skirblog

post punk opera house

Another excellent show at Oakland's lovely Fox Theater. This time it was the Pixies running through the whole of "Doolittle" for unknown reasons other than, what the hell? It's a better living than writing death notices? I dunno. I tried not to think too much about the enterprise of reforming for gigs like this. I'm cynical and my cynicism (or resistance to everything sez F) gets me nowhere, including not seeing the newly re-formed Pixies a couple years ago as they apparently destroyed Berkeley's Greek Theater.  I believe I was invited to that show but declined. I was getting sick of all the good bands who broke up getting back together as their older selves just to take us all down memory lane. Yech! I'd been mostly burned by this kind of show before: the sad reunion of Television in San Francisco saw them sloppy and unrehearsed; Gang of Four? Totally irrelevant and way tuckered out by the end of the night (not that I could play "I Found that Essence Rare" at the end of a long gig at my age... but you see, I don't attempt such!) Only the mighty Mission of Burma seemed to have a reason and the energy to come back: they were writing new songs! They wanted to rock. They fucking rehearsed and saw that they were good. Plus they stayed in pretty good shape. I mean, your humble narrator has aged and thickened and greyed and thinned, and yes, I bet if I wanted to I could get out there and start rocking again. But god help the sad geezers who've taken the stage in their fat, bald incarnations to less than hilarious results. Devo, I'm looking at you! Throbbing Gristle? Its not even fair to talk about it. The Pixies? 

Honestly, as much as I loved that band, I didn't want my excellent memories of seeing them – numerous times – including their famed appearance at Pittsburgh's The Decade, a bar where maybe 100 people, if that many, saw them play way, way back. That's when I fell in love with the Pixies and of course with Kim Deal's eyes. She was literally a pixie for god's sake with mischievous eyes and sweet singing voice and impeccable bass playing. As was evident that night and is still evident: the Pixies sound seems to be greater than the sum of their parts. in blowhard art historical terms that is usually considered sublime.  Maybe this is because they took the time not only to write killer songs but arrange them as well. Who did that back then? The whole vaunted "loud quiet loud" aesthetic was only part of it. The arrangements are key. Listen to how guitar parts come and out, trade melody duty, echo earlier riffs and later riffs, drum drop and reenter, bass takes the melody then the beat. Hell, Oliver Nelson couldn't have done it better himself.  

So it was good. And stayed good for a good amount of time. No complaints. Then, as almost always happens, the Pixies then seemed to run their course.  That's okay, know when to stop, know when to move on. Not a tragedy. That's part of the art of the game. Get out before it gets bad. Plus we still had Kim and the Breeders, and Frank Black and his many, many solo releases, which filled the Pixie void in my life, all of which I bought eagerly and loved and saw The Catholics and Frank Black and Black Francis and Charles Thompson and anything else the dude would do many, many times.  I related to the guy.  Big guy, fat fingers, about my age, my milieu. With all the good stuff he was doing, Charles in particular didn't seem to need a Pixies reunion, so I was suspicious. I'm sure he coulda used the money. I'm sure he was sick of the thousands of bands making it big emulating his riffs and arrangements and making a buck. But did the Pixies have new songs? No. Did they miss each other and were burning to get back as a band and play live? No.  So I resisted. Opted out.

Then a few documentaries on the Pixies came out, one about the reunion, which supports what I just said; the other about their strange synergy and legacy and so on. Very candid films, unflattering a lot of the time. Charles letting all the girth hang out, dysfunctional family dynamics, the oddness of Kim and Kelly Deal, the bizarreness of David Lovering, etc. These films though made me all very nostalgic about the Pixies, and aware of how special and wonderful a band they were, and made me damn my own contrary eyes for not going to see them at the god damn Greek Theater in Berkeley, even though I don't like seeing shows at the Greek too much, as I don't like baking on a concrete slab in the hot sun for hours, being penned in with very little access to expensive beer or bathroom etc., or listening to outdoor PA sound, I still, after seeing the films, and of course listening to "Surfer Rosa" and "Doolittle" a million times, wished I'd been there.

