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This just in from the Associated Press:
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Film director Robert Clark, best known for the beloved holiday classic “A Christmas Story,” and his son were killed Wednesday in a car wreck, the filmmaker’s assistant and police said… The driver of the other car was under the influence of alcohol and was driving without a license.
I am a good driver. I have good reflexes and pretty good instincts, and have been able to avoid disaster a couple of times. But as the above story shows, there are times when the best drivers in the world are flat out screwed by people who are assholes and don’t give a fuck about anyone else on the road.
Last week, my friend Mike, whom you may remember from the near-bar-fight story, was sitting at a red light. He had come to a full stop, and was just waiting for the light to change.
That’s when he heard the squealing brakes behind him.
The impact sent his car flying into the intersection, only luck kept him from getting hit by any oncoming cars. It took a moment for him to gather his wits, but when all was said and done, he was ok, sore, but not seriously injured.
I turns out a cop witnessed the whole thing, and upon questioning, figured out the other driver was hammered. But he was also fine. The drunk drivers always are.
It’s the people they crash into who are fucked.
Mike’s car, a paid off, but fairly old Audi, is a total loss as far as the insurance company is concerned. To him, it was as good as new. Now he has to buy a new one, with about $10,000 in insurance money. Sure, he could sue the guy who hit him, but there’s no point. The other guy did have insurance, but the bare bones kind for people who only want the least amount of legal coverage. Her won’t have any money of his own.
So Mike is screwed. Alive, and aware of how much worse it could have been, but screwed nonetheless.
Robert Clark and his son Ariel aren’t so lucky. 24-year-old Hector Velazquez-Nava, the driver of the other car, is alive.
Like I said, it’s the people they crash into who are fucked.
Opening day is all about hope, rebirth, a new chance for greatness.
Reverse play-by-play.
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And just like that, the fresh start comes to a crashing halt.
I will, as always, back my Fightin’ Phils right down to the last pitch of the season, but, alas, they’ve already chipped away another little bit of me.
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That fucker Renteria. Phils down by 2 in the 10th.
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Extra innings, my friends.
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Crud… 0 and 2 pitch to Renteria, right into the centerfield bushes. And we’re tied. Myers is going to the showers.
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Ooops… Braves drop a ball, and suddenly we’re ahead.
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Bang! The game is tied at 2!
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Rollins puts it into the rightfield stands… 2-1
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After 4, Atlanta 2-Phillies 0… Howard is screwed on a bad call
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At the end of 2, 0-0
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Phillies vs. Braves 1:05pm
We did it!
Congratulations to the people of my fine city. Last night we reached an exciting milestone: 100 murders!
And it’s not even April yet.
It took a lot for us to get here, of course.
When I was a young boy, playing on the streets here, there would be the occasional fight. We did it the sissy way, though. There would be punching, wrestling, yelling and then someone would run home in tears.
Then the next day, all would be forgotten. We’d play in the streets again, and the two people who had been slapping each other would most likely be on the same team, no memory of why there were fisticuffs the day before.
And then in school, boy did we drop the ball. Sometimes guys would “challenge” each other to a fight in the playground. The other guys would gather around and watch, take sides, make lunchroom bets on who was going to win.
As we got older, those classroom disagreements would lead to payback in the athletic arenas. There would be a little extra oomph during tackling drills in football, maybe a dirty shot on the ice in hockey, and then, like with the street fights, all would be forgiven later in the locker room.
Nowadays though, people get right to the point.
Forget the fighting. Let’s just kill each other.
What, in my day, would be an animated argument, now turns into a shoot out.
In school, kids don’t resort to more tradition means of anger management, they pop a cap into each others asses.
And then there are the witnesses, the honorable witnesses, the ones who wouldn’t dare damage their own or anyone else’s street cred.
No snitchen’!
Amen, that’s the way to keep our murderous streak alive.
It takes a lot for a city with the 6th largest population in the country to have more murders than any other American city. New York has more than 4 times as many people as this city, but we’re kicking their asses! L.A., Chicago, you call yourselves cities? HAH. I spit on your lack of deadly violence.
We’re so good at it, we share the fun with the uninvolved. Kids, mothers, little old ladies, don’t worry, just because you aren’t packing heat, selling drugs, or giving dirty looks, you still have a good chance of taking part in the killing, of course, by being on the receiving end.
See, we’re generous here. Our shooters aren’t stingy with bullets or aim, they fire enough lead to share.
Fuck you Detroit, our people love the killin’ and we’re making sure we’re the best.
Apparently there are some workplace scenes that, while normal here in a television newsroom, aren’t so commonplace in the rest of the world.
Last night I was reading the details of Anna Nicole’s autopsy out loud.
It included lines like: “The anus is unremarkable,” “the vagina is normally wrinkled and contains no foreign matter,” and “there is a deep seated abscess on the left buttock with a creamy, yellow-green pus.”
