Tuesday, Dec. 21, 1999
Well, this is almost my last column for 1999, but, with any luck, I’ll be around to write more in 2000.
We often reflect at year’s end on those who have died in the past 12 months. I suppose that’s because we know about them. Many valuable and talented people were born, of course, but we won’t actually know who they are for a little while yet.
I was looking over an Associated Press list of notables who died in 1999 and spotted something a little odd. On April 3, Lionel Bart died. On May 2, Oliver Reed died. And Sir John Wolf died on June 28. Bart was the lyricist and composer who created “Oliver!” Oliver Reed played Bill Sikes in “Oliver!” And Wolf produced “Oliver!” Is all this coincidence? Or conspiracy?
We lost a lot of good people this year. In music, there was Mel Torme, Joe Williams, Dusty Springfield, Grover Washington Jr., Yehudi Menuhin, Al Hirt, Rick Danko, Anita Carter, Mills Brother Donald Mills and the incredible poet, author and songwriter Shel Silverstein.
Some other show business notables also died in 1999: actress Susan Strasberg, director Jose Quintero, director Stanley Kubrick, playwright Garson Kanin, actor Charles “Buddy” Rogers, cowboy actor Rory Calhoun, actor Dirk Bogarde, actor DeForest Kelley, Allan Carr, director Edward Dmytryk, actress Sylvia Sidney, actor Victor Mature, “Candid Camera” creator Allen Funt, actor George C. Scott and actress Madeline Kahn.
But what about some of the lesser-known famous people who passed away this year? Let’s not forget them.
There was Edgar Nollner Sr., who died in January at age 94. He was the last survivor of the 1925 dog-team relay that carried diphtheria serum to Nome, Alaska. That event inspired the annual Iditarod race.
Charles Luckman, who helped design New York’s Madison Square Garden, died in January and Glenn Seaborg, the chemist who discovered 10 atomic elements, including plutonium, died in February. That month also saw the passing of John L. Goldwater, who created the comic book characters Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica.
Harry Callahan died in March. This one wasn’t Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry,” but an influential photographer.
In April, Senor Wences died at age 103. If you don’t know who this ventriloquist was, it would be hard to explain it to you.
Clifton Fadiman died in June. You might not recall Clifton as radio host of “Information Please,” but he did shape the reading habits of the country as one of the guys who chose which volumes were offered by the Book-of-the-Month Club.
Forrest Mars Sr. died in July. He created M&Ms candies.
Judith Exner died in September. She insisted she had been not only JFK’s mistress, but Mafia boss Sam Giancana’s mistress.
Oseola McCarty also died in September. She took in laundry for a living and surprised everyone by donating her $150,000 savings to the University of Southern Mississippi.
And don’t forget JFK Jr., who died in July.
It has been an incredible year. We changed editors here, at least once. We started publishing seven days a week. This column, after 14 years of appearing on Tuesdays, now also appears on Mondays.
I stopped doing police reporting, went back to municipal reporting for a while, then started working on getting news from three newspapers onto the Internet everyday.
Then I got promoted to city editor.
There have been major changes in my personal life, as well. Everything went topsy-turvy for a bit, but everything has worked out well and everyone is reasonably healthy and happy.
There is something bothering me, though. All is not sunshine and flowers.
Our veteran columnist, Bob Shryock, not only gets to write the last column of the year and the 1900s, he also gets to write the first column of the year 2000.
I would get upset about that, except for one thing.
My mother taught me to respect my elders.
Merry Christmas!
©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Monday, Dec. 20, 1999
Now THIS is disturbing. It’s about the state of education.
I don’t have all that much direct contact with the process of education. My nieces and nephews are in school, but I have nothing to do with their educations.
I have read to kids in the 3rd grade. I have spoken to older students in elementary schools. I have visited journalism classes at Rowan University now and then.
I have written about students and teachers and schools during my career.
That’s pretty much it. I haven’t actually had any experience with what or how kids are being taught.
That’s why it surprised me when some young reporters
started turning in stories with words — like “a”
and “the” — missing. Or with words blatantly
spelled wrong. Or used wrong.
I was shocked. These people had graduated from college, for
Pete’s sake! How could this be?
I mentioned it to the parents of some teen-agers. They were not
surprised at all.
“I noticed stuff in my kids’ homework was wrong,”
one woman told me. “I mentioned it to the teachers and was
told they were not stressing the details so much as the
concepts.”
Other parents have told me much the same thing.
Basic things, such as spelling, grammar, word usage, have taken a
back seat to concepts. Concepts of WHAT I am not sure.
I looked this up in the dictionary. Dictionary? That’s a
big, thick book with lots of words and their definitions listed
alphabetically. I was down at the college the other day and one
kid seemed to be questioning my insistence that reporters know
how to spell by espousing the use of a computer spell check
program, aided and abetted by a grammar check program.
I explained that any decent journalist has to be able to spell or
to look up the correct spelling of a word at any time in an
actual paper dictionary. I know, paper cuts can be debilitating,
but that’s one of the hazards we face in the newspaper
business.
Anyway, I looked up the word “concept” in the
dictionary. It means an idea or thought, especially a generalized
idea of a thing or class of things, or an abstract notion. One of
the definitions of abstract is something that is theoretical or
not applied, although the verb “abstract” can mean to
take dishonestly or steal.
Here are some examples of concepts. I have Call Waiting on my
telephone. In concept, I should be able to call my own telephone
number and talk to myself. In concept, man should have been
walking on Mars by 1999. In concept, the moon would have been
colonized by the end of this century. In concept, there should be
a pill that cures the common cold. In concept, this column would
be hilarious.
In reality, however, none of those concepts worked.
The notion of teaching via concepts really bothers me. It’s
certainly annoying that students don’t know how to spell or
write, but imagine medical school graduates learning the concepts
of medicine and surgery. Imagine if driver’s ed covered only
the concepts of driving on public highways. I don’t think
the Internal Revenue Service would appreciate tax returns
calculated with the concept of mathematics. It would be costly if
NASA sent billions of dollars of space stuff to Mars based on the
concept of — oh, wait! Bad example.
Now, before you start getting all bent out of shape with me, let
me make sure you catch my drift. This is by no means meant to be
an indictment of all teachers. I like teachers. We’d be sunk
without teachers.
It’s meant to be an indictment only of teachers who teach
concepts and ignore the details. Our kids deserve to know as much
as they can. They may all be computer geniuses now, but what good
is that if the e-mails they write make them look like morons?
Kids should know how to spell when they graduate from college.
Heck, they should already know how to read and spell when they
graduate from high school.
What a concept, huh?
©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Monday, Dec. 27, 1999
Just be calm. Don’t get excited. Relax. Stay cool.
For all my kidding and joking during the year about The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) and the impending collapse of civilization, I must now emphasize that I was ONLY KIDDING.
I do not think that, come next Saturday or Sunday, we will all be wearing leather chaps and recycled football shoulder pads and toting sawed-off shotguns, as in Mad Max movies.
I do not believe for a second that nuclear devices will spontaneously detonate around the globe, sending us back to the Stone Age.
I do not foresee major runs on the banks, long-term power outages, disruption of utilities, riots in the streets, murder, mayhem, malicious mischief or incessant name calling.
Oh, sure, thousands of motley marauders will be running loose on the streets of Philadelphia, but that’s just the Mummers’ Parade.
Revelers will be dropping crystal balls, fish, whatever, at midnight around the country, but I am fairly certain the hordes of Algerian terrorists with gasoline cans will all have been caught at Canadian border crossings well before Y2K actually arrives.
(Of course, it’s always possible that respectable-looking, well-heeled guys in expensive Mercedes Benz sedans are being waved through these same border crossings because they have the right look, even though they have sophisticated explosive devices in their trunks, but let us continue to look at the bright side, here.)
I don’t really know what’s going to happen. I am concerned that the news media has spent the last several days giving great play to unconfirmed reports and unsubstantiated information. Back when I was a news pup, no one dared report on a rumor. Now, every possible rumor, no matter how far out it is, is being reported and given equal time with major facts.
Sadly, terrorists really don’t have to do anything to cause problems in the United States now. People around the world are being inconvenienced because of the possibilities of terror. People around the world are being forced to do things differently because of the potential threats. Some people are being destroyed by Armageddon paranoia. Some have spent money they can’t afford on food and survival supplies they will never need or use. Some have returned to the 1960s bomb-shelter-mentality we thought we’d left behind.
So, by simply planting the seeds of doubt and fear, the terrorists have already accomplished a great deal.
Now we have to be worried about what might happen if a drunk driver takes out an electric transformer somewhere. Will the resulting power outage spook people into reacting badly? Will some mild pushing and shoving in Times Square spark a riot?
Will the monsters have finally come to Mulberry Street? I hope not.
I think all will be fine. Really. I am excited by the end of this century and the beginning of a new one, despite those who insist the new century and the new millennium don’t begin until 2001. For me, THIS is IT and that’s exciting.
I have lived in portions of six decades so far. I have seen amazing things. I have done some outrageous things. I have met some incredible people. Despite being the master curmudgeon I profess to be, I do have loads of faith in people.
I have faith now that everything is going to be all right. And in that spirit, all kidding aside, I would like to wish for all of you a healthy, happy and prosperous new year, new century and new millennium.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Tuesday, Dec. 14, 1999
I am increasingly appreciative of how the government makes use of our tax dollars.
Years ago, Wisconsin Sen. William Proxmire used to give out Golden Fleece Awards for silly government spending. He's the guy who brought to our attention the $600 toilet seats and the $150 hammers our federal government routinely purchased.
That's not the kind of frivolous spending I mean, however.
I am talking about the kind of thing that makes the newspaper every day but doesn't always trigger the response, "Holy cow! Who's paying for that?"
The Mars Polar Lander, for example. I forget how much that cost me. There were too many digits in the price for me to actually understand how much it cost. I mean, sure, I make a fortune writing these columns - my salary is five digits when I count the decimal point - but I always get confused by anything over a million. What is the proper order? Billions, Trillions, Bazillions, Gazillions and Yow?
So NASA sent this gazillion dollar doohickey to Mars to check out stuff there. It seems to me that just before the Polar Lander was supposed to arrive at the Red Planet to take a look-see, I read that it was supposed to crash on the surface of Mars. If I read that right, then it probably worked the way they wanted it to work. It probably crashed bang-boom onto the surface. OK, maybe just a little harder than they expected, but that's probably what happened.
Unless, of course, the Martians got it. Hey! You never know.
I have a small connection to the Mars Polar Lander that disappeared. Last year, you could log onto a NASA Web site and enter a child's name. The kid would get a certificate urging her to stay in school and study hard if she wanted to go into outer space someday and noting that her name would be included in the Mars Polar Lander and be launched to Mars.
Well, I entered some children's names, of course, but I couldn't resist entering my own name, as well. My little certificate reminds me that my name " is now part of the cosmos."
Now that no one knows where the Lander is, that's kind of creepy.
It cost money to take all those names and stow them on the Polar Lander. A drop in the bucket, I'm sure, but every cent keeps me working to support this kind of thing.
Now, creating space flotsam and jetsam that costs megabazillions of dollars is one thing, but when our government starts throwing away my money right here on earth, well that's another story.
And that story is about a 6-year-old boy. It seems my tax bucks are now financing international kidnapping programs.
Yes, I mean the little Cuban kid we fished out of the drink, half-dead from a harrowing escape from that communist haven 90 miles off our southernmost shore.
His mom died in the sea. His father, still in Cuba, wants him back. The entire nation has mobilized to demand his immediate return. They have practically canonized the boy.
We have ignored what would seem to be the best course of action for this child - to return him to his birth father - in a misguided effort to keep a bunch of Cuban exiles happy, I think. I am not a lawyer, thank goodness, but I still don't think we have a legal, moral or ethical leg to stand on in this case. The boy's father is in Cuba. The boy should be in Cuba.
Now, I understand, lawyers have applied for political asylum for the child. It's just a legal maneuver to stall. The lawyers would have to show the child would be persecuted and in danger if he were returned to his own country. Yep. Just look at the videotape of thousands of people demanding the child be returned to his immediate family and you can tell they're just waiting to get him home so they can punish him and abuse him.
Puh-lease!
So, our leaders are spending our hard-earned moolah hand over fist and some of that money is going to send more technological garbage into outer space and some is going to finance a very public kidnapping.
I suppose I shouldn't complain. Just for the entertainment value, this version of Stupid Government Tricks is almost worth the price of admission.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Monday, Dec. 13, 1999
The Russian diplomat parked his car. He'd been parking in the same area since the beginning of summer. He got out of the car with the diplomatic plates and strolled around the sprawling, two-square-block headquarters of the Department of State.
The FBI agents had him this time. A surveillance team on another assignment had stumbled onto his unusual pattern of parking and walking and decided he was up to something.
A wiretap team had started covertly patrolling the halls of State when the diplomat was walking around outside. Finally, the de-bugging team's efforts paid off: they found an electronic signal coming from a conference room down the hall from the Secretary of State's office.
It turned out the guy had to trigger his eavesdropping device, which is why he had to be present outside State. And his car had to be parked where it was because there was a receiver inside.
But now the agents were able to break the case and bust the 54-year-old Russian diplomat. The next step? Figure out how the sophisticated bug got installed in the first place. Even Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, admitted the Russian might have had some inside help.
Sounds like a spy novel, doesn't it? Of course, it's not. It's news.
The feds busted Stanislav Gusev last Wednesday and said he works for the technical section of Moscow's SVR spy agency.
Here we go again. If this were a spy thriller, we could call it "Getting Chilly." Here comes the Cold War back again.
I suppose its return could be sort of comforting to Baby Boomers who grew up with the Cold War. We were sort of surprised when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War thawed out at the beginning of this decade. It was all we had ever known: the Red Menace, the Atomic Threat, bomb shelters, the Communist Conspiracy, the Domino Theory.
Of course, we were able to crow about the superiority of Capitalism over Communism when the Iron Curtain came tumbling down.
Relations between Russia and the U.S. have been deteriorating lately. The Russians haven't been happy with us since NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia. We haven't been thrilled with Russia since that country started shooting up the countryside in Chechnya.
On Nov. 29, the Russians claimed to have caught a U.S. diplomat spying in Moscow. She was given 10 days to get out of the country.
Is this case with Gusev simply reciprocal finger-pointing? All the TV talking heads are using the phrase "saber rattling" to describe the tension between the two super powers. Boris Yeltsin said on Thursday that Bill Clinton should remember that Russia is still a super power and still has nuclear weapons. Sounded like a threat to me.
But, wow! What a windfall this is! Do you realize how hard it has been for some people since Communism and the Iron Curtain fell? Espionage agents have had to find other targets to spy on. With the Red Menace gone, they have had to concentrate on the Middle East and the Far East. All the Soviet experts were out of work.
Even worse, writers of thrillers and spy novels were hard pressed to come up with plot lines for new books. No longer could they pit the CIA against the KGB if there was no KGB. They had to settle for rogue former KGB agents and Russian mafia criminals to populate their pages.
Now, however, we have Russians and Americans once again flexing their muscles and waving their fists at each other, with Fidel Castro thrown in for good measure.
Well, I have this book already started. All I need is a hero and some other
characters.
Oh, yeah, and a publisher.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Tuesday, Dec. 7, 1999
It just occurred to me that I started my newspaper career at Christmas time. It was way back in 1963.
As features editor of my high school newspaper, I had attended a daylong seminar for scholastic newspapers at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. The man who organized the workshop was the Bulletin's director of special events, Reginald Beauchamp.
Reggie would become my first boss. I told him I was looking for work. He had no job to offer me then, but he did want to help me out. He invited me down to the paper one day after school, had a photograph taken of me and gave me several copies so I could send them out with resumes.
I never sent those resumes out. Beauchamp called me soon after and asked me to help put together that year's Christmas display.
Christmas displays in the Bulletin lobby were legendary. People actually went to 30th and Market streets in Philadelphia on purpose just to see the incredible displays.
And Reggie Beauchamp was the guy who created them. The centerpiece of the 100-foot display in 1963 was a handmade Christmas tree which opened and closed mechanically. Inside, surrounded by red velvet, was a wire sculpture of the Madonna and Child - crafted by Beauchamp - and strung on the wire was $5,000 worth of cultured pearls. That was a lot of pearls in 1963, believe me.
I helped string the pearls. I got a crash course in flower arranging by doing 50 feet of the display on my own. I climbed ladders and twisted wires and tested Christmas lights. Even the tree was put together twig by twig.
It was an impressive display.
I worked part time for Beauchamp on and off for some time. I helped him put together an entry for a parade and helped him paint a huge mural.
I eventually started working as a tour guide at the Bulletin. In August, I started guiding tours full time.
After two weeks on the job, I said, "Boss, you know I'd really rather be working in the newsroom."
Beauchamp said, "OK." Two days later, I was working in the newsroom.
The rest is history.
What made me wax so nostalgic about all this was the lovely Christmas tree in the lobby here at the newspaper. While it is by no wild stretch of the imagination part of a 100-foot display, and while it does not play Christmas carols, move, jiggle or otherwise open to reveal something as artistic as a sculpture of precious pearls, it DOES have ornaments made from the newspaper's classified ads.
No, I'm not kidding. Classified ads. It seems there was a contest for kids to make Christmas tree decorations from the classified section. Some of the ornaments are kind of what you'd expect; shapes snipped from the paper. Others are a bit more creative: Christmas balls made of crumpled classified ads, dipped in paint to make them hold their shapes.
The winning entries won some money, I believe.
Hey, anything to get the children more involved in Christmas is fine my me.
We, here in the newsroom, however, are not going to be outdone. I think we should have our own contest. I am inspired by some traditional Christmas songs, such as "Deck The Halls With Lots of Money," and "'Tis The Season To Be Greedy."
Here's my idea.
I want all you creative kids out there to make Christmas tree ornaments using $5 bills. Fold, tuck and crease them, but please do not cut, spindle, staple or mutilate them. We wouldn't want Uncle Sam ticked off at us.
That's the contest. It's pretty simple. The kid who makes a Christmas tree ornament from the most $5 bills wins a prize. Heck, I don't know what. I'll pick something up at the Nothing Over 100 Cents Store or something. It'll be nice. You'll love it.
