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1st
& 2nd September, 2008
New concerts announced!
Click HERE for details.
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Photo by Jay Hagan,
7/12/08 Burbank, CA
A Thought for Today
Work is the four-letter word that makes
any country great.
TO BEGIN WITH
While in NY, NY I answered e-mail and worked on the FP in the Starbucks
across the street from my hotel a lot. Yes the on again/off again WiFi
in my room sucked. Talk about feeling like a tourist, with my Mac in
front of me and a double late to the side all I needed to complete the
picture was a camera dangling around my neck.
Not sure what all the other guys behind their laptops were working on
but had it been Hollywood each would probably have boasted about
pounding out a screenplay.
As Starbucks go the one near my hotel was a small to medium sized venue
and last morning after hitting the arbitrary number of 12 cell phones in
use I stopped counting. Onward to today’s ‘not necessarily the news’
feature.
NOBODY ASKED ME BUT . . .
BIG DEAL
Guess the ratings must have started slipping but it finally happened! It
only took them 3 years and 246 episodes but at last “Deal or No Deal”
has managed to unload a million dollars, you know the one they promise
every “lucky contestant.”
Haven’t seen the particular show where this milestone occurs but I
imagine more than the usual amount of jumping up and down took place.
Not just by the fortunate contestant and the obligatory family
cheerleaders but the gleeful taxman who’s been waiting in the wings all
these months.
HIT–&–RUN JERK SUES OVER CAR
The above recent headline from The New York Post has to be one of the
best and most apt of recent times. Here’s the story as reported by Post
staff writer Stephanie Cohen:
“A hit-and-run driver who killed a man with his Bentley is suing the
city –– for damages while it was impounded.
Harry Shasho, 39, claims he’s due $190,000 because cops impounding his
2003 Bentley Continental –– the car involved in his fatal Brooklyn
hit-and-run –– allowed mold to fester inside.
But he makes no mention anywhere in the suit about the reason it was
impounded.
Shasho was arrested in the early hours of Oct. 1, 2005, after mowing
down Louis Couch on Ocean Parkway. Shasho heartlessly took off and left
the man to die in the street.
According to police Shasho hit Couