last week while grocery shopping with Sally I walked by a chesty young woman showing about 6" of cleavage. As is my wont in these cases, after having perfected over five decades the art of looking at boobs without being seen, I took a mental snapshot. I turned away before she could catch me looking. Not quick enough for an elderly woman standing by the dairy case, who saw me looking and who shot me a dirty look of her own. If her eyes had been tasers I'd have been writhing on the floor.

I thought, who the hell are you, lady? Sure I looked; I'm a man. A man must look. After all, the young woman carefully chose her clothing that morning, going out for maximum effect. She must've wanted someone to look. I don't think Sally even saw her, but I did, as did the prudish old lady who saw me take my mental photo.

I'm not even that surprised by what females find appropriate to wear outside their homes anymore. I've been working in and around high schools now for years. Over time I've seen the clothing drop away from the girls. I read in the newspaper this morning about more and more young women finding amateur pornography and exhibitionism appealing. Who knew? Why wasn't this happening when I was young enough to do something about it?

Some girls of my generation. Click on pictures for full-size images.
Today we were at the same store and while walking through I spotted a young Latina with a very low cut top. Across the tops of her breasts she had a word tattooed in script that I think was Juggaletto. I don't know what a word like that would mean in Spanish, or whether it's a nickname. It seemed appropriate, considering her bodacious baba-looeys.

Some girls of today's generation.
Ciao for now.

New American

Here's our new American, my daughter-in-law. Along with 195 other immigrants she got her certificate yesterday in a ceremony in Salt Lake City, Utah.

She was born near Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. She is the oldest of 10 children. All of her siblings, and her parents, are still living in Vietnam.

With her new citizenship she has taken a new American name, Julia.

I feel very proud of her and for her. In many ways, and considering the way most Americans take their citizenship for granted--even abuse it--I think she deserves it more than some who have it by birthright. She is a hardworking person who has contributed much to society since she's lived in our country.

Besides, she and my son have made a couple of really great children!
Congratulations to Julia and all of the other 195 people who attained their citizenship yesterday, our new fellow Americans.

Ciao for now.

Memorial Day 2007

To all of the brave men and women, then and now, who gave their all.

We remember you.

Now, Junior, Behave Yourself

A bad little kid moved into my neighborhood
He won't do nothing right just sitting down and looks so good
He don't want to go to school and learn to read and write
Just sits around the house and plays the rock and roll music all night
Well, he put some tacks on teachers chair
Puts some gum in little girl's hair
Now, junior, behave yourself

The other day I walked into an elementary school during an assembly for parents. In the office the principal was pushing a young guy, maybe a 5th or 6th grader, onto a chair. She told the secretary, "He's not going to ruin this for everyone else." I assume she meant he had been acting up in the assembly.

I've seen this kid in the office of that school before. I've seen his mom and dad in the office with the principal. Apparently this kid is the school hell-raiser. The office staff just shake their heads, but the custodian told me once he had taken a dump on the boy's room floor. Sounds like a kid who has some problems.

As I was leaving I noticed he was sitting with his arms folded in front of him, his lips set into a thin line, and his eyes were straight ahead, not on anything in particular. I don't know what a child psychologist would call this body language, but to me it says defiance.

Going tell your mama you better do what she said
Get to the barber shop and get that hair cut off your head
Threw the canary and you fed it to the neighbors cat
You gave the cocker spaniel a bath in mother's Laundromat
Well, mama's head has got to stop
Junior's head is hard as rock
Now, junior, behave yourself

I don't speak to students. It's a policy I've had for 30 years, and unless I'm asked a direct question or am spoken to directly I just keep my mouth shut. This kid, though, I wanted to tell him in as direct a manner as possible: "You can't win."

The deck is stacked against rebellion, defiance of authority, in the school system, in society in general. Some inner programming in some kids makes them kick against the pricks, though. I could tell the kid that, but it wouldn't work. It never does. You've just got to hope they get smart early enough, so that everyone won't give up on them, because that's what happens. Then the real trouble begins.

Bad boys, bad boys
Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do
When they come for you

When you were eight
And you had bad traits
You go to school
And learn the golden rule
So why are you
Acting like a bloody fool
If you get hot
You must get cool

For several years part of my route included one of the kid jails in our county. I call them kid jails but they're official "detention centers" or some other euphemism. But really they're jails for youthful offenders. The worst was a secure, lockdown facility out in the middle of a field, fed into by a single road. If a kid were to go over the wall from that facility he'd be easily picked up because of the distance he would have to travel to get anywhere. Using my own euphemism, I called that one the Young Murderers Program.

Years ago they were holding a 16-year-old who had invaded the home of a 40-year-old woman, beat her, raped her, kidnapped her in her own car, taken her to the shore of the Great Salt Lake, stripped her nude and left her. This was in the middle of December, too. You can't throw a kid that age into prison, but what he did was so bad he belonged there. So they put him in the youth offender program until he was old enough to go to prison.

I was talking about him with a school custodian who told me he'd known the kid when he was five-years-old. The custodian said, "If I was ever to pick a kid who would end up in prison, it'd be that kid." You've got to feel sorry for the teachers and counselors who tried and failed to reach that boy during his growing up years. You also wonder if there came a point where they all looked at him and said, "We've done all that we could, now just go on out and do your thing and we'll see you when they stick the needle in your arm on your execution day."

Well, I'm exaggerating, because in our society people are given chance after chance, and if they're smart they'll take the chance. If not, they'll end up where the rapist-kidnapper ended up.

I looked at the defiant kid in the chair in that elementary school and wanted so bad to tell him what I had to say: "You just can't win. No matter how many times you show hostility to authority or act out against your family or society you just can't win. It's not the way our system works. Wise up now, kid. Pay attention."But what I did was what I always do in that situation: Walk out without saying anything, let the professionals handle him.

Why did you have to act so mean
Don't you know you're human being
Born of a mother with the love of a father
Reflections come and reflections go
I know sometimes you want to let go
Hehehe
I know sometimes you want to let go

Lyrics are from "Bad Boy" by the Beatles and the theme from Cops, "Bad Boys" by Inner Circle. Cartoons are cover illustrations from Panic, issues one and two, from 1954.

50% Honest

Today I lost my cell phone. I got to a school on my route and realized I didn't have it. I retraced my steps and drove to a school where I thought I'd lost it. I asked the secretary if someone had turned in a cell phone and she held it up. "A lady just brought it in," she said.

"Great," I said. "Where's the case?" I have a nice leather cover with a magnetic flap, so the phone can't fall out.

"There wasn't a case," she replied.

So I got my phone back, which was important, but no case. Hmmm. Now where did it go? If the whole thing fell out of my truck onto the ground, then the phone wouldn't just fall out of the case because of the magnetic flap. What I had to conclude was the lady who found the phone took the phone out of the case, kept that, then turned in the phone.

Click on pictures for full-size images.I should consider myself lucky that I got the phone back, and that she hadn't kept both, or even just turned in the case. But it's still just 50% of what I lost. So is she 50% honest?

Do you get into heaven if you do right 50% of the time? Like you only shoplift every other time you go to Macy's, or you only deliberately break the speed limit half the time? Or you give back what you found after taking half of it?I don't understand the morality of that, but I'm still glad to get my phone back. She could have made a bunch of calls before I cancelled the service and left me holding the bill, but she didn't.But I'm only 50% grateful to her.

Ciao for now.

Heave-ho

I walked into the office of a junior high on my school route yesterday. One of the secretaries told me, "Don't look over at Debbie's desk. There's a kid being sick." Of course I looked at Debbie's desk. Debbie was typing, which is what I usually see her doing. There was a boy on his knees leaning over her trash can, heaving. My first thought was, "I'm glad they put liners in those cans."

The girl who told me not to look was grimacing, as was the other girl across from her. They are both young women who don't have children. Debbie, on the other hand, is a mom, so a kid barfing is nothing new to her. Nor should it be in any school. You've got to expect things like that in schools.

Once I talked to a secretary who couldn't stand the sight of blood. I said, "How can you be a school secretary when kids are coming up to you all the time with cut fingers or waving a bloody stump of an arm?" She said, "I ask someone else to put on a Band-Aid." She told me she had five children, so I asked how she survived their upbringing. She said, "I'd call the neighbor to come over and dress their wounds."
I wonder how I'd do in this particular situation? Years ago a coworker, Dick, drove into a schoolyard to see a commotion on the playground. A big kid had somehow gotten a rope knotted around his neck and was hanging from the overhead ladder, strangling. A teacher was trying to untie the knot while the kid was grabbing at it. Both were in a panic. Dick ran over, took his pocketknife and cut the kid down, then carried him into the school where the knot was untied. By this time the kid was purple. The principal called paramedics, then called the parents, who said, "Oh, no need to take Johnny to the hospital. We're sure he's fine." In other words, Mom and Dad had no medical insurance. The principal was wise to send the kid to the hospital, anyway, despite dire threats of lawsuits from the parents. A lot of people don't realize that when a kid is in school the principal has parental rights in such cases.

The kid recovered, but not so Dick, who was never the same. Dick was a short man, about 5'2" tall, with an enormous paunch that practically touched the ground when he walked. Running with the large boy in his arms put his back into spasms, and he had some other damage, too. Eventually, after two or three years, a couple of surgeries and lots and lots of sick leave, Dick retired. I'm sure the kid has grown up by now and that incident is just a distant memory, but Dick is probably still paying for it.

So entering a school you never know what you'll see. Custodians tell me kids sometimes shit in a corner, and vomiting is common. What the hell are these kids eating that makes them little puking machines? I haven't thrown up twice in the past 20 years, much less twice a week like some of these kids. Or could it be…stress? For some kids just the thought of school, or taking a test, or being late with an assignment, is enough to cause last night's dinner and this morning's Cheerios to make a quick trip backwards through the esophagus.
Ciao for now.

Don't Be A Fred, It's Only Me...

Do you know me? Do you think you know me? Some people do.

Saturday morning I had my car in to get it serviced. I was talking with the service manager when a man with a Spanish accent walked up to me and said, "Hey, Fred, what you doin' out here--?" then he looked at me and said, "You're not Fred! You look just like Fred!" The service manager said, "Yep, you look just like Fred, all right."

Poor Fred. He might be the person people are spotting and walking up to, thinking he's me. It happened a couple of months ago to one of my female coworkers who said, "I saw you at the burger joint yesterday afternoon." I said I wasn't at any burger joint. "Oh, really? You're kidding, right? I mean, it was you."

Well, no, it wasn't me. I told the story to another female coworker who told me that a few months prior she'd seen a man she was sure was me at a restaurant. She was so sure she went up to "me," who was really some puzzled guy, and started talking to him. It was only then she realized it wasn't me. She asked him if maybe he was my brother. He said no. I told her, luckily for my brother, he looks nothing like me. The Monday after that yet another female coworker approached me, asking me if I'd been in a local sporting goods store the previous Saturday. No, I hadn't.

Somewhere out there I have a doppleganger, a double. It may or may not be Fred. It may be several people. It may be that middle-aged white men with white beards are a distinct species, and we all look alike.

I have noticed over the years that lots of people I don't know walk by me, smile with a look of recognition and say hello. They may "know" me, or think they do. It's all kind of creepy, really. I just hope my double isn't a bank robber or liable to get me in trouble. (Paranoia.) And perhaps my double realizes he has a double out there, and is worrying the same thing. Then that double has a double, who has a double…and on and on. Maybe someday we'll all run into each other at a burger joint, restaurant or sporting goods store, and we can all have a good laugh.

Ciao for now.

What I Don't Know

I was being my usual smartass self today. Someone was annoyed with me and said, "Oh, what the hell do you know? You don't know shit."

Well, to set the record straight, I do know shit, but there is a bunch of stuff I hear people talking about that I don't know. So, just so YOU KNOW, here's what I DON'T KNOW:

I don't know why Paris Hilton is going to jail.

I don't know who has been booted off American Idol.

I don't know who is still left on American Idol.

I don't know where The Great Race is racing to.

I don't know who is lost on Lost.

I don't know who is surviving Survivor.

I don't know who Lindsey Lohan is.

I don't know who Brittney Spears' husband, ex-husband(s), or current boyfriends are.

I don't know who Jennifer Aniston's current boyfriend is.

I don't know who Justin Timberlake is.

I don't know any of the bands or artists in the Billboard Top 10.

I don't know what movies are playing at my local movie megaplex. I don't know what the number one movie in America is.

I don't know why I love you like I do…I don't know why, I just do. (Old song lyrics, for those of you who don't know.)

Also, to add to the list of "I don't knows," I also don't care about any of the above subjects. I know shit, I just don't give a shit.

Ciao for now.

Funeral For A Friend

We said goodbye to a friend. Our pal, Jan, died from injuries she got in a car accident, and was buried yesterday.

Jan was one of the hardest-working and nicest people I knew, but had a major fault about driving: She didn't like to wear a seatbelt, and because of her hard work she drove tired, about as bad as driving drunk. It's all the same thing, really, driving impaired. In the accident that caused her death, she turned left in front of a truck which struck the passenger side. She was pinned in her car, unconscious, and lived for six days, never regaining consciousness.

It's all so sad, and yet it was preventable.

I don't have a picture of her wreck, but trolled around on the Internet to find some pictures of cars that have been smashed up. You can probably figure from the look of them that somebody got seriously hurt or killed. .According to statistics about 40,000 Americans a year are killed in car accidents. I'll bet there isn't a crash that couldn't have been prevented at some point. That's a lot of people to die from any cause. If avian flu or E. coli or something sexy-scary was killing 40,000 a year there would be a hue and cry from the American public, demanding somebody do something. With cars, eh. We accept the risk because we love our cars and we feel more in control than we do with diseases or public health risks.I've driven for 43 years but still catch myself driving distracted. It's hard to pay 100% attention 100% of the time, but we all need to. As long as we don't we'll keep ratcheting up the fatality rate.Last night Jan spent her first night in the ground. She lived for just over 42 years, a very short time, but she's going to be forever dead. It's too bad, but she could have bought herself a few more years with those of us friends who really cared for her had she not been driving when she was exhausted.

Ciao for now.

The $imple Joy$ of $uburban Home Owner$hip

Ah, home ownership. The American dream.

After about 40 trips this morning up and down a ladder to fix a problem on my roof, I'm exhausted. I'm 59 years and 10 months old (that's almost 60, for you mathematically impaired types out there). I'm too freakin old to be going up and down a ladder.

I should pay a guy but he'd charge me about $100 to do what I can do with some labor and some equipment. So up the ladder I go. Down the ladder I go.

All my life I was taught, by my parents, by my friends and coworkers, "Owning a home is really important. You have a sense of pride in ownership."

Oh yeah? Take a look at the yellow patches in my lawn…take a look at some overgrown shrubs or some weeds in the backyard. The weeds are so damn tall you could camouflage a Humvee back there. Who's responsible? Well, me, of course.

What happens when the toilet clogs or breaks? What happens when the stove or refrigerator goes out? Who has to buy new carpet, new mini-blinds? Who gets to worry about cracks in the driveway turning into chasms that will eat a tire next winter unless some needed repairs are done? You guessed it.

And as for "owning" a home, that's the biggest laugh of all. Laugh, laugh, I thought I'd die…sang the Beau Brummels. And I'm laughing.

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

Who really owns your home? After 32 years of living in my palatial estate I have paid off mortgages one and two…but still owe on mortgage number three. That's another five years of paying, and who knows what I'll need then. (All this being conditional on me living through all of these trips up and down that ladder.) So the bank has interest in my house. Then when I get the mortgage paid off, get the deed back in my hands, then who really owns the house? Not me. The County really owns the house. Just see what happens if I neglect to pay my property taxes.

The simple joys of home ownership. What a crock.

Ciao for now.

Cheap: One Jack the Dripper Original!

I watched 60 Minutes last night, with the story of the 74-year-old truck driving lady who claims to have a Jackson Pollock painting. She found it in a thrift store a few years ago, and bought it for $5.00. She's a non-art person, and the art establishment is denying that it's a genuine Pollock. She's gone around and around with them for a few years making her claim.

The kicker was when she said she'd been offered $2,000,000 for the painting but she doesn't want someone "stealing" it from her. Jeez, two mil doesn't sound like much compared to 50 million, which is what she thinks it's worth, but it's about $1,999,995 more than what she paid for it. That's a good rate of return, I'd say.

