Month: February 2007

Boom Box Bust


I got this message in my work e-mail on 12/19/2006:
Please remind your respective staff members as appropriate that personal items and belongings and/or items of a valuable or sentimental nature should be properly secured if they choose to bring them into the workplace or simply left a home. Unlike many of our previous office locations, we have an open floor plan setting at this location with several of our programs merged onto one floor. Our swipe card system simply limits the number of people who have access to our area but does not limit access once inside the secured zone.
Please let me know if you have any questions.

In the last couple weeks, one of the folks in my section had an iPod stolen from his desk. And not just the device itself, but the base, that was plugged in under his desk. The powers that be on our floor were notified, and they sent out this message on 2/6/2007:

Please remind your respective staff members as appropriate that personal items and belongings and/or items of a valuable or sentimental nature…

Yes, the very same message, including the phrase “simply left a home”, rather than the intended “simply left at home”. This means that the thieves work on the floor and/or are from the cleaning crew. In any case, I thought the response was inadequate, and told the powers that be of that fact.

In part at my urging, the victim of the iPod theft had called the Town of Colonie Police. What was striking is that the officer said that the department hadn’t gotten any complaints from our building before the iPod, which of course was a bit discouraging to the victim.

I recommended to the powers that be that they should encourage people to report the thefts. And I told them why, which leads to a story also recollected as a result of my recent jury duty.

It was March 14, 2001. (Why do I remember the date? It was a week after my birthday.) I was supposed to meet Carol somewhere, so I left my office on State Street in downtown Albany at 5 pm. Carol and I must have gotten our wires crossed, because she wasn’t where I expected her. I returned to my office to call her at 5:30, when I discovered the boom box that had been on my desk had disappeared. Initially, I thought one of my co-workers who were there – there were at least two – might have borrowed it. Alas, that was not the case. Immediately, I called the police and reported the theft. I had no illusions of getting my box back, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

What surprised me is that a few months later, they caught a guy who had stolen a number of pieces of personal property from offices all up and down State Street and adjoining streets. Eventually, I had to testify in front of a grand jury – that was surprisingly intimidating – that the boom box pawned by the accused was not given to him by me.

The real surprise, though, was when I received a check for about $70 from some victims’ compensation fund; the particulars I’m not clear on, but the fact that I got back about 88% of what I had paid for the machine was a really pleasant, unexpected outcome.

So, I’m waiting, waiting, waiting for the powers that be to actually follow through on his pledge to encourage police reports to be filed. But holding my breath, I’m not. And in case, you’re wondering why I don’t just tell people myself, I have, informally, but a mass distribution from the powers that be would be much more effective.

ROG

Deadly sins (again)

Did you ever wonder why Andy Rooney, of all people, seems to be depicted as the authoritative figure on about a third of the junk e-mails in the United States? O.K., I made that up, but I did get another one of those “agree or delete” things, wanting me to verify my Christian faith. Without going into great detail, the thing is filled with a combination of half-truths. For instance, the Supreme Court DOES have the 10 Commandments on the building, but it also has other representations of law givers. So it’s not the Commandments per se that was the problem, it was the status as the singular law which that Alabama judge was trying to suggest that was problematic.

In any case, I’ve seen Andy Rooney enough times to doubt that he was actually the source of the info attributed to him. Intellectually lazy, the creators of these spam e-mails are. And speaking of lazy:


Which Seven Deadly Sin are you?


Sloth- You don’t do anything too difficult in your life. You take the easy way out and sleep way too much.While sleeping, you will be burned alive in a house fire.
Take this quiz!


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“Sloth- You don’t do anything too difficult in your life. You take the easy way out and sleep way too much.While sleeping, you will be burned alive in a house fire.”

Still sloth. Oh, barnacles!
***
Paired deadly sins! As dwvr put it, “This is one of those ‘how come I didn’t think of that?’ concepts HERE.

