skirblog

distractions of the court

I got the jury duty last week, which, for a lot of people is like saying I got the Swine Flu or a case of the Clap.  No, they don’t make it “fun,” but fret not, the skirblog will make it fun for ya!  At least twice as fun as actually sitting there yourself!  So, don't ask to see my briefs, here's the long version: skirblog’s meditations on the Jury Duty.

This was my first time in the inner sanctum of the court. Usually getting called for duty means a phone message telling you you’re not needed; or maybe having to go down to whatever courthouse and wait in a jury room while others are called. This time I thought the same would happen, and was a tad disgruntled by that thought.  Why? Because I’m actually interested in serving on a jury, mostly out of curiosity, but also knowing that as the calm, rational, worldly person I am, I’d make a great juror! And of course that has probably what has kept me out of the pool, until now.

The jury assembly room:  a cattle call for sure. Nobody looks happy here. People don’t move their legs when stretched out, or their purses and other shit from empty chairs. However the clerks who run these rooms are like the best people ever. Funny over the microphone, encouraging, sympathetic. Why can’t all public servants be like them?

Oakland jury room is HOT! Sun streams in, yet when I go to pull a blind I get looks of utter astonishment from several dozen people.  Sorry, I sweat!  Really weird lady with a mess of papers and hair and broken down briefcases is, I don’t know, pretending she’s a lawyer or somebody important? She immediately gets to the loud cell phone yammering (old school flip model, no iPhone nor bluetooth) drowning out the other type A important dudes on their own more expensive cells. Glasses down on a chain, grey wisps of hair everywhere, she announces her name to the caller as Rita Goldberg or something. Right outta the lower East Side. Maybe she really is a lawyer, as all the lawyers I've noticed so far have insanely weird and outdated hair do's. But god help her poor clients.

Jovial loudspeaker says all Federal and school employees are excused. They don’t get paid for being on jury duty.  So good, lets let these poor slobs go. Even though as teachers and perhaps educated workers they'd make semi-intelligent jury choices, no? Can't have that.

As I ponder the elitism of thinking this, I almost miss my own poor last name being mangled by the jovial loudspeaker woman: Lee "Scree a bible?” Mr. "Skryburble?" Skrewboil? Screwball Scribble Scrabble, Scra-bopple, Scap Apple, Skee Ball five fucking plays for a dollar?"  Lots of laughs from the assembled assembly.

I’m actually the last one called. I get the packet of names to take up to the court. so now I have a "job" and that makes me o' so special. We are lead to courtroom, or the "department" as it is called, about 80 of us.

This room is even hotter.  A big, linebacker of a deputy is waiting for us. Takes my packet of names. Tells us the various don'ts and don'ts including no reading, talking, whispering, eating, cell phone talking, messaging, texting, or game playing. Even so much as displaying a got damn cell phone and you are toast. Also no sleeping, yawning, nose blowing, coughing, nor horseplay.  Just sit there and stare at something. Very few comply.

Lawyers and Defendant and Judge and Clerks and Stenographer are all staring at us.  Stuff is explained. Its to be a DUI case.  I sag at this. DUI? That's a bullshit waste of my time, I think.  Why do I want to hear some slob try to get out of a DUI?  (See how good and impartial juror I'd be?)

Judge is very pretty, and likes to explain things.  Jury selection will now commence.  The great winnowing. The weeding. 12 random names are called and these people occupy the Nice Chairs. Then six more occupy the not as nice chairs below.  The rest of us hang in the cheap seats.

Each person is to answer a sheet of about 15 questions.  15 basically "yes" or "no" questions I'll add.  Yet it soon becomes distressfully clear that nobody will answer yes or no to any of them. Suddenly, in our purportedly madly private society, strangers cannot wait for the opportunity to disclose as much personal detail about themselves as is possible to a roomful of other strangers. And after a few hours of this, it starts to make those of us in the “pool” insane. The woman next to me slaps her own forehead each time a person does not answer yes or no. She writhes in agony the entire day. The lady on the other side of me is snoring.

    “Have you ever been the victim of a major crime? One thats nnot a traffic stop or property theft.”
    “Well, once, when I was 9, my bicycle was stolen from our garage… 
    "Were the police called?"
    "No."
    "Anything about that experience that would prevent you from making an impartial decision on this case?"
    "Well, it was my favorite bicycle and it had a banana seat? Remember those? So I was real upset. Still am..."
    " ** "
    “Are you related to any police officers?”
    “Oh yes, my cousin lives next door to a dispatcher from the police. Oh and my niece was gonna marry a cop once.”
    " ** "
And on and on like this. Judge tolerates all this patiently. And if she didn’t happen to be so beautiful and calm and sweetly voiced I wouldda started to get quite irritated with her.  Person after person offers up full, full and fuller, totally unnecessary disclosure. Imagine 18 people doing this. It takes all day, plus half of the next. It’s a weird mix of too much information and a transparent desire to be dismissed.  Like if they can prove, by even the slightest long and circuitous path that they are on the side of the cops or the defendant, than maybe they can go home. Never mind the fact that we all have to listen to this, and after everybody makes all their claims and sad stories so much time has elapsed that we coulda just had the damn trial already and been done with it.  So, really, if people put as much effort into trying to get out of jury duty into just getting the job done…

After I get done being irritated by this I start to feel bad for us a group, as a society. Most people do not have an outlet or avenue to talk about themselves! So finally when a judge or a lawyer asks them a bit about themselves, where they went to school, what they studied, what job they do and they let loose 25, 30, 50 years of suppressed information. Sad. More people need blogs.

BTW my back and knee were killing me the whole time, but I was so put off by the shirking and lame-ass moves by these peeps that I decided to not ask for my own deferral.

And of course I got called. Cause after all the sad stories (I’m a Jehovahs Witness and we cannot judge another person!) and outright bullshit (I believe that the consumption of alcohol is wrong and eveel under any circumstances and its evil and from the devil and that’s what I think and no, I can’t be impartial about it.) I found myself moved up to alternate, not-as-nice seat Juror #15.

And more were called to fill in the gaps of those dismissed and they, too, told their long assed stories. Even the lady who sat next to me in the pool, who slapped her own forehead when people didn’t answer directly, got up there and went on and on about every episode of Court TV she ever saw and every summons she ever got in the mail.  By the time they got to me I was like this: “yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, no, no, no!” I was done in about four seconds.