The tree will be lovely. A thing of beauty. It may even inspire people to make appointments to come tour the newsroom, just to see our incredible Christmas display.
Don't get any wild ideas. We're going to have armed guards on duty.
Ah, Christmas!
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Monday, Dec. 6, 1999
I heard a report on the radio news the other day that the New Jersey Supreme Court had ruled that private security guards are allowed to make unreasonable searches and seizures.
According to the radio report, even if the guards are armed and in some kind of uniform, they are not police officers and are not faced with the same Fourth Amendment limitations on unlawful searches and seizures.
I checked with the Administrative Office of the Courts on this. It turns out it was not the state Supreme Court but an Appellate Court that ruled in the case, which involved a guy who was arrested for drug possession at Giants Stadium in 1995. He was being thrown out of the arena and was in the process of producing identification for a private security guard when he emptied his fanny pack onto a counter. The fact that there were three bags of heroin in his belongings attracted the attention of a nearby state trooper, who busted the guy.
The court ruled that the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure by the government. When private parties conduct a search and turn whatever they find over to police, courts have held there was no state action, so the search was not bound by the constitutional restraints.
This is all legal mumbo jumbo, of course, but it does present us with a real conundrum.
In the strictest sense, it makes me uncomfortable. It restricts our freedom. If the Constitution bans only governmental police officers from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures, well, then, maybe freedom of religion will apply only to members of organized churches. Maybe freelance journalists and publishers of small papers and newsletters won't be entitled to freedom of the press. Maybe only professional lecturers will be protected by freedom of speech. How will we make these decisions?
Next thing you know, the government will be telling us we don't really have the right to keep and bear arms - oh, wait! Never mind. I'm a little late on that one. (Ironic, isn't it, that the whole idea behind including that bit into the Constitution in the first place was to protect the people from the government, just in case. Just in case what? In case the government tried to disarm people? I don't know.)
On the other hand, this court ruling might be useful if applied with the right attitude. For years, it has been clear that the very laws we depend on to protect us sometimes hog tie us when it comes to fighting crime and combating terrorism.
The Bad Guys of the World ignore the law. They steal and maim and kill and do not follow the rules. The people we hire to protect us and maintain the peace are bound to obey the very laws the Bad Guys of the World are breaking. The police cannot do things that are generally prohibited by law, even if that's what it would take to fight back effectively.
That's why part of me LIKES this new ruling by the state court. If constitutional restraints do not apply to non-governmental groups, let's use that to our advantage.
Why not put together a private security force, well-trained and well-equipped? It can fight drug dealers and organized crime lords and gun runners and car thieves in a manner calculated to end these crimes once and for all. If these private security warriors step on the human or civil rights of the Bad Guys of the World in the process, oh, well, too bad.
This would be so ideal for fighting terrorism. No longer would we have to fret over which military target we could safely bomb in retaliation for a terrorist attack. We could simply turn our private security force loose and let it find and eliminate the terrorists.
Wow! What a simple plan!
Libyan honcho Moammar Gadhafi last week joined Italy in signing a pledge to deny "sustenance and protection to those responsible for terrorist acts." Yeah, sure, I believe him. We'd better still be ready to act.
Funding this protection force shouldn't be a big problem. I know lots of people who would chip in with money, equipment, training, in a snap. Reward money could go right into an account to run the outfit.
There are already a lot of civilians I know in the business of providing this kind of training. It would be nothing for them to start providing it to an organized group, believe me.
I know, I know, it might be considered some small erosion of the Constitution, but don't worry. We can work it out later.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Monday, Nov. 29, 1999
Oh, my! 'Tis The Season already? Wait! No! I'm not ready!
I hate it when The Season sneaks up on me.
No, not the Christmas season, but the one that comes with it: The Shopping Season.
It starts with Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, but as far as I'm concerned, what follows is Traffic Jam Saturday, Crowded Sunday and four weeks of Obnoxious Shopping Days.
On one of my days off, I like to go to the bookstores. They are all in the Deptford Mall or in that general vicinity. From now on, though, drivers heading for that exit on Route 55 will find themselves backed up for a quarter of a mile or more out on the highway.
Those who want to purchase toy trucks from gas stations will sit in long traffic lines, trying to deal with others who are trying to figure out some scheme to beat the system.
At malls, you'll find yourself parking in the hinterlands of the parking lot, so far out you'll need new shoes by the time you get to the stores. Those retailers know what they're doing!
Shop downtown in the area's little towns and you'll still find parking problems, so there's no getting around the complications of The Season.
Some people love to shop. Some people tolerate shopping. Some people hate to shop. Then there's me. If I go out with a shopping list, I get the first two
things on it and decide I've had enough. Or I stop at one place and they don't have everything I want, so I figure I'll wait and buy everything somewhere else. Then I go somewhere else and they don't have it all, either. I wind up having to run back and forth to get everything I wanted, sometimes having to return to the places I already went.
Still, I have no real reason to complain about The Season. My Closest Companion usually does most of the shopping for us. She's very good at it.
I am generally in charge of books and stuffed animals, although my big problem is remembering which stuffed animals and books I have bought, and for whom. This year, most of the youngsters on our list are out of the stuffed animal stage, I think, so that will narrow the field for me a bit.
It's so hard to keep track. It seems like the year before last that a couple of the kids on our list were still getting blanket sleepers and now they're pre-teens. I mean, one day you're buying them Pooh and the next you're getting them perfume.
My Closest Companion is the bright one. She's the one who thought of getting magazine subscriptions for some of the children on our list.
Reading is one of the most important things in my life and we try to share that importance with those we love. A gift of reading is an incredible gift. People who want to give me something I will really appreciate need only get me a gift certificate from a nearby book store.
Thank goodness my Closest Companion knows about the right kinds of magazines for kids. My reading often runs to current issues of Soldier of Fortune and Tactical Tough Guys, magazines that are not really suited for kids.
When I get to the book stores, though, I'll still be confused about what books are good for what age groups. Some of the books I think look like they are meant for little kids often surprise me with the language inside.
Many years ago, I bought a book for a niece who was very young. I was about to wrap the book when I started reading it and discovered some unusual four-letter words. Unusual, that is, for a children's book.
I want to publish a magazine called Your Parents Are Dopey, but I can't figure out how to make money from such a periodical. I mean, kids would absolutely love it, that wouldn't be the problem. Kids usually have money only because they get it from their parents, however, so selling the magazine and getting advertisers would be tough with those dopey parents controlling the purse strings.
For young children, the ones who can't read yet, you should get books grown ups can read to them. For others, try to find out what they like. For older kids, gift certificates for compact discs might be a good idea.
Now, deciding on a gift for my Closest Companion, that's another story altogether. I never know what to get for her.
She keeps suggesting emeralds.
Anybody know of a really good book about emeralds!?
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Tuesday, Nov. 23, 1999
"There are some things better left unknown to man."
Count Dracula uttered these words to his vampire-hunting nemesis, Dr. VanHelsing.
I don't necessarily agree. As a newspaper guy, I believe we should know as much as possible. Even about things we don't think we should know about.
Maybe the biggest area I want to know about right now is what the experts and officials really know about what's going to happen when 2000 gets here in a few weeks.
I've read all sorts of things written by conspiracy theorists who want us to believe the government's infrastructure will collapse, utility companies and banks will fail and water and Charmin will be all but unavailable. Clinton will declare martial law and suspend the Constitution.
People are buying electric generators and candles that burn for six days, pre-packaged military meals (yecchh!), hand-cranked radios and gas masks.
Unfortunately the experts and officials can't seem to agree on what we should be doing.
Is 2000 going to come in all nice and quiet-like or will New Year's Day be like the prologue to a Road Warrior movie? Will Baby New Year be in a diaper or be wearing leather chaps and brandishing a sawed-off shotgun?
Last week, the President's Y2K guy announced that everything is going to be all right. There's nothing to fear. Not a thing to worry about. The government will be just fine. It's cool.
In the same speech, however, the Y2K Czar said it wouldn't hurt to stock up on some stuff we might need, just in case.
It sounds like this guy knows something he's not telling.
Then, a day or so later, President Clinton said he thinks everything will be fine and there really is no need to stockpile groceries or anything like that.
It sounds like governmental gobbledygook to me. I wish someone would get to the bottom of this.
Maybe a study has to be done on this, like the study that was just done on newspaper "Personals" ads.
An anthropologist looked at 18 months of ads in a New York newspaper and found out that men place more ads than women. Men refer to themselves as successful, athletic, honest, caring and humorous, while women use words such as homebody, country girl, sensitive and easy-going.
The study done by this anthropologist included lots of information I wasn't interested in, such as how revealing men and women were about themselves, but no information at all about what most of us would love to know: do "Personals" ads really work or don't they? Can I get a date this way? Will I find the woman of my dreams this way?
Why doesn't someone do a meaningful study of this stuff? This is information we could really use!
Sometimes, digging up information involves demystifying secrets.
When I was a kid, the religion I practiced - I don't want to say which one, but it's led by people in a tiny foreign country in Europe - insisted that Freemasonry was a secret society we were forbidden to join on pain of something excruciatingly evil happening to us.
Generally, prohibitions like this go a long way in making some of us all the more curious. I can't tell you how many banned movies I have seen or banned books I have read just because they were banned.
On the other hand, this childhood warning didn't make me run out and become a Mason.
My brother is a Mason now and when I chided him about secret handshakes and such, he said in reality he is not free to tell me things unsolicited. He is permitted to answer truthfully any questions I might ask.
Now all that could change. A bold group of Masons from England has videotaped its lodge meeting and wants to sell the tapes. Logging onto their Web site can get you a downloadable sample of the tape, I understand. They want to shed the cloak of secrecy and they're doing it in the most modern fashion possible.
I am not a joiner, thank goodness. I could form a club for people who don't like joining clubs, but that would be like joining a procrastinators' organization and demanding the meetings start on time.
I just don't care about the big conspiracies. I don't care if the Masons have, over the centuries, influenced society behind the scenes. I don't much worry about whether there is a group of international financiers who really control the world. If such a thing were true, it would probably affect people with money, and that pretty much leaves me out.
If you're interested in learning the secrets of the Yorkshire Masons, log on to www.wrprovince.co.uk and take a peek.
And stick around. All will be revealed.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Monday, Nov. 22, 1999
If the news keeps going in the direction it's going, you won't need me to make fun of it anymore. So much of it is just so blatantly hilarious on its own.
For instance, the World Tourism Organization thinks space vacations are going to be huge. I suppose some people will want to do this just because they can. I can't believe floating around the dark emptiness of outer space would be as much fun as a week down the shore or at spring break.
And haven't we all seen enough movies by now to know how dangerous it is in outer space? Cat women on the moon. Life support systems failing, stranding space cadets. My goodness, didn't you see Alien?
True, I don't really have any expertise in the area of vacations. The last time I actually went someplace on vacation was way back in 1992. Of course, when I go somewhere, I tend to GO somewhere; in '92, I went to Morocco and visited Casablanca and Tangier.
What strikes me as funny, though, is a statement by the Reuters wire service that companies are tripping "over each other building crafts to whisk adventurous tourists" into space and there's a company hard at work trying to design a place for these astrotourists to stay.
The company that created Legoland Theme Park in England is working on the design. I always figured some outfit like Disney would be involved in outer space. I wouldn't be surprised if there are already plans for an interstellar Disney World or something on the drawing boards.
Here's more.
A good marriage is worth about a hundred grand a year.
No, I'm not kidding. Two researchers have done an exhaustive study of happiness.
Overall, they said, Americans have gotten less happy in the past 25 years, while Britons have stayed about as happy as they had been. Women are happier than men, but the gap is narrowing. Comes with increased equality for women, said the researchers.
Comparing marriage and money, they said their research shows the amount of happiness generated by a lasting marriage is about equal to the happiness brought about by an additional $100,000 a year income.
This applies only to first timers, though. The study showed that people were less happy in their second marriages than their first.
I have to question that. I mean, if they were so happy in their first marriage, how come they're on their second, anyway?
Overall, though, you'll be happy to know the researchers say happiness is on an upswing.
But not everything that's ridiculous is fun and games, I'm afraid. Sad events have a lion's share of craziness.
The recent crash of that EgyptAir plane was certainly a tragedy. But have you noticed some of the ridiculous things being said during the investigation? As American officials started to think a member of the flight crew might have crashed the plane on purpose, people, press and government officials in Egypt started refuting the claims.
The government started insisting Americans tampered with the black boxes on the plane and were lying about the crew member. Officials insisted in TV interviews that the U.S. news media were interested only in spectacular and fantastic stories. It was all the media's fault.
And the Egyptian news media carried stories that there was something sinister afoot in the Atlantic Ocean where this plane, TWA flight 800 and even John Kennedy Jr.'s plane crashed. They stopped short of calling it the "Nantucket Triangle," I think.
And they insist OUR media people are crazy!
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Nov. 16, 1999
Thanks to the amazing immediacy of communications these days, we are exposed to way more information than we can adequately process.
At least I am. I am bombarded with so much information, I can't begin to understand all of it at one time.
Of course, some of the information we get is borderline stuff. Call it what you want: rumors, urban legends, confidential intelligence, paranoia. There's just so much stuff out there, we don't know what to believe.
Often, we joke about the weird stuff. That's a terrific way to jeep people off balance, to make sure they can't tell if we believe it or not.
Cuba's foreign minister jokingly suggested the other day that a cold front that was attacking Havana might be the result of some top-secret CIA shenanigans.
"I wouldn't be surprised if, in 50 years time when they declassify things, it will show there was a plan to send these cold fronts to ruin" a summit of Ibero-American leaders, said Felipe Perez. His comments drew laughter. Of course.
For years, the Cubans have insisted that the CIA was behind not only the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, but epidemics, crop failures, sabotage and more than 100 assassination plots against Fidel Castro.
Sure, most of the urban legends are outlandish, but many are so weird we want to believe them. A lot of them sound so, oh, I don't know, reasonable.
The concern about the possibility of impending disaster as a result of the dreaded Y2K Bug certainly straddles the realms of rumor and paranoia, I think. The experts seem to have widely diverse ideas about what will really be going on in 46 days or so, and some of the experts sound like raving
maniacs.
Secret plots and conspiracies and black helicopters are the stuff of great paranoia. I must confess, I don't understand all the hoopla about black helicopters. I personally have seen several black helicopters and nothing too weird has happened because of it.
A buddy of mine is somehow hooked into some special operations types in the military. Well, now that you mention it, I have several friends who are either connected to secret agencies or military groups or who work with clandestine agencies that do not exist.
Anyway, this one guy I was talking about said the latest intel rumor is about the CIA or some other government agency hiring people to monitor Internet chatrooms. These part-timers are supposed to sit back, "lurk" in Internet parlance, and watch for specific buzzwords, about 200,000 of them.
What - 200,000 words? How specific a list can that be? I mean, the Webster's New World Dictionary recognized by the Associated Press as the official news media reference book contains only about 160,000 words or so! What could the government possibly make out of all those words? That we communicate?
Not that I would put such a project past the government. They have financed some pretty ridiculous operations in the past. Or so I've heard.
See! There it is again, that rumor thing.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Monday, Nov. 15, 1999
So far, the answer is overwhelmingly "Yes."
A whopping 90 percent of those who have taken The Official Jim Six Survey have voted "Yes." Only 10 percent have cast their votes for "No."
The question asked by the poll is "Yes or No?" It's a simple question, but some respondents have had some trouble with it.
"I'd love to take the survey, but all I see are the answers. What's the question?" some folks have said.
I think the folks who can't see the question are used to looking at very complicated things. This is simplicity itself.
Some may call it a philosophical question. I figured a simple question like "Yes or No?" would say something. I don't know what it really says, but it says something.
The poll is one more cyber gizmo I have discovered.
Back in the summer I launched my own web site at http://www.jim.six.org and it's still up and running, although I haven't updated it in a couple of weeks.
Then I started what I thought would be a scintillating e-mail discussion or mailing list. Several people signed up by sending an e-mail to jimsix-subscribe@globelists.com but the e-mail traffic has all but completely dried up, despite valiant attempts by the subscribers.
I next discovered how to launch an Internet bulletin board with a couple of forums people could read and post messages to. That's at http://server3.ezboard.com/bjimsixjustlikethenumber and remains somewhat active, although the activity isn't enough to give me whiplash.
More recently, I started The Official, Genuine Jim Six Chat Room, located at http://beseen3.looksmart.com/-chat/rooms/g/10184/ .
It's a little quirky, but works OK. The problem is figuring out when to be there when someone else is there so you can actually chat.
For some reason - well, I found out it was available and I didn't already have one - I also have a message board at http://www.InsideTheWeb.com/mbs.cgi/mb825325 but no one leaves messages there.
You'd think all this cyber inactivity would chill me out about the Internet, but it hasn't.
So when I found I could conduct my own Internet poll, I jumped on the opportunity. I started out by asking whether I should run for president, but that was a silly question. Of course I'm going to run for president! In fact, I am already working on plans for the 6P2K - Six for President in 2000 - campaign. For now, all I ask is that you remember that catchy little phrase: 6P2K.
Anyway, I decided to take a more philosophical approach with my survey, thus the question "Yes or No?"
I think a response of 90 percent for "Yes" is pretty substantial all by itself, but some respondents have left comments to expand on their response.
"Yes? Yes, of course!"
"No thanks, I'm driving."
"I feel that a yes vote would be the only vote at this time, or at least in the near future. Signed, Bill Clinton."
"I agree wholeheartedly. You are absolutely correct. No doubt about it."
"You're one sick puppy."
"Yes, but I did not inhale."
"Yes, but will you still love me tomorrow?"
My favorite comment was, "Yes, what? I didn't just change long distance carriers, did I?"
So, if you'd like your vote to really count, head on over to my bulletin board, which is at http://server3.ezboard.com/bjimsixjustlikethenumber, scroll to the bottom and take the survey. I’ll be asking something interesting.
Think positive.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Tuesday, Nov. 9, 1999
Pollsters surveyed 3,000 Britons recently to come up with The Most Beautiful Woman In The World.