I was trying to come up with others, and all I got was the same sloth/lust combination one of the respondents came up with. I do agree that it’d be more informative if, e.g., the chart replaces “the A-G letter labels with meaningful letters. Use the first letter of each sin (with Greed replaced by Avarice, for uniqueness). Then it will be possible look at WE = Cattiness and see immediately that it refers to Wrath and Envy.”

The page in general is fun with ersatz math.

ROG

Walking Home, Minding My Own Business

I found the experience of being called for jury duty last week to be extremely affecting on me, despite the fact that I never even got to actually sit in the box. It forced me to think about a number of things. By the end of the week, all will be made clear. Maybe.

Part of it involves this story about my childhood, which I could have sworn I had told before. Maybe it’s that I THOUGHT about telling it more than once.

Anyway, so I don’t have to keep mentioning it throughout the story, all of the players in this tale, except for my father and me, are white.

As I’ve described previously, I lived in a predominately Slavic neighborhood in Binghamton, upstate New York, and there were only a handful of black kids in my school. Often, I would walk my friends home before going home myself. Often it included my friend Carol (not to be confused with my wife Carol).

One day, though, when I was 16, my classmates weren’t around for some reason, and I ended walking a girl named Peggy, who lived across the street from Carol, home. We weren’t great friends, but we went to the same elementary school, which was small, so we were friendly.

Just as I get to Peggy’s house, this guy from next door to Peggy’s house started yelling racial slurs at me, and quite possibly at us. He was under the mistaken impression that she and I were dating. Having been trained in the method,of Martin Luther King, Jr., I ignored him. I said nothing, and I did not look at him.

Suddenly, the guy, who has been getting closer and closer, attacks me. I’m not sure that I saw him coming. He was, it turned out, a 23-year-old Marine from Florida who was visiting his father. Don’t remember much except that my glasses flew off. I found them, and retreated to Peggy’s porch. By this time, Peggy’s mother, who must have heard the commotion, was on the porch in a shouting match with the Marine and his family.

Someone had called the police. I explained to the officer what happened; I presume the Marine gave his version, too. The policeman said that I could press charges if I wanted to.

I went home, talked with my folks, and decided to go downtown the next day. The judge, whose name I’ve forgotten, took my paperwork, but made it clear that he thought my actions were silly. He believed – perhaps from the police report – that it was just “some spat over a girl.”

I went home and I was livid. LIVID. I could use a half dozen exclamation marks to express my near rage at being dismissed in that way. So I wrote a letter, a long, angry, nasty letter to the judge, commenting on his lack of listening skills. It wasn’t “some spat over a girl”; this jerk attacked me, and him making light of it was not helpful. Having composed it, I did not feel compelled to mail it. And I didn’t.

Instead, my father hand-delivered my letter to the judge. Obviously, I didn’t ASK him to do it, and now I’ve a bit peeved with him, too.

The judge then called and asked to see me. I complied, and he apologized to me.

There was a trial, with that same judge on the bench. I testified, Peggy and, I think, her mother testified. I’m not sure because I didn’t hear it. They kept me out of the room, to see if our testimonies jibed; my father, who was in the courtroom, assured me that they did.

Then the Marine, his father, and I think his mother and/or his wife or girlfriend testified. This testimony I did hear, and the details were wildly inconsistent.

Anyway, I suppose you’d like to know the results of the trial. So would I. I never got word from the judge or his office as to the outcome. Since I don’t remember the name of the Marine, perhaps I never will. To this day, I appreciate the actions of Peggy and her mother, neither of whom I’ve seen in decades.

First time I ever voted, in 1971, the judge was up for re-election on my absentee ballot. I didn’t vote for him, though; I wrote in my father.