And then I found myself as Juror #1.

Juror #1 doesn’t mean anything except an excellent view of the lovely Judge, and a comfy seat with a little ledge to place my water. Take what I can get.

The court reporter was also rather cute, in a kind of freaky secretary kind of way. She was definitely smiling at me, and Juror #2 was way jealous.

Trial would finally start.  Tomorrow.

To enter the Alameda Superior Court in Oakland, you pass through security, a metal detector and screening of your belongings. You can leave your shoes on but you have to remove your belt. ??? This felt far more invasive to me than the shoes. Next day I eat giant croissant for breakfast and gain five pounds so as not to have to wear a belt.

The Clerk of Court may have been a female to male sex re-assignment ? Or a guy with a beard and breasts. I dunno. These clerks have to work their day with a bunch of people staring at them since there is nothing else for us to do, so you have to stare, and break down the person into unfair and minute points about their looks and mannerisms.  At least that's what I did. The other clerk, a young woman, seemed kinda bitchy and high falutin if you know what I mean. Poor girl, she’s probably a saint.

Finally the trail itself starts. and immediately a moment of hilarity: two highway patrol cops are called as witnesses, the ones who arrested Mrs. innocent DUI. They are almost stereotype for stereotype the exact two cops from the movie Superbad! Seth Rogan and the other dude. The Seth Rogan guy is first, and he be-bops into the court, grinning like a complete asshole, the whole time wearing every piece of State patrol gear imaginable dangling from his belt, and has wrapped himself in his big winter Trooper jacket with the fur collar and all. And its, no joke, 75 degrees in this courtroom cause the AC was broken. He slouches and grins and can’t be more than in his early 20s. God help us, I think. Though admittedly he has a shitty job, trolling the highways at night looking for drunk drivers. I imagine if he had pulled me over and acted like that I'd-a maybe driven over his toe with my car.  He could give a giant shit, it is clear, can't remember anything and would rather go home and get some sleep. Yet through all his smirking and attitude I can see he actually knows his shit, the rules, the procedures and that makes me feel just a tiny bit better.

Other dude, also like one year out of the academy is sporting the '70s stash so nobody's taking him seriously either,  and he's almost completely worthless to the DA or the defense.

Then a witness is called for the Defense. And I am again distracted by her looks, although this time because she purposely it seems, has made herself as unattractive as is humanly possible. Shit I hate to always comment on people’s looks, and if it weren’t for a lack of other places to direct my attention, I could have ignored her looks I guess, and sure, it isn’t fair, but I gotta report on what I saw.  This woman had the most severe, triangular widow’s peak I’ve ever seen. Forget Ruth Buzzi as the old lady with the hair net on Laugh-In, this was ultra severe. She enhanced it by pulling her hair back as tightly as she could get it, and pinning it back with silver clips in some sort of Frankensteinish affair, making sure our complete attention was on her giant forehead and the aforementioned widows peak.  Again, not to be mean, but I mean her forehead looked as if second complete forehead had been somehow grafted onto her own, with this crazy widow’s peak plastered on later, and the whole effect was to make it almost impossible to listen to a word she was saying.

Their story was unusual: coming home from a party, a party where the driver had one teeny tiny glass of wine when she got there, I mean a half a glass, or a sip maybe. A thimble is more like it, it was a mouse party and they were serving wine in thimbles so one thimble just to be social. The passenger, the widow's peak woman, had perhaps four drinks. And I don't know if it was four bottles of wine or she's saying she has an allergy or some kind of chemical thing, but wine can really, you know, go to her head. Like shit, four wines and she was out. And sick.  So while driving home passenger becomes sick and needs to vomit.  They have just driven through the giant Bay Bridge toll plaza at about midnight, and decide to pull over to the shoulder and stop and open the door so passenger can vomit. Lesson #1: as my intelligent wife commented (even though I did not discuss the details of the case with her): “somebody in your car needs to vomit at midnight on the Bay Bridge? Open the damn window!”

They’ve got their flashers on so up pulls the cast of Superbad and there the fun begins. Some sort of passion play takes place which, depending on who's side you're on is either a routine and well founded field sobriety test, or an exercise in humiliation and trauma worthy of the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition.  There is no video tape, we don't know why. There is also no blood alcohol test cause driver refused to take one.  And this gives everybody pause.

But maybe she was not on something, but ONTO something. Because apparently you can indeed be arrested for not taking the test, but it will then be almost impossible to convict you.  ESPECIALLY if you weren’t actually driving the car when the superbads approached you, and may have actually passed the field sobriety tests pretty well for conditions and circumstances, and have never been pulled over before for as much as throwing an apple core out the window in your life.  That's the case. Can the People (you and I and a pimply, young kid from the DAs office) prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that this driver was impaired. The answer is no.

But it aint gonna be that easy. We must deliberate.

We are corralled from 75 deg. court room, to 83 deg. jury room, a tiny room that smells of people and sweat and those who ate onions, curry, garlic, chives, shallots, fish, or aged cheese for breakfast.

Foreman’s name is “Rory.”  Coincidentally, I’ve been listening non-stop to the Vaseline’s comp “Enter the Vaselines,” and you’d have to be numb not to immediately get the song “Rory Rides Me Raw” stuck in your fool head, as I have had for months now.  So every time Rory, who’s a rather straight laced, upstanding type chap speaks, I go straight to Vaseline-land, the last place ol' Rory probably goes.

People want to play Court TV. Even though it is abundantly clear that the People have not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that our driver was under the influence, there are jurors who are clamoring for a complete transcript of the trial be brought in, and also on sending several written questions out to the court. This means calling the Deputy, getting word to the Judge, who may or may not be around, getting the court reporter, printing out the record and delivering it to us, so a few of us can finally play Law and Order in real life. This will take crazy long, and will possibly extend our deliberations past one day.  And I says to myself I says, no way that's gonna happen. I askthem why, why do you need transcripts?  “because I need to understand the emotional state of the defendant and the witnesses.” 
      “Yeah?” I say. “Well check this emotional state out:  we are not coming in here tomorrow, ok? I’ve already spent 3 of my last precious four days off for the last two weeks on this trial, and we can futz around all day today if you like, cause today is already a wash, but believe me, we will not coming in tomorrow. Is that clear?"  And with that, skir took over the proceedings.

