Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Tiger's Address Book (Yes, Yet Another One!)

Why did Mrs. Woods get so upset?

1. She found out Tiger had been using Magic Johnson's old address book.

2. She found out Tiger wasn't trying to break Jack Nicklaus' record, but rather Wilt Chamberlain's.

While I don't take celebrities' follies all that seriously, it looks like Mrs. Woods has hired a really good divorce attorney. I think she's going to take a walk.

Tiger, of course is re-writing his book: "How To Get In 18 Holes Without Your Wife Finding Out."

Gilad Shalit (Remembering U.S. Grant)

I see that the Israelis are about to 'buy' Gilad Shalit for a THOUSAND Palestinian prisoners. Damn fools! They would do well to follow the example of U.S. Grant during the last year of the Civil War, who stopped all prisoner exchanges- and won the war.

Audie Murphy is rightly revered as a great hero because he took out about a hundred enemy soldiers. Is Shalit worth a *thousand*? No way!

General Anthony McAuliffe

It was 65 years ago yesterday that Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, the acting commander of the American troops surrounded at Bastonge, received a demand from the German troops outside the town that he surrender. Upon reading the message, he commented to an aide, "Nuts, what do I say in response to this?"

The aide said, "How about what you just said?"

The rest is history. Because his response was simply "NUTS!"

For the rest of his life, people asked General McAuliffe frequently asked him if he didn't use a different four-letter word. However, I once saw an interview with that aide, who as emphatc that General McAuliffe did, in fact, say "NUTS!"

General McAuliffe was a man of both great bravery, and great brevity.

Parental Perspective (I): Nondriving Preschoolers

For anyone who has had a rough time with their kids recently: a friend of mine told me that she once got she got so exasperated with her three young 'uns that one day she told them to go to hell.

To which her four-year-old replied. "But mom, we can't. We don't drive!"

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Juanita Jordan

In view of recent news about Tiger Woods, it might be useful to consider the case of Juanita Jordan, who managed to wind up with $160 million as a result of her divorce from her basketball star ex-husband. Hmmmm....she's gorgeous, and she's rich- what guy wouldn't want to catch her own the rebound?



p.s. One more Tiger Woods joke while we're on the topic: What is the difference beteen Tiger Woods and Santa Claus? Santa Claus usually stops after three Hos.

Oral Roberts

Sometimes, I hear of someone's passing, when it would take a heart of stone not to laugh. Oral Roberts ent to his reward at the age of 91. About 20 years ago, he announced that he feared that God was "going to call him home" if he did not raise an additional $8 million for Oral Roberts University. (Insert joke here)

To borrow from Lord Byron:

"Posterity will never survey
a nobler grave than this-
Here lie the bones of Oral Roberts...
Stop traveler...and piss"

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Joe Don Looney

Joe Don Looney achieved fame for two great reasons. He was a great fullback at the University of Oklahoma who played several years in the NFL and he was very well named. In the Oklahoma locker room, there was a large trash can by the door with a sign on it reading, “Put your used tape here.” Looney, however, continued to throw his used tapes on the floor. When his coach rebuked him for this, and pointed out the trash can sign, which was in plain sight, Loony retorted: “I refuse to take orders from a trash can.”

I believe that while Obama people tend to blame McCain people (and vice versa) the truth is that we have entirely too many loony people running around loose. I think it’s all too common for people on one side of the political side of the spectrum to never give anyone on the other side credit for a good idea.

Krugerrands and Rubles

As I’ve related several times, I have absolutely no use for Kucinich Democrats. My brother Bruce used to work on Dennis Kucinich’s staff. Back in 1976, on my twenty-first birthday, I purchased an old coin, a replica of an Austro-Hungarian 100-kroner piece for $200. That turned out to be one of the smartest investments I ever made. A bit more than three years later, I resold that coin for more than a 200% profit. When my brother Bruce heard that I’d purchased a gold coin, he felt the need to warn/threaten me that I had better not buy any South African krugerrands. I refrained from telling him that it was none of his business, but I couldn’t resist asking him if he had any objection to me buying a Soviet 100-ruble piece. He said no.

Does anyone need for me to explain why I found Bruce’s politics utterly despicable?

Woody Hayes, Anglophile

My English readers might be interested to know that my old friend, the late Woody Hayes, was an extraordinary Anglophile. Indeed, he once tried to motivate his players with a halftime speech describing Admiral Nelson’s death at Trafalgar. That didn’t go over well. A great many of the players had trouble keeping from laughing. When Woody’s old friend, Paul Horning, (about the only journalist Woody ever had any use for), told Woody that he planned to write a biography about him, Woody barked, “fine, so long as you do it like Cromwell’s.”

When Horning asked what Woody meant by that, Woody replied, “Do it warts and all.” In 1977, the BBC did a twenty-part documentary entitled, “The Americans,” and made Woody one of the subjects. They must have had trepidation, as Woody had a prickly reputation with the press. To the surprise of just about everyone in the American sporting press, Woody assented, along with a comment that he had always respected the British for the courage they’d shown in both World Wars and especially Air Marshall Dowding’s courage during the Battle of Britain.

Mystery in Mogadishu

I’ve been to Mogadishu, Somalia twice. This serves to remind me that 99% of all Americans have no idea how good they have it. There’s one Mogadishu story that I wish I could claim I was present for, but that would not be the truth. Sometime in the 1970s, the Somali government riled that the Soviets were trying to play a game by supporting the Somali’s rivals in Ethiopia. The Somali reaction was to expel the the Soviets and make overtures to the United States. Soon thereafter, an American destroyer visited Mogadishu and the Somali government held a banquet in the captain’s honor. At the climax of the banquet, the Somali envoy made a gift of half a dozen live goats. Perhaps the captain thought, “Well, at least I won’t have to eat the goats’ eyeballs.” He was, however, flabbergasted when the American ambassador informed him that the maintenance of good relations between the United States and Somalia demanded that the ship accept the Somali gift. The captain broached the idea of accepting the gift. The ship’s crew was none too enthusiastic about sharing the confined spaces of a destroyer with that many goats, since they can be ill-tempered, rambunctious and smelly creatures.

The captain suggested that they throw the goats overboard once they’d passed the twelve-mile territorial limit. The ambassador was adamant that, if the goat carcasses washed ashore, there would be a diplomatic situation. Trying to reach the best possible conclusion, the captain called a conference, and the guys working deck force suggested that they construct a pen on the fantail of the destroyer and that they could feed the goats table scraps and any sailor who had seriously messed up would be awarded Extra Duty, being required to clean up after the goats.

(My four years in the Navy, I heard of some jobs being referred to as chicken*** jobs, but this is the first time I heard of anyone having goat****jobs.) The guys on deck force were even nice enough to cover the pen with a tarpaulin to protect the goats from inclement weather. After leaving Mogadishu, they headed north and passed a Soviet base on the island of Socratscrtia????

The Soviet practice at that point was to send a helicopter out to react to any warship passing through the area. Usually, they would just fly one circuit around the US ship and return to base. This time, however, the Russkie helo completed one circuit and then spent quite a few minutes hovering a few hundred yards behind the destroyer. They were no doubt taking photos of that strange, unidentified structure on the destroyer’s fantail. Many Soviet analysts must have spent some sleepless nights figuring out what that structure was.

P.S. When the destroyer got to the Persian Gulf, they regifted the goats to an orphanage.

A Shabbat/USMC Story: Moses and the FAO

I enjoy the friendship of people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Recently, I got an invitation to attend a bar mitzvah of the son of a classmate of mine. We met in London and she new lives near Miami, Florida. I am also friends with a number of retired career United States Marines. I am happy to report that I know one story that both will enjoy. The story of Moses and the Forward Air Observer.

Once upon a time, an elderly Jewish gentleman asked his grandson what he learned in Shabbat. To which the youngster replied, “Grandfather, the rabbi told us the story of Moses and the Forward Air Observer.”

Moses had just sprung the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. When they got to the Red Sea, things looked pretty bleak because Pharaoh’s army was in hot pursuit. Moses asked the FAO to have his buddies, the engineers, build a pontoon bridge across the Red Sea and the Israelites beat feet across the bridge to get to Sinai. They had just made it to the other side when Pharaoh’s army started coming across the bridge after them. Things were looking really bad, but Moses got on the horn to the FAO, called in a precision air strike, which blew that pontoon bridge and Pharaoh’s army to Kingdom Come.

After hearing this, the old gentleman was silent for a while, then asked his grandson, “Are you sure that’s really what the rabbi told you?”

There was a long silence. Finally, the little boy said, “No, grandfather. But if I told you what the rabbi told me, I don’t think you’d believe it.”

p.s. I’m a little bit early, but let me wish a Happy Hanukkah to all of my Jewish friends.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Obligatory Tiger Woods Jokes

Actually, it wasn't Tiger Woods who was behaving so badly- it was his evil twin, Lion Cheetah.

What is the difference between a golf ball and a Cadillac? Tiger Woods can drive a golf ball 400 yards.

What does Tiger Woods have in common with a baby seal? They've both been clubbed by a Swede.

Why did Tiger hit both a tree and a hydrant? He couldn't decide between a wood and an iron.

When asked how many times she hit her husband, Mrs. Woods said, "I don't know- put me down for a five."

Why was Tiger up that early? He had a 2:30 am tree time.

Why was Mrs. Woods up that early? She was out clubbing.

Why did Mrs. Woods go ballistic? She found out Tiger had been using Magic Johnson's old address book.

When asked to comment, Jack Nicholas said "That's none of my business" (No joke there- I guess Tiger must enjoy knowing who his friends are.)

Jimmy Doolittle

Jimmy Doolittle was born to missionaries in December of 1896. They moved to Nome, Alaska, where Jimmy must have had an awfully rough time in grade school, seeing as how he was 1) Caucasian in an almost all-Indian town, 2) the preacher’s kid, 3) named “Doolittle.” Can you imagine a better recipe for getting picked on in the schoolyard? Even worse, he was small of stature, which was a fourth strike against him. Even as a grown man, he weighed no more than 112 pounds.

Surprisingly, Jimmy Doolittle turned out to be an extraordinarily tough little guy who became an amateur boxer and won the Golden Gloves championship of the entire Western United States. Even more surprising, Doolittle turned out to be a brilliant scholar, as well. He earned a PhD. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Aeronautics. After his service in the Army Air Corps, he earned a doctorate in Aeronautics. Jimmy Doolittle is very close to my concept of the ideal man. He was extremely smart and extremely tough.

Between the World Wars, he earned a reputation as one of the best civilian flyers in the country. When WWII broke out, he was called to active duty at the rank of lieutenant colonel. In early 1942, he pulled off one of the most innovative schemes in the history of warfare. The United States did not yet have any bases close enough to Japan to launch a ground attack. The Navy was not yet strong enough to do that with the few available aircraft carriers they had. So Doolittle hatched a scheme to fly sixteen Army B-25s off the flight deck of the USS Hornet and attack Tokyo and send a very clear message to the Japanese that they could not attack us with impunity. Because a Japanese trawler spotted the Hornet’s task group, approximately 670 miles off the Japanese coast, Doolittle had to launch his planes a day early. Each of them ran out of gas before they could reach the Nationalist Chinese air bases they were hoping to reach. Of the eighty Doolittle raiders, four were killed when their planes crashed, three were captured by the Japanese and executed, and one died in Japanese captivity. Five more were interned in Russia. The rest walked more than 100 miles to safety.

For that spectacular feat, Doolittle was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and promoted to Brigadier General, skipping the rank of Colonel. For most of the rest of the war, Doolittle was in England, directing the strategic bomber offensive against Germany and reaching the rank of lieutenant general. (I understand that he and General Patton were drinking buddies.)

After the war, Doolittle had a spectacularly successful career in the aeronautics industry and died in 1993. The surviving Doolittle raiders continue to have a reunion each year to reminisce. (The 2009 Reunion was held in Columbia, South Carolina.)

Bill Clinton and Christopher Hitchens at Oxford

As anyone who knows me already realizes, I am very fond of the work of the contrarian Christopher Hitchens. Among the many insights I’ve gained from him, some of my favorites result from the fact that he attended Oxford University just one year behind William Jefferson Clinton. Hitchens relates that he once dated a former girlfriend of Clinton’s. Years later, the young lady became a radical separatist lesbian. (Insert joke here.)

Even better is Hitchens’ insight into Clinton’s famous semi-denial, “but I never inhaled.” Apparently, Hitchens knew some of the same marijuana dealers as Clinton did. Apparently, it’s true that Bill Clinton never inhaled, I think it’s highly unlikely he will ever ‘fess up to how many brownies he ate while at Oxford.

A Sailor’s Lucky Appendix

Back in the summer of 1945, a young Naval officer suffered an attack of appendicitis that sent him to the hospital and prevented him from getting on board the cruiser he’d been assigned to serve on. That turned out to be an incredibly lucky break on his part. His assigned ship was the USS Indianapolis, which a Japanese submarine torpedoed near midnight on July 30, 1945. The ship sank so rapidly that the radio room did not have time to send out an SOS. Although the majority of the 1199-man crew got off the ship in time, it was four days before anyone picked them up. By that time, only 316 men were still alive. Hundreds of their shipmates had died of thirst or being eaten by sharks. The sailor with the lucky appendix was a lieutenant named John Wooden, who went on to achieve legendary status as the coach of UCLA’s basketball team to ten national titles. If Coach Wooden’s present good health continues, this October, he will celebrate his 100th birthday.

Elliot’s Education Evasion

A few months ago, I represented a client named Elliot on a probation violation. He had been sitting at home under Mom’s orders not to leave the house when a friend called him up and said, “Hey, Elliot. I just stole a car. Wanna go for a ride?” This made perfect sense to Elliot. Not only did he knowingly go joyriding in a stolen car, but Elliot managed to get behind the wheel himself. Indeed, that’s where he was when the police stopped the car. He ended up in police custody.

By the time I made Elliot’s acquaintance, he had violated probation by repeatedly not showing up for school. (He is rapidly approaching eighteen.) Shortly before our case was called, Elliot showed me his report card, which listed him as earning Cs and a couple of As. I was able to implore the judge not to ship Elliot off to Juvenile Hall as he was doing so well in school. It was not until after we had finished that I took a closer look at that report card. I noticed that the six different grade notations all seemed to be in the same handwriting and I’ve never seen a teacher record a grade in a felt-tip pen. When I confronted Elliot about this, he ‘fessed up. The next day, I called Elliot’s high school and learned that his attendance record was well under fifty percent. He had double-digit unexcused absences in every one of his classes. He had also fabricated the report card.

Elliot admitted as much to me when I confronted him about it. He also seemed quite mystified when I informed him in tones not usually used while addressing children that he was going to inform the judge of his deception at our next appearance, or I most certainly would. Elliot seemed crestfallen to learn that I would not risk my license and a five-year term in jail to protect his right to play hooky.

I had another hearing for Elliot last week. Surprise, surprise, he did not appear. The judge issued a warrant for his arrest. I managed to reach Elliot by phone and recommended he get his gluteus maximus to the courthouse forthwith. His timing was flawless. He arrived in time to get the warrant quashed, but too late to have his hearing, so we’ll be back up in front of a judge this coming week.

The British, Nigerians, Burma, India and Japan

I once told a friend of mine never to underestimate the ingenuity of the British. I shared with him one of my favorite bits of WWII trivia. During the war, the British convinced over 30,000 Nigerians (enough to form two full divisions) to go to Burma to defend India against invasion by the Japanese. He looked at me, dumbfounded, and asked how they did it. I told him that I was still working on that problem myself.