Then the Goblets, that famous art project/social club/zendo/band, which would be myself, Gina M and Courtney C, then snared some decent tix to see our old friends Sonic Youth play at the newly renovated Fox Theater in Oakland. Now of course the Youth haven't re-formed or revamped in any way, they've been there all along, talking the talk, walking the walk for untold years now, although my interest in them waxed and waned many times, and I had to be convinced a bit to see them in 2009 (I try to learn albeit slowly), and was damn glad I went. The Youth were remarkable and fresh and true to their mission, a pleasure to be sure; and the other surprise hit of that evening was the Fox Theater itself! A very plush experience -- one at least the Goblets were unused to in our concert going experience.  The Fox is one of many urban renewal projects just like it all around the country, where people are trying to save and restore these outlandishly beautiful, ornate old movie houses and theaters. Oakland also restored the art deco Paramount down the road to excellent reviews, and there have been similar projects in San Francisco and the East Bay that have spared no expense to get everything right. If you're an architecture buff, you love these places. If you're a history buff, the same.  But now, if you're a punk rock (and all the post punk nomenclature) buff, you can enjoy it along with those hip folks!

At the Youth show I remember thinking: this is just like the symphony and opera that my folks took me to as a kid back there in Pgh: Heinz Hall (which is no longer there?) plush, marble and chandelier, red velvet everything, old school place, which of course gives all proceedings the air of high art. Some of it is bullshit of course, the rich strutting their stuff, trying to snoot up music to unapproachable levels; but part is the seriousness given to the endeavor, the respect for the consumer of live music, and attention to their comfort.  This is what's been missing until now in the post-punk concert world.  A place that treats the whole thing with a bit more respect and intelligence than the down and dirty club, or the once proud, yet aging hall.  Not to discount the charms of both those types of places, but there's a lot to be said about the energy around going to a show at say Heinz Hall in Pgh, or Davies Hall in SF, rather than the Great American or the old Decade. Have we, as a generation finally grown into deserving the royal treatment for our Pixies and Sonic Youth shows?: the courteous staff; the clean, well appointed bathrooms (with sitting lounges even for the dudes, though no dude was sittin' there); the multiple bar areas that actually look like bars, not hospital carts or pissiors, stocked with good beer and liquor and quick service; coat checks and velvet stairs and cup holders and get this: excellent sound. All the stuff that the big kids get when they take in one of their operas or plays or symphonies.

The journey of the theater itself was much like that of a band like the Pixies: youthful grandeur, a heyday; a decline, a falling out; closed down, gone, getting older, poor condition. To bring the Fox back to life was an insanely expensive, politically tangled and near impossible task that only really happened because of the passion of a few people who kept pushing through. The Pixies initial reunion was frought with similar obstacles, yet somebody realized it was a project worth taking on and jumped through the hoops to make it happen. When the two finally met this November, Pixies and the Fox,  sparks literally ignited. Anyone, like me, who resists such reunions or such renovations should take note: sometimes they had it right in the past, ease up on the cynicism... 'cause a lot of times, what is old is more often than not, hot shit again.

cloudy with a chance of skir-bolls

Fall. A feeling more than anything, a tangy smell of the air, a change in the breeze, a new slant to the light.  Unfort. for me that also often means some of the SADS, Seasonal something Disorder which is basically enhanced depression brought on by a change in seasons.  In my case it is Fall and most noticeable by the Fall’s perceptible change in light and shadows. The last few years I haven’t had it so bad, due, I thought to my success with Lexapro. So a few weeks ago when early Fall was in the air, I didn’t worry bout it, in fact I felt pretty good.  But then, a dramatic shift in temp and light, a very marked fall feeling day, a sharp breeze, a smell of wood fire off in the distance, and I was struck low. Could have burst into tears for no reason around 4pm.  I’m not writing this for any sympathy (I’ve got other things for that. Gout anyone?) but because writing about it seems to mitigate it. Its weird cause I like the Fall. I like cooler air, and the crispness, the slight burnt smell, but it’s the light, I’ve been told that affects this. One doc told me it is impossible that I would actually notice the change in the angle of the sun, but a lot of us know it is very possible. The upside? I’m writing a freakin’ blog entry for the first time since about June?