Before I got jumped, our guardian/jailor Deputy comes in and tells us he’s taking us all to lunch. Huh? Plus he’s not suggesting a hotdog from the cart downstairs, but taking us to a nice place up the street: Le Cheval, the delicious French/Vietnamese place famous in Oakland. On them. Dang. Best part is filing out of the court house and walking up to Le Cheval with an armed Deputy in front and another in back.  They guide us to a special seating area that Le Cheval has for jurors, pretty much the same 12 person round table that we had back at court. But this time with a lazy susan…

Lunch is delicious, even though Juror #2 somehow manages to drop a broccoli from a great height into his plate and  splash me with a wave of brown sauce. No matter, I’ll have food on my shirt whether from him or my own smutzing.

Escorted back.  Deliberations continue and clearly half of us have lives to get back to and half of us do not. I press pretty hard to cut the bullshit and vote not guilty already. Understandably a bunch of dudes in there are not digging my scene. But I donut care.

Its fascinating really, how 12 disparate people with diverging opinions and no guidance somehow coalesce by the end of things into agreement. There are no rules really. You just start talking. Some wanted to dwell on procedure, should we write on pads or on a big board? Should we raise our hands? Make a list? Others played the same bad kid role they played in school, cracking wise and slouching in the seats.  I pulled back from my obnoxiousness several times just to let the flow flow. We started to inch toward a verdict.

Rational people emerged from the group. Idiots emerged from the group. People who would sit there and talk gibberish unimpeded for 15 hours if you let them emerged from the group. At points I wondered how anything would get decided. But group dynamics has its ways. Rory didn’t ride us raw, but I did, aided by a few fellow barebackers… we polled. We agreed. Not Guilty.

We filed back into the now refreshingly cool by comparison, 75-degree court room. Took our places once again in our comfy chairs. And before the pretty judge, the transsexual clerk, the misshapen and perhaps not altogether truthful defendants, the cute but predatory stenographer, the pimply young DA (turns out he was just a student, this was his first case!), and us, now 12 best friends and confidants who will never see each other again, read the verdict.

“Not Guilty.” And the defendant smiled for the first time ever, her lawyer looked genuinely surprised and the judge, in her sweet, calming tones thanked us, and dismissed us.

On the way out Rory said: “I guess even liars can be sober.” And Juror #2 and I decide on that note to go and have ONE BEER to shake it all off. And we had made the right decision.

facebook killed the bloggio star...

Admittedly my urge to blog has been lessened these days, and facebook is just one of the culprits. What is the urge to blog anyway? Lack of fiber in the diet? Too much? The thought that you have something to say and a place to say it?  The good news is while yes, I've been busy on facebook, I've also been busy finishing my novel.  I know, I know, I've said this before, but this time I really mean it... book thermometer reads 120 degrees, which for meta-memoir ficktion hybrid is pretty damn delicious.  So anyone out there want to publish it?

Writing a blog is always an endeavor of doubt.  It is on the web but "unpublished."  You haven't been recommended, edited, bound or paid, the things that most often convince people to read you. At first you wonder why you're wasting your time; but if you're like me, you fret about it for a moment, but you have other criteria to meet: actually only one: did you amuse yourself?  I always thought that if I, at a minimum, amused myself, then I am absolved from answering the question, why do it?  Why write a book for that matter or create anything? I have written a book. And only because an unexamined part of my psyche said I had to. I had no goal in mind, except of course world domination, ego inflation, gloating and riches beyond my wildest dreams, but those are surface things and don't answer the question with any depth. But is it amusing to skirb? I'm also happy to report (though I'm NOT A REPORTER as my Chron ID keeps reminding me) that the book finally, after years of tinkering, turns out to amuse me quite a bit.  Is that narcissistic? Yes.  Is it narcissistic to write it here? Yes again. But now I can recommend it to others, as amusing others is another driving force in me, class clown at heart.

But what of the skirblog? These bloggio tidbits, rants and raves exist somewhere between the book and the facebook; yet the little blips I post and read on FB also satisfy the urge to amuse and communicate, and I wonder, maybe that is enough? Why do I also need a blog?  (I did briefly try Twitter but it didn't stick.  Not because I don't enjoy the mundane as well as the profound in what small sentences people "tweet." In fact I love 'em, I just like 'em better on FB.  Sorry, but yes, I think it's interesting when someone is eating ribs for dinner or buying a freakin' donut, or what they think about Obama or the police or injustice or when Obama or the police eat a donut.)  I know a lot of you hate the whole idea of FB and Twitter don't you?  You seem to be quite offended by the mundane-ities which have blossomed into "narcissism" to you.  I'm not sure why this is so since you can much easier ignore them than not, but has probably more to do with feeling left out, which is hard when you're left out of something you don't even really want to do.  But you shouldn't get mad, because railing against facebook makes you sound old and curmudgeonly for no reason.  So don't get mad, just don't do it (Nike slogan for 2012), or better yet, sign onto FB and tell everybody why you think its "narcissistic," "self indulgent," "egotistical" and "boring." Then you'll enter into irony and that's always a good place. Plus you'll get responses and and comments and will find like minded curmudgeons who also hate facebook right there on facebook and you can form groups and makes quizzes and lists and have a great old time.

By the way, narcissism isn't a problem for me, The skirblog is the most narcissistic things I've ever done. Until FB that is...

But my narcissism is tempered with amazement and disbelief that anyone reads the blog. That you're reading it now is confounding to me and I mean that, I'm not trying to be self-depreciating, or get you to compliment me, I know there are those who read this regularly (prisioners) and enjoy it (my mom) and I'm damn crazy happy about it. But its a chunk of time that not even I have, I mean I don't read other blogs, (unless its yours of course). And lemme gloat about this: the skirblog just hit the 40,000 page view mark. Funny, this is about five years into it. There are youtube videos that get 1,000,000 views in one week. I forget all my web data stuff about hovers and click-thrus and eyeballs and stuff, but for part of my $4.95 a month, Typepad tallies my stats, and they have added up over the years. Mostly due to people still trying to find naked pictures of good ol' Rachael Ray. Nuff said on that subject by me over the past 40,000 screens, but about 20 people a day land on the skirblog. (some are looking for Rachael's boobies; others for "what kind of stove does Rachael Ray use on her show" (really, people, who want Rachel's stove? What the hell you gonna do with it, I know you aren't actually cooking anything); to the next most  erroneous search that brings you to me: "upskir," when you were clearly looking for "upskirt," yet you gave me a click anyway, you lecherous old fucks I love you.