Rondo Hatton's Lemonade

Rondo Hatton is an underground Hollywood trivia king. He was voted the handsomest boy in his high school class- quite ironic, considering the unpleasant surprise Life had in store for him. Some time after his service in World War I, Hatton contracted acromegaly, a malfunction in the pituitary gland that caused him not only to grow well past six-foot-seven but gave him supersized hands and feet and an expanded jaw, lending him a monstrous appearance. Hatton was married twice, the first left him after he contracted his condition, and the second, thankfully, realized that one can’t just a book by its cover. Legend has it that the neighborhood children taunted him, calling him “monster man.” Acromegaly had several dreadful side effects, leading to diabetes and chronic pain. Somehow, Hatton failed to succumb to self-pity, earning himself a job with the Tampa Tribune that forced him to get out and talk to people. Ironically, one day, he was sent to cover a movie being filmed in the Tampa area and the director told him that a man with such a distinctive appearance might make a living in Hollywood.

Later, Hatton found out that he could make a whole lot more money playing bit parts in Hollywood than he could as a reporter, and he moved to Hollywood. Hatton achieved a measure of success in films, though he had to take a philosophical stance about playing monsters in film. He was in The Princess and the Pirate with Bob Hope; he played the gorilla man. He was in The Ox-Bow Incident, playing a member of an unruly lynch mob. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he played the runner up in an “ugliest man” competition with Charles Laughlin’s Quasimodo.

Hatton’s most famous role, however, was in the Sherlock Holmes classic, The Pearl of Death. By all accounts, Hatton was a kind, sweet-natured gentleman. However, due to his grotesque appearance, he was cast as the “Hoxton Creeper,” a mute, serial killing fiend who murders six different people by breaking their backs. In the climax, the Creeper is confronted by Basil Rathbone’s Holmes, who happens to have a pistol handy. Since the Creeper does not possess super powers, the outcome is predictable.

I remember seeing that film as a kid and finding it scary. Now, in middle age, I am surprised audiences didn’t find it silly. Are the London police so incompetent that they can’t find such an ernormous monster? Ironically, the Creeper was such a hit with fans that Hatton found he was going to be featured in four different films, playing the same grisly character. Sadly, he died at the age of 52, before any of those films were released. I think it’s admirable that Rondo Hatton managed to make a life for himself in spite of having suffered such terrible misfortune. Life gave him a huge pile of lemons and he managed to make a pretty good batch of lemonade.


Thursday, December 3, 2009

Democracy in Action: HB 96 Passed

A dear friend of mine recently testified before the Ohio legislature in favor of requiring antifreeze to contain additives to make it unappealing to animals. Everybody in Ohio- write your legislator! Everybody outside Ohio, write your legislator.

Victoria (Sirker's) Secret

When I was stationed at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, one of my Navy shipmates was a gal named Victoria Sirker. She was nice, she was smart, and she was *very* nicely proportioned. (Filled out her uniform quite well :)

One day, I had just taken a seat on the shuttle bus that ran from the classrooms at the bottom end of the DLI up the long, steep slope to the Navy barracks, when Victoria climbed in, carrying a large grocery bag. I offered her my seat, which she accepted. When I looked down, I could not help but notice that Victoria had done some serious shopping- that bag was filled to the limit with just about every snack food the PX had to offer.

Aware of my gaze, Victoria said, "Uh-uh-uh, Kent! I see you peeking at my goodies!"

In a moment of pure inspiration, I replied, "Yes, and I've checking out your *groceries* too!"

Among many other fine qualities, Ms. Sirker had a sense of humor- she cracked up.

Chelsea Clinton

It is now official: Chelsea Clinton is engaged to be married next year. The lucky fellow is Marc Mezvinski, who was classmate of hers at Stanford.

Chelsea's future father-in-la is Ed Mazvinski, a former congressman who served a bit over five years in federal prison after being convicted of 31 felony counts of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud. (insert joke here)

The happy couple in 1996.

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods is still the world's best driver, but lately, he certainly has been having trouble with his putts.

Howard Cosell

For over twenty years, Howard Cosell was one of America’s most famous sportscasters. He initially achieved great fame by fervently championing Muhammad Ali’s right to fight. Toward the end of Ali’s career, he and Cosell developed a routine that went as follows:

Cosell: Let’s face facts. The spring has gone from your step. The sting has gone from your jab.
Ali: Well, I tell you what, Howard Cosell. I see your wife over there, and I’m going to go over there and ask her if you were the man you were ten years ago.

Cosell was noted for his braggadocio and his egomania. Once, while taking questions after a dinner, a young man said, “Mr. Cosell, I just want to say that you’re a great man and I agree with everything you say.” A second later, Cosell replied, “Young man, you are possessed of extraordinary intelligence.” It was quite some time until anything else could be heard above the laughter.

When I was in law school, one of my professors, Terry Phelps, was married to Notre Dame basketball coach, Digger Phelps. At a school function, she once mentioned she had met Howard Cosell. I asked her if, upon meeting her, Cosell had proclaimed, “What a world-class beauty, what an extraordinary intellect, what an amazing woman…truly, your parents must be absolutely devastated that you married so far beneath yourself.” Professor Phelps complimented me on my Cosell impersonation and told me that had been pretty close to word-for-word what Cosell had said.

In the past year of Cosell’s tenure broadcasting Monday Night Football, his partner was Al Michaels, who has related that Cosell’s bombast and egomania made him extremely difficult to work with. However, he also mentioned one occasion when Cosell managed to really impress him. Michaels and Cosell were in a limo, on their way to broadcast a game. Their driver that evening was a young woman named Peggy. On the way, while driving through a very tough neighborhood, they stopped at a light. On the corner beside them were two young men who were having a serious fistfight, much to the delight of a throng of cheering onlookers. To Michaels’ amazement, Cosell opened the door and got out of the car. (Howard was in his seventies at the time.) Michaels and Peggy did not even have time to scream at Cosell when he shoved his way through the cheering throng. In his loudest voice, he was proclaiming, “It is immediately apparent to this reporter that neither of these opponents has the skill to compete at the highest level of pugilism. This young southpaw’s jab is weak and ineffectual, whereas the other combatant’s skills are obviously in steep decline.”

At this point, the crowd was staring at Cosell. The man then bellowed, “I order this contest stopped forthwith!” A few seconds later, one of the dumbfounded onlookers said, “Howard Cosell!” The fighters and audience alike then took turns asking Cosell for his autograph. When Cosell got back into the limo, having restored peace to that street corner, Peggy said, “Howard, I don’t believe you. You could have gotten killed. “ Cosell sat back and proclaimed, “Pegaroo, I know who I am.”

He certainly did. Howard Cosell was one-of-a-kind.

The Terror of Influenza

As a lifelong student of history, I rarely read anything that surprises me anymore. An exception was John Barry’s book, The Great Influenza, written about the big outbreak in 1919. Influenza killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages did in a century. It killed more people in a week than AIDS has in 30 years. The thing that boggled my mind was understanding the horrors of the plague. It’s horrible to know that the medical authorities of the day were so far behind those of the present day. While the author did not write a polemic, it did occur to me that for all the heinous things John Rockefeller did in his life, he did manage to found the Rockefeller Institute. That body did great short-notice work to help mitigate the death toll.

I learned that the killer strain of flu emerged at the exact time when it would do the most horrific damage: during a World War, when millions of soldiers were living in close proximity. The U.S. Army was undergoing unprecedented expansion in 1917,-1918; barracks became death traps. Of all U.S. Army bases, the worst-hit was Camp Sherman, just fifty miles south of Columbus. In Philadelphia, the police were the first line of defense. During the week of October 16, 1918, 4,597 Philadelphians died from influenza. Nineteen police officers died of the disease. It took extraordinary courage for medical personnel to remain on the job. As bad as the death toll was in Europe and the Americas, in non-Western countries, indigenous people who lacked immunity to Western diseases experienced an unimaginable death toll. I lived on Guam for five months. 1999-2000. On October 26, 1918, nearly 95 percent of the U.S. sailors ashore caught the disease, but only a single sailor died. The same virus killed ten percent of the native population. The same virus would later kill another five percent of the native population. In Nome, Alaska, 176 out of 300 Eskimos died.