According to this poll, 65-year-old Sophia Loren is The Most Beautiful Woman In The World. This distinction gets her photograph placed in a millennium time capsule, so future generations can marvel at her beauty.
Personally, I think winning the title The Most (Whatever) In The World should come with some form of cash award. Or at least a trophy.
According to the Reuters news service, "mature" women did well in the polling. I'm appalled that an international news service would risk insulting woman by referring to them in such a manner. "Women of a certain age" is a much gentler way of saying the same thing.
So, anyway, women of a certain age did well in the poll. Joanna Lumley, 53, was fifth and 59-year-old Raquel Welch came in seventh.
Who, you may ask, is the second most beautiful woman in the world? That honor went to Elizabeth Hurley, 34. Cindy Crawford, 33, was number three and Julia Roberts, a mere 32, was number four.
The poll was conducted by a company that makes beauty products.
The poll had two flaws. First, it was done in England. Second, it asked respondents to pick women in the public eye.
Because, as beautiful as Sophia Loren may be, she pales in comparison to my Closest Companion.
Oh, I know, you think I'm biased. But it's not so. There is evidence that everyone agrees that she is, indeed, The Most Beautiful Woman In The World.
I knew it immediately, I think. It was Sunday, Nov. 13, 1977. My friend, Don, and I had been out singing and honky-tonking at the old Mustang Lounge. The Mustang closed at 10 that night, so Don and I wandered down the road to the Lakeview Inn, which was pretty crowded. We sidled up to the only empty spaces at the bar. Both empty stools had coats on them. We leaned in anyway and ordered beers.
I looked out onto the dance floor and saw The Most Beautiful Woman In The World. My eyes lit up and my breathing stopped.
She looked right at me and smiled, not only with her mouth, but with the most incredible dark eyes I have ever seen.
I'm not sure how long I went without breathing.
As it turned out, she and another woman were the owners of the coats slung over the stools where we were standing. She and her friend had never actually gone out together before. They were not country music fans and had not been to the Lakeview before. It was apparent this meeting was destined to take place.
We talked. I have no idea what we talked about. I was hypnotized. I was mesmerized. I was, as they used to say, smitten.
I was having trouble breathing, I remember that much. I was also drowning in those dark eyes. We went out a couple of times, but that lasted only about a month or two. By February, we were on to other things and other people.
The thing is, we remained friends. For a couple of years, she would bring dates to hear me perform and spend all 20 minutes of my break with me, not him. Eventually, about four years later, we surrendered to the inevitable and got back together.
She took my breath away then and she takes my breath away today. Over the years, people have told me how beautiful she is, as if I didn't already know that. They seem amazed by her beauty. Maybe it leaves them breathless, too.
She's been with me a long time now and has been referred to as my Closest Companion for more than 14 years of this column's history.
Obviously, those Britons don't know about The Real Most Beautiful Woman In The World, or lovely Sophia would have been a distant second to my Closest Companion.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Monday, Nov. 8, 1999
Good news, Godzilla fans! The real Godzilla is coming back!
Everybody's favorite goofy, clumsy giant lizard is being rejuvenated at age 45 to celebrate the coming millennium.
You remember the original Godzilla. He was played by a guy in a cheesy rubber suit.
Diehard fans of the atomically enhanced reptile, or dinosaur or whatever it's supposed to be, did not seem too impressed by the 1998 American version: The creature was too lean, too tall, too agile and too computer-generated.
I was never a big Godzilla fan, but I certainly thought the old one - the guy in the cheesy rubber suit - was way cooler than the newer version.
I could never keep up with Godzilla and his awkward and oddly named adversaries. What were they called? Mothra, Rodan, Katapilla, Muskratta, Bubba and Steve?
There was something strangely endearing about this giant lizard. He, she or it could be bad in one movie and good in another. As kids, we also got a major kick out of the way people in the movie talked out of sync, with their lips moving in Japanese and their words coming out in English.
So, no, a Japanese movie company has done it again. The reincarnated Godzilla - the Japanese movie folks had filmed his supposed extinction in 1995 - will do battle in Tokaimura, the site of Japan's worst nuclear accident.
This is all great fun, but wait until you see how seriously Takao Okawara, the director of "Godzilla 2000: Millennium," takes the dinosaur.
"The U.S. version was a bit hard to digest as the real Godzilla," Okawara said. "It was too synthetic." Remember, when he's talking about the "real" Godzilla, he's talking about a guy in a cheesy rubber suit.
For those of you who have lived in a cave for the past 45 years, allow me to recap.
In 1954's "Godzilla, King of the Monsters," the lizard was awakened from his prehistoric nap by American atom bomb tests on Bikini Atoll and went on a rampage in Tokyo. Made only nine years after the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the movie ended with the clear message that, unless nuclear weapons were abolished, the monster would return.
In other words, we had nothing to fear but a guy in a cheesy rubber suit.
Nuclear weapons not being abolished, Godzilla returned at least once a year from 1962 to 1975. He dozed off for a little while, then stirred in 1984 and walked the earth again in 1995.
The new flick will be the 23rd Japanese Godzilla movie. This time, the lizard will square off against a mysterious giant spaceship that is reactivated after crashing to earth 60 million years ago.
I've always chuckled at the unsophisticated nature of the Godzilla movies, but once again, Okawara is dead serious about the movie's message.
"Godzilla is a symbol of the fact that humanity is threatened by what humanity itself creates," said the director, citing "the destruction of the environment and war."
It's a guy in a cheesy rubber suit!
"Some people see him as the 'heaven-sent" child of nuclear (weapons,) some as a ... mere monster and some as a symbol of the threat to humans from what humans create," Okawara said.
"You can't just sum him up in one simple sentence."
Well, yes I can:
It's a guy in a cheesy rubber suit!
©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Tuesday, Nov. 2, 1999
How many years have I been telling you I should have my own TV talk show?
Do you have any idea what you're missing with me not being on the air? I could be bringing you television shows with topics that would tantalize and titillate, entertain and educate, enthuse and excite you. You think I'm kidding?
How about a show that would teach you how to hypnotize anyone in 60 seconds or less? Wouldn't that be handy?
You could learn how to determine if your family is addicted to television or how Hollywood is influencing your children. You could learn the 10 worst on-ice hockey accidents, get the inside scoop on professional wrestling and learn how to stop deadbeat parents from going another day without paying child support.
You could hear all about the most famous shipwrecks of all time, find out if we would recognize Jesus, Mohammed or Buddha if they walked among us now and be taught 365 ways to beat the blues.
Could the Internet spawn Armageddon? I could get a guest to tell you. Would your marriage survive a serious illness? You could tune in to find out. Want to learn how to fix your own computer? I could book a self-proclaimed computer geek to show you how.
Oh, sure, I could book local folks to discuss environmental problems. I could have guests who will be stultifyingly boring, guests who would clumsily try to dazzle you with political prestidigitation and legal legerdemain, but wouldn't it be more fun to find out how to fall in love on the Internet, how to spot business opportunities that can make you rich and why corporate America is using cult brain-washing techniques on its employees?
You want local guests to prattle on about education in area schools and municipal money concerns, or do you want to learn why 75 percent of American woman dislike their appearance, why silly people live longer (Oh, thank goodness!), how you can make yourself irresistible and how to choose the best baby-sitter.
My show would feature fascinating people: the "Dave Barry of menopause," one of America's first women basketball stars, a big-city cabdriver who tells all, a woman who insists she is visited by the Virgin Mary, the actress who plays Dharma's mother on TV, a human "Eight Ball" who will show you how to tell your own fortune, the "man who dares to be stupid" and the "world's greatest toy designer."
Already, I'm considering shows on how you can solve every problem you have in 30 minutes, the truth about Doomsday cults and their plans to destroy the world, how the government can seize your property and keep it, what your preteen wants and needs to know but may not ask and why what the government doesn't want you to know about Y2K can hurt you.
Did you know that veterans, Baby Boomers, Generation Xers and Generation Nexters are clashing in the wor place? Would you like to know what happens when we die? Will Christ return in July? (Uh, this guest's interpretation of Nostradamus' predictions seemed to indicate Jesus would return in July 1999. I would imagine this guest is not getting loads of calls from talk show hosts.)
You could tune in to the popular Jim Six Show and find out how many fashion faux pas you are committing, how to control an uncontrollable child, how to fail your way to a fulfilling life, how to be happier at work and how to get gorgeous gorging yourself on fatty foods.
You can also learn why men are from locker rooms and women are from luxury boxes, how to talk to your computer and why you should set your wedding date before you meet your intended spouse.
I'm not making any of this up. These are all items listed in a booklet of "Feature Ideas" for radio and TV producers, published by Bradley Media Publications in Lansdowne, Pa.
OK, OK, so maybe this stuff is boring compared to the stuff you might find on Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones, but it could be a start, right?
Anyway, if you're interested in all this stuff, I suppose you should start the letter-writing campaign right now to get me on the air. Be firm. Don't take "no" for an answer.
©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Monday, Nov. 1, 1999
How was your Halloween? Ours was pretty scary. In the newsroom on Friday, we all wore Bob Shryock masks. No, really, we did.
Bob’s not really all that scary. A recent poll found that Frankenstein’s monster and Freddie Kreuger are the characters Americans consider the scariest of all. Dracula came in a distant third.
What’s not very shocking is that folks over 50 ranked Frankenstein’s creature — who first appeared in Mary Shelley’s book 181 years ago and made his film debut in 1931 — highest, while younger folks gave the highest ranking to Freddie Kreuger, who was brought to life first in “Nightmare on Elm Street” in 1984.
I’m saddened that the Mummy and the Wolfman didn’t seem to make the list.
Trouble is, at my age, movie monsters don’t scare me all that much any more.
What scares me is the day that comes so soon after Halloween: Election Day.
The Silly Season always drives me crazy. Highways get fixed up. Veterans issues are addressed. Babies are kissed. Pit bulls are patted on the head. Newspaper reporters are smiled upon and treated in an almost civil manner.
Of course, all that usually changes by Wednesday, the day after.
The signs that exhorted you to vote for this really great candidate or that really terrific person start to get tattered and faded, but they will remain in place way too long. Take my word for this: some of them will still be up at Christmas time. You should remember all those candidates who allow their signs to stay up any longer than a week after the elections.
Things get really nasty before the voting. Candidates make claims and promises.
The scary part is that a lot of people believe much of the rhetoric strewn around by the politicians. We’re so lucky here to be close enough to other political jurisdictions that we can share the joy and excitement of their elections, too. We not only get to read about the local and county races, we get to read and hear ads for Camden County and Philadelphia candidates. What good fortune for us!
To add to the confusion, there’s some guy running for senator next year who has campaign ads appearing everywhere. He sends at least three copies of multi-page news releases to our newsroom every day.
Personally, I think we should charge to receive faxes, considering that they are printed out at our end and on paper we have to pay for. Maybe there is technology somewhere that would allow us to choose which faxes we really do want to get and refuse all the other tripe.
Anyway, it’s almost over. Tonight and tomorrow night should do it. Go out and vote tomorrow and do the best you can, considering the things you have learned about the available candidates. No, don’t write in my name. I don’t want to be a state assemblyman or a freeholder. I’m saving myself for the 2000 Presidential Race.
Generally, I avoid partisan politics, but I am thinking of becoming a Republican, just so I can quit the Republican Party and declare myself a Reform Party candidate for President, like Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump.
But, oh, my! Look around at the actual, honest-to-goodness presidential candidates with a whole year to go yet.
Now that’s really scary!
©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Tuesday, Oct. 26, 1999
Regular readers may have suspected over the years that I suffer from a mild case of megalomania. I have written many times about how things would be different if I were in charge.
Well, I'm probably not really a megalomaniac. I don't REALLY have delusions of grandeur or actually think I am in charge.
I just know how I would act if I WERE in charge.
The thing is, despite all the great ideas I have had about new laws and ways to improve society and even baseball (they have rules for stealing! Isn't that ridiculous?) no one is knocking on my door with offers to put me in charge.
More drastic measures may be called for.
I am thinking about declaring my house an independent, sovereign country. Sure, it's an old idea. I think the movie "Passport to Pimlico" was about just such a thing, some place declaring itself a country and declaring war on its larger neighbor. Some Floridians did it several years ago, too, calling themselves the Conch Nation or the Conch Republic or something.
So there is a history of small, independent nations emerging now and then and applying for foreign aid from the countries with the big bucks.
But here's another great idea: I could insist all my utility bills should be canceled, due to the fact that I am a sovereign state.
A silly idea?
Not according to the Vatican City.
The electric, gas and water utility company in Rome, recently privatized, has announced that the Vatican owes a utility bill of 44 billion lire - that's $24 million in American money.
The Vatican says it doesn't owe the money at all. Mirabile dictu! (That's Latin for, "The heck you say!")
The Vatican insists the treaty that spells out its relationship with Italy exonerates it from sewage charges and ensures free water services because the tiny Vatican City is a sovereign state with no water supply of its own.
Huh?
Let me see if I have this straight. I become a small sovereign state and I can claim my water and sewer services should be free? Cool!
Despite its insistence that it should not be held liable for the bills, the Vatican has been negotiating to reach a solution to the dispute. How do you negotiate with folks like this? When one of the cardinals insists the check is in the mail, how do you call him a liar?
And you have to wonder what kind of collection agency the utility company would hire to go after a bill of this sort. I mean, will some tough-sounding guy start calling the pope at work or at home after 9 at night, dunning him for the money?
"I'm sure you realize that your credit rating is an important thing, Your Holiness. You wouldn't want something like this on your credit report, would you? Suppose you want to buy a new bulletproof car?"
Not to worry, though. The utility company will get its money, no matter what. The Rome city council guarantees the Vatican's credit and the city will pay if the Vatican doesn't.
Everything will work out fine, although the Roman taxpayers might not think so if they have to dig into their pockets to pay that $24 million bill if the Vatican defaults.
This could be a great idea. If I create an independent country at my house, I can ask for foreign aid from the United States government and insist that my municipality stop charging me for water and sewer service. I can demand that the electric company give me free service.
I may extend the idea to include my telephone bill and my car insurance. Heck! For that matter, there's no local cable TV source in the town in which I live, either. Maybe I can include that bill, too!
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Monday, Oct. 25, 1999
The dog days of summer have passed, I think. We're in the glorious days of autumn.
I like the summer and don't much like the winter, but I am absolutely nuts about the spring and fall.
Some of you may be worrying about the upcoming cold weather, but it's a beautiful day today.
Look around. Appreciate what's going on.
I know, I know. You're probably up to your eyebrows with dreary Monday stuff right now and you wish I would just go away with my Little Susie Sunshine routine. Mondays start long, exhausting weeks. You're in that old Monday funk.
Try to look at it another way. Mondays are a rebirth, a whole, new week we can use to start things fresh.
We can always look at today and find cause to remember and celebrate.
You're probably grimacing right now and asking, "Wha-?"
Well, today is really rather special. It's unique. It's not just another Monday. It's Oct. 25th and that means something. Exceptional things could happen. They have in the past.
Composers Johann Strauss and Georges Bizet were born on Oct. 25. I'm not real big on Strauss, but Bizet wrote that cool opera, "Carmen." It featured a song called "Toreador," which, I think, was about bullfighters and not the pants.
Football coach John Heisman was born on this day. They tell me he's the guy the trophy is named after.
Many famous people were born on this date: Pablo Picasso, the artist; 3-foot, 9-inch-tall actor Billy Barty; Marion Ross, Richie's mom on "Happy Days"; Helen Reddy, who sang "I Am Woman"; country comic Minnie Pearl; "Pretty Woman" Julia Roberts.
"Canterbury Tales" author Geoffrey Chaucer died on this date. I never really understood the "Canterbury Tales," but they sure sound funny when they're read in the original Old English.
Peter Jensen, who invented the loud speaker, died on this date, as did rock concert promoter Bill Graham, who made extensive use of Jensen's invention.
In 1147, the armies of the Second Crusade were destroyed by the Saracens in what is now Turkey. On Oct. 25, 1415, Welsh bowmen defeated armored knights in the Battle of Agincourt.
In 1760, George III was crowned king in Britain. He's the guy we rebelled against to create the United States of America.
The famous Charge of the Light Brigade ("Cannons to the left of me, cannons to the right of me...") took place in 1854.
Postcards made their debut in the United States in 1860.
"Little Orphan Annie" first appeared in the comics in 1924. Leaping lizards!
In 1930 on this date, the first scheduled transcontinental air service began. I'm not sure if baggage was lost for the first time on a scheduled transcontinental flight on the same date.
On this date in 1944, Jim and Elaine Six had been married for four days already. They had spent their first two days as man and wife at the Drake Hotel in Philadelphia.
Their firstborn son was 23 days old on this date in 1946.
The first electronic wrist watch was put on sale in New York on this date in 1960. Uganda was the 110th country to be admitted to the United Nations that year on this date.
John Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1962. The Beatles started their first foreign tour, in Sweden, in 1963.
On this date in 1965, the Rolling Stones released "Get Off Of My Cloud." In 1968, Yoko Ono announced she was going to have John Lennon's baby.
Walt Disney World was dedicated in 1971 on Oct. 25.
The United States invaded the tiny nation of Grenada in 1983. We won, I think.
Today is Thanksgiving Day in the Virgin Islands.
So, see? It doesn't matter whether you enjoy today for what it was, what it is or what it might be, as long as you enjoy it.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Oct. 19, 1999
“The bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, to see what he could see.”
I just wanted to sing you that little song from my childhood to get you in the mood for today’s column.
I guess Pennsylvania must have a really good tourism department. These days, it seems, even New Jersey bears can’t resist the lure of the Keystone State. OK, so in this case, the bear went over the river, but you get the connection.
A couple of months ago, there was a black bear running loose in Bucks County, Pa., in the Southampton area. That animal led authorities on a wild-bruin chase for a couple of days before it was caught. Officials insisted the bear had come from New Jersey. I think they released he bear somewhere over here.
A couple of weeks ago, another black bear was caught strolling around Bridgeport in Montgomery County, Pa. That one was also captured and hauled off to New Jersey, where it was released in a conservation area, or a game preserve, depending on which news account you read.