ROG

Actors from Other Shows QUESTIONS


The woman pictured above is Marisol Nichols, a socially aware young woman who I remember from a short-lived show from last year called In Justice. She played Sonya Quintano, an idealistic Latina trying to help get people falsely imprisoned out of jail. Now she’s Nadia ‘Natalie’ Yassir, of Middle Eastern heritage, on “24”. Her boss on “In Justice” was Charles Conti, played by Jason O’Mara, who’s now the publisher Stuart Maxson on Men In Trees, and will play Philip Marlowe in an ABC-TV pilot.

Now, I happened to have enjoyed In Justice, in part because it had a different POV; that law enforcement sometimes gets it very wrong, and we need to be mindful of that, something that fuels, in part, my opposition to capital punishment, BTW.

Here’s the first question: what obscure, not all that popular show or shows do you remember that have been a launching ground for performers? Two that come to mind were both Norman Lear productions. 704 Hauser, a 1994 show about the folks who moved in after Archie and Edith Bunker were gone. Don’t remember much about it, except that it featured Maura Tierney, who now appears in E/R. The other is The Powers That Be, a 1992-93 show starring John Forsythe as Sen. William Franklin Powers, Holland Taylor, later of The Practice and Two and a Half Men, as his wife Margaret, Peter MacNicol (Ally McBeal, Numb3rs) as an aide, Valerie Mahaffey as the Powers’ daughter Caitlyn Van Horne, David Hyde Pierce (Frasier) as her husband, the philandering Congressman Theodore Van Horne, Elizabeth Berridge (The John Larroquette Show) as Charlotte, the maid with whom Theodore was dallying, Robin Bartlett (Mad About You) as another aide, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Third Rock from the Sun) as Pierce Van Horne.
You can’t name St. Elsewhere – not obscure enough.

Likewise, what movie seemed to spawn future stars, excluding American Graffiti, Taps, and movies directed by John Hughes?

One could take this in a literary way: a magazine or short story anthology that generated some big name writers.

ROG

The Beatles in Italy


The Beales’ first time on Ed Sullivan 43 years ago today.

A couple years ago, I was part of this:
The complementary exhibition, THE BEATLES: Community Stories, from December 21, 2002 through March 2, 2003, is a community-based exhibition that celebrates the Fab Four with a selection of memorabilia on loan from Capital Region residents. From toys to tea towels, from posters to photographs, from autographs to collectibles…you’ll see it all at the Albany Institute.
I had but one magazine, but I also brought in some bootleg LPs. (If I had thought of it, I would have brought in copy of Abbey Road, purportedly signed by all four Beatles.) I also brought in The Beatles in Italy. Despite its name, it wasn’t recorded in Italy, and it certainly wasn’t a live album. Here are the songs:
Side One
Long Tall Sally (Johnson/Penniman/Blackwell)
She’s a Woman (Lennon-McCartney)
Matchbox (Lennon-McCartney)
From Me to You (Lennon-McCartney)
I Want to Hold Your Hand (Lennon-McCartney)
Ticket to Ride (Lennon-McCartney)
Side Two
This Boy (Lennon-McCartney)
Slow Down (Williams)
I Call Your Name (Lennon-McCartney)
Thank You Girl (Lennon-McCartney)
Yes It Is (Lennon-McCartney)
I Feel Fine (Lennon-McCartney)
Those of you with many of the Beatles CDs recognize that all but one of the songs appears on Past Masters 1. Since the Beatles albums in Italy were the same selections as those in the UK, they did not include the singles or the Long Tall Sally EP, songs that had been dispersed on various US LPs of the time. The 12th song is “Ticket to Ride” the first single of the then-forthcoming Help! album.
***
When I took the JEOPARDY! test in May 1998 in DC, the only question I KNEW I had gotten wrong involved this Playboy model who married a millionaire. I mean, I could visualize her, but her moniker slipped my memory. Since then, Anna Nicole Smith has been emblazoned in my mind. She was a reality show contestant (didn’t watch) and had her case heard before the Supreme Court. Surreal, including the deaths of her son, and now herself.

ROG
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