The most haunting bit: In the Labrador town of Okack, there was a population of 266 people and a whole lot of dogs. When a relief mission reached the village, only 59 people were still alive. What made the town something out too scary for a Stephen King book was that the town’s canine population outnumbered that of people. The dogs, without people to care for them, ate what they could. The Reverend Andrew Asboe, though deathly ill, survived by keeping a rifle near his bed. He personally killed over a hundred dogs.

The possibility of a renewed outbreak of influenza that would be as deadly as the 1919 strain is a horrifying prospect, particularly if someone is diabolical enough to use weaponized biological agents. While reading Barry’s book, I wasn’t interested in a political polemic, but I will make one observation: Why was the 1918 strain so deadly? It’s because the influenza virus evolves.

PSH in CMH

Last month, a young man from St. Louis who had just finished serving a seven-year prison sentence for convictions for burglary, grand theft auto and weapons possession, decided to seek greener pastures here in Columbus. On October 28, he decided to burst into a hotel room and rob six people at gunpoint. One of his victims handed him fourteen dollars and the thief cursed the man for having so little. Another one of his prospective victims was a seventy-year-old great grandmother who had something else for the burglar, Mr. Winston. She pulled a .357 Magnum from her purse and shot Mr. Winston full in the chest. Winston managed to stagger out the door into the hotel parking lot, where the paramedics pronounced him dead on the scene.

Note: CMH is the National Transportation Board abbreviation for Columbus, Ohio; PSH is Public Service Homicide.

The Ballad of Mike Lantry

Yesterday was a joyous time in central Ohio, as the Ohio State Buckeyes defeated their hated archrivals, the University of Michigan Wolverines for the sixth straight year by a convincing score of 21 to 10. OSU/Michigan week is an occasion for vituperation towards our archrivals, a time for telling nasty jokes about anyone or anything related to Michigan. Example: how to you get a U of M MBA off your front porch? Pay him for the pizza. What’s the difference between a U of M cheerleader and a hippopotamus? About fifty pounds. How do you eliminate the difference? Feed the hippopotamus? One of my all-time favorite musical groups is an outfit called the Dead Schembechlers, who have produced a number of albums. One of my favorite songs from their album is the song of Mike Lantry, commemorating his missing of a last-minute field goal in the 1974 game.

The Bucks were locked in battle
In the Fall of seventy-four.
The Wolverines would be the champs
If they got one quick score.

But who would win the game that day
To play the Bowl of Rose?
Schembechler bet his season
On Michael Lantry’s toe.
His toe, his toe, he bet on Lantry’s toe.

Well, Lantry was pure evil,
For he had sold his soul .
He sold it to the devil
To kick some field goals.

He strode into the Horseshoe
As seconds ticked away.
He planned to beat the Buckeyes
On the last play.
Last play, last play, upon the last play.

The snap, it came to Lantry;
He kicked it way up high.
The ball flew like an angel
Who swiped it as it flew by.

By the grace of God he hit it
For he was quick and deft.
The ball, it started spinning
And it sailed to the left.
Wide left, wide left, the ball, it went wide left.

The devil, he was angry;
The angel had him beat.
The Wolverines were defeated
Schembechler stamped his feet.

Mike Lantry, he tried suicide
Because he felt bereft.
But when he tried to shoot himself
The bullet sailed wide left.
Wide left! Wide left! The bullet went wide left!

p.s. Contrary to what the song says, Mike Lantry did not try to commit suicide after the game. He is a Vietnam veteran. Serving in Vietnam gave him perspective on how to deal with losing a college football game.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Palin and Penguins

My collaborator loves to hate former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Indeed, he takes the Matt Damon position that former Governor Palin does not believe that dinosaurs and man were separated by millions of years.

As the last word on this, Palin has declared in her biography, Going Rogue, that she does believe in both divine Creation and evolution and that evolution is part of the divine plan. I’d say that seeing evolution as a divine plan is the thin end of an absolutely enormous wedge. My own position can be summed up with the story of the male penguin who, after waddling fifty miles over an ice field in sub-zero temperatures, says to his mate, “Intelligent design, my ass!”

Arkansas Politics

My father was born in Osceola, Arkansas on December 28, 1919. For anyone who saw the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, Osceola is a county seat town in the north of Arkansas, about fifteen miles from Dyess, Arkansas, where Johnny Cash grew up. In the film, there is a scene where the entire Cash family is picking cotton and someone says it will be one hundred and two degrees by noon. Speaking as someone who made a dozen week-long visits to visit my paternal grandmother in Osceola, always in the summertime, my reaction was, “Goodness, they’re having a cold spell.”

He was thirteen years old when FDR took office and told me the following story about the impact the New Deal had on the region. A popular joke had a new teacher asking her grade schoolers who built this new school. The children would chorus, “Roosevelt!”

“And who got us our new textbooks?”

“Roosevelt?”

“Who made heaven and Earth?”

A newcomer child says, “God?

His classmates got together and decided, “During recess, we’ll beat up that Republican.”

I did some research and learned that FDR carried Arkansas with 82% of the vote in 1932. Four years later, he actually improved his score, moving up to 86%. (Across the river in Mississippi, FDR did even better, with 94 and 97%, respectively.) Arkansas voted Democratic in every Presidential election from 1836 until 1968, when George Wallace carried the state as an independent.

I once asked my father which would have astonished him more: to see a man walk on the moon or to see a Republican win election to the governorship of Arkansas. He laughed and said that latter. This leads to the story of one of the great electoral flukes of American history. Back in the 1930s, John D. Rockefeller’s five sons all seemed destined for great things. Nelson wanted to be President of the United States. David wanted to run the Chase Manhattan Bank. Winthrop, however, appeared to be an utterly hopeless alcoholic. He managed to get himself expelled from Yale. (Exactly how bad to you have to be to get expelled from college when your name is Rockefeller?) The family sadly concluded that Winthrop was a lost cause and they shipped him off to a treatment center in Arkansas where they were certain he would drink himself to death.

Wonder of wonders, Winthrop sobered up after a few years. He had spent enough time in Arkansas that he’d grown to rather like the place. He went into politics as a Republican in a state that had been solidly Democratic since day one.

Winthrop was extraordinarily fortunate in his opposition. Arkansas had a four-term governor by the name of Orval Faubus, who was utterly corrupt and a vociferous racist. It was he who had forced President Eisenhower to send fifteen thousand troops to Little Rock to protect black students integrating in the local high school. Winthrop Rockefeller was a reasonably intelligent man and, as far as I can tell, an entirely honest man. (Exactly how do you bribe a Rockefeller?)

He won election in 1970 and won reelection four years later. I believe he was the only Republican my father ever supported in his entire life.

Beauregard's Flag

Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was one of the leading Confederate generals during the American Civil War. If the South had won the war, Beauregard would certainly have been one of the Confederacy’s greatest heroes. He is supposed to have fired the first shot at Fort Sumter in April of 1861. He took over command of the Army of Tennessee after General Albert Sidney Johnston’s death at Shiloh in April of 1862. He commanded the coastal defenses of the Eastern Seaboard for much of the war and was credited with helping to defend Petersburg in 1864. While reading Gone With the Wind, I came across a short story that described General Beauregard’s popularity with the Cajuns in Louisiana. The story goes that, when a Cajun hears another Southerner praising General Lee, he is silent for moment then says, “General Lee? General Lee? Oh, yes, I remember now. General Lee is the gentleman General Beau regard speaks so highly of.”