Last month I railed about the newspaper's problems and the crap going down there. It's still happening by the way, and nothing has been resolved. But what I didn't rail about was the need to accept when things need to change. A newspaper printed on paper isn't going to stay with us, we all know that, for many reasons, but it might surprise you that the major one isn't the internet in and of itself, it is purely one of profit margins: it is insanely expensive to produce and mass print a paper every day and deliver it; yet when it was one of the only games in town, it could still turn a profit by selling advertising. (which shows you how much money my overlords were actually making in their heyday, and why they are so reluctant to let it go); it's not that "paper" is so passé, or the job the newspaper does for the community is unneeded, its that three forms of  advertising found the internet to be better and more efficient: recruitment, real estate, and automotive, classified advertising to be specific,  my old and current stomping grounds.  And this is ironic because in newspaper land, classified advertising was at the bottom of the status barrel --  the most underappreciated and overlooked department, historically staffed predominantly by women, it was given the fewest parties, the worst offices and equipment, lamest perks, and sparest recognition etc.  Ha ha, but when classified went away to the Internet, it was an immediate and irrecoverable death knell.  So I can't help laughing to myself a bit, having fought the classified wars, having seen the advertising caste system that existed at the paper, I can't help but to say it serves them right. All the attention that went to retail and national advertising left both paper and advertisers in the lurch.  Retail advertisers now don't have an effective place to advertise, and they too are dropping like flies.  Is something "better" coming newspaper wise? Probably not better, but cheaper, more efficient for the producer, not necessarily the consumer, and hopefully does a similar job.

We don't initially decide what disappears and what stays, yet can have an ultimate vote by our acceptance or rejection. We have given production of our most cherished "things" to corporations whose bottom line is always its bottom line, but they are often wrong. Some examples:

Camera film -  did something better come along with digital that warranted its demise? I might be really sad about it losing camera film, but is my sadness nostalgia, or misguided because something good was replaced by something better? There's a little bit of both. Mostly taking pictures has become cheaper and much more portable, so I count that as good. But pictures have also become ultra disposable, rarely printed or shown in frames or albums.  So we don't have to be so careful about "wasting film" that we had to pay to buy and have developed, but we also don't take the kind of care we use to take.  Not that you can't take excellent photos with  your phone or pen or lapel, in fact, maybe digital demystified the "art" of photography, and once and for all brought it down to the level of mass amusement and communication.  But I still feel bad that the hard copy is harder to copy. Printing and displaying an actual photograph is now harder and of lesser quality, and most of our pictures exists only on our computers. Things were gained and lost.

The myth of progress.  Often the new thing seems better but after time doesn't stick, like the "death" of vinyl records whence came CDs.  Vinyl records certainly died an initial mass death when CDs hit the scene, but they did not disappear, and over the years they have had various resurgences and renewed interest. And ironically, due to digital music, CDs will most certainly disappear, but not vinyl.  I doubt when CDs do go bye bye they will ever return. Play a vinyl record today and you will fall in love again with the lovely sound of it and you'll know for sure that CDs were never totally better. They may have been better for storage and transmission but for the important thing, sound, no. They also failed on the "thinginess" factor, a factor that people want to discount all the time, but is undeniably there.  We love tactile objects with their accompanying smells, flaws, textures and visuals, because we are sensory, tactile creatures, no?  I have my own, rather long and unsubstantiated theories about the sounds of vinyl records, which have something to do with the physical mechanisms that are our ears, and how they are built (evolved) to hear "analog" or physically produced sounds. Yes, all vibrations coming from a speaker are physical, but a needle revolving around a disc inside a groove is something we are simply wired to appreciate. No, it isn't as "pure" or maybe even as accurate as digital, but we appreciate it more, or in a sense "hear" it better. That's why vinyl may never go away, until our ears evolve a digital sensibility. God help us.

Camera film? Maybe it will also come back, maybe people will pine for the "warmth" of film. I know that movies have not really been made "better" by digital, its just cheaper now to do more grandiose things. Is that bad? No, but better? Not sure. A lot of film- films have a richness and texture that is absent from digital films. Look at the Star Wars progressions. I used to wonder if people raised on digital ever missed the analog?  But my son hears and sees the differences clearly and that's enough of a focus group for me. 

We can lament things because we are uncomfortable with change, or lament things that were honestly better and went away.  Will books be next? Probably not until a truly better way to read comes about and satisfies all the aspects to reading we love including the aforementioned thinginess, Jeff Bezos and the Hearst Corp, etc, often fail to realize that the total reading experience is more than just comprehending words, having words fed directly to our brain. A lot of it is ineffable: browsing the bookstore (first casualty of book "progress"), our favorite chair or spot, the right lighting,  flipping pages, smells of paper, textures, progress marked by a dogear or bookmark. Maybe they should make the Kindle smell like a book.  Even our fondest futurists like Gene Roddenberry had books as treasured items in the future. Even a forward thinking, tech embracing, man about town like your humble narrator prefers to buy books in shops rather than online, and this from a person who recently dumped all his CDs and cassettes in lieu of digital, but cherishes and plays his vinyl collection.

My dad, skirblog Sr has seen a lot of change in his 80 years, and he seems pretty non-plussed by it all. Like he doesn't walk around going "holy shit look at this Internet, just think I had no TV when I was a kid! Or freak about about his flat screen tv, palm pilot, digital picture screen, etc. He's even trying to be on facebook, but only has two friends, my sister and me.  We had a party for him last month, at my aunt's house in Pittsburgh.  In her li ving room she still has a an antique floor console radio that she has owned for at least 40 years of my memory, and who knows how far back it  goes before that. I'm pretty sure it was used as a radio for a long time, it did work when I, as a youngster, and my young cousins used to jam all the buttons and pretend it was some kind of scifi computer or device.  Now it's a beautiful object - polished wood, curvy design, bone pushbuttons, and a soft yellow glow from its tubes and indicators. Yes, it would have been appropriate to dispose of this when transistors came around, shit radios became hundreds of times smaller and better sounding, but they didn't trash it because it wasn't "just" a radio! It had a feel and a smell and a place in somebody's life.