Tell you what, Art Establishment…I found the above pictured painting in a trash can at a Salt Lake City high school. It's on foam board, and I'm not claiming it's Pollock, but on the chance it is, and because I got it for nothing, I won't be greedy. One million dollars--or even the best offer--takes this fine foam board Pollock away!

Ciao for now, art lovers.

Bring on the 'bots!

I was in the library going through sthe do-it-yourself books when I ran across this book that tells me that intelligent robots can be built. Wow. How far away are we from a Utopia where robots are doing our jobs for us? It's too late for me, I think, but maybe sometime in the future everyone will have a Robby the Robot to send off to earn a living while they go on vacation or sit home and watch TV.

If I had a robot I'd like to program it to shoot death rays or at least to beat the crap out of all my enemies.Click on pictures for full-size images.

When I was a kid there were movies, comics, television programs and movies that featured robots. They all had humanlike characteristics. What a bore when I grew up and saw things they called "robots" welding pieces on cars. It was a comedown to dull reality. Now I see these books on robots showing humanoid robots on their covers. Yippee. Maybe my old childhood robot fantasies aren't just fantasies after all.

These are a couple of books with the images of robots I grew up with:
The scientist and writer Isaac Asimov wrote science fiction stories about robots. He came up with three laws of robotics. Maybe some day we'll need these!

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Ciao for now.

"Her Majesty's a Pretty Nice Girl..."

The Queen of England was in the U.S. for a few days, and was a spectator at the Kentucky Derby. She also got to keep company with some…urp!…dignitaries, including…gag!…Dick Cheney. Here's a picture I scanned from a newspaper that shows how she was feeling about sitting next to Mr. Happy.

I've been wondering what the protocol is when the Queen arrives? Does someone go ahead of her and tell the President and Vice President what to do and say? Like, "Don't turn your back on her," or, "Please call her 'Your Majesty.'" Wouldn't that be sort of grating for a bunch of self-important politicians to have to kowtow to an appointed-for-life Queen? On the other hand, how often does the Queen come to call?

I picked up some issues of Majesty Magazine at a thrift store a few months ago. Here's a cover photo that was taken back in the early '50s when Elizabeth II became Queen.

Click on the pictures for full-size images.I think the photo shows that even as a young woman she had a queenly appearance, but didn't look as austere and uptight as some of her predecessors.
My wife and I are fascinated by these magazines for showing us a life that seems so impossibly far away. How can I even resent that sort of life? I've never even been close to it, or even cared to. These people are born to it and all of the responsibilities that go with it. I also think the Royals have a tough go of it with all of the duties they perform. They always have to be "on." The latest is Prince Harry who will be going to Iraq as a lieutenant. In other words, the Royals are willing to send a prince to Iraq. Can you imagine anybody in our administration going to war or sending their kids? Fat freakin' chance of that.

OK, your Majesty…hope you enjoyed your visit to the States*, and just thought I'd add, love the hats.

Ciao for now.

*Despite having to talk to our Big Dick.

Beware of Texters

Yesterday I walked into a high school as two high school girls brushed by me. They didn't see me. They were both involved with their cell phones, texting.

Saturday night we had a family dinner at a nice restaurant, celebrating my wife's birthday. My wife is her teenage niece's favorite aunt, so the niece sat next to her but during the entire dinner was busy with her cell phone, texting.

Yesterday I walked down the stairs of a school behind a teenage girl, about 15-years-old. She had on a midriff top which exposed a roll of fat. She was wearing hip hugger pants that exposed her thong underwear. She was wearing sandals with 2" platform soles. She was blithefully skipping down the stairs while engaged with her cell phone, texting.

What I want to know is…what the hell are all those kids texting about, and to whom?

Is this some sort of plot we should all be worried about? Why is my Spidey-sense tingling and my paranoia bump itching? Maybe one day all of these young texters will rise up and kill all of us oldsters, non-texters, who actually use a cell phone (and yes, I have a cell phone) to communicate by speaking!

I'm not against writing, but what are all these kids writing about, and why are they concentrating on it when they don't pay attention in class? Hmmmm.

Ciao for now.