General Beauregard’s fame comes from his design of what became the Confederate battle flag. In the early stages of the war, the Confederate “Bonnie Blue” flag (13 white stars on a blue field with one red and one white stripe) was so similar to the American flag as to cause confusion. Beauregard came up with the idea of creating a flag with a blue St. Andrews cross against a red background. After the war, Beauregard went into politics and used his flag in his political campaigns. I recently learned a detail that astonished me. Beauregard’s political platform provided for complete equality between the races. Needless to say, Beauregard’s platform did not enjoy unanimous support.

My question for the present day is, does Beauregard’s flag stand for disunion and slavery, or can it merely be a symbol for Beauregard’s subsequent political platform. As Alice said to Humpty Dumpty, can you make a word (or a symbol) mean what you want it to mean.

Representing Decamom

The Octomom has been much in the news lately. This wretched creature, after having six illegitimate kids, managed to get fertility treatments and had eight more in one shot. In my legal career, I have represented two sextomoms (six children), and one septomom (seven kids). This past year, I met Decamom. Yes, that’s right, ten children.

In response to my collaborator's facetious question about why the state would want change of custody on her youngest, after having already received Permanent Changes of Custody on numbers five, six, seven, eight and nine, the answer is that the tenth was found to have cocaine in her bloodstream. By the time I got to the case, I learned that Decamom had failed two drug screens and had failed to appear for over 100 others. I discovered, to my considerable surprise, that, legally speaking, her children were not illegitimate. She is married and her husband is doing a lengthy prison sentence in the federal system for drug trafficking. I met her paramour and did not inquire as to his thought process in choosing such a woman as the mother of his child. (After all, she only has one conviction for soliciting prostitution.)

I did everything I could think of as a professional to represent her. However, she lost her case. If the child hasn’t suffered permanent brain damage as a result of her mother’s drug use, maybe it has a decent chance in life. What I find terrible disturbing is the thought that I am one of 260 lawyers doing assigned counsel work in Franklin County. I find the long-term implications for our civilization to be cause for despair.

(A friend of mine once asked, upon hearing about this case, “That’s stupid! (expleteive deleted) Hasn’t she thought of having an abortion?” Let’s not have a discussion about abortion. I should, however, point out that after her second or third or fourth illegitimate child, I’m pretty sure that Decamom knew exactly what she was doing.)

The Sullivans and the USS Juneau

The five Sullivan brothers grew up in Waterloo, Iowa. Before World War II, two of the boys had served hitches in the U.S. Navy. After Pearl Harbor, the five brothers agreed to enlist in the Navy on the condition they be allowed to serve of the same ship. When notified about the possible danger, the brothers said, “if we go down, we go down together.”

Unfortunately, on November 13, 1942, their ship, the USS Juneau, which had already been damaged in the Naval battles around Guadalcanal, took a torpedo from a Japanese submarine that set off a massive secondary explosion. Astonishingly, the Juneau sank in twenty seconds. The commander of the Juneau’s task force decided that there could not be any survivors. Rather than risk losing another ship to submarine attack, ordered the ships in the task force not to make any attempt at rescue. For that decision, Admiral Halsey later relieved him of his commission. The task force commander had ordered a message sent for a plane search of the area. Unfortunately, that search was conducted ten days later.

Over 600 men died immediately. They might have been the lucky ones. Eighty men made it into the water, where all but ten died of thirst, exposure or shark attack. At least two of the Sullivan brothers were in that group.

Back in the States, Hollywood made a 1944 film called The Fighting Sullivans. This film, to a modern viewer, comes across like Ozzie and Harriet Go to War. The very last shot of the film depicts the fifth Sullivan brother, the one who was always left behind, scrambling upstairs to the Pearly Gates, “Hey! Wait up for me!”

The truth about what really happened out the South Pacific was far more than Hollywood could handle. Only years later did the ten survivors relate that George Sullivan managed to survive for five days in the water. As horrible as that experience was, one of the worst aspects of this was hearing George call out the names of his four brothers, never getting a response.



The USS Juneau

My Encounter With a Rogue Psychologist

When I was attending Arabic language classes at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey in August of 1980 to August of 1981, the dropout rate was close to fifty percent. One day, the sailor who sat next to me in class had an anxiety attack and was sent back in training. At the time, the thought of being dropped from language course and being sent out to sea as a nonrated seaman terrified me. Furthermore, after seeing Seaman Zimmerman completely freak out, I was scared of getting too scared. I found out that the Presidio Monterey Dispensary had a counseling center. Upon discovering that it was FREE, I decided I would see a counselor once a week after class so I could, in effect, count my marbles and make sure I still had all of them.

For a while, I was seeing an Army Captain by the name of Frank King, who seemed to have a pretty good idea of what he was doing. One afternoon, I got to the Dispensary and Captain King was not there to greet me. After a minute or two, I had the orderly on duty page him, but there was still no response. The two of us went back to Dr. King’s office and knocked on his door. A few seconds later, Captain King opened the door just slightly and told me that he was working on a stress case and that he would be with me shortly. We had our usual session, and I didn’t think anything more of the incident until the next day, when I got back to the Navy Barracks. I had received a message that there was a call for me from the Criminal Investigation Division. I immediately called the CIE personnel, wondering what they wanted. Shortly thereafter, I learned I’d be talking to a different counselor. It was not until several weeks later that I learned that Captain King was under investigation for making improper advances on his female patients.

I graduated from DLI in August 1981 and went off to Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas for four months of additional training. One day in late October, I was taking care of some paperwork at the Navy admin center when I heard I’d been subpoenaed to testify at Captain King’s court martial. I was on the next flight, and arrived in Monterey on Thursday evening, which made for one of the best four-day weekends of my life.

When I took the stand, the defense tried to get me to say that I had seen everything that had been going on, and that everything had been above-board. That’s not what I saw and that’s not the testimony I gave. On cross examination, the prosecutor asked me why I’d been seeing Captain King. I told him, “Academic stress.”

The prosecutor asked, “Did Captain King ever tell you that you needed ‘relaxation therapy’?”

“No.”

“Did he ever tell you to lie down on the sofa?”

“No.”

“Did he ever dim the lights?”

“No.”

“Did he ever touch you?”

“Uh, I think we might have shaken hands.”

I found out later that six servicewoman had testified that Captain King had made improper advances during counseling sessions. My brief testimony was just one more nail in Captain King’s coffin. The court martial convicted him on all counts, and he was shipped off to Leavenworth. After leaving the Navy in June of 1984, I attended Notre Dame Law School and occasionally told the story of the Captain King Court Martial. In December of 1987, just as I was about to take my last final exam at Notre Dame, I got a call that I’d been subpoenaed to testify at Captain King’s retrial. I was flabbergasted to learn that he’d managed to get a new trial on appeal. While out on bail, he had allegedly committed date rape. So he was on trial for all of his previous charges in addition to the alleged rape. I learned a few days later that the defense had stipulated to my testimony so I was not going to have to fly to Leavenworth, Kansas in December. Captain King was convicted on all charges a second time, but a military appellate court reverse the rape conviction and, ultimately, he was released on time served.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Mine is that six years and a few months in Leavenworth does not strike me as a lenient sentence. To this day, I enjoy the irony that Captain Frank King managed to totally trash his career through his egregious, unprofessional conduct, and I managed to get a five-day weekend in Monterey.



A lawn at the DoD Center at Monterey.

Hirohito’s Conversion

In the aftermath of his surrender in August 1945, General of Army Douglas MacArthur acted as shogun. He had a virtual free hand from Washing to put in place any Constitutional reforms he saw fit. For example, making over a million tenant farmers into landowners, legalizing labor unions, institution a free press (with just one restriction: no criticism of MacArthur) and giving the vote to Japanese women. I must admit to feeling a certain malicious glee when I point out to certain feminists that MacArthur may be history’s greatest Suffragette. (Suffrager?)

MacArthur was a devout Episcopalian and saw Christianity as a positive influence on Japan. He encouraged missionaries (indeed, requested) to come to Japan to spread Christianity as a bulwark against Communism. The recently discovered diary of Defense Secretary James Forrestal relates that MacArthur told him he considered ordering Emperor Hirohito to convert to Christianity. Had he done so, many interesting questions would have been raised.