 

What’s been happening? Mostly good things peeps! So, yeah I got laid off from the Kron. No more death notices. Are you sad? I’m not! Jeezes what a fucking weight lifted off my shoulders. No, my chest, no my SOUL. Holy Hell. I forgot about the toll it takes on your psyche, not only doing that particular job, but working under the constant threat of losing that particular job.  For over a year and many months there’d been talk of imminent layoffs at the Chron and shutting the paper down, etc. Every week new frenzied, whispered rumors, paranoid theories, wholesale panic. Then boom! Axe falls on some. Then more weeks, the same thing. And all we can do is cower in the corner and put death notices in the paper.  As per usual by Kron standards and practices, they did everything as ass backwardly and ungraciously as possible, including this bit of French farce:  They moved the entire staff up to the third floor of the building because they intend to lease out the bottom two floors to… uh, I guess whatever business is out there looking to take on new offices... the EDD? Goodwill?

So everyone moved except for my death colleagues and me.  That's curious we thought.  At first they said it was to keep us near the public entrance where we often help walk-in customers. But after a tour of the new 3^rd Floor space we noticed an alarming lack of empty desks with our names on ‘em.  “Where are we gonna sit?” we asked.  “Oh, we haven’t decided yet. There will definitely be a place for you when the time comes,” they lied, and we were chastised and pooh-poohed for being worriers and gossipers and conspiracy theorists and etc.  Pooh poohed! Can you imagine! Ever hear the one about the family who waited till the kid’s away in college then move without a forwarding address? Think that means anything?

After that more writing on the wall, more dumb, ham-fisted moves like when they were clandestinely training our replacements in Houston, and accidentally put their test obits in our live system so we could see them. (Luckily we did… they were about to publish in the paper!) and when asked about them they made up the usual weird and implausible excuses.  And there was more, of course. Hey, I don’t want to give away all the Kron’s trade secrets of stupidity, cause that’s for a book or something down the road, but by the time our axe finally fell, we knew, almost to the day it was coming.  We were 'tapped on the shoulder' right in the middle of helping a poor, distraught family who’d walked in, crying, upset; unfinished obits on our screens, ushered into HR to get canned. But the lifting weight. I was free! I didn’t feel crappy or scared or depressed. I wanted to go see a movie, so after F whizzed into the City to rescue me, I took in “District 9,” (which I mostly thought was gross. Fun. But gross. A perfect antidote to gettin' canned).

I was sorry to have left the job so abruptly though.  Their choice. They said I had 15 minutes to pack my stuff and leave the "premises" and I said "That's exactly 14 more minutes than I actually need!"  I worked with good people and will miss them. I had many clients in the Bay Area funeral biz who were friends (and fiends!) and will miss them as well. I will say it hurts to look at the poor, poor Chron of late, esp. the once proud obit page. Whatta shame. It  pains me to see every error I fought so hard against all those years on ignominious display for all to see: random and improper (emotional) capitalizations (my Mother was a Veteran so show your Respect by Capitalizing As Many Words As Possible!); commas, seeming, dropped from, a helicopter, to the page below; cemetery spelled with “a’s” and “i’s;”

and a dozen or so other laughable and quite sad grammar and spelling issues that should never appear in print. I was one of the only people there who cared about it.  Why? God knows. Just took it on as a point of pride. I mean a newspaper should not be full of errors. The skirblog, sure, but not the SF Chronwinkle for god’s sake. Its just another sign that that particular media is death rattling its final throes. We’ll see if I don’t write it, the paper’s obit myself one of these days…

 

On to next phase of work, of life, which feels good, optimistic, which thanks to the awesomeness of Felicia, who’s doula biz is booming, will hopefully include more writing, and eventually teaching next year. Looking to getting my Credential finally and doing what I probably should have been doing all along: helping warp those young minds you hear so much about, so perhaps one day not every kid will hate Melville or Shakespeare or reading or writing something. Will let you know.

 

OK, there’s still media that’s not dead. Here’s notes on some of it.