On Sunday, a black bear was spotted on a school football field in Chester County. Police said they thought it was the same bear that had been in Montgomery County.
This has me quite concerned for a number of reasons. I don’t always believe everything “authorities” or “officials” have to say.
How do they know the bears came from New Jersey? Is it legal for officials in one state to just come over here and drop off bears that are bothering them? I mean, I don’t think police in one town would be permitted to round up wandering miscreants and deposit them in an other town.
Oh, wait! I forgot. Many years ago, cops in one Gloucester County town picked up the local drunk one night. The guy was as passed out as he could be without being dead or in a coma. The gendarmes drove him north a couple of towns, where they handed him over to some other cops, who did likewise.
The drunk woke up in Brooklyn.
Even so, I just do not think dumping your troubles in someone else’s lap is a cool thing to do. If your troubles happen to weigh 400 pounds and have claws and teeth, it really isn’t cool.
I think heads should roll if it’s learned these bears didn’t come from New Jersey after all.
But there are some really important questions going unanswered here.
How does a bear get from New Jersey to Pennsylvania in the first place? Do bears have access to EZPass? Oh, right, I forgot. That wouldn’t work. Humans don’t even have access to EZPass yet.
Are the bears crossing one of the bridges when nobody’s looking? I suppose there are portions of the river north of here that are narrow enough for a bear to wade or swim across, but that just leads me to another important question.
Why did the bear cross the river? I could understand if these bears are emigrating from the northern portions of the Garden State. Up there, the New York influence must make being a bear in the ever-diminishing woods a tough life. Yet, you don’t hear about bears heading into New York City, do you?
But down here, in the truly garden portion of the Garden State, where paradise is not an abstract but a reality and a way of life, well, why would a bear want to leave at all?
A bear could terrorize South Jersey neighborhoods just as easily as it could communities in Pennsylvania. And do it without going that far from home.
Anyway, if these bears are, indeed, Jersey bears who went over the river, I feel sorry for them.
I mean, think about it.
If you had cops and TV news helicopters and guys with tranquilizer guns chasing you, and you were a bear, I’m sure you’d have an immediate and unavoidable need to find the woods, too.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Oct. 18, 1999
Take one part “Real World,” without the fancy house. Add a little “Road Rules” and mix in some “Double Dare.” Stir together with some reruns of “Gilligan’s Island” and, voila! You have the proposed CBS TV summer series “Survivor!”
The program will plop 16 contestants down on a tropical island in the South China Sea and ask them to survive. The winner — one winner — will take home a million bucks.
On the face of it, this sounds pretty brutal. Put a group of people in primitive conditions and tell them winner takes all and you’d pretty much be asking for a “Lord of the Flies” scenario, survival of the fittest, eliminate the competition, a cut-throat contest. Piggy!
Naw! This is TV programming. There will be a TV crew taping everything. Real survival experts, including my pal, Jeff Randall of Randall’s Adventure & Training in Gallant, Ala., the guy with whom I may trek off to the Amazonian jungle next June, think this prime-time foolishness is a farce.
Imagine: unlike “Real World,” where hand-picked obnoxious young people living in the lap of luxury get to whine about every little thing while on camera, we can now see 16 hand-picked obnoxious people whine because they didn’t get enough bananas or because they don’t like the other guy’s jungle hygiene practices.
From the looks of it so far, the whole selection and elimination process will be a personality contest and have little to do with real survival skills. The contestants will not be permitted to hunt or trap, which would certainly be required in a real survival situation. It’s my understanding that contestants who successfully complete certain challenges will be rewarded with food or other benefits, although I can’t imagine how that will work.
Will those who get rewards receive extra Charmin or a Snickers bar or a night in a pup tent?
I wouldn’t worry too much about the contestants possibly engaging in violent behavior to eliminate their competition during this contest. According to published information about the project, the contestants will vote every couple of days on who to eliminate from the competition.
Sound pretty civilized, huh?
Well, that might be misleading. The program is based on one that has run in Sweden, called “Expedition Robinson.” In 1997, the first contestant to be eliminated killed himself a month later and his wife still blames the contest.
Once there are only two contestants left, reportedly, those who have already been exiled will get to vote on the final winner. So, when you’re voting to eliminate someone, do it nicely.
According to the application forms and fact sheets for the CBS version of the show, contestants will be on the island of Palau Tiga, off Borneo, for seven weeks in March and April. Travel, paid for by the show’s producers, will be economy class. Only the winner gets any money. Those chosen for interviews in the selection process must pay their own way to certain cities. If selected to be in the show, they will not be paid for the time they spend on the island, although they will receive some form of consolation prize.
The producers want a videotape of the applicant. I can’t imagine they want more than one geeky, ugly contestant for this program.
The application form doesn’t ask about possible survival skills. It does however, want information about your hobbies, what political office you’d consider seeking, your favorite TV show, whether you have any tattoos or body piercings, your hero, and what types of people you’d want with you on the island and what types you wouldn’t want there.
Randall and his ilk, people to whom survival means knowing how to use the most basic tools to live, eat, find shelter and treat medical emergencies in the most inhospitable wilds on the planet and have a good time while doing it, find the whole concept hilarious.
In fact, Randall is offering the winner a real, two-week expedition to the jungles in Peru, on him.
Consider this, perhaps the most important and telling question on the application: “Which former castaway would you be most identified with: Gilligan, Skipper, Professor, Mary Anne, Ginger, Mr. or Mrs. Howell and why?”
Next summer’s must-see TV? Hmm. Maybe reruns of “The Drew Carey Show.”
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Oct. 12, 1999)
I was thinking that it’s not too early to start making plans for New Year’s Eve, but then I realized it’s probably way too late.
This will be a big one, of course: the year 2000 means a lot to many people. I will forego for the moment the continuing debate over whether we will enter the new Millennium on Jan. 1, 2000 or Jan. 1, 2001. We can keep THAT discussion going for another whole year.
The big-ticket events may be selling out, even as we speak. Hard-core New Year’s Eve revelers probably make reservations and buy tickets for their gala shindigs months, maybe years, in advance.
Barbra Streisand is getting top dollar for her performance at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas — tickets are selling for four figures. Jimmy Buffet is doing likewise, appearing at a show in Universal City in California. There will be an open bar at this one. For something like $1,500 per ticket, an open bar should be expected, don’t you think?
But, if you, like me, wait until the last minute for these things, don’t despair! Don’t wonder what you can do to ring in the Year 2000 in a most unforgettable way. I can help.
Don’t worry that mischief and mayhem will be rampant when the calendar flips over and computer bugs deliver us into apocalyptic chaos! Just go out and have a good time.
If you can’t make it to Times Square in New York City when the big ball drops, go to Tuskegee, Ala. instead. That’s where they will mark the passage of this old year by dropping a seven-foot-tall peanut.
In San Francisco, they will celebrate with the Great Millennium Olive Drop — a giant, illuminated olive will plummet several stories into the world’s largest martini glass.
In New Orleans, you could go to a voodoo mass, although I’m not sure that’s the way I’d want to welcome in the new year.
If you really want to be able to tell people you attended the Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration, go to Keene, N.H., where they’re calling their celebration the “Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration.”
For something really different — as if giant peanuts and behemoth olives aren’t different enough — head out to Port Clinton, Ohio, along Lake Erie. They’ll have the Walleye Drop, ringing in the new year by dropping a 16-foot, 120-pound fiberglass fish called “Capt. Wylie Walleye.” Holy moley!
In Nashville, they will be dropping Dolly Parton — oh, no, wait, I was reading that wrong! Dolly and other country performers will actually be on stage at the Opryland Hotel for the holiday.
If this is all too tame for some of you, here are a couple more suggestions. Go to Jacksonport, Wisc. and jump into Lake Michigan on Jan. 1. The 12th Annual Polar Bear Swim is expected to attract 1,000 people.
Or go to Sheboygan, where only about 400 hardy soils will take the Lake Michigan plunge. I was concerned that this celebration was a bit too violent when I first read the description in a brochure. It invited partygoers to a shindig at the armory after the dip, where “grilled brats take away the chill.” I thought scorching rambunctious children was a bit severe as a form of celebration, until someone pointed out that, this being Wisconsin, “brat” means “bratwurst.” Whew! That had me a bit worried.
Personally, I plan to have a few of the Usual Suspects over to my place. Maybe we’ll drink some margaritas, play some Jimmy Buffet, drink some more margaritas, do Barbra Streisand impressions, drink some more margaritas, curse Dick Clark and think about dropping my friend, Pete, off the roof on the stroke of midnight.
Or not.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Oct. 11, 1999)
What’s the greatest rock-and-roll movie of all time?
We were discussing music the other day in the newsroom when the question first came up.
The guy who first asked the question said he thought I would pick “Physical Graffiti.” I hesitated long enough to avoid having to tell him I had no idea what “Physical Graffiti” is.
My young colleague — I think he’s a little past three years old, in dog years — suggested that the Talking Heads movie, “Stop Making Sense” was the best rock-and-roll movie.
Anyway, I started thinking about it.
I immediately discounted all the Elvis Presley movies. Come on, “Love Me Tender” and “Blue Hawaii” weren’t rock-and-roll movies.
Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around The Clock” made its official debut in the film, “Blackboard Jungle,” but that wasn’t a rock-and-roll movie, it was a juvenile delinquent movie.
The Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello movies weren’t rock-and-roll flicks, either. They were about — well, I don’t know what they were about, exactly. They were about teen-agers or the beach or beehive hairdos, but not about rock-and-roll.
I started asking around to see what other people thought. One guy admitted a fondness for “Grease.” One of our photographers didn’t hesitate at all before saying “Spinal Tap.” In fact, three guys nominated “Spinal Tap.” Of course, one of those guys also thinks “Wayne’s World” might qualify, so what the heck does he know?
Others suggestions included “Yellow Submarine,” the Buddy Holly movie, a couple of votes for “That Thing You Do,” someone said “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and there were a couple of nods to “Eddie and the Cruisers.” Someone told me recently that portions of the “Cruisers” were actually filmed in Gloucester County, N.J. If anyone knows where, let me know.
My first reaction was that “Hard Day’s Night” is probably the best rock-and-roll movie. It was about the music.
Well, maybe “American Graffiti.” It was about the music, too, and featured really great oldies. They were oldies already when the movie came out in 1973, which makes them fossils for today’s youngsters, I suppose. I think I just read about the cultural and generation gap between my Baby Boomers and today’s college kids. They were born almost 10 years after the Beatles broke up!
Naw, I still think “Hard Day’s Night” should be considered the best rock-and-roll movie. I personally prefer “Help!” to “Hard Day’s Night,” but the second Beatles movie wasn’t about the music as much as the first was.
Richard Lester pretty much invented music videos with both movies, especially “Help!” The whole Monkees phenomenon was based on that film.
There have been other rock-and-roll movies: “Monterey Pop” and “Woodstock” and “Gimme Shelter,” but they were documentaries.
A woman in the newsroom said she thought of the Doors movie when I asked her, and another came up with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
Many movies have featured rock-and-roll music. Many have been about rock-and-roll figures: Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and Prince before he was the former whatever. Madonna has had a couple of movies out and they were about her, not the music. Then there’s the Spice Girls’ movie, which I think was about nothing.
“The Rose” with Bette Midler was supposed to be about Janis Joplin, but it wasn’t, not really.
I shudder to think what kind of movies will be made about some of the current rock stars.
No, despite all these other possibilities, I keep returning to my initial answer, ‘Hard Day’s Night.”
Trouble is, many of the young people today, the ones who are not yet four years old in dog years, don’t remember the early days of rock-and-roll. They get to hear it every day, though, whether they realize it or not.
Because there ARE films that use rock-and-roll more than the feature-length movies.
Commercials. TV commercials are a hotbed of classic rock-and-roll.
Trust me, kids: Today’s commercials will be tomorrow’s great rock-and-roll movies. Start keeping track now, in case some old curmudgeon asks you to name your favorite rock-and-roll commercial of all time.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Oct. 5, 1999
Once again, a so-called work of art is causing a stink.
Up at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, there’s a painting or something called “Holy Virgin Mary.” It’s supposed to be a painting of Mary, but the artist incorporated pieces of, you should excuse the expression, elephant dung and cut-out pictures of bare buttocks.
Ooh, talk about a controversy! New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani wants the exhibit shut down. People are demanding that the painting be removed from the museum. Others want it censored.
I saw the painting by accident the other day. Some talking head was interviewing a museum official on one of the morning TV talk shows and he was sitting right in front of the painting. Now the painting in the Brooklyn museum has had international exposure.
I am going to surprise everyone with my stand on this one.
I think the museum should have its federal money yanked. I do not believe taxpayers should be paying for this sort of thing.
You are shocked, right? You would not have guessed that I would be in favor of censorship.
You would be right. I despise the notion of censorship.
By “this sort of thing,” I don’t mean potentially offensive pictures of religious characters with animal excrement, or depictions of naked people or anything like that.
By “this sort of thing,” I mean art.
I just don’t think the government should be in the arts business at all.
I have never been in favor of the National Endowment for the Arts. Why should some creative people receive federal subsidies and others not? Because some creative people write better grant proposals? Where’s the artistic ability in that?
If every artist, author, actor and musician in the country received equal amounts of money from the government, well, then I might think it was a fair system. Of course, it doesn’t happen that way and that might be the way things operated in communist countries for all I know.
Using my money for schools is paramount. Using it for defense is equally as important. Using it for all sorts of common-good things is OK.
For art? No, sir.
How do we decide what is really art and what is not? If we use public money to finance museums, we are paying someone — usually some snooty person with a questionable accent and bad fashion sense that often includes bow ties — to sit in judgment on what constitutes a work of art.
I know lots of people who think a painting of a 12-point buck in the woods is art. Others would feel the same way about depictions of a SWAT team raiding a drug lab. Still others would prefer Norman Rockwell, and others would choose Pablo Picasso.
I think if we’re going to have government-run museums, anything anyone creates and calls art should be displayed. Treasured tracings of tiny hands from pre-school. Greasy finger-painted masterpieces. Artsy Polaroids of Aunt Regina. You name it, it should go in the public museum if somebody thinks
it’s art.
But none of this pick-and-choose stuff, not on my dime.
That way, we never have to worry about religious figures being made of empty sugar packets or losing lottery tickets and we never have to worry about who gets offended by what you and I think is art.
Now, on the other hand, if the government insists on giving money away for creative endeavors, well, I have this idea for a book about go-go dancers.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Oct. 4, 1999
I know some newspaper columnists who collect weird items in closets and drawers, only to write about them.
Me, I collect stories that need to be told, weird bits and snippets of information or tantalizing headlines that make me smile or chuckle out loud.
Just since the spring, I have collected a lovely compilation of oddities and absurdities that I knew I would share with you, sooner or later.
This is the kind of stuff that catches my eye.
A guy who runs a Web site called “myboss.com” is running a contest to select the Dumbest Boss of the Millennium. The entrant with the best story will win $1,000. Of course, this WOULD come up now that I have technically become a boss, myself.
Pizza Hut Inc.is paying more than a million bucks to have it’s corporate logo painted on the Russian rocket that will carry part of an international space station aloft.
Oct. 11 is National Coming Out Day, when folks of a gay persuasion are urged to come out and let the world know about their sexual proclivities. For those spouses who suddenly find themselves left behind by newly announced homosexual partners, there’s a Web site called straightspouse.com where they can seek consolation.
In a Pennsylvania high school, students who want to use really clean restrooms must pay $25 and sign a pledge not to vandalize the lavatories.
A while back, a topless woman danced on an electrical tower in Seattle. She was drinking vodka, spitting it out and setting it on fire. To keep her from being electrocuted, the electric company cut power to the lines — and to about 5,000 homes in the area. It was later revealed that she was really a man. No, I don’t know why he or she was doing all this.
The White House’s head Y2K advisor says everything is going to be all right when 2000 arrives, but suggests we stock up on food and water and save our bank records anyway.
An Iranian cleric insists that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini didn’t REALLY mean Salmon Rushdie should be murdered when he issued a fatwah, or death contract, condemning the British author for blaspheming Islam. It was just his way of warning people not to mess with Islam.
The British government has come out with some important advice: don’t drink and fry. Drunks frying up late-night snacks are responsible for fires that kill about 40 people every year.
According to recently de-classified documents, Fidel Castro sent a message to Lyndon B. Johnson in February 1964 supporting LBJ’s election to the presidency and giving the American president the green light to take hostile action against Cuba, if that would help.
A 375-pound man claimed he was discriminated against by an airline after he was told he was too big for a plane seat and would have to purchase a second ticket.
A man in Cairo killed his wife because she wouldn’t make him a cup of tea, claiming she was too busy watching the solar eclipse in August.
You can now buy Tupperware over the Internet.
Nuns who fatally shot a man who broke into their convent in Colombia were found by a court to be acting in self defense, despite the fact that the two sisters took turns firing a revolver at the man.
You can’t sing or wear shorts in Pakistan’s most popular summer resort town. In Iran, however, a ban has been lifted on the import of Western musical instruments.
Swimmer-movie star Esther Williams insists her former boyfriend, actor Jeff Chandler, wore women’s clothing.
The city of Philadelphia is considering installing self-cleaning toilets in public restrooms. I’d like one of them for my house.
There are about 1,000 large asteroids than can still threaten our planet, according to scientists.
Bing Crosby music is played at the entrance of an Australian shopping mall as a surprisingly effective way to keep teen-agers from hanging out there.
A woman in England sued for job-related stress because she became depressed after being promoted against her will. She was awarded more than $100,000.
“Moby Dick” was included on a list of the best gay novels.
An 8th grade student in Ohio was suspended for smearing poison ivy on her teacher’s chair.
Students at a California university were caught cheating on an ethics test.
Would I lie about this stuff?
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Sept. 28, 1999
“So, what’s gonna happen in 2000?” Mack asked me on Monday afternoon. Mack delivers my lunch from the deli. He figured if anyone knew whether we would be plunged into powerless darkness on New Year’s Day, it would be me.