Until Hirohito renounced his divinity, he was the head of the Shinto church. This did not prove an insurmountable obstacle; the Vatican reached an understanding with the Shinto authorities allowing a sort of hybrid Shinto/Catholicism in Japan. (While I find that a bit bizarre, it’s much more sensible than some of the horrendous sectarian strife that has occurred in the past millennium.)

One of the first questions would be: If Hirohito converted to Christianity, which denomination would he convert to? Would the divine descendants of the Sun Goddess accept the Pope as head of his church, or, if he became Anglican, would he accept the monarch of England as the head of his church? Unfortunately, there was no option to convert to “white-label” Christianity, so that moment passed.


A Troubling Thought in the Vatican

When I visited the Vatican fifteen years ago, while walking down a broad, high-ceilinged hallway near the Sistine Chapel, I noticed that the structure was literally wall-to-wall old masters’ paintings for the length of the hall. I can only guess there might have been a thousand of them. I recognized a few of them. One of them was of the Pope in the early fifth century warning Attila the Hun not to advance upon Rome. (Attila did as the Pope advised. Some people see this as divine intervention. Others suspect Attila was wary of leading his army into a city that was suffering from an epidemic at the time.)

Another painting depicted the Massacre of the Innocents from the Book of Matthew. Herod had (allegedly) ordered the killing of all boys under the age of two in Bethlehem. I found that painting very disturbing. Happily, there is no non-biblical source for such a deed. Furthermore, while King Herod could be a thoroughly unsavory character, the Roman occupation authorities were extremely jealous of their power and did not look kindly on anyone else exercising it. What I found disturbing about that painting was that (allegedly) God warned Joseph in a dream of Herod’s plan and, the Good Book tells us, Joseph, Mary and the Christ child made a rapid exit to Egypt for two years. This raises a very disturbing question if you accept that story as being historically valid. (I certainly do not.) How could an all-loving, all-merciful god only warn Joseph, ignoring all of the other families of Bethlehem? Or, did the Angel warn Joseph, but screwed up big time by not ordering Joseph to spread the warning. (Or maybe Joseph made a flawed moral decision by not letting others know?)

It also disturbs me that I’m the only person who seems to have noticed this.

Presidential POWs

If John McCain had been elected President, he would have been the third American president to have done time as a prisoner of war. The first was George Washington, who was forced to surrender to French forces at Fort Necessity near present-day Pittsburg back in 1754. His actions managed to touch off a world war. Quite an accomplishment for a twenty-two-year-old.

The second story is less well-known. In 1780, a thirteen-year-old boy who was serving as a courier to a South Carolina militia unit was captured by British forces, along with his older brother. (A third brother had already been killed in action the year before.) At one point, a British officer ordered the young fellow to polish his boots. The teenager’s exact words are lost to history, but they so enraged the officer that he struck the boy repeatedly with his saber, leaving him with scars on his head and left hand. There was no Geneva Convention in those days and the life of a prisoner of the British was a hard one. Both brothers nearly starved to death while in British custody. The younger brother contracted smallpox and died a few days after his release. That teenage boy had had a tough year. His widowed mother had been tending to wounded American soldiers, contracted smallpox herself and died. Who would have believed that that orphaned thirteen-year-old boy who had lost his entire family would become Andrew Jackson.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Movie Recommendation: MOON

I just got back from seeing the film "Moon". I HIGHLY recommend it.

P.S. For the benefit of one of my friends in London, the movie is *not* about an adorable English bulldog. :)

USMC Commandants and the MOH

Since we're celebrating the 234th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, I thought I'd share a bit of trivia: while web-surfing recently, I happened upon a list of the USMC Commandants. I happened to notice a small notation (MOH) next to some of their names- indicating that they'd been awarded the Medal of Honor. (Kindly note: the majority of Medals of Honor are awarded posthumously) Of the last *twenty* USMC Commandants, *four* were Medal of Honor winners. US Marines have a very well-deserved reputation for bravery under fire.

Nov. 9th in Germany

It appears that in the past century in Germany, *everything* happens on November 9th. On that date in 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated his throne, one indication that the end of World War I was at hand. 11/9/38 was "Crystal Night" in Nazi Germany-a grisly episode of mob violence which portended the onset of the Holocaust, and on 11/9/1989, the Berlin Wall came crashing down (one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen).

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

My Great-Aunt Hazel, Suffragette

When my Great-Aunt, Hazel Blecha died in late October 2006, she was 111 years old. She was only thirteen months short of becoming a teenager for the second time. She was born November 30, 1894, back when there were only 44 states in the Union. She also was one of the very last women in America to be denied the right to vote because she was a woman. The presidential election of 1916 was held four weeks before her twenty-second birthday. Great-Aunt Hazel did manage to make up for that by voting in the next twenty-two presidential elections. During election season, it is important to remember how precious the right to vote is.

$188 History Lesson

Several years ago, Bill Cosby’s only son, Ennis, was shot to death by a Ukrainian immigrant. Mrs. Cosby was understandably devastated. I was saddened to hear her declare that America had “made Mikhail Markhasev a killer.” She said that America was such a racist society that we put slaveholders on our currency. For anyone interested, here is the truth about America’s founding fathers. It’s a lot more complicated than you might think.

George Washington is on the one-dollar bill. Revisionist historians love to bring up that he was one of America’s wealthiest landowners, with many slaves on his plantation. What most people don’t know is that most of the slaves at Mount Vernon were not Washington’s property. They either belonged to his wife, Martha, or were part of a trust that he’d inherited. Even before the Revolutionary War, Washington had strictly forbade his overseers to buy new slaves. He also declared that all young male slaves on the plantation be taught a useful trade. Before the end of the war, Washington had become what you might call a lukewarm abolitionist. A person on his staff suggested that Washington that the states institute a policy of granting freedom to any slave who volunteered to serve in the Continental Army. That officer went back to his home state of North Carolina with Washington’s encouragement and put the proposal before the North Carolina legislature, where it did not enjoy much support. As President, Washington continued to be a slaveowner and to advocate the abolition of slavery. He was well aware that he could not press the issue too hard, as the American Union was a shaky thing in those early years. After Washington’s death, his will instructed in iron-clad terms that no Mount Vernon slave was to be sold for any reason. He also mandated that after Lady Washington’s death, the slaves would have the option: they could be manumented or be provided for at Mount Vernon until their deaths. Washington’s estate was still making payments to elderly slaves in the 1830s, more than three decades after Washington’s death. Washington had a better retirement program than most current-day corporations.

Thomas Jefferson is a paradox and a tragedy. The same man who ringingly condemned slavery in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence was a slaveholder for his entire adult life. Contrary to popular belief, it is still somewhat in doubt whether he fathered Sally Hemings’ children or whether it was one of his brothers.

Critics of Abraham Lincoln love to cite an 1858 speech he made during his campaign for the Senate against his great rival, Stephen Douglas. Real students of history learn of the evolution of Lincoln’s views mere opposition of the extension of slavery to his later signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. In early April 1965, he endorsed suffrage to blacks who had served in the Union Army. One of the people in the audience that day was a young actor who commented about Lincoln, “He’s a dead man.”

Alexander Hamilton was running his own business in his early teens in the West Indies, an economy built on slavery. By the time he was twenty, Hamilton became one of the founding members of New York’s Abolition Society.

Andrew Jackson was a slaveowner and Indian fighter. I’ll bet you don’t know that, after one battle with the Indians, he found a small Indian child on the battlefield. When he inquired of the survivors whose child it was, the Indians said that they should let the child die because its parents were dead. Jackson and his wife raised the child as their own.