 

I did rant a bit about Leonard Nimoy being on Fringe on a facebook post, and was wondering why o’ why does that guy have pop up in every sci fi thing out there? I was preeety disappointed at the Star Trek “retool” film that had to use Nimoy as a crutch. C’mon guys, you can do your own movie just fine.  The younger versions of the characters were excellent, but that old Spock dragged me down. Plus the whole alternate universe being created with the time traveling Spock and Vulcan blowing up etc, felt unneeded. I didn’t like it.  But these Lost boys love their alternative universes. Like Fringe.  I went and re-watched a few of last season’s final shows and I have to admit that Nimoy cuts a kind of striking figure as the suave techno-evil dude from the alternate universe.  So maybe its not the actor Nimoy I’m on about, but that character Spock. Fringe is shaping up to be a lot of fun. Very X-files mixed with Lost and The Lost Room and some other harder sci fi

thrown in to boot. Less aliens more agents from a parallel universe who use stuff like an IBM Selectric and a mirror to communicate across the void. Its all weird and watchable.

 

The Lost boys have missed however on Flash Forward. I may give it another chance, but after ep. One, I can’t say that I was too excited about the rest of it. It feels very exploitative of the success of Lost, down to the billboards for Oceanic Airlines and hundreds of other hidden Easter eggs just waiting to be TiVo’d out. But I think you have to earn this kind of thing, like Lost did over many seasons, not right out of the gate. The whole show is a giant Easter egg really, and the worst seems to be the un-subtle aiming for the big “date” that everybody flashed forward to: April something 2010, which is apparently the start of Nielsen Sweeps, where obviously the show itself will catch up with and be all tied in with hype and marketing and bla bla. Yawn.  Ep. One was a huge downer… more than the “cool” aspect to what went down, everybody on the planet passing out at the same moment for the same duration, all having “memories” of that future day in April when either their show will be cancelled or not, we have to imagine hundreds and thousands of grizzly, horrible deaths, many of them glimpsed during the show: planes and copters crashing all over, cars killing people in hundreds of creative, gruesome ways, surgeons botching operations, and on and on. What a mess. I’m not as worried about the story of “why,” but moreso how the world is going to clean all that shit up?

 

But if you wanna talk TV, and apparently you do… you’ve gotta talk “Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia” new contender for most transgressive, funniest show out there, beating out Larry David, Sarah Silverman and whatever naughty cartoon people love. IASIP, as it must be forever typed, is insanely funny, infinitely watchable, insane, and at times idiotic, brilliant, disgusting, horrific, dumb, genius, etc. Plus you don’t need to see them in order so you can start anywhere and have your fun.

 

Two actors from that show showed up in a little indie film called A Quiet Marriage, which was worth a look. Not a screaming comedy like IASIP, but quirky and interesting. Who’s worse? A wife who pokes holes in her diaphragm? Or a husband who doses her coffee with birth control pills? You decide.

 

Also indie kudos to good ol’ John Kransniski from the Office, who apparently spent a lot of his extra Office bonus cash to buy and film David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which until now probably was in contention for “Book most least likely to be made into a movie…” I was super, gigantic, crazy skeptical about the idea,  but they kinda sorta pull it off. A bit confused and perhaps underacted at times, but is faithful to a lot of the book, and tells its own story rather well… Maybe if he wins an Emmy he’ll buy and film Infinite Jest…. (!!))

 

Not exactly media, but an item of much beauty and joy, a piano, has entered our lives and improved them greatly. Felicia manifested this piano out of the ether, as she often does, and was I surprised when, a) it showed up and was in perfect condition, beautiful shape, seemingly brand new; and b) she figured out a way to fit in our little house, house that is more like one of those square number puzzles that you slide the little tiles around to get everything in order. I mean, I’m afraid to even bring a Sunday New York Times in lest it topple the delicate balance, yet piano? No prob.  What’s even weirder is that I am remembering so much of what I used to play, like 20 years ago when I spent countless hours figuring out the chords to “Pinball Wizard” and the “Pink Panther,” and Stones songs and bad boogie woogie. This piano brings it all out of me, it is so playable, so amenable really, what a doll.

I play a bit, the sun slanting madly out there, but I feel better already.

 

 

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.