Hmm. Good question. Is the world going to come to a screeching halt because computers won’t understand the double zeroes represent 2000 and not 1900? Will we have widespread power outages and riots in the street? Will our heat stop working? Will the banks crash? Will our water stop pumping?Worse yet, will the illuminated crystal ball high over Times Square blink off as it descends at midnight? And what would it matter if our TV sets didn’t work?
Who knows for sure?
I will have enough food to make it through and, beyond that, I am not going to panic.
If the banks crash, well, I don’t have enough money in the bank to worry about. If my debtors can’t find me for a while in their computer systems, well —ah, too bad.
The government insists everything will be all right. Well, at least parts of the government say that. Other parts of the same government say there might be some problems, after all.
It’s hard to figure out what to believe.
Friend of his, said Mack, bought land in Arkansas or someplace, so he won’t be caught in the urban jungle if the dreaded Y2K Bug bites hard. At least Mack’s friend didn’t get scammed when he bought the land.
Apparently, Y2K scams are becoming a big deal. I don’t mean scams like buying a Millennium Clock that counts down to the Year 2000 and getting only three months of use out of it. I mean real scams.
According to a wire story, thieves are calling, pretending to work for banks, wanting to “confirm” credit card or bank account numbers. Someone else is selling fake magnetic strips that supposedly make credit cards immune from computer problems. Others are offering to take your savings and investments and hold them in a “safe place” until you’re sure the banks are safe.
There are unscrupulous con men offering to turn your cash into gold for safety. All you have to do is send them your money and they will send the gold back to you. This one targets lots of elderly folks, who are being told Social Security is going to collapse when Y2K arrives and that they’d better get some gold while they still can.
Reminds me of a story I heard about a guy who was buying up gold some years ago because of the impending financial crash, the one that didn’t occur, at least not when it was supposed to. Someone asked him if he had any guns to protect all that gold he now owned.
The gold-buyer smiled knowingly and said, don’t worry, if he needs guns, he’ll have enough gold to buy them.
See, it never occurred to him that someone with guns might just wind up with the gold, too.
Some of the people making money from the Y2K scare are doing so legitimately, of course. They are selling water containers and non-perishable food. Still others are selling revamped bomb shelters left over from the atomic-scared 1960s and weapons and gas masks. This market might not represent merchants you’d want in the local business association, but in many cases, they are giving you something for the money you spend.
The real scam artists, I’m afraid, are the people who are giving something away for free: the fear mongers, many connected with religious organizations, who are taking advantage of the uncertainty and confusion to preach catastrophe and Armageddon.
They’re the ones that tick me off the most.
So what’s really going to happen?
Best answer I can offer is this: At 92 days and counting, let’s wait and see.
©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Sept. 27, 1999
Your attention please: Amerikan has left the country!
America’s favorite refugee family, the Karilijus from Kosovo, got homesick and went home.
Awww!
Now I won’t have Naim and Lebibe Karaliju to kick around any more.
The couple was among the first refugees to arrive here in May. They lied about how pregnant Lebibe was when they climbed aboard the airplane, knowing that officials would probably have refused to let her fly if they knew she was due to deliver at any moment.
Hours after they arrived at Fort Dix, Lebibe had a baby. Hoping to milk this made-for-a-TV-movie-moment for all it was worth, the couple named their little boy Amerikan. The media ate this up.
Good-hearted people from all over the country started showering the family with gifts, even including designer baby outfits. Oh, sure, there were plenty of LOCAL babies starving to death at the time, but this was dramatic, this was a refugee, this was the way our people open their arms to the downtrodden. Well, to the downtrodden who wind up on the evening news, anyway.
I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I think baby Amerikan was a cute kid. He never did one thing wrong.
It’s his parents I don’t like.
Amerikan and his folks collected their booty and moved from Fort Dix to Dallas. They moved into an apartment with an extended family, grandparents and all. A refugee service agency started giving them money to pay the rent and eat with. Naim made headlines all over again in August when he said the refugee agency was doing such a poor job of taking care of all his family’s needs, he didn’t know if there would be milk for the baby. His mother, in her 60s, was the only one earning a living, by cleaning hotel rooms. Why, he might even have to pay his own rent and maybe even get a job!
Of course, the agency had already set up several job interviews, but he never mentioned that.
A big corporation hired him a couple days later. Another elderly relative was getting a Social Security check every month and had full Medicare and Medicaid coverage. Don’t ask me how that deal worked. I never did find out how the old man managed to get such good coverage.
Finally, Naim Kariliju admitted he had lied about the refugee agency providing lousy service. He was just envious because he thought other refugees were getting more than he was.
The national press never did report on how Naim made out with his new job.
I remember being incensed to learn that Naim was worried about how the family’s property in Kosovo had fared. Property? They had PROPERTY and we were feeding them and housing them? Lovely.
Still, the news media insists on referring to them as poor farmers from a small village, poor refugees who cannot speak English. Awww.
So now, they have gone home. On a flight chartered by the U.S. government to take some Kosovars home. As it turns out, the Kariliju house had survived Serb looting and NATO bombing raids.
“A lot of refugees were not used to the fast pace (of work) and the fact that a lot of American families routinely work two jobs,” said a refugee services worker. “This culturally was very different for them.”
Awww.
The social worker said he thought the Kosovars were “tremendously homesick.”
Yeah. They were homesick for someplace where they wouldn’t have to work so hard. Well, I’ll bet they were homesick. It’s tough to be a poor farmer when you’re working on the loading dock of a big U.S. corporation.
Those of you who will worry about the fate of poor, innocent Amerikan, fear not: The kid was born here. He’s a citizen. No matter what a lazy slug his dad is, or where they are, Amerikan IS an American.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Sept. 21, 1999)
In my never-ending quest for the perfect money-making scheme — er, income opportunity — I have stumbled across a whole new idea, involving juris prudence.
I think I can clean up.
The plan has to do with defendants giving money to jurors after a trial is over, providing, of course, they decide the defendant’s fate in a favorable way.
I’m sure this won’t change the course of justice for the poor jerk who has been arrested for murder or some other nefarious crime, but I’m sure it could alter the future for a rich palooka busted on similar charges.
There’s a guy in New York who was charged with criminal solicitation for allegedly trying to hire a hitman to kill a former business partner. The crime supposedly happened in 1997, although the hit never took place. The “target” died of natural causes this summer.
The accused in this case just happens to be a millionaire. Not long ago, a jury deadlocked and could not convict him of tax fraud. He gave $2,500 to 10 members of the jury. The other two jurors just said, “No, thank you.”
Now let’s look at this logically. This is like leaving a big tip in a restaurant. The first time, it’s for services rendered, but it’s also for services not yet rendered. But the next time, you can be pretty sure they will remember you as a generous tipper and provide service accordingly.
So here’s a guy who drops a cool couple grand on jurors. Now the judge in the current case has issued an order putting the kibosh the whole idea BEFORE the fact.
The defendant’s lawyer thinks such an order is illegal. He said the judge cannot restrict anything his client does AFTER the trial is over. The lawyer said he can’t see anything wrong with jurors accepting a gift once their jury duty is over.
It seems that the rich guy is trying to set a precedent, just like the big-tipping diner. He is not only facing this criminal solicitation charge, but faces retrial on more than 100 counts in a tax-evasion case.
You and I would immediately wonder why the rich guy could get away with something as blatantly wrong as this. It’s got to be against the law, right?
Well, maybe not.
The judge who actually issued the order acknowledged that giving gifts to jurors just might NOT be illegal, but she reasoned that she should be allowed to rule against it so the trial would be a fair one.
A law professor seemed to agree. If there is an acquittal, the defendant is pretty much a free man. Free to do whatever he wants to do, maybe.
Jurors here earn a whopping $5 per day from the county. If you spend a week on a jury, your whole pay check, including mileage reimbursement from home to the courthouse, might not buy you and the family a night at the movies.
But if you knew there was going to be a $2,500 pay day at the end of the trial, well! Jury duty might not be such an onerous task, after all!
I think this is going to be big.
People might start volunteering to sit on juries as a way of earning a few extra bucks. Volunteering to judge a lowlife defendant might earn you some illicit drugs or stolen property, but well-to-do defendants should be willing to fork over worthwhile incentives.
Of course, no one jury volunteer is going to make the big bucks, but I believe there’s going to be a crying need for a professional jury broker.
That’s where I come in.
Hey, a buck’s a buck.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Sept. 20, 1999)
Looking for a unique mode of transportation? Something a bit different from all the SUV’s (that stands for Simply Unaffordable Vehicles) that are choking the highways these days?
Well, you might want to buy one of the newest cars designed, or even design your own.
Debuting in a couple of years is the Saroukh el-Jamahiriya. That translates to “Libya’s Rocket.” It’s the world’s safest car, according to its inventor, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
The narrow, rocket-shaped car holds five passengers. It has air bags all around the inside of the car, a bumper that collapses to create a large crumple zone and a system of anti-roll rocker panels to protect those inside.
Gadhafi, the man who has been perceived as a major supporter of international terrorism for many years, said his new car is meant to demonstrate his concern for humanity and human life.
The name of the car is supposed to show that, while others produce rockets to kill and destroy, Libya designs rockets for humane purposes, or at least to get you and the family to the grocery store in safety.
If you can’t wait a couple of years, maybe you should start designing your own vehicle.
I am pondering the possibility of taking a trek to the Amazonian rainforest next summer, hunting alligators, eating monkeys, pacas, which are big rats, and grubs, which are worms, and hobnobbing with former headhunters.
Of course, at my present ponderous proportions, traipsing through the jungle might be a breath-taking proposition, literally.
So I have come up with a lazier way to journey through the jungle.
My Closest Companion’s sister works for Electric Mobility, in Sewell, N.J., makers of the Rascal, a little electric cart that can be used by folks who have problems with normal mobility. She told me they already make a version of the Rascal for rougher-than-usual terrain, but I wonder if it’s suited for the rainforest.
So here’s my plan. I want to put treads on a Rascal, instead of wheels, make it a tracked vehicle so it can go anywhere, uphill and down, over fallen tree limbs and through rotting jungle vegetation and, perhaps, even through streams and shallow rivers.
It would have to have a long-life battery, something that could be charged enough to last several days at a time, and be able to function well in hot, humid conditions while carrying a fat guy and his gear.
Unfortunately, something like this would probably have to be a bit bigger than the normal small Rascal. My guess is it would have to be about as big as a Humvee or a small tank. And it probably wouldn’t do much for the ecological system in the rainforest. Trampling down the plant life with a tracked vehicle probably won’t put me on a list of the environmentally friendly tourists.
Ah, well. It was just a thought.
There may be one other way for me to get moving. Some scientists believe there may actually be a gene for laziness, something that keeps people from exercising. I should probably offer myself for scientific study.
If the scientists could isolate such a gene, they figure they could develop treatments to get people like me off my duff and off the couch.
In the meantime, while waiting for that anti-laziness pill, the Jungle Rascal and the debut of Libya’s Rocket, I guess I should probably just go for a little walk.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Sept. 14, 1999)
You might say, if you read this column even semi-regularly, that it’s often filled with a lot of nonsense.
You’d be right, of course.
A crusty old newspaper editor told me more than 30 years ago that he thought I was filling my drawers with nonsense. He meant my mind, not my boxers!
See, every now and then, it dawns on me that I actually make my living writing for a newspaper.
I decided to become a writer when I was still in high school. I wanted to be a real writer, a novelist. Not wanting to take any chances, I figured I’d take up journalism so I had something to fall back on while waiting to make it big in the novel business.
Here it is, 35 years later. I am still falling back on journalism, waiting for that first novel to become a best seller. I realize you have to write a novel before it can ever become a best seller.
I did start writing one, a mystery novel, back in 1986. I seem to be stuck at Chapter Six. I wonder if there’s something significant about that?
I’ve always been writing, it seems. Even during the years I played music, I was writing songs.
Most of my writing inspiration comes from Mike Sikorski, who was my freshman English teacher in high school and then my creative writing instructor during my senior year. Mike, more than anyone, believed I was a good writer. He insisted that I write anything, everything, all the time.
Even before I started at the old Philadelphia Bulletin, I read columns written by James Smart. I was fascinated by the column format then, and I remain fascinated by it today.
Last time I saw his work, Jim Smart was still columnizing for a chain of weeklies in the area.
I don’t want to say I’d do this job for free, because my boss might get the idea he can cut my pay, but the truth of the matter is, I can’t imagine doing anything else day-in and day-out.
Covering news has always been exciting. When Robert “Mudman” Simon was killed on death row a week ago, I was the acting city editor. I watched as a reporter started working on the story and — this is the truth — I was physically twitching. I was thinking about how I would cover the story. When big news breaks, I always start twitching. I am a news junkie.
Writing this column is something altogether different. It gives me the chance to try to be funny, to say things that occur to many of us, to be wild and crazy and to put ridiculous nonsense in print.
Back when I was a young pup at the Bulletin, I worked for a grouchy editor named Charlie Johnson. Charlie was not one of my biggest fans, I am sorry to say. I worked for him as an editorial assistant for a time, but finally he called me into the city editor’s office one day to tell me he was letting me go. He wasn’t firing me, just terminating my editorial assistancy, so to speak.
“I’ve always believed the mind is made up of a bunch of little drawers, “ Charlie told me. “We fill up the drawers with information we’ll need to use sometime in the future.”
I can’t be sure, recalling this over a span of so many years, but I seem to see Charlie either shaking his head or wagging his finger at me.
“Trouble is, Jim, you’re filling up your drawers with nonsense.”
I wish he were still around. It would be nice to tell him that he was right, I was filling my drawers with nonsense.
Weird thing is, it’s nonsense I find myself using everyday, writing it down, as Mike Sikorski suggested, and turning it into a newspaper column, the way Jim Smart did.
So, Mike, Jim and Charlie — thanks for the inspiration!
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Sept. 13, 1999)
Well, the Mudman is dead.
When copkiller Robert “Mudman” Simon was beaten to death on Trenton State Prison’s Death Row last Tuesday morning, shock waves rippled through Gloucester County. The news triggered a lot of sweet and savage emotions in people who are normally pretty polite.
People who generally do not condone violence — don’t espouse it, anyway — started spouting clichéd old maxims.
Justice is served. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Saves the taxpayer the cost of an execution. Ambrose Harris, the guy who stomped and gouged the life out of the Mudman, did what the state of New Jersey hasn’t been able to do: execute someone sentenced to the death penalty.
Of course, it’s times like this that prove why clichés become clichés in the first place — because they’re often so true, they’re used so often.
Anyone who was involved in the whole case, anyone who followed the gruesome story as it unfolded from the brutal murder of Lee Gonzalez in 1995 to the courtroom to Death Row, anyone who shivered uncomfortably when they saw the Mudman’s disturbing thousand-mile stare coming at them from front-page newspaper photographs, anyone who knew Lee or the cops who investigated the case was shaken and surprised when the news circulated Tuesday morning.
“The Mudman is dead!” shouted someone in our newsroom. A quick check of the Associated Press wire on a computer turned up a one-line news alert confirming his death, but containing not much in the way of details.
Days later we were still reeling and still learning all-too-graphic details of one murderer’s death at the hands — more likely, at the feet — of another murderer.
C’mon, let’s face it: what have these guys on Death Row got to lose, anyway? If they charge and convict Harris of Mudman’s murder, will they give him two death penalties? What’s that mean to him?
When Simon and Charles “Shovel” Staples — they have such colorful nicknames, don’t they? — murdered Lee Gonzalez on Route 47, within sight of the police station, they killed more than just a good cop.
They outraged our society. They tried to kill a piece of the security and orderliness of the community.
They were tough, by God, and no cop was going to mess with them.
But they did something else when those deliberate shots were fired in the dark on the side of the road. They murdered little bits and pieces of a lot of other people.
One of the first cops on the scene after they killed Lee was unable to return to duty. He left the police force. I think he’s a man of the cloth now.
They killed parts of all the cops in that township. They disheartened once and future police chiefs. They tore the heart out of the man who’d hired Lee. They burdened Lee’s friends with grief that is proving hard to shake.
They slaughtered the peace of mind of many officers and their families, families who now, more than ever, were worried that the father or husband who pinned on a badge and strapped on a gun as he left the house to go to work might not return at the end of his shift.
They tore to ribbons the hearts of the people who loved Lee and of people who didn’t even know him but who firmly believed that Old West violence no longer happened on our serene streets.
Well, the Mudman is dead.
Will I mourn him? Don’t make me laugh.
Will anyone mourn him?
Someone will, I’m sure.
But not around here.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Sept. 7, 1999
Bad news, Beanie Baby boosters. Bid your beloved baby beanbags bye-bye. The Babies are biting the dust. At 11:59 p.m., Dec. 31, all Beanie Babies will be retired.
The announcement was made by Ty Inc. last week. I’m not really sure what it means. From the way it was worded, you’d think that not only was the company going to stop making the stuffed toys, but that it would require any Beanie Babies you have at home to be packed up and sent to retirement villages in Florida.
Company employees were reportedly caught off guard by the surprising announcement, as well.
I have to wonder if this is a gag. The floppy bean things have been selling like crazy since they were introduced in 1993. Investors stockpile Beanies, which initially sold for about five bucks, in hopes of unloading them for big profits. Some have even fetched $1,000.
They tell me the biggest price tags are on Beanie Babies that have been retired or discontinued.
Well, I’m not an investor or a Beanie Babies collector and I certainly don’t understand the world of high, or even medium, finance, so maybe I am wrong — but if these things are taken off the market, won’t that make them even MORE valuable in the future? Beanie Babies made only in the 20th century would certainly command much more millennium moolah. And if people even THINK they’re going to be more valuable in the future, won’t they rush out to buy more and more of them now, while they’re still available? And won’t that make the company oodles of dough?
Yeah, I thought so, too.
Of course, I am not alone in such thinking. There is speculation that the retirement announcement was a gimmick to hike prices and prepare Beanie fans for something new in 2000. Wow, how shocking that would be!
Personally, I think Beanie Babies are kind of silly, but I think I had several mood rings way back in the ‘70s, so to each his own. People collect all sorts of things.
Besides, it’s a great money making idea. I wanted to market something called Imagi-Beans: a swatch of colored cloth, some buttons and beads, a needle and thread and some beans for stuffing. Voila! Make your own imaginative toy! Each one a Collector’s Item! No two alike! Only $5.95 each!