So will the blog go away or be usurped by the newer and better? Probably will kids,  There isn't really anything too concretely "good" or "better" about a blog as opposed to other internet communications, probably the same with FB and Twitter. I will say that FB is doing a few things that neither blogs or myspace or anything else has managed to do very well or efficiently: connect people in more than one-way "conversations."  What I get from FB is response. Profound and mundane to my own mundane and perhaps mundane-plus. Feedback! Actual dialogue often springs up outta nowhere like a leak in a pipe.  And even in many fruitful cases of  my own direct experience, the connection advances to meeting face to face, a lunch, a dinner, drinks. That's a pretty amazing, noble little app, if it can accomplish that.

But I blog on for now. Perhaps the death throes of a dying form. 

 

ruts

Roots

"I am Kunta Kinte" I'd wanted to shout from a hill in an open field somewhere, the milky way above me, maybe holding up a baby.  Maybe not.. "I am Kizzy, Chicken George."  But alas, I am skirblog and live on 35th Ave in Oakland... and oh yeah, I'm white.

(btw: that's Maya Angelou in the photo behind Cicely Tyson...)

Felicia gets credit for this idea: why wouldn't we want to share the epic television mini-series, Roots with our son, the way we were exposed to it as kids, as we were so impacted and moved, perhaps permanently by the story.  Do you remember the event?  About a week of consecutive nights of made-for-TV, harrowing, gut wrenching, box-of-Kleenex history?  I hadn't seen it in over 30 years, but still carried many of its scenes fresh in my memory: the hatcheting of Kunta's (John Amos) foot; the rape of Kizzy by Tom Moore (Chuck Conners); Lou Gossett's incredible "Fiddler," and of course Ben Vereen as Chicken George, his chicken plumed hat, his triumphant return as a free man. Such a mix of sadness: the whippings, the humiliation, the racists, one expertly played by Lloyd Bridges; and redemption: the raising of newborn baby to the heavens: "behold the only thing greater than yourself."

Its also worth noting (for the one millionth time)  that storytelling and acting trump any and all special effects. With what limited visuals they had available to them for TV in 1977, I'd argue that the impact was greater than later treatments (Amistad) with more full blown graphics. I don't know why exactly this is so, probably something to do with our, ahem, imaginations maybe? But I've yakked about this before perhaps ad "nausea."

Now with your good friends, Netflix, or whatever you use,  you can relive it all sans commercials (although I'd love to see what ad got the slot after some of the more dicey moments...  horrendous whipping, then K-Tel Hits from the '70s?  The new Dodge Dart?) It's 6 discs (+ one bonus disc which we didn't watch) of essential viewing.  Depending on how you order it, you can watch one each evening gathered around the glowing LCD flat screen, just like in the ol' days.

Ruts:

disclaimer: the following is a work of fiction. Any confluence toward accidental resemblances is highly irregardless and should be legally and symmetrically ignored.

You may have heard that some paper named the SF Chronicle is having a bad time of it; has said they will either sell or close down if they don't get bla bla bla... So I thought I'd take this opportunity to throw out a giant and probably ill advised "I told you so (motherforkers)" to the San Francisco Chronicle, which among other newspapers (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Rocky Mtn News, Cincinnati Post, Baltimore Examiner, Philly Inquirer and Daily News, and lets face it, all newspapers everywhere) seem to be going out of biz:

I was there when the tide could have turned.  I happened to be working in a management position (I know, insane)  right when the Chron could have chosen the red pill and faced the distant train that was the Internet, (hows that for mixed metaphor. Also I may have red and blue reversed... so slack me some cut) a train which seemed so far down the tracks, but would obviously get here one day, and did we want to be fooling around on the tracks and get our foot caught in the ties at the last minute as the train gets closer and closer?  Or take the blue pill and actively and with full conscience ignore that faint headlight, hoping somehow it would never reach us, and just in case lets spend all our money NOW.

I was (sort of) in charge of the Chronicle's Classified recruitment advertising dept at the time (I know, yawn), but "help wanted" ads were one of the highest dollar per inch pieces of advertising you could buy from the Chron.  We knew we had you over a barrel too.  At the time there was nowhere else for you to go if you were a company trying to hire people, at least nowhere that actually worked. We could do whatever we wanted, double our rates, triple 'em, hang up on people, swear at them, screw up their ads, who gave a damn?  Nobody could do nothing.  They had to use us.  We routinely turned away as much advertising as we ran, just because we could and because we were as stupid with money. Plus we were also stupid.

At the same moment -  editorially,  the Chron was busy ignoring Silicone Valley as a newsworthy subject and let the San Jose Mercury News take all the cookies there. Companies like Apple, IBM, Intel, Genetech had to scream their lungs out to get coverage from us, and conversely had trouble believing our paper could reach the kind of people they wanted to hire.

But then you had mr. skirblog sitting in his office, way uncomfortable in his monkey suit and baboon tie, who had been surfing the internet since its pre-graphic days, when all you had was Lynx, and Mosaic and nuttin'.  This is funny: one day I had to give the Chron management team a little primer, a little sucky Powerpoint demo on this whole Internet thingy, because they were sick of me yammering about it and wanted to know what the hell it was.  Fer instance we hear people were actually searching for jobs on the thing. A little site called Monster.com showed up (run by one of the paper's arch enemies/friends TMP Advertising, who routinely skimmed 15% of our profits by simply placing ads for clients we couldn't reach...), and another upstart called Hotjobs was also in the game.  "Look folks, boss," I said, "Classified ads are a list, a DATABASE, and anything that's a database works even better when you can sort it, and search it, rather than hunt and peck down printed lists for hours. Yes you can read the paper on the can, or on the bus, but we need to get in the game, our site is already one of the most recognized, well read sites out there (how this had happened is some kind of weird miracle or something) we will be left way behind."

Blank stares and cuticle examining from the assembled. "No, Lee, YOU don't understand.  The internet is our ENEMY, our competition, we must shun it. When they turn right, we must turn left. When they approach, we must ruuuuuuun screaming down the street.

And the Internet did approach. The train showed up.  Many trains. A fleet. An armada. All friendly like too. Hardly hostile to the good ol' Chronicle.  Web companies were falling over each other trying to team up with us.  They desperately sought legitimacy in their very crowded fields; they wanted to team up their incredible databases with our brand name and let the riches flow.
  As the Recruitment dude, I was approached by Hot Jobs and Yahoo and many other big names (most defunct). "Let's partner," they'd say, "lets make some money." I begged my managers to listen, to explore, visionary that I was am.  And you know what they we did?  They said, "not only won't we partner or explore with those PEOPLE, but we will not even let them run ads in our paper either.  That will show 'em! How about that?  Did I mention we had money coming out of our asses back then?