Ulysses S. Grant executed Lincoln’s orders to end slavery. You could fault him because he didn’t follow through on Reconstruction. Perhaps he figured that we had already fought one horrendous civil war and didn’t need another one. Ironically, Grant had owned a slave through an inheritance from his wife’s family. He was a black man named Jones and came to him in the 1850s. Although Grant was in such dire straits that he was selling firewood on the street, he simply let the man go.

Benjamin Franklin is another paradox. As a young man, he was a slaveowner. Yes, in Philadelphia. However, his views underwent a sea change when he visited a school for freed black children. He came to the conclusion that the facility of blacks were as great as those of whites, and became one of Philadelphia’s abolitionist society.

Malevolent Marquan

Last year, I had a teenage client named Marquan. He was a black kid whose father is not in the picture. (Gee, there’s a surprise!) He was charged with menacing. He had shown up on school property after he’d been ordered to leave the premises and made threatening gestures toward another student. While that charge was still pending, he informed me that he had picked up another menacing charge, so he had two cases. After I had received the discovery packets on both cases, I met with Marquan and his mom, who was adamant that her son had never done anything wrong.

During that meeting, Marquan told me that he had picked up another charge. I told him I knew. He said, “no no.” Darling Marquan had picked up a third menacing charge. I would like to note for the record that, having visited Marquan’s residence, I can attest that he lives in a very nice house in the suburbs. What terrifies me is his that he is convinced that he’d done nothing wrong; he just had a “I gotta keep it real” attitude.

The ending of my dealings with Marquan came as a surprise. He had managed to pick up a fourth charge for possessing marijuana. The prosecutor offered to dismiss those three menacing charges if he would plead guilty to marijuana possession and agree, as a term of his probation, to avoid the people he had menaced. While my appreciation for irony helps keep me sane (would people think I was racist if I thought this case was full of black humor?), Marquan’s attitude simply terrifies me. I fear that, someday, he will hurt someone really badly or else menace someone who is prepared to respond with lethal force.

Visiting Bristol Cathedral

Back in the summer of 1986, I attended the Notre Dame Law School’s summer program in London and I managed to go on quite a few bus tours. That’s one of the nice things about England; you can see an awful lot of it within a three-hour drive of the capital. One weekend, a busload of us visited Bristol, and we toured the cathedral. For the record, I found my classmates to be a very pleasant bunch (we had several students from Baylor Law school we affectionately referred to as the “wackos from Waco”). There’s only one of them I wouldn’t want to see again. That exception was a guy from Berkeley Law School who, I understand, had graduated from Harvard as an undergrad. (That sound you hear in the background is the three Yalies on this mailing list laughing.)

His name was William Holman, and he was a real piece of work. He was about 6’6” and was morbidly obese. He was at least 100 pounds overweight. He had unruly hair, a bad complexion, wore extremely baggy jeans. (He looked like he stole them from Dumbo the elephant. ) He smoked unfiltered cigarettes and was given to wearing unbuttoned white dress shirts over t-shirts with either obscure or obnoxious slogans on them. While walking through the cathedral, I discovered, to my horror, that Holman had picked that day to wear a t-shirt that proclaimed, in large letters, “born again atheist.” At this point, let me say that while I am not of the Anglican faith, I believe in showing a modicum of respect. If I walk into a synagogue, I will certainly put on a yarmulke. In a mosque, I would take off my shoes. If this had taken place in the United States, I would have, perhaps, not been so outraged at Holman’s swinish behavior. However, we were a group of Americans in a foreign country and I take a great deal of pride in being a good ambassador for my country.

I was doing a slow burn, working up to a full boil. It occurred to me both that Holman’s behavior in wearing such an obnoxious t-shirt was beyond the pale and that the man was such a pig that if anyone said anything to him, he might just make a scene that would make the whole sorry matter a whole lot worse. I thought the next day’s Sun might bear the headline; Yabbo Yanks in Bristol Cathedral Brawl. I pondered that dilemma for a moment, then I realized that when the summer program was over, I was planning on paying a visit to a couple of whom I am very fond. The man of the house is a career United States Marine who spent four years as a drill instructor. The thought occurred to me that I might recount this incident to them. It then occurred to me that I might tell my friend that a fellow American so utterly disgraced himself before not only his classmates but before the whole world and I was too chicken**** to do anything about? How would a Marine drill instructor handle the situation.

Armed with that thought, I walked over to Holman until I was so close until my mouth was two inches from his ear. I snarled, “You button that shirt up. You look like a caricature of an ugly American tourist.”

He replied, in a goofy voice, “Oh, yes, sir.” And he buttoned up his shirt. It’s just as well that he did, because I was so livid that I was ready to Holman through one of Bristol Cathedral’s walls. Immediately thereafter, two of my classmates came over to shake my hand and pat me on the back for my cojones. Less than a minute later, the resident rector came out to greet us, said a few nice words and even offered one of those oh-heavenly-father-help-us-to-be-good prayers. At the time, I was quite skeptical of signs of divine approval, but that sure appeared to be one.

Yahya Abdul Kareem

In view of recent events in Fort Hood, Texas, I thought I’d tell of my experience with a Moslem shipmate of mine named Yahya Abdul Kareem. I should note that Yahya was black and he was Muslim, but he was not a Black Muslim. We worked in the same office at Fort Meade, Maryland. We had a supervisor who neither of us could stand and NOTHING builds friendships better than having a common enemy.

Yahya and I got along so well that he started calling me “Kunta Kent.” (Instead of Kunta Kinte from Roots.) He even told me once that I might have all the honkies fooled, but I was a brother passing for white. I took it as the good-natured ribbing it was, and slipping into my best Kingfish impersonation, replied, “Yahya, I have carefully considered de situation, and seein’ how much I love barbecue, basketball and god knows I always be chasin’ de white women, you must be right.”

In all the time I knew Yahya, I never heard anyone say a single negative word to him about him being Moslem. I also never heard him mention anything like that, either. If someone had made a religious slur about him, I would have gone ballistic. In my four years of active duty, eight years in the reserves and slightly over two years teaching on board US Navy ships, I never heard any friction between servicepeople over religious matters. I can’t say anything about how Major Nidal Malik Hasan was treated. I can only say that I never heard anything like that.

My Bailiff Theory

On the sixth floor of the Franklin County Courthouse in room 61, the Honorable Judge Dana Preisse has a bailiff named Jerry who is rather hard to miss. He is 6’7”and looks like a slightly paunchy ex-NFL lineman. For the record, Jerry is a very pleasant fellow who does his job quite well. I’ve never heard him say a cross word to anyone. Somewhere in that courthouse (I won’t say where) is another bailiff who, you might say, is quite vertically challenged. This person (I won’t mention name, race, gender or religious affiliation) is notorious for going off on people for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all. I am always walking on eggshells when in that section of the courthouse.

I recently told Jerry that I had developed a theory on bailiffs. I had come to the tentative conclusion that the niceness of bailiffs seemed to be in direct proportion to their size. Jerry got a good laugh out of that.

Hollywood Riddle

In 1970, there was a movie that earned Golden Globe nominations for both the male and female leads, as well as an Oscar nomination for the male lead. Surprisingly, the actor playing the title role in that film did not speak a single word and never appeared in another film. Can anyone name him? (I see that I have my collaborator stumped.)

The film was The Great White Hope, starring James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander. Jim Beattie played the kid who ultimately defeats Jones’ character to become Heavyweight Champion of the World. In real life, Jim Beattie had been a much-hyped, but only moderately talented, heavyweight boxer. (At 6’9”, he was an impressive-looking guy, similar to Jess Willard.) So after failing at being the Great White Hope in real life, he managed to play one on the screen.



Writing Fiction...and Sleazy Frenchmen

A while back, I wrote a screenplay entitled “The Zambezi Conspiracy,” which was my pipe dream/wish-fulfillment fantasy of what should have happened in Rwanda. I have one character who is a sleazy Frenchman who happens to be a priest. If you’re wondering why I conceived such a character, it’s because Rwanda was once a Belgian colony where French was the first language. Further, even as I write this, there is a priest and a couple of nuns doing time for having assisted those who committed genocide. While considering what to name this sleazy French character, I thought, “what the heck; why not name him ‘Petain’,” though I knew some readers may find that too obvious a name for a Frenchman who collaborates with doers of unspeakable evil.