Some people have unexciting ideas for making money, like the dentist with the breath center who’s offering to send regular or e-mail letters to folks with bad breath.
It’s a touchy situation. How DO you tell someone their breath could stun a bull elephant at 50 yards? Without hurting their feelings, I mean?
Calling or e-mailing this guy’s outfit gets the letter sent, and it politely explains that bad breath can be handled with a $40 breath-freshening system, which, by the way, is available at the dentist’s World Wide Web site. Clever, huh?
I’m not entirely sure I would be willing to shell out 40 smackers to a guy who just sent me a letter telling me my breath stinks, but what do I know?
While great money making ideas come easy to some people, other folks have to be willing to sacrifice a little to make a buck.
Some guy tried to auction off one of his kidneys on the Internet the other day. Bidding got to almost $6 million before the auction company pulled the plug. It’s against federal law to sell body parts, but, even more importantly, the guy was breaking the company’s policy.
No one knows if it was a scam.
Beanbags retiring. Bad breath hotlines. And kidneys for sale.
Ah, the world makes me shake my head in wonderment.
-30-©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Sept. 6, 1999
The summer season may officially close today, but I’m thinking about possible vacation plans for next June.
No, I’m not considering a typical week at the shore or a visit to Walt Disney World.
The last vacation trip I took was in 1992, when my Closest Companion and I went to Morocco. Those of you who have been with me for a while might recall that a guy in Marrakech tried to buy my Closest Companion for 400 camels. We were in a fragrance shop in the Djemaa El F’na, the huge market place in the Medina. Djemaa El F’na means “Rendezvous of the Dead.”
This guy was probably attracted to her dark eyes and intense good looks and started the bidding at 100 camels. I kept refusing his offers and I guess he thought I was bargaining. The price rose, a hundred camels at a time, to the outrageous price of 400.
“There are not enough camels in the world,” I finally exclaimed. I still believe this, although it has since come to my attention that camels sometimes sell for $25,000 apiece in some parts of the African continent.
Anyway, I haven’t really gone anywhere since then.
Now I’m thinking about taking a little trip on the river. The Tahuayo River, actually, which is a tributary of the Amazon, in the jungles of Peru.
The tour operator, an adrenaline junkie named Jeff Randall in Gallant, Ala., travels to the jungle several times a year. He teaches jungle survival skills, tests knives and other gear and seems to love the heck out of it.
This particular trip, he’ll have the company of Newt Livesay, a good old boy from Arkansas who makes some of the best knives around today and ex-undercover cop and freelance writer and novelist Jerry Van Cook. Could be a really fun time in the jungle. In fact, Jeff keeps referring to it as the “Rumble in the Jungle.”
It’s a week-long expedition based out of a nice-looking lodge on the river. The description of the trek says it’s not an extreme trip. I think that means there would be porters to carry our gear through the jungle.
The excursion will involve day-long hikes through the jungle, overnight stays in the bush and night-time alligator hunts from dugout canoes. It will also include survival skills classes and a lot of “exotic” food.
Hmmm. As I read more carefully through Jeff’s descriptions of jungle life, I see that “exotic” foods might include monkey, caiman, pacas and other jungle animals, palm grubs, piranha and plants. Wait! I’ve tasted alligator, but it says here pacas are large rats! And grubs! Aren’t they worms?
The requirements for the trip include a Yellow Fever vaccination and a prescription for malaria medicine, lots of insect repellent and fishing gear. Oh, and Jeff seems to think participants in the expedition should be of “average physical shape.”
When I first started thinking about this trip, I thought it might be possible to run into headhunters. I had a nun in grade school who had spent time as a missionary in Peru and she discussed, in great, explicit detail, the methods headhunters she knew used to shrink heads. My friends dismissed the notion of headhunters off hand.
Well, according to Jeff’s information, travelers on the Tahuayo River might encounter the Jivaro tribe. “Once feared by their enemies for their fierceness in battle, guerrilla tactics and shrinking the heads of fallen foes, the Jivaros are now a peaceful tribe welcoming visitors into their homes.”
Right.
Some of you may be chuckling now, trying to picture ME traipsing around in a humid rain forest, trying to mop the perspiration off my face, swatting gigantic flying jungle bugs and munching on worms and rat meat. Sleeping on the ground and hunting alligators and monkey. Bathing in piranha-infested river water.
Boy! That’s my idea of a GOOD time!
But I can’t think about it any more right now. I’m out of breath from typing so fast, my allergy medicine just stopped working, the tendonitis in my elbow is throbbing, my feet hurt and the pizza I just had for lunch really upset my stomach. And I have this mosquito bite that’s killing me!
-30-©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Aug. 31, 1999)
Oh, geez! As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, what with the dire forecasts that the world may be coming to an end at the beginning of the Year 2000 and all, now we have to start watching the skies again.
Last year, we had what some scientists called a near miss with a giant asteroid that would have smushed large portions of the Earth, killing or seriously inconveniencing many people. Now we’re going to have to start worrying about whether we will have to dodge pieces of the Russian space station Mir when it heads back to Earth.
Of course, we should probably wait to see if we make it past January before we really start worrying. There are those who would assure us that all is well and that the dread Y2K Bug will not affect mission-critical computers and will not cause widespread mayhem and unpleasantness and The End Of The World As We Know It.
One in particular who wants us to know everything will be fine is John Koskinen, the White House Y2K advisor. He says the federal government’s computers, the aviation and rail systems, power grids and communications systems and the nation’s banks are all hunky dory.
Koskinen also said the government is satisfied that there won’t be any accidental, short-circuit launchings of missiles with nuclear warheads from Russia.
But the man tasked with making everyone comfortable with the coming of 2000 has now advised the nation NOT to become too complacent, because local governments aren’t doing as good a job of exterminating the Y2K Bug as the feds are.
He has suggested that we all save our financial records and have battery-operated radios and flashlights and a three-day supply of food and water on hand, just in case.
“It’s going to be a long weekend in the middle of winter,” he said.
If we do make it through the turn of the century, we might have a new problem to worry about.
The Russian are bringing their astronauts home from the Mir space station and are planning to abandon it next year. After 13 years of service, Mir has seen better days and is expected to be scrapped in 2000.
If all goes according to plan, two astronauts will go back up to Mir for a month and lower its orbit. Then, after they leave, the 140-ton space station will be sent on a course back to Earth. It’s supposed to burn up once it hits the atmosphere, but any surviving fragments are expected to crash into the Pacific Ocean.
Russian space officials say there’s no way the space junk will crash on land.
Sure. What would you expect them to say?
Remember TelStar? The useless, abandoned satellite that was supposed to come crashing back to Earth?
There was great consternation and gnashing of teeth about whether TelStar would cause injury or damage when it crashed down. Entrepreneurs even sold insurance policies covering getting bonked on the head by the errant satellite. It was a worriment.
In the end, it all fizzled out, as the concerns about Y2K and Mir probably will. But, hey! You can never be too careful.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the Russians aren’t really planning to abandon Mir after all. Perhaps this is all a big ruse to cover up the fact that the Russian astronauts just didn’t want to be up there, floating around in a big tin can at the mercy of computers when Y2K arrives.
Better safe than lost in space.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Aug. 30, 1999)
You try it. You like it. Next thing you know, you’re doing it all the time.
One thing certainly does lead to another. You take the plunge into something and become hooked. Enough just isn’t enough.
It’s addictive behavior.
No, this isn’t me preaching about the evils of drugs, booze, cigarettes or gambling. I’m talking about the Internet.
I first bought a computer in 1994. For six months, I ignored the free America Online software that came with the computer. I had important things to do on the computer. I didn’t plan to waste my time surfing around aimlessly in some ill-defined, unreal cyberworld located “out there” somewhere.
Then I plugged in. That was it. I have since moved on to more sophisticated Internet packages and am on my second computer. I also discovered that the cyberworld is pretty real, after all.
I have learned quite a bit. I can read amazing and educational things on the World Wide Web. I have access to interactive forums in which people discuss things of interest to me. I can send and receive e-mail and even converse, via the keyboard, in real time, right now.
My Closest Companion has rightly accused me of spending way too much time at the computer. I have made efforts to cut down the amount of time I sit at the keyboard. Sadly, I discover again and again that what I see and read online is infinitely more interesting that what TV offers, most of the time.
I think I am seeing some progress in battling this addiction. I don’t twitch quite as much when my e-mail goes unchecked for hours. I don’t really get that much personal e-mail, anyway. Most of it is stuff from e-mail discussion lists.
There are thousands of lists available. You subscribe to a list and when any member sends an e-mail, you all get it at the same time.
There are lists for computer-assisted reporting, lists for passing along jokes, a list for humor writers and lists to talk about anything you could imagine: how to survive moving, Okinawa, motherhood, Bob Dylan, boredom, misfits, shopping, investing, alternative energy, gender issues, Wicca, the common cold and people born in 1973.
There are at least 95,000 lists listed by Liszt, the major listing of lists at http://www.liszt.com and they don’t list all of the lists there are.
Like mine, for instance.
Yes, I have my own e-mail discussion list. I created my own World Wide Web site in July and one thing led to another and now I have created a discussion list for people who read this column and might want to talk about it. So far, the list hasn’t taken off like a rocket. Most of the subscribers are old friends or people who used to work with me or both. Message traffic is very low, but I prefer to think that’s just because not many people know about it yet. I figure once the word gets out, this will become one of the busiest discussion groups in cyberspace.
If you send a blank e-mail to jimsix-subscribe@globelists.com you will become a member of my list.
Of course, now that the word is out, I expect membership to grow into the high double digits in no time.
Try it. You might like it. Next thing you know, you’ll be doing it all the time.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(August 24, 1999)
Want to be among the first to welcome in the New Millennium? Aside from bragging rights about being first into the Year 2000, you might find out before everyone else whether the prognostications of doom and gloom associated with the dread Y2K Bug are true or not.
If being in the vanguard of the new century appeals to you, think about going to Tonga for New Year’s Eve.
The parliament of this tiny Polynesian kingdom is pondering a bill that would adopt Daylight Savings Time there from November to February so Tonga would hit the Year 2000 an hour earlier than Fiji. They’d like to call it “the place where time begins.” As it is, when the fire sirens are sounding 12 noon here on New Year’s Eve, Tongans will be shouting “Hap-py New Year!”
Fiji also has its eyes on the Millennium prize, in the form of increased tourism bucks. Fiji had the International Date Line bent around its eastern points many years ago so it would be in time step with Australia and New Zealand. Lately, some bright Fijian had even suggested setting two time zones in the islands again, at least temporarily, so hardcore Millennium partiers could literally have one foot in 1999 and the other in 2000. That idea didn’t fly, though. Too bad. Imagine being in the earlier time zone then technically crossing the line and going back in time! Cool.
There are many people who are concerned that when the dates in mission-critical computers click from 12-31-99 to 01-01-00, complete havoc will result and chaos, perhaps even the End of the World, may ensue. If you’re even a little worried about what might happen with the arrival of the New Millennium, I would guess there are some things you should do and not do. You should hoard all the stuff you think you’ll need. You should lock your doors and windows and arm the children. You should stockpile gold bars and ammunition.
Seriously, though, I would think you would not want to be airborne when the change occurs, just in case the airplane’s computers choose to go wonky. I mean, if my coffeemaker has an imbedded date chip and decides not to operate that morning, it’s no big deal. But I wouldn’t want to be flying seven miles high, or working at the nuclear plant, either. It might not be a prudent time to be visiting third-world countries.
On the other hand, what could possibly happen if I was already in Tonga when the New Millennium arrives? If catastrophe does occur, there probably won’t be widespread crime and looting going on there and, oh, my! You mean I could be stranded in paradise for a few extra days? Oh, how awful!
Some Millennium mavens continue to forecast dire consequences if the Y2K Bug has not been exterminated by New Year’s Eve, but I remain skeptical about how disruptive any disruptions will be.
Over the weekend, the entire Global Positioning Satellite system went bonkers and reset itself. I am sure this caused many minor inconveniences, but I haven’t seen any reports of deaths or dismemberment or the sacking of cities because of it.
Even the so-called experts can’t make up their minds.
Officially, the U.S. government has adopted a policy of “Don’t worry, be happy,” but a military report updated in the last couple of weeks says otherwise. It predicts that there will be probable or likely electricity, natural gas or water supply failures in numerous Navy and Marine facilities around the country. Out-of-the-way locations, right?
Wrong. Included in these predictions are Orlando, Pensacola and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth, Texas, Baton Rouge, La., Montgomery, Ala., Tulsa, Okla., Albany, N.Y., Columbus, Ohio, Charleston, S.C. and Nashville, Tenn.
White House officials have poo-pooed the report, having announced that national electrical failures are “highly unlikely” and that water service disruptions are “increasingly unlikely.”
Of course, heavy flash thunderstorms in parts of Montgomery and Bucks counties in Pennsylvania a week or two ago knocked out electrical service to more than 10,000 customers and in some cases, restoring power took several days. So, who’s REALLY ready?
Of course, none of this is really all that important to some people, those who believe the New Millennium doesn’t really start until 2001.
Personally, I think we all missed it. I believe there was a loss of about four years when we switched from the Gregorian calendar to the Julian calendar. That means the New Millennium passed us by in 1996. Too bad!
Happy New Year!
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Aug. 23, 1999)
I’m sure many of you know that it was Franklin D. Roosevelt, during his first inaugural address in 1933, who uttered the famous statement, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Obviously, people who subscribe to this eloquent maxim have no experience with the crippling phobias that plague many of us. For us, perhaps more appropriate quote would be the one uttered by actress Geena Davis in the movie, The Fly: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
The Harris Poll recently surveyed just over a thousand people about what scares them. Fear of snakes maintained first place, although fewer people are scared of serpents now than in 1992.
While some fears have decreased, though, others have not. There is apparently an increase in the number of people with a fear of flying, but the pollsters admit they asked these questions just after the John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash, which certainly could have weighted the answers a bit.
Statistics and survey results always amuse me. These folks ask 1,000 people something and are able to extrapolate the results to entire populations. I suppose it makes some sense.
More than 36 percent of those interviewed are afraid of snakes. At least 14 percent are very afraid of heights and 23 percent are very or somewhat scared of high places.
All across the board, those who are extremely afraid of something represent up to 15 percent, it seems: 14 percent afraid of heights, 14 percent afraid of flying, 13 percent horrified at the thought of being alone in a forest, 12 percent afraid of spiders and insects, 10 percent afraid of mice, 5 percent afraid of thunder and lightning, 3 percent afraid of being home alone at night, 3 percent scared of being alone in an elevator, 3 percent frightened of being alone in a big crowd, 2 percent afraid of dogs and 2 percent petrified of leaving the house at night.
This all adds up to one thing: at least 15 percent of the world’s population is made up of real fraidy cats who are spooked by everything.
I am comforted by the fact that so many people share my fear of heights. I don’t fear bugs and spiders, although I do dislike them a whole lot.
There are things we should be frightened of, but they were not mentioned in the Harris Poll: being in an elevator with someone really creepy, being in an elevator with spiders and being in an elevator with a crowd of dogs, being home alone in the bathtub while playing computer games during a lightning storm, suddenly hearing the banjo theme from “Deliverance” while being alone in a forest, stuff like that.
I fear old women in swirly square-dance skirts, having to eat dog food when Social Security benefits disappear, being trapped in small spaces with spoiled children who won’t stop screaming and being forced to do the chicken dance on national television. All very serious concerns, I can assure you.
There is still a big difference in the sexes, according to the pollsters, who said more than twice as many women than men are scared of snakes and heights, three times more women than men are frightened of flying, about five times as many women are afraid of spiders or being alone in the woods and roughly nine times more women than men are afraid of mice.
The poll did not mention the high percentage of men who are frightened of, or at least intimidated by, women.
By the way, FDR’s famous quote was not all that original. In 1851, Henry David Thoreau, who was not afraid of being in a forest by himself or being home alone at night, wrote, “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.” In 1850, some guy named Michel Eyquem de Montaigne wrote, “The thing of which I have most fear is fear.” And you have to wonder if these men read Francis Bacon, who, in 1623, penned the words, “Nothing is terrible except fear itself.”
Me? I’m sticking with Geena Davis.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(August 17, 1999)
I’d like to warn you about a couple of things. I want you to be ready for the little twists and turns on life’s rocky road.
So, I want you to be careful when wearing a fragrance, be careful in your preparations for the upcoming Millennium and be careful to act on your crazy ideas before someone else does.
A couple in Philadelphia has financed their $34,000 wedding by selling advertising space to about 24 companies. The sponsors’ names appeared on invitations, thank-you cards, cards at the buffet, scrolls at the dinner table and other places.
This is a grand notion, an extension of an idea I wrote about several years ago. I suggested making a few bucks from your wedding by selling prime seats at the reception, holding 50-50 drawings and selling T-shirts and other souvenirs. I should have packaged the idea then, but dragged my feet. I let the idea simmer and someone else not only did it, but one-upped me. So my warning is this: put your creative juices in action when the muse hits.
I also want to advise you to please be careful when planning for The End Of The World As We Know It, otherwise known as TEOTWAWKI or Y2K or the New Millennium. You’ve heard all the theories that there will be widespread chaos and mayhem come the year 2000, when computer chips not ready to accept the double-zero date will cause everything from coffee makers to nuclear warheads to go wonky.
The trouble may come, not from the preparation for Y2K, but from those who are not preparing for it. In Washington, D.C., people tipped off the feds when a neighbor started receiving deliveries of big containers. The nosey parkers were concerned the guy was getting material to build bombs.
So, on a quiet Friday morning recently, agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, local police, explosives specialists and officials from the United States Department of State raided this guy’s house. They obviously found a judge who was willing to issue a search warrant based on the flimsy suspicions of busybody neighbors.
Anyway, they found 30 empty, plastic 55-gallon drums. The guy is planning to stockpile water in case Y2K does bring mayhem and chaos.
“We did not find sufficient material to warrant a further investigations,” said an ATF agent. Talk about understatement.
Lastly, I want to warn you to be careful when choosing perfumes or colognes.