 Then the guy named Craig with his nifty database came and cannon-balled into the pool and blew everyone out of the water. He single-handedly killed classified advertising, first in the Bay Area, then in every city he set up in. Craig's not evil either, he waited plenty long, waited until all newspapers were long past the point when they should have done what he did.  And folks were overjoyed about  Craig.  He did everyone a favor:  he released them from the tyranny of the newspaper, our fickle and greedy whims.  He took his database and offered it for free.  He let Apple and Intel and Joe's garage all advertise jobs for a flat rate of $75. And all other ads were free. You could rent the apartment that actually existed and not some newspaper come-on, and see pictures of it to boot. Same with a car, or anything without a middle man or paper skimming off your meager profits.

As we loved to say with solemn, shaking heads around the Chron at the time: "you can't compete with free."  But we coudda, we just chose not to. 

It wasn't all bad, Craig also killed Monster and Hotjobs while he was at it... so there.

I ended up leaving my managerial position in 2000 to try my luck at getting some last minute cash out of the Internet.  I lasted about two years before it all went to hell.  Then I worked for the zoo.  Then I tried to sell advertising for a bunch of really wretched orgs.  Then I had no choice but to go crawling back to the Chron, begging them for a job, cause after actually reading my resume, looking at my work experience and skills, I realized I was only really marketable to one firm: the flippin' SF Chronicle.  They weren't crazy about the idea of hiring me back a THIRD TIME (long story) but after me harassing and pestering them, and waiting for some of my enemies there to retire, and my unemployment running out and trying three or four more times, they relented because there was a job available that nobody wanted: obits. Death notices. The dreaded.  So I gleefully took it.

I settled in and laid low.  I found it curious, then comical, that never once in the intervening years did anyone in the ever-shifting mgmt team ever approach me about my former position, acknowledge that I'd worked there at all for many years, or wonder if I might have an opinion about the still losing battle with the surprise Internet that sprung on them out of the blue so many years ago.  No, I'm like the American Splendor guy in the basement, toiling away, drawing stick figure comics on the side. Why didn't I ever mention it to them?  Another long and ill fated story.

Jump to last week, nine years later, I hear the paper is losing $50M a year in advertising revenue and is thinking about throwing in the towel.  Really? Izzat so? I wonder why?  Crocodile tears people.  Yes, its gonna suck when I and my downtrodden brothers and sisters are out on the street, because as I just observed, I'm marketable to about one company in the US and unfortunately happens to be the bleeding SF Chronicle.  But it's no surprise.  It's only happening because the Internet is BETTER and we ignored it when it literally came to our door and laid itself on our mat like a submissive dog!  Our smugness and greed killed our own biz, and its not a mystery why as soon as something BETTER finally came along, people couldn't wait to get away from us.

The only reason I still have a job (apart from the fact my bosses don't read this blog) is that ol' obit job that nobody wanted?  Well it still brings in money,  cause for some reason nobody has come up with a better way to do public death notices... yet.  They will, its yet another train down the tracks that will come but isn't here yet.   For obits, people still feel the paper is the place of record to publish and to read, Legacy.com is laying in wait, and so are our old friends over at TMP, still licking their monster.com wounds.

It was just shocking to hear the words said out loud,  "we will close this paper," whether they really mean it or not.  The announcement came abruptly and has been sitting there like a brick for one week now.  People are sad about it for different reasons.  As much as people like to hate the Chron, it keeps some people honest, if not the paper itself. Plus to witness it sinking is depressing, as I worked there during its glory days, Herb Caen still writing, over 100 people working in a beehive-like Classified Dept.  Halloween parties and big boards and sales contests and a "family" of amazing people who put out that paper.  I was in the building during the Loma Prieta Quake and came in the next day to put out the famous desk-topped edition, that yes even that had ads in it!  I have a lot of years and a lot of history there, including meeting my wife Felicia, if you didn't know. 

So it's still about roots. But we'll pronounce it "ruts" so as not to devalue Alex Haley's staggering story. Also meaning stuck. In a. We know its been a rut, and now its roots are  waterlogged and disintegrating quickly like a stack of soggy newspapers left out in the rain. No, its not a tragedy, but it is a shame.

the pageant

I've been thinking some (emphasis on the some) about the power we willing cede to movie stars, movie stars being at the top of a hierarchy of false idols that runs something like:

movie stars,
rock stars,
NFL players,
NBA players,
TV personalities,
politicians,
baseball players,
and the rest (known writers/artists/bloggers/chefs/tech or web tycoons, etc.), leaving some room for hybrids and anomalies like Miley Cyrus or JK Rowling. A hierarchy that probably also corresponds to income. But which came first, the perceived value of these people, or the income they command?  Do we idolize them because of how rich they are, or are they so rich because we idolize them?  Hard to say with your Brittney Spears' and your various rappers, but for my current musings I wonder why movie stars are so far up the list?

Yes we value movies as our preferred storytelling vehicles, and yes, bla bla escapism, but are they really so important that we elevate the people who act in films to the top of our food chain? So starstruck are we that we are rendered awestruck and speechless in the presence of one of these people, and we feel its ok and normal to pay them the most money that can possibly be paid a person who didn't create a software program or inherit some oilfields etc from their old man.

I mean, I go to movies, and I have the typical varied reactions to them, some are pleasant, entertaining, or just eye candy; some fail, or are boring; and some I love as sublime works of art, but how far am I willing to bow down to those who acted in them?  My friend Robert says that when a movie is working right, he's left his body for two hours -- no small feat that, isn't that kind of transcendence worth any price?

But as I age (like-a nice cheese, no?) I don't feel as driven to see movies as I used to, (maybe its the driving? Maybe somebody else should drive?) When I finally get to one, as entertained or touched as I might have been, I don't see why that means so-and-so can afford chateaus in four or five countries, or why actor X flies to exclusive, hidden resorts in a  private jet; or why AB or C can't even think of ways to spend the outrageous amounts of money they are paid. Like Tracy Jordan on 30 Rock recently with his solid gold shoes.  This is not coming (entirely) from fits of jealousy either.  I don't begrudge the movie star any of what they have or do, because we, I, created them.  So it is we, I, I want to understand but cannot.