This was our dinner break entertainment. I was eating a sandwich, one coworker, P, was standing behind me slurping down a bowl of salty miso soup, and another, W, was chomping on sushi.
“The implants were surrounded by a thick connective tissue with a clear thick yellow fluid.”
Slurp.
“The abdominal cavity is lined with glistening serosa.”
Chomp.
There was a visitor who watched us from across the room with a look of true disgust on her face.
What do the rest of you talk about when you eat?
I am not the first person to say this, so I’m not breaking any ground here. I just want to get on record.
To me the Oscars amount to this: over paid pretty people, who don’t work as hard as the rest of us, and have no sense of what the real world is like, patting each other on the back and congratulating themselves. They cheer and cry and make statements and look serious, as if they are as important as their paychecks are bloated.
I love movies.
I don’t think an actor who has worked 8 weeks on a film has any clue what he’s talking about when he says it was an exhausting project.
When an actress puts on 40 pounds for a role, a role that earns her more many than the average American earns in a lifetime, she is not courageous.
And then when I hear a star take the stage and make a political statement, I wonder, has he ever actually had to work an entire year with two weeks or less of vacation?
And let’s talk for a moment about the jewelry and the fashions.
Here are some of the people who can actually afford to buy obscenely priced clothes and necklaces.
But they don’t have to. No, they get them for free. They get so much for free that many stars have come to expect freebees wherever they go.
Recap: They make too much, they don’t have to spend it. Nice!
It’s all ok though, because they realize that part of the price they pay for their lives of glamour is treating fans well, knowing that they’ve given up their privacy, showing with their real-life actions that they’re good people.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Sorry, I had to throw some humor into this post. That’s a good one.
Back to reality.
I know, I’m painting in broad strokes here and there are exceptions. There are good people in Hollywood, smart people, caring and even real/realistic people.
But when I look at the Oscars, my first reaction is that I’m watching people who think they are worth the hype.
I just disagree.
And giving them more television time than the President does when announcing major world policy is just silly.
I never really wanted this to become a place for my political rants. Generally I find other people’s political rants quite dull and unpersuasive.
Of course, mine aren’t dull and are always right, but I still don’t want to burden what few readers I have with politics or religion.
BUT… (you knew that was coming)
Today came word that drug maker Merck is suspending its campaign to make its HPV vaccine mandatory for American kids. Among the reasons is a backlash from parents who say requiring the vaccine takes away their right to teach their children about sex.
Here’s how the flow chart works:
Vaccine stops forms of HPV… HPV can cause cervical cancer… HPV can be transmitted by unprotected sex.
Here’s how the puritans see the flow chart:
Vaccine = unprotected sex.
I don’t know where to begin here.
Once anything is in anyway linked to sex, the conservative, head-in-the-sanders are against it.
Their logic? Well, there is no logic.
Maybe it’s their belief that giving preteens this vaccine sends the message that unprotected sex is ok.
It doesn’t, that argument is stupid.
If you teach your kids that they’re too young for sex or that they must always use protection, getting this anti-cancer vaccine isn’t going to ruin your lessons.
Perhaps they think their daughters aren’t going to have sex until they’re married, and then only with a husband who has never had sex.
Dream on.
Parents will be lucky if their kids don’t have sex. You have to double that luck in order to have an abstinent daughter marry and abstinent son.
But what about those abstinence covenants? Great idea, but there are two problems with them. The first is that they don’t always work. The second is that the kids who make virginity promises are less likely to use condoms (or any birth control) when they break the promises and have sex. These are the kids who need the vaccines the most.
Maybe some parents think their daughters should be older. Maybe, but the vaccine is more effective if given before the girls are sexually active.
I fear that with this thinking, there’s no point in coming up with an AIDS vaccine. No one will let their kids have it. (Oh, by the way, the HPV vaccine has shown that it may prevent anal cancer among gay men, but there’s no way anyone is going to give it to a 12-year-old boy)
There is a segment of our country that hears “blah blah blah sex blah blah blah” and immediately starts yelling “NO NO NO,” without thinking through the consequences, without looking at the big picture.
They scare me.
There is a newly discovered film of President Kennedy, taken less than two minutes before his assassination. The man who took the film has known about it for more than 40 years, but apparently never thought it was very noteworthy. Only after casually mentioning it to his grandson did the man donate the film to the museum dedicated to Kennedy’s assassination.
There are, no doubt, historians and conspiracy buffs alike looking at the film frame by frame, to see if there are any shots of Lee Harvey Oswald carrying a violin case into the Book Depository.
Apparently there have been a few other similar discoveries of items originally thought to be unimportant.
In New Guinea, air traffic controllers are taking a new look at a file that’s been lying around for the last 80 years, labeled A. Earhart/Change In My Flight Plan.
FBI agents now think it might be worth checking out a map that’s been hanging on the wall at the headquarters for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. They’re curious about an X over the Meadowlands and a scribbled note that says “We buried Jimmy here.”
And, several residents of Qandahar, Afghanistan have decided to contact U.S. Forces about the tall bearded man who has been working the register at Osama’s Coffee House.
That’s all for now, I’m catching up on past emails, like the one from my friend Anna Nicole that says Paternity Results in the subject line.
Oh, it can wait.
Damn computers…
I’d written the funniest, wittiest post ever. You all would have died laughing.
But I never saved it and it’s gone forever. No point in trying to rewrite it, I’ll never be able to recapture the moment.
You’ll just have to imagine the most perfectly written essay ever… and give me credit for it.
Instead, let me tell you about my first trips back to the gym.
It really isn’t a gym, it’s one of those classic old fashioned men’s clubs. The locker room is mahogany; the lounge is filled with beautiful leather furniture, which is as much about practicality as it is aesthetics. It’s not at all uncommon to see a 65-year-old man, reading the Wall Street Journal, smoking a cigar, lounging on the couch, naked. Imagine bare asses on cloth. It wouldn’t work.
Naked was the way everything there was for decades. It only went coed about 15 years ago. Before then, no clothes.
I’d seen the bare asses of some of this city’s movers and shakers poking out of the surface of the swimming pool, much like the tops of humpback whales in the ocean. I looked away before seeing the blow holes.
Heat room, naked; steam room, naked; sitting around reading the paper area, naked; no need for a towel during massages.
Go up a floor to the courts, and all of that changes. One flight of stares takes you from the least formal to the most formal. Don’t get on the squash court wearing anything but white. It’s offensive to the members.
Fat lawyers standing face to face naked, not offensive.
Blue shirts for a game, offensive.
A few weeks ago I saw a friend of my father’s in the locker room. He was, of course, naked. As he walked toward me to say hi, he gave himself a nice vigorous scratch. Then extended the same hand for a shake.
Thank goodness I was headed to the showers.
I had a couple of topics I wanted to touch on today, but then that great man Tim Hardaway opened his mouth.
As a fellow heterosexual, I will offer my opinions.
If you missed it, here’s some of what the former NBA player said on a Florida radio station.
“You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people… First of all, I wouldn’t want him on my team. And second of all, if he was on my team, I would, you know, really distance myself from him because, uh, I don’t think that is right. I don’t think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room.”
He added that he would try to have a gay player removed from the team.
Word!
I can’t tell you how many times I have been in a locker room when a gay man has lost control and grabbed my dick. All of us straight men are so good looking that we are always at risk of being jumped by gay guys.
Certainly, if I were in the shower, and one of “them” saw me naked, I’m sure I’d somehow end up in an all-man threesome.
And then there’s the risk of being hit-on by a gay man. That’s how you can catch gay, you know.
There is a gay couple in my building. Believe me, it’s just a matter of time before they kick in my door and do gay things to me. Forget keeping them out of the locker room. Let’s get them out of my building too.
Of course, I am surprised that there are any gay men in a professional locker room. Pro-sports are so manly I didn’t think a gay man could actually keep up with the real men. They throw like girls.
It’s probably a gay conspiracy, just so they can see and talk about how amazing the big muscular athletes look when they’re all sweaty after a big game.
Thanks Tim, thanks for giving me the courage to speak out as intelligently as you…
Asshole.
Today my friends, I present my favorite news story of the week. As I stared at it, I realized it also holds an important lesson for all of you kids who don’t think punctuation matters.
It comes from California, in the form of a 911 transcript.
I’m sure many of you have been following the story of Walter the Wandering Wallaby. He escaped from his wallaby sitter’s home last week and has been surviving the mean streets of Fontana ever since.
Caller: “Yes there is a big kangaroo here on the street.”
911: “I‘m sorry, I need you to… what’s going on there?”
Caller: “A large kangaroo, lady. We are looking at it. He’s right here in our street.”
911: “What do you mean a kangaroo lady? That doesn’t make sense.”
Caller: “It’s large kangaroo in our street, right there.”
Saddly, part of what makes the 911 call so special are the tones of both the caller and the operator. The caller is pissed that she has to keep repeating that it’s a kangaroo (perhaps if she’d recognized it as a wallaby it would have been a smoother conversation.) The operator can’t figure out what the caller is talking about and, because you can’t see a spoken comma floating out there, can’t figure out what a kangaroo lady is.
It reminds me of a written example of why commas are so important. As I recall, this came from one of the strong female teachers in my life:
A woman without her man is nothing. (that’s the wrong, comma free version)
A woman, without her, man is nothing.
See the difference?
It is important, because I’m sure police respond much differently when the call is for a wild kangaroo lady.
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