Figuring out the fragrance counter in a department store can be overwhelming. It’s hard for me to tell the difference between women’s perfumes and men’s colognes. I am grateful that many manufacturers add the words “For Men” to the name.
I’m generally not a fan of colognes and perfumes. My over-sensitive nose often reacts negatively to the scent and it’s rare that I sniff something and think, “Oooh! That’s nice.”
I really can’t tell the difference between “Pixie Juice, the Fragrance for Ballerinas” and “Chunky Hunk, the Meaty Fragrance for Big and Beefy Guys.”
The thing is, your cologne could be dangerous. Researchers at the Dallas Zoo, looking for ways to save the ocelot by encouraging the wild cats to breed, have discovered that Calvin Klein’s “Obsession for Men” works wonders with the cats. Experiments with rat feces and ocelot scent did nothing for the felines, but the “Obsession for Men” made them go crazy, acting the way cats do when confronted with catnip.
You see how dangerous this could be. I’m not sure where ocelots roam, frankly, but let’s face it: if the cologne works on one species of wild thing, it might work on others. Maybe we should put together a special protective cologne made from rat droppings and ocelot sweat.
Anyway, just remember: ocelots or not, it’s a jungle out there. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Aug. 16, 1999)
If you read this column once in a while, you must have guessed by now how much I love words. Learning them. Writing them. Saying them. Playing with them.
Life for me is sometimes a constant rendition of the old rock-and-roll song, “The Name Game.” I speak words, I sing words, I roll them around on my tongue and savor them, I get them right and say them wrong on purpose, I flip them over and turn them inside-out, I pump them up and flatten them out, I dust off archaic ones and make up new ones.
After I wrote a recent column about the search for new words for the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, my editor asked me if I ever notice how computer spelling programs offer really goofy alternatives to some words.
Whenever possible, I prefer to use an old-fashioned dictionary, that big book with lots of thin pages and an occasional picture. There is a certain satisfaction in looking up words to make sure they’re spelled correctly or to see if you have the definition and the usage right. There is even more satisfaction in being able to do this when you are not quite sure how the words are spelled in the first place. I consider this a valuable skill.
What’s nice about flipping through the alphabetically arranged printed dictionary is that I am often sidetracked by interesting words along the way. It’s thanks to this method of scouring a dictionary that I have such fine words as scrofulous, callipygian, blowzy and ungulate in my vocabulary.
We’re in the computer era now, though, and you can write and publish what you write as fast as your fingers can fly across the keyboard. It’s instant word gratification, which makes it pretty easy to press a key or click a computer mouse to check your spelling in the blink of an eye, electronically.
So my editor suggested playing the spelling game after checking the spelling on one of my columns. You run the spelling checker and chuckle at some of the goofy alternative words it comes up with.
When you run the spelling program, you can teach it to learn new words and remember them for next time.
It turns out I have some pretty unusual words already learned and remembered in my computer dictionary: Aha, burbs, capodimonte, crypto, curmudgeonly, derring-do, expats, geegaws, geek, gyrosphere, hirsuteness, hipness, itty-bitty. moolah, mopery, schnoz, sweetie and uh, to mention just a few.
So, I had to use someone else’s computer to play a quick round of Spell Check Follies.
Right off, the program offered me alternatives for the weird words in my collection: molar for moolah, sweaty for sweetie and Barnes for hipness. Barnes?
The program offered me manatee for Mantua and mulch and malice for Mullica. I could replace Bosnia with bison, bassoon or basin and, instead of Kosovo, I could use the word cohesive.
Rowan’s alternatives include Roman, Iowan, Rowena, Ronnie, whine and wren. Yoke and yak were the other possibilities for Y2K. Reno, whether it’s the Attorney General or the town in Nevada, could be replaced with reign, rayon, runaway, ruin and renew.
The options for boomers, as in baby boomers, are boozers, bookers, bloomers, zoomers, roomers or bummers.
Those pesky celebrity photographers, the paparazzi, could be called poppers, peepers or papyrus, if you believe my spelling program.
Hillary, as in Clinton, got me these possibilities: howler, hollower, holier, healer and hauler.
Here’s my favorite. Remember Joey Buttafuoco, the dirtbag who had an affair with Long Island teen-ager Amy Fisher, the same Amy Fisher who then tried to eliminate the competition by firing a bullet into Mary Jo Buttafuoco’s head, the same Mary Jo Buttafuoco who is now becoming best pals with Amy Fisher, who is now out of prison?
So, what word do you think pops up when I type Buttafuoco into one of my spelling programs? There is only one alternative offered: Beatific.
So I figured I’d better look up the definition of beatific.
Here it is. B-E-A....
Say, did you know that the word beadledom means the fussiness and stupidity of minor officials? Ooops, sorry. Got sidetracked again!
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Aug. 10, 1999)
The Oxford English Dictionary is looking for some new words. This news excited me quite a bit, great lover of words that I am.
OED is the big, fat dictionary that most of us can’t afford and never really see, but it’s often considered a definitive dictionary. The publishers are planning to go online with the biggest dictionary they have ever assembled, more words than in the printed editions, and are inviting new word submissions from anyone who speaks or reads English. Unfortunately, OED also wants documentation that the words have actually been used in some recognizable form.
According to a story I read, OED editors want evidence that new words, slang or regional phrases have entered written English recently.
Well, heck! In some circles, this column is loosely considered written English, so maybe I can use some new words and phrases and we can get them into the Oxford English Dictionary.
I have created a word or two in my time and have chronicled the creation of at least another word by a friend, so all we’d need is some documentation.
For instance, I created the word “skinfection.” I think it’s pretty self explanatory.
“Bob was taking antibiotics for the skinfection on his arm in hopes the rash would stop spreading.”
A friend of mine who used to be on the SWAT team coined the word “hostagations,” one word to denote hostage negotiations. Of course, it spawned the companion word, “hostagator,” to describe the hostage negotiator.
“The hostagations have bogged down since the gunman holding the three woman inside the movie theater hung up the telephone.”
There. Now I believe we have published evidence that each of these new words has been used recently in written English. It’s up to you now to send them to OED.
One new word I would like to suggest is pyrocremation, or maybe even pyromorial, to describe a new notion of linking a private memorial fireworks display to the disposal of a loved one’s ashes.
A California company is now advertising this new service. For a mere $3,200, not including the price of cremation, the Neptune Society will pack the cremains — now there’s an obnoxious word that probably will show up in the new OED — inside fireworks shells and fire them into the air from a barge in the San Francisco Bay. Does it surprise anyone that this is being offered on the Left Coast?
Patrons can choose a musical theme for the three-and-a-half minute fireworks show.
The first customer was a rocket scientist who died last year. His family went out on the outfit’s 55-foot yacht last month and watched his ashes blasted into the air to the tune of the “William Tell Overture.” There is no report on whether the guy’s Cousin Louie and Aunt Dora went “Ooooh” and “Aaaaaah” for the really spectacular bursts.
Having your ashes detonated with fireworks may not be the same thing as having them launched into outer space, but becoming one with the universe, physically, probably isn’t available to just anyone. The ashes of astronaut Gene Shoemaker were sent to the moon recently, but unless NASA opens that service to the public, that’s an option not open to you and me.
We mere mortals may have to settle for something more affordable, like a fireworks display. Although, at almost a thousand bucks a minute, you’d really have to want to go out with a bang.
Personally, I have no desire to be catapulted into the atmosphere when I’m dead and gone. I’d like to be disposed of in a more practical manner.
I want my ashes mixed in some ink. Use the ink for a newspaper, maybe. Or a dictionary.
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(Aug. 9, 1999)
The truth hit the fan on Friday: Kosovar refugee Naim Karaliju and his family are not really destitute after all.
Surprise, surprise!
Baby Amerikan Karaliju was born at Fort Dix on May 6, hours after his parents lied about how pregnant Lebibe Karaliju really was — since authorities in Macedonia probably wouldn’t have allowed her to fly if they’d known she was that close to having a baby.
The shrewd couple named their new son after their new home, the land of bilk and money, and the goodies came rolling in. Money, baby toys, even designer baby outfits.
Last week, Naim complained that the refugee agency that was supposed to be using federal tax dollars to take care of them wasn’t doing such a good job. He had no money to buy milk for the baby. The money Naim’s 63-year-old mother was making cleaning hotel rooms just wasn’t enough. Why, he might actually have to pay the rent! How awful!
The reaction was just what you’d expect. United Parcel Service in Dallas, sensing a priceless public relations moment was at hand, sent people out to see Naim and they offered him and a cousin jobs on the loading dock.
A job. Just what he really wanted!
At week’s end, Naim did ‘fess up that he went just a teensy bit overboard in his claims of destitution. His needs — income, baby food and rent — had, indeed, been taken care of. He reportedly complained because he was resentful that other refugees seemed to be getting more than his family.
Other refugees? He’s been so busy slurping at the public trough he hasn’t noticed some other refugees have gone home!
The original news item mentioned that Naim was awaiting reports on the state of the family’s properties in Kosovo. I wondered how destitute someone with properties can be. I knew this guy was full of baloney. I was right.
“We have lots of food — no problem,” he admitted Friday. “The problem is, I don’t know if I’m going to have enough money later.”
Excuse me. That sound you hear is me uttering an ugly, sardonic laugh. If Social Security benefits are still being paid when I retire, I will receive such a small amount that I am seriously considering developing a taste for dog food NOW, but Karaliju is worried he won’t have enough money for later.
If you want your kids to do well in life, you are working like crazy to earn
enough to secure their futures, but Naim Karaliju is worried the federal government is not giving him enough money for later.
Money for nothing. It’s amazing Karaliju’s hand doesn’t cramp up, being held out with the palm up like that all the time.
It turns out grandmom’s wasn’t the only income in the family. Grandpa is getting $500 a month in Social Security benefits. The family is getting more than $550 a month in food stamps, is living rent-free in a $750-a-month apartment and has full Medicaid and Medicare coverage. How are YOUR health benefits, by the way?
I don’t know how Naim is making out in his new job on the UPS loading and
shipping dock and I don’t really care. I don’t get all that much mail order stuff from Dallas, thank goodness.
Besides, if you ask me, he won’t be keeping this new job, anyway.
By acknowledging that he really isn’t destitute, he’s acknowledging that he really doesn’t need a job after all.
Good thing. We wouldn’t want him to wear himself out with all this lifting.
Freeloading itself can be so exhausting.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Aug. 2, 1999)
It’s hot again and in the great tradition of merchant-consumer relationships, the electric companies are urging us all to purchase less electricity.
Huh?
The big power companies, the ones that sell electricity for a living, instead of trying to get us to use and pay for more and more of their product, are insisting we cut back.
“It’s gonna be another sweltering day today, folks. With staggering humidity and dangerous ozone levels, it will be unhealthy for old people and babies, but we’d like you to cut your air conditioners to 80 degrees anyway. If you use too much electricity, our power grids will crash and no one will have electricity and it will be all your fault! This friendly message is brought to you by your caring neighbors at MegaBux Power.”
Heck, most air conditioners can’t even handle 80 degrees. That’s like trying to drive a Ferrari through downtown, gridlocked traffic.
What kind of business urges you to buy less of their product because their delivery system just might not be able to handle it? Ice cream companies don’t worry about their refrigerated delivery trucks overheating. Television companies don’t urge you to watch less TV to keep their transmission towers from melting.
Trying to get consumers to consume less makes no sense, unless, of course, there’s something else behind it. Like, maybe the electric sellers want us to use less electricity so they’ll have more to sell elsewhere, at higher rates?
Naw! I’m sure they’d never do something like that.
You probably believe that electricity is the main necessity of life in today’s computer age. Well, according to one recent study, you’d be wrong.
The one “small, but important, convenience of the 20th century that most people take for granted but can’t live without” is not electricity. It’s toilet paper.
Pollsters asked people what one item they would most like to have if stranded on a desert island. Toilet paper, replied 49 percent of those surveyed. Food came in second, at 31 percent. Although, without one, there’s no need for — well, you get the idea.
Did I mention the survey was conducted for a toilet paper manufacturer?
When asked in a slightly different way — What small convenience of the 20th century is most taken for granted? — the responses were 69 percent for toilet paper, 42 percent for the zipper and 38 percent for frozen food. Not just food, but frozen food. Which, may I remind you, would require lots of electricity.
Electricity wasn’t mentioned at all in the survey. And you certainly don’t hear toilet paper suppliers urging us to conserve to avoid a toilet paper emergency.
If the electric companies can’t handle the summer, how will they be able to survive the Y2K catastrophe when the calendar rolls over from ‘99 to ‘00? If they can’t handle a heatwave, how will they be able to battle the dread Millennium Bug?
All I know is, I’m planning for all sorts of unpleasantness to hit the fan when the New Millennium arrives and it isn’t electricity I’m stockpiling.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(Aug. 3, 1999)
OK, here’s where I get everybody ticked off. Still, it doesn’t matter. Some things just have to be said.
If you haven’t seen the news already, I have to break it to you: the family of little Amerikan Karaliju claims to be destitute.
You remember: Naim and Lebibe Karaliju were among the first Albanian Kosovar refugees airlifted from Macedonia to Fort Dix in May. Lebibe lied about how pregnant she was so they’d allow her on the airplane. She gave birth shortly after landing at Fort Dix. What an auspicious start in the New World, huh?
Cleverly, they named the baby Amerikan. Wow! You’d have thought this was the first birth to occur in the Western Hemisphere, the way fools and their money started parting for this family.
Americans flooded him with goodies. He was photographed in designer baby outfits.
There were American children dying of starvation and drug overdoses and immigrant babies of all sorts coughing and sputtering, trying to stay alive, but little Amerikan and his family were being showered with gold, frankincense and more by people from all over the country.
Now, Naim Karaliju claims the family is about to go belly up, because of unfulfilled promises of aid.
“We are having a hard time,” Naim said. “There is not enough money to buy milk for the baby.”
Did you ever take note of the kind of men who hide behind veiled threats to babies? Moammar Qhadaffi and Saddam Hussein come immediately to mind.
Well, Naim, old buddy, old pal, maybe you should sell some of those Tommy Hilfiger baby outfits you received and get off your Kosovar keister and get a job!
“We are being told that our food stamps will be cut off and we will have to pay the rent,” he whined to a reporter from a New York newspaper. “For me, it’s just too depressing.”
Well, Naim, old pal, old buddy, for me, also, it’s just too depressing. Imagine! You’ll be expected to pay the rent? Bummer. Heads should roll!
According to the news wire, refugee advocates claim the federally funded refugee agency that was supposed to provide adequate housing, furniture, food and clothing for the first 30 days of resettlement, is also supposed to enlist further assistance from other agencies if the refugees are still in need. These un-named advocates say the agency failed to provide for the Karalijus.
Agency representatives say they’ve done all they could. They say Naim turned down a job that was offered to him.
I realize, of course, that there has been no hurry for Naim, who is 28, to rush out and accept just any old job. It’s not like the whole family is unemployed. His 63-year-old mother has a job, cleaning hotels in Dallas. So Naim has time to consider his options. Mom. Welfare. Welfare. Mom.
The decisions are so tough on a young man these days.
OK, so you have the picture. Destitute immigrant family. Baby in danger of having no milk. Food stamps about to be cut off. Executive positions paying six figures not being offered to job seeker.
Ah, but here’s the line of the wire story that REALLY got my attention. The Karalijus, it seems, await word from family members in Kosovo on the condition of their properties there.
Excuse me? Properties? Not one, but plural properties? Am I alone in thinking Naim ought to get one more gift — one-way airfare to Kosovo?
“I don’t see any optimism,” Naim said. He insisted he is willing to take any job.
“I don’t know what will happen,” he said. “Who is going to pay the bills?”
Oh, don’t worry about it, Naim. We’ll keep picking up your tab. We always do. No problem.
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(July 26, 1999)
I went to court the other day to affirm and declare that I was not seeking to change my name as a way of avoiding creditors.
Having received my affirmation and declaration, the judge said I could start using my new name after publishing my intent to do so.
Of course, I have been using the new name for quite some time already. I changed my name to Jim Six.
I know. Half of you are crying, “What?” The other half are whooping, “See! I told you ‘Jim Six’ wasn’t his real name!” Well, you’re wrong, I’m afraid.
I am simply trying to streamline my life a little. The reason cited in my legal complaint — yes, I filed a complaint to do this — was “convenience.”
I was named James Daniel Six Jr. when I was born. I suppose my parents thought it was a good idea to name me after dad, but I have no idea who James or Daniel were before him or why my grandparents chose those names for him.
I thought long and hard about this move. I did not want to show any disrespect to my late father, or to my mother, by changing the name they had given me. The truth is, no one ever called my father James or James Daniel in all the years I knew him. They called him Jim. I didn’t think that officially adopting the name by which my father was known would be disrespectful at all.
The only people who have ever called me James were teachers, clergymen, nuns and loan officers.
I was never big on nicknames. Oh, sure, I’ve had a few nicknames — Adonis, Duke, Stud Muffin, Hunk and Jim the Magnificent come to mind — but I have always discouraged them. A few folks called me J.D. now and then, but that’s not really my name, either.
I am, and always have been, Jim.
For years I have thought about making it official, bothered by the parts of my life in which I was forced to be James Daniel Six. I have to drive around as James D. Six, thanks to my driver’s license, and I have to pay state and federal taxes as James D. Six.
For many years, my paychecks were issued to “Jim Six.” Then suddenly, this year, a new outfit started doing our payroll and my checks are made out to “James D. Six.” I asked for it to be changed back, and was told the payroll company couldn’t do that. I think they could do it, but didn’t want to be bothered, but, hey! That’s just my skeptical nature talking.
So that was what spurred me to make this official. I hired a lawyer, paid the fees and went to court. A legal ad ran in the newspaper announcing my intention to change my name and listing the date for the hearing in court. I went and, under oath, explained that I was not trying to avoid creditors, judgments or criminal prosecution by changing my name. The judge even had the opportunity to make a little joke about the spelling of my name.
The wait for the hearing to start was about 45 minutes. The hearing itself took five minutes.
I’ve been holding off sending in my auto registration renewal. I was hoping I could notify the state about the name change at the same time. My lawyer said it could be 30 days or more, though, until I see the actual court order, so I guess that plan is shot.