A few months later, I happened to read James Webb’s novel, Lost Soldiers, which takes place in present-day Vietnam. I got a very good chuckle when I discovered that Webb had given the name of Petain to one of his characters, who also happened to be a sleazy Frenchman.

The Perfect Undergraduate Major for a USMC Lieutenant

I’ve mentioned before that when I was stationed at Fort Mead, I knew a very sharp Marine Lieutenant named Eileen Finkle-Hering. She told me that she graduated from Rutgers and I once (politely) teased her that she had earned a degree in the perfect subject to prepare her to become a Marine officer.

While at Rutgers, she studied Animal Behavior.

Robert Stroud’s Parole Hearing

Robert Stroud (1890-1963) is better known by his nickname, The Birdman of Alcatraz. The 1962 film by that name, starring Burt Lancasater in the title role, depicted Stroud as a sensitive, misunderstood fellow. Incredibly, some of the theaters that showed the film set up tables featuring petitions in favor of the commutation of Stroud’s sentence.

The real Robert Stroud was an extraordinarily vicious sociopath. As a young man, he was a pimp in Anchorage, Alaska, who murdered one of his patrons. Since Alaska was then a territory and not a state, Stroud was sent to prison, where he murdered a guard. That ensured that he never drew another free breath. (When he was being transferred from one federal prison to another, the guards discovered that he had been inventive enough to construct a still out of equipment he was supposed to be using for his aviary studies.)

Shortly before he died, Stroud represented himself at a parole hearing. When the board asked him why they should release him, Stroud stated, “Well, I’m getting to be an old man and I’ve got so many people I want to kill that if I don’t get released pretty soon, I’ll never get around to killing them all.” People who were there state that Stroud was not joking.

Theodore Geisel’s Extraordinary Economy of Words

Theodore Geisel’s friend, Bennett Cerf, once bet him that he could not write a book using fewer than fifty words. Geisel took the bet and won it while creating a literary masterpiece. The result of the bet was Green Eggs and Ham.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Down the River, Up the River

The term "to sell down the River" dates back over 150 years. In the antebellum South, slaves in the "Upper South" tended to have a *much* easier lot than field hands in the Deep South, who spent a lifetime working dawn to dusk six days a week. That's why the Mark Twain's character of Jim in Huckleberry Finn fears that his new master might "sell him down the (Mississippi) river".

The term "Going up the river" is just as old, and originated due to the fact that clear back in 1825, the state of New York decided to locate its maximum security prison at the town of Ossining, (or Sing Sing) up the Hudson River from New York City.

Anyone "going up the river" to Sing Sing was going to serve a *very* long sentence.

Miss United Kingdom Yvonne Ormes

Back in December of 1971, a young lady named Yvonne Ormes, who'd won the title of Miss United Kingdom, joined Bob Hope's Christmas Show as it toured American military bases. I have no information as to her motivation; in any event, I'm sure that a whole lot of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines were *quite* happy to see her. Bob Hope's writers did manage to give her a very good line.

Hope: "So, what's it like being Miss United Kingdom?"
Ormes: "Well, it sure beats Miss Common Market!"

Saffron Burrows' Fancy

Saffron Burrows is a very talented actress and (IMO) a very beautiful woman from Great Britain. She also, I understand, either is a switch-hitter, or bats from the left side of the plate. (Sad to say, I lack any direct information.) I suspect she has absolutely no shortage of prospective boyfriends and girlfriends. I really saw her give an interview in which she was asked about having once announced that she 'fancied' Hillary Clinton. She commented that she'd figured that that would be a much more interesting thing to say than Brad Pitt.

I suppose it's only a matter of time before she gets a call from Chappaqua, New York...................from Bill, asking if she 'fancies' a threesome.

P.S. I thought Ms. Burrows was excellent in "The Bank Job". I also thought, Jeeeez! When Princess Margret went slumming, she did NOT go halfway, now did she?

Richard Palmer

A few days ago, I happened to speak with an attorney named Richard Palmer. I asked him if he'd ever heard of his California namesake- who spent a number of years married to Raquel Welch. I told him that being named Richard Palmer probably built his character in high school- and that I hoped that the California RP managed to take Raquel to at least one of his high school reunion ("Hey guys, look who I'm palming now!")

The Ohio Richard Palmer laughed and told me that years ago when he'd been dating his wife, she announced that she needed to "go put on her face"

He replied, "If you're going to put on a face, see if you can make it Raquel Welch's."

Well, they *did* wind up getting married, didn't they?

Anne Hayes on Family Relations

Many of my friends know that I knew Woody Hayes, Ohio State's great football coach, fairly well. I also knew his wife, Anne. She was a great lady. Despite Woody's fame, the Hayeses never got an unlisted number. One evening after an Ohio State loss, a disgruntled fan called up and yelled at Anne, "Your husband is an idiot!"

"Well, what husband isn't?" was her reply.

Once, when Anne was shopping, a woman approached her and said, "Tomorrow is Woody's birthday. What are you getting for him?"

Anne said, "Make me an offer."

One question Anne got over and over was "Are you ever going to divorce Woody?"

She always explained, "Woody and I have been married for over forty years, and in all that time, neither one of us has *ever* used the word divorce. (pause) *Murder* on *many* occasions, but *never* divorce."

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Sinophobia and Anti-Semitism

This is a story that illustrates the total folly of racial and religious prejudice:

Once there as a Chinese guy sitting next to a Jewish guy on a park bench, and the Jewish guy says, "I don't like you Chinese."

The Chinese guy says, "How come you don't like Chinese?"

"Because you Chinese bombed Peal Harbor!"

"That wasn't the Chinese, that was the Japanese!"

"Ah, Chinese, Japanese, they're all the same!"

Silence.

Finally, the Chinese guy says, "That's OK, I don't like Jews."

"Why don't you like Jews?"

"Because Jews sank the Titanic!"

"That wasn't Jews- an iceberg sank the Titanic."

"Iceberg, Goldberg, Greenberg- they're all the same!"

Nuns In Decline

In 1965, there were 180,000 nuns in the United States; today, there are 60,000. Back in those days America had a population of under 200 million people; now that figure is over 300 million, so in absolute terms, the number of nuns in America has declined by 67%; per capita, the figure is a bit more than 78%. Furthermore, the average age for American nuns is 70.

Some people see this as a crisis. I see it as a slow outbreak of common sense.

Ted Ginn Did Everythin'!

Way back in 1967, the Green Bay Packers' great Travis Williams returned two consecutive kickoffs for touchdowns. In the next 42 years, no one in the National Football League matched that feat- until last Sunday, when the Miami Dolphins' Ted Ginn (from Ohio State) returned a kickoff for 100 yards and a few minutes later, returned another for 101! Mr. Ginn is a spectacularly athletic young man, as anyone who views this highlights can see. Also, he inspired the musical group The Dead Schembechlers to compose the following ditty:

Who built the Sphinx and the Pyramids?
Who built the Eiffel Tower?
Then who knocked down the Berlin wall
with Marvel Super Power?
Who battled giant asteroids
to keep the earth from dyin'?
Who lead the troops in World War II
and then saved Private Ryan?

Ted Ginn! Ted Ginn!
Ted Ginn did everythin'!
Ted Ginn! Ted Ginn!
Ted Ginn did everythin'!

Who made the earth?
Who made the sun?
Who saved the baby seals?
Who was the first in history to put a suitcase on wheels?
Who built the ark while Noah slept?
Who turned lead to gold?
Who got your cat down from a tree
when you were four years old?

Ted Ginn! Ted Ginn!
Ted Ginn did everythin'!
Ted Ginn! Ted Ginn!
Ted Ginn did everythin'!