Funny how warped our popular culture. We elevate the film actor in so many ways, yet now deride them when, for instance, they actually spend some of their wealth and power on something other than excess. it has now become unseemly, for instance, to adopt a kid from a poor country and shower her with movie star wealth; untoward to support a political candidate. Aint it quaint ho we have created a class of super elite who we idolize, yet also vilify any chance we get. Physical beauty is desired regardless of how contrived, yet god forbid an actor leaves the house un-showered or shaved. This is seen as disrespectful to US and will not be tolerated. Not to mention having ill mental health, scrapes with the law, troubles at home, etc. We are the opposite of the Greeks who created gods who then played games with humans. We created Gods yet we want to play the games.

A recent trip to LA certainly fueled this particular train; LA where the value placed on movie stars is palatable in the air, like the tinge of salt from the Pacific. Or like the pervasive smog herself, its the FACT of the movie star that permeates everything, and is nowhere more evident in the vast third, fourth, fifth tiers of wannabes, associated hangers on, name droppers, dreamers and outright liars you will encounter on your daily sojourns.  They all refer to that fact that the movie star exists and is exalted --  the goal.  Not that I'm down on LA either, just the opposite. I seem to love the place even though all my friends who live there advise me otherwise. Yes traffic is bad in LA, but its not mean. Here in the Bay Area traffic is an asshole. Its not so much what they have there that I'm drawn to, you can get or do practically the same things in the SF area, its more the vibe, and the vibe is harder to articulate. I can tell you its not as uptight and aggressive as it is up North these days. Contrary to the conventional wisdom which says otherwise, SF has the stick up its ass now.

Glorified artificiality has no greater home than the Superbowl, a pageant I certainly participate in and enjoy, but that doesn't mean its mechanisms should not be questioned.  As much as I love the Pittsburgh Steelers and love watching them play, I can't shake the nagging feeling in the contrary cobwebs of me brain that something needs addressing there, something shallow and false, something so hollow and devoid of meaning that to examine it even for a second will strip all enjoyment from the spectacle. So I go forward reluctantly.  That the Steelers won the AFC this year, was to me more of a tangible and hard-won goal than winning the Superbowl may or may not be. The conference is more about the teams, the rivalries, the strategies; where the Superbowl is about the NFL, the corporations,  owners, Cities. I lived in the 'burgh for 4 of the Steelers Superbowl wins and of course the city went apeshit about it. Then five and now possibly six. Bragging rights I guess, which amount to what exactly?  Then I moved to SF and was there for their 4th and 5th wins and believe it or not, that city went even more apeshit than Pittsburgh. I'm talking rioting in the streets, looting, pillaging, all the stuff that football is about right?  But what were we rioting about? (I did take to the streets myself on motorcycle to experience the mayhem en pointe, and damn if I wasn't prone to a little pillaging myself.)

It is actually natural to be suspicious of the NFL, since the entire game of football is set up within a completely make-believe system.  Unlike baseball, our "national pastime," where basically two talented individuals, a pitcher and a hitter, go head to head, mano-y-mano, like boxers in the ring, supported by a group of specialists; or the sports of soccer,  hockey or basketball, where everyone tries at all times to score, constantly pitting fast moving offense against defense, (much like our favorite sport: war); football, conversely, has specialized itself into a whole different ballgame, with the  greatest difference being now we will take turns trying to kill each other.  It gets positively philosophical:  there are two squads on each team that only exist because their opposite exists on the other team. Get me?  Doesn't matter what kind of  "offense" you have, how talented your individual players are, its no good, and is in fact meaningless, unless you are playing an equally matched "defense" from another team, a defense that has been created for that exact purpose.  If I understood my semiotics, which I do not, I'd probably find more of an answer in its objects and referents and signs and symbols, but I only got my MFA peeps, no PhD in postmodernism, so I'll have to muddle through skirb style.

Football, because of its contrivance, being not really based on any model from history or society, is more of a pure game than other sports, and because it is another step removed from "reality" works nicely as a metaphor for our aggression and clannish behavior.  It is a narrative each season, and its climax is always known: the goal, the Superbowl. There is no mystery or serendipity, the ending is known at the preseason: one team will win. So the 'ending" is not really important to the narrative is it?  Of course we think its all about who will win, and that's certainly there, but again, never a big surprise.  Its the telling. The  commentary. The pageant.  There will be a grand public spectacle, meant to "fire our imaginations," to be bigger, louder, glitzier, and more extravagant than any other show.  its not even the game, the game decides what?  The best team of the year? The world? The Universe, Eternity?  Of course not. The minute its over we go back to our normal lives;  football season starts over from scratch, and we are left getting no... satisfaction.  Or maybe we did. Like those of us from Pittsburgh will get when our always shunned city forces itself to be recognized on the national stage. 

"On any given Sunday" is the phase the NFL drummed in since its inception; meaning we have built our system so well that no matter who plays it will be a good game. And I hear a pipe organ suddenly hammering out Bach's Tocatta and Fugue (in D minor) sounding from the great film, "Rollerball" which tried to get at this whole business of sports and manipulation and nationalism, and did a pretty good job of it.  James Caan's Jonathan, was an anomaly, an individual star in a tightly controlled system where there was supposed to be no individuals only the State.  What played out was a Nietzschean power struggle, individual against the machine. This should not be confused with a will to live, as power is what's all important.  Usually sci-fi movies illustrate what we fear at any given time, so back in the '70s we were clearly worried about losing our identity to the corporation.  Interesting that a remake of Rollerball failed so miserably a few years ago, as we don't really look to individuals in sports to buck their own system, and buck the system for us, in fact we'd rather they didn't.  Anyway we always have movie stars, the repository of all our hopes and dreams.

wait a sec

Wait a sec

this year an extra second was added into the Earth time continuum to compensate for the erratic and slowing rotation of the planet. I happened to catch a bit of a science board where this was being discussed. Some people wondered if we keep adding seconds into time, will our lives get longer?