Oh, well, that’s not all that important. It’s not important what this cost me, either. Someplace in the Bible, someone says, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.”
In A Place in Thy Memory, Gerald Griffin wrote: “A place in thy memory, dearest, is all that I claim; to pause and look back when thou hearest the sound of my name.”
No, I don’t know what that means, either, but I stumbled across it while looking through Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and I hated to waste it.
“Jim Six” just fits me. In fact, most people refer to me, not as “Jim” but as “Jim Six.”
Maybe I should go back to court and see if the judge will change it again, to “JimSix,” one word.
Me, Cher, Sting, Madonna, Michelangelo. I like it.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(July 27, 1999)
Well, Woodstock ‘99 is over. Three days of peace, love and music — and arson, rioting and looting.
Is this any way to run a music festival? Who the heck knows? The 30th anniversary of the first Woodstock festival was held at a decommissioned Air Force base that has been converted into an industrial park. That, alone, speaks volumes about the nature of the event.
I understand some 44-year-old guy died of a heart attack in his tent during the festivities. He’d had heart surgery 11 days before. Hey, I’m sorry music lovers, but there wasn’t any act at the festival good enough to warrant venturing out into chaos and mayhem that soon after surgery.
The 25th anniversary concert in 1994 was soaked in mud, thanks to inclement weather. This year’s event, under sunny skies, had a mud pit courtesy of a broken water line. Tradition dictated that some young folks wallow in the mud, of course.
This year, security was really tight. Everyone entering the festival grounds had everything they owned searched. Even disposable razors were being confiscated. I suppose if you make enough people spend a long weekend listening to cheesy rock bands, enduring hot, sunny weather and being unable to shave, they are more prone to burn everything in sight.
Some journalists speculated that the preponderance of nudity — more skin than at 1994’s festival — was due to the hot weather. Some journalists do not and will not ever get it. Besides, the festival was aired on pay-per-view, so you can’t convince me the camera operators didn’t encourage nudity every chance they got.
I was not at the first Woodstock. I was a married radio news director then, so I couldn’t go traipsing off with a bunch of hippies, even though I wanted to. I did get to go to subsequent music festivals that were inspired and affected by Woodstock, though. The Atlantic City Pop Festival in 1969 or ‘70 — on, no! My memory is fading! — starred every big rock act of the moment, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Dr. John the Night Tripper. I think. Darn, I just don’t remember for sure.
Even the Philadelphia Folk festival was affected by big rock festivals. More people went to the annual shindig that takes place the last weekend of August just to go to a festival. There were more naked people and more everything for a few years, before the music took over again.
I remember one such year. I was on my way down to the creek at the Philly folk fest to see some naked people wading in the water. I was walking along a narrow path cut through the woods, the only way to the creek, when I was approached by a very attractive and quite topless woman.
I’m afraid I stared. I gawked. I stepped off the path to allow her to pass, ogling all the while. She drew abreast of me, stopped and looked right into my eyes.
“You’re standing in poison ivy,” she said without a smile, then continued on.
Ah, well. It was a different age.
Now, the festival goers not only got naked and nutty but got criminal and destructive. Sure, I know a man was beaten to death at the Altamont festival 30 years ago, but this seemed different, somehow.
Some group reportedly had distributed 200,000 candles Sunday night, which were supposed to be used in a demonstration against gun violence. The same candles were used to start the fires.
There’s a perverted logic to all this. I mean, why shoot someone when you can burn stuff down?
Of course, there will be some folks who don’t agree with my assessment of Woodstock ‘99 and to them, all I can say is: Oh, yeah? Well, peace and love to you, too, pal!
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(July 19, 1999)
Call it "The Aging of Rock and Roll." Call it "Time (Rocks and) Rolls On." Call it - well, call it bewildering.
My Closest Companion and I went to see Boz Scaggs the other night. We have a soft spot in our hearts for Boz, since he's the guy who does our song. Very romantic.
Anyway, my Closest Companion complained that she had trouble seeing the stage because of the reflection from all the bald heads around us - and I'm not even counting mine, since I shave my head.
Sure enough, I looked around and was shocked at what I saw. Besides all the bald heads, there were gray ponytails and old guys with dangly earrings. Women in hippie dresses with gray streaks running through their braided hair and 50-ish women in toreador pants and high-heeled sandals. Middle-aged guys in leather jackets and RayBans. About the only things missing were headbands.
Wow! Look at that good-looking young woman with that fat old guy with a gray beard! Wait! There's something terribly familiar about that image. Why can't I put my finger on it?
How did all these rock and roll fans get to be so old looking?
Rock and roll and I seem to be aging together, but it's hard to accept that fact.
Rock and roll was born when I was about nine or 10. It was my music. It was rebellious. It was way out there. Grownups hated it, so it was all ours. Rock and roll belonged to us and vice versa.
Of course, the people who were making this new rock and roll music were older than nine or 10, so the rock and roll pioneers and our musical heroes are now either dead or senior citizens. Little Richard is 66 years old, for Pete's sake! Grace Slick will be 60 this year. Ringo Starr just celebrated his 59th birthday. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel are both 58. Paul McCartney is 57. Mick Jagger turns 56 next week and Keith Richards will be 56 at the end of the year. Boz Scaggs had his 55th birthday last month.
So why are we surprised at the aging of rock and roll? And why are we shocked to see the fans looking a bit, uh, shall we say, mature?
Sure, we remain young on the inside, but the hilarious part is that I actually looked around the audience at the Boz Scaggs concert and wondered why all these old people were there. I didn't equate me with them at first, but when I did I thought it was pretty funny.
"Look at that old guy," I told my Closest Companion. "He's wearing a dangly earring and he must be 60!" Of course, in less than eight years, I will be 60 and I have no intention of taking my earring out by then.
What's nice about all this is that you don't actually have to be old to be a rock and roll fan. The culture has adapted, as has the music. I firmly believe there's not much new coming down the musical pike these days. It has all been done before, but there's good stuff around, anyway.
So you can be a young whippersnapper and still enjoy rock and roll. I got a great laugh out of the whole scene, but it bothered my Closest Companion a lot.
In fact, I think she went out the next day and ordered tickets for a Ricky Martin concert. Geez! I wish she'd checked with me first. I think that's the same night I'm going to see Britney Spears.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(July 20, 1999)
In case you were wondering, the United States is the third-best place in the world to live.
No, I didn’t just decide that on my own. The ranking was published last week in the 1999 United Nations Human Development Report.
For the sixth year in a row, Canada came in first, with Norway in second place.
The countries that rank below the United States are, in descending order, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, the Netherlands, Iceland, Britain, France, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Italy and Ireland.
From the bottom up, the 10 least-developed countries in human terms are Sierra Leone, Niger, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Mali and the Central African Republic.
The report ranks 174 nations according to how people live and factors in health care, life expectancy, education and income. Even though it ranked second, Norway, according to the report, treats women better than any other country.
In the “gender empowerment index,” which measures how many women are in government, how many have professional or technical jobs and how much they earn, and where Norway comes out on top, Canada slips to fourth place and the U.S. ranks only eighth. No country has a perfect gender empowerment index, I might add.
Nowhere in the U.N.’s report does it mention anything about hate-free zones, however.
Some folks in Santa Cruz, Calif. have started a campaign to have a question on the ballot in next spring’s election that would declare the town an official hate-free zone. It would probably be the first hate-free zone in the country. At least, the first official hate-free zone.
“Hate is like litter,” said a spokesman for the campaign. If you visit Santa Cruz, this guy said, “leave your hate at the city limits and just enjoy yourself.”
The notion of a hate-free zone is commendable, of course. Not something I would like, but commendable, nevertheless.
Anti-hate campaigns are like anti-drug campaigns, I figure. If you move hate out of your town, you’re just moving it to someone else’s town.
I am not fond of hate. It’s a terrible thing. If I allowed myself to hate, I would probably hate hate. I do dislike hate, though.
In fact, I like dislike a lot. I have to, since I am a curmudgeon. Being a curmudgeon requires me to dislike lots of things. Curmudgeons have to be cranky and ticked off at things most of the time. It’s my job, as a master curmudgeon, to let even the smallest things get under my skin. I get upset at all sorts of injustices and inequities. In fact, I am thinking seriously about getting a tattoo that says, “Born to Be Riled.”
I don’t much like having things outlawed, so it would probably get me all riled up that a town outlawed hate. This is supposed to be a free country. If some misguided jerks want to hate, I suppose they should be permitted to do so.
Some people think I am a complicated person, but I’m really very simple: if something ticks me off, it’s probably wrong. If it doesn’t bother me, it’s probably right. I’ve explained this before: if you cut in front of me on the highway without using a turn signal, you’re a jerk. If I change lanes without my turn signal, well, excuse me, I just forgot. I hope that explains how I feel.
Of course, this probably means I won’t be welcome in Santa Cruz anytime soon.
Tough.
Being around all those goody two-shoes would just get me all riled up, anyway.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(July 13, 1999)
Some people get their jollies by bursting our bubbles, raining on our parades and tampering with our myths and legends.
Now someone has tinkered with the legend of Robin Hood.
An English English professor —that’s a guy who teaches English literature in England — has decided Robin was gay.
Stephen Knight teaches at Cardiff University. He apparently has given great thought to this matter. He studied 14th century ballads, the earliest known versions of Robin and his Merry Men and their adventures in Sherwood Forest.
Let me recap. Robin Hood was a disgruntled nobleman who took to the forest when evil Prince John ran England while John’s brother, Richard the Lion-Hearted, was off crusading in the Middle East. John and his nefarious henchman, the Sheriff of Nottingham, were nasty dudes in every way, so Robin put together a guerrilla band to fight their tyranny and hold the line of righteousness while good King Richard was away delivering Christianity to the heathens at the end of a sword.
Robin lived and frolicked in the woods, but there was a love interest: the noble and comely Maid Marian, who occasionally camped out in the backwoods with Robin and the guys.
Or so we thought. Professor Knight says otherwise.
“The ballads could not say outright that he was gay because of the prevailing moral climate, but they do contain a great deal of erotic imagery,” said the professor. I’m afraid I can’t get into the symbolism of the forest, the trees and the bows and arrows because this is still a family newspaper. But Knight said there was no Maid Marian. She was added about 200 years later to make the tales more palatable for heterosexual readers.
I was concerned about what kind of “prevailing moral climate” permitted a gang of gay outlaws to cavort and gambol in the woods, terrorizing the countryside, but would prevent someone from singing songs about them, but another scholar chimed in with an explanation for that.
“In the 12th century, homosexuality was accepted, but in the 13th, the church became much less tolerant and such people were driven underground,” said Barry Dobson, professor of medieval history at the University of Cambridge.
British newspapers have concluded that Mel Brooks must have been a visionary when he made the film, “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.”
Needless to say, gay rights groups think this new revelation is just great, and that it’s time the contributions of famous homosexuals are acknowledged.
The Robin Hood Society, as you might also expect, is outraged. Spokesperson Mary Chamberlain said, “Robin remains a highly regarded figure the world over and children like to play at being Robin Hood. These claims could do a lot of damage.”
I can’t say all this is a big surprise. Just the names, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, certainly seemed suspicious.
I don’t care much whether Robin and the boys were gay, I just hate it when our heroes are dethroned. This new theory makes me wonder. Will all our heroes be re-examined and changed?
The field is ripe for speculation. All our old-time cowboy heroes had little time for womenfolk, preferring to spend time with their pards and their horses. Swashbuckling pirates spent years at sea, crews of men sharing cramped quarters on ships where a woman’s presence was considered bad luck.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto. Red Ryder and Little Beaver. Batman and Robin. Where was Charlie Chan’s wife? Was there a Mrs. Moto? Sherlock Holmes. Hercule Poirot. Nero Wolfe. The list of womenless men goes on and on. Oh, this is terrible!
Even Peter Pan stayed with the Lost Boys after that thing with Wendy didn’t work out. Next thing you know you’ll be asking me to believe Peter Pan couldn’t FLY.
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(July 12, 1999)
Hemingway made it famous. And even if you are not a big Hemingway fan, you probably know something about the running of the bulls in Pamplona.
They have been running with fighting bulls for centuries in this Spanish town during the annual festival of San Fermin.
I don’t know how the tradition started, but for a little over a week every July, a handful of bulls is turned loose to run through the narrow, cobblestone streets of Pamplona. They slip and skitter over the slick stones as they make their mad dash, only to wind up in a bull ring at the end of the course. There, of course, they face almost certain death at the hands of a matador during the afternoon bullfights.
Though hundreds of years old, the running of the bulls has been the subject of written records only since 1924. That was two years before the event became world famous in Ernest Hemingway’s novel, “The Sun Also Rises.”
Those who didn’t read the book probably saw Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, Edward Arnold and Mel Ferrer don the red sashes and scarves and white shirts and trousers as they tried to impress the lovely Ava Gardner in the movie version.
This year’s running of the bulls has attracted more participants than usual, owing to the fact that this year is the 100th anniversary of Hemingway’s birth.
The last time Hemingway was in Pamplona was 1959, two years before he took his own life at this home in Idaho. I’ve always thought it quite ignominious that the man who lived such a colorful life in such colorful places as Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Paris and Africa would end his life in Idaho.
As the bulls make their way along the 825-yard course through the streets of Pamplona in this annual corrida, they have their one opportunity to exact pre-emptive revenge on some humans.
Surprisingly, since they started keeping track of things like this, only 13 people have died and a few hundred have been injured while running with the bulls.
This ancient “extreme sport” lasts for only a few minutes, but it gives some of those who run with the bulls a lifetime of bragging rights.
Many Americans join in the fun, but another tradition is that the State Department has never really offered any advice to those who sought the bull-running glory — until this year.
When I heard that the government had altered its “no bull” policy the other day, I was flabbergasted, but then I realized it had to do with Pamplona and did not suddenly require the government to tell us only the truth henceforth.
Asked at the beginning of the fiesta for some advice, State Department spokesman James Foley said, “We don’t have a bull policy.”
A couple days later, however, he relented.
“Without wishing to set any kind of precedent,” Foley said, “ I do happen to have bull guidance today. What I can tell you is that, given today’s security environment, no American can be considered safe from raging bulls.”
The advice suddenly sounded like suggestions for security in general, though, when he mentioned that Americans can avoid becoming “targets” by doing the following: “Make sure your sneakers are tied, your valuables are safely stowed in your neck pouch and your medical insurance is thoroughly up to date.”
One of my favorite toasts comes from those who run with the bulls: “Here’s to lying, stealing, cheating and drinking. When you lie, lie to save a friend. When you steal, steal the heart of a young woman. When you cheat, cheat death. And when you drink, drink with us, my friend.”
I have been known to do odd things now and then. Back in 1980, I rode a bull at the rodeo, twice. I fell off both times, but I did last four seconds, half an official ride and longer than some professional bullriders I have seen. I got hurt, too, but it was one of the most exhilarating things I have ever done.
Bullriders are crazy. Those who run with the bulls are crazy. Yet, I know without a doubt that, if I were in Pamplona today, at age 52, terribly overweight, incredibly out of shape and gasping for breath, I would endeavor to run with the bulls. Sure, I’d look like the Pillsbury doughboy in white shirt and trousers, with a great red sash wrapped around my prodigious middle, but it would be worth it.
Besides, I wouldn’t have to outrun the bulls, just stay out of their way.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(July 5, 1999)
I’ve been wanting to write a best-selling novel for a long time, but I could never come up with a blockbuster idea.
Until now.
I have dreamed up a really bizarre idea for an international suspense thriller. Ian Fleming? Old hat. John LeCarré? Passé. Tom Clancy, move over!
Here’s the story in a nutshell.
The president of Russia, this big, really boozy kind of guy, is struggling to stay in power. His term in office is up in about a year and he’s frantically trying to figure out how to remain top dog. The people aren’t particularly fond of him and the Communist Party really hates him.
He doesn’t like the Communists, either, and decides it would behoove him to outlaw the party itself. He comes up with this really Machiavellian scheme to steal the body of one of Communism’s legends. Nikolai Lenin would be a saint if the Communists had saints. His mummified body rests in a public tomb in Moscow’s Red Square. The body looks only recently deceased, despite the fact that Lenin died in 1924.
Lenin’s body, for some mystical reason, is a strong symbol of the rift between Russians who want to see the country move ahead and those who espouse the revival of the Soviet Union. So the plan is to steal Lenin from his mausoleum under cover of darkness and bury it somewhere.
Why this will matter to anyone isn’t clear to me yet, but don’t worry, I’ll figure it out. The secret project is code-named “Body.” The conspirators break into the tomb and snatch the body just before July 17. It was on July 17, 1918 that a Bolshevik firing squad executed the last Russian czar and his family, see.
The theft and burial of Lenin’s body is such a blow to the prestige of the Communists that the party faithful riot. This lawless behavior is just what the president hoped would happen and he’s able to get the government to outlaw the Communist Party.
The president, despite being despised by the people, continues to plot and scheme to circumvent the constitution that demands he leave office at the end of his term. He even considers annexing Belarus, believing the union would help him maintain his tenuous hold on the presidency.
Political observers around the world watch bemused as Russia, the erstwhile Evil Empire, the Free World’s staunchest foe, struggles with, of all things, constitutional issues. As the readers perch breathlessly on the edge of their seats, they start to wonder. Just where are all those old Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that were pointed at the United States, anyway? And what has become of all those possibly unstable nuclear devices used to threaten us? What will the world be like without the Communist Party? Is the president of Russia a good guy or a villain?
I haven’t figured out the personal aspects of the story yet. Who should be the protagonist? What personal stories will the book weave into this global crisis?
The cool part is that this is all so weird and way out there, it will have to be a best-seller. No one – what? You say I didn’t make all this up? Well, OK, so some of it is true. All right, all right, so all of it is true, ripped from the news wire just the other day.
Of course, just because it’s true doesn’t mean it can’t be a great suspense thriller. I can weave a spellbinding, bombastic finish for the fictional version, but I’m hoping we can avoid, in real life, any ending with the word “bomb” in it.
Sure, I’ll autograph a copy for you.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.