At first a bit of a laughable question, and the asker was derided on the board, but by none so intelligently as this writer, known only by his or her board sign-on "paxd." I liked it so much I've included it excerpted below, since it echoes exactly what I believe about "time" but don't put as well:

 Implicit in the article, that the Earth's rotation and orbit are unreliable instruments for measuring time, is that what we call 'time', is strictly a human invention. Time, or our notion of it, does not exist independent from our minds... time is a very convenient tool which we have created and refined over thousands of years. In essence we have divided the motion of the rotation of the Earth into 24 equal intervals we call hours... Why twenty-four and not 158, 7 or 10? It is a convention we inherited from the Egyptians who divided day-light and night hours into 12 hours... rather than just counting fingers (which would have given them units of ten... they counted finger knuckles, not including those of the thumb. So ... Time in a very real sense is something that does not exist, other than as a convention we share between us and in our minds. If we ceased to acknowledge it or decided collectively to ignore or change it, which we theoretically could, it would not change the fact that we are mortal and will eventually die of old age or some other malady. Thus, our notion and counting of time, as is implicit in the article, is independent from the motion of the Earth--that is why we have to keep adding seconds every couple of years.

Yet its hard not to mark time in some way, esp. around the first of the year, the calendar also being a strictly human invention. I don't want to get cliche about how "time" and "calendar" seem to work against us more than not, esp moving from childhood to adult. I think you all know what I'm talking about. Although time isn't so innocent for children, as kids always seem to be anticipating everything: birthday, holidays, getting older. Adults the reverse.

JG Ballard liked to write about our time marking tendencies and 'whatif' the idea to various extremes. Whatif there were no clocks, or clocks were outlawed, or we never slept, or we always slept, etc. In Ballard, even without conventions of clocks or sleep, time is still marked, it seems to have to be, and how its marked changes how we carry out our lives. Another Heisenberg moment: the act of marking an event, changes an event.  Ballard in this way also speaks to the same question that the naive writer above asked. Then you wonder, maybe that questioner wasn't so naive...

 There was a melancholy end to the year 2008, and there is a melancholy start to 2009. The mood, the uneasiness of the world isn't aware of the date. We're hoping for change in this country anyway, and we finally saw to it that we elected a non-buffoon/non-crony to be president, but that elation seemed to wear off rather quickly come December. We'll see what February brings.

"Clocks are big... machines are heavy" as Atheletico Spizz 80 might have said.

Or just as nonsensically, as Lewis Carroll might have said, don't let the mome raths get you down.  Right? This transition time, (and I hope that's what it is, a time between times, un-markable...) has its highlights. It brought us the iphone did it not? One of the few devices in high tech history that does what it says its going to do. Its brilliant and should be celebrated. (I can now have the text of "Jabberwocky" and "Walrus and the carpenter" with me at all times. And Ulysses and Moby Dick if I wanted for x's sake, and about half my 30G music collection (15Gs approx) including my fave of the new year, Holly Golightly and on and on.

But '08 was a year I pulled back from pop culture more than not. I didn't really buy too much new music, still just pirating the old.  Did get the new Portishead, new Brightblack Morning Light and both of those while good, didn't kill. What did kill of course were the Kills, and '08 was my time to be big into them. Then there was the enormous Cramps resurgence which lead to Link Wray and probably engendered the current Holly Golightly jag.

I cut way back on the TeeVee last year, and the few shows I did like disappointed mightily: Entourage sucked big time this season, although seemed to pull out of it by the last few eps. The biggest disappointment by far was Californication, which went way, way down the shitter into probably unrecoverable territory this season. The Office had a nasty spin to it, 30 Rock was okay. And I was kinda interested in "Fringe" but it teetered too often to the ridiculous to make it stick. That left really the only bright spot as "Tru Blood" and I only saw four eps before they took it off payperview for some reason.

I didn't get to many movies. I know there were some excellent ones out there, but, and I can't say exactly why, the act of going to see a movie seems awfully boring and tedious to me. I had fun seeing the ones I saw with the kid: Wall-E, Speed Racer, whatever; but stayed away from the films of substance like the plague. Probably a dumb move. But coincidentally just today I saw Vicky Christina Barcelona and had a rip roaring good time. Total eye candy: both lovely lead actresses, whats her name and the other, plus Penolope Cruz plus Spain. Sexy, pretty Spain! I'm in love.

I did amp up the reading quite a bit, and enjoyed very much: "And Then We Came to the End" by what's his name? I dunno I wrote about him a few posts ago; two of the three in Robert Sawyer's kinda trashy, but also solidly "sci" and "fi"  sci fi trilogy Hominid and Humans; Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao had many charms, though in retrospect also had some large failings;  I keep trying to read poetry, and have rec'd some very nice books of it. But like films, I have this odd, aversion to it, even though admittedly there is beautiful stuff out there. F gave me Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency, (see "Mad Men") whose title I'm loving more than the actual poems right now. There seems to be a line here or there that strikes me, but the works as a whole elude me. Sorry poets out there who I know and love. I'll read your stuff and like it I swear!

We're all aware that someday, not too long from now, the printed newspapers that we know and hate so much will cease to be, or will be put together and sold very differently than they are today.  Most of the backroom functions of our UNbeloved local rag are outsourced at this point to far flung places like Buffalo NY and the Philippines and (the editorial) we wonders when our axe will fall. No doubt I've been there through this org's many blunders and ineptitudes, some so large and wrong as to be comical. I like to say that that place is run like a "one ring circus..." its a circus, but a three ring circus would be too complicated for them. So in thinking ahead to my next career ('specially after they read this god help me!)  I wonder what it is I can actually do?  I mean, what, skirb are you good at?  Of course my dream job would be to get paid to sit around to be my own self for 7 1/2, maybe 8 hours a day.  Shit, I'll even be my own self on overtime!  But I haven't found any openings for that. yet. I'm always looking.  So that leaves the only other marketable talent I might possess: no, its not stealing honey from beehives, its editing. Not that you'd know it by reading this of course, but your faithful blogger, is really quite a fierce and relentless editor when he wants to be. Although my editing has been limited to the work of my friends, I'd like someday to parlay it into paying work. So those of you writing novels and whatnot out there. Keep me in mind.

But that's down the road and we're staying in the moment right? No looking forward or back. If you've read any of these posts for the last five years or so (gulp) then you'll know I like to come full circle by the end of them. But since they inserted that extra second into the "clock" this year I feel off; out of balance, askew. So circle I will not, but will take a moment to sit back and enjoy my extra second, philosophical construct or life prolonging fiction that it may be. And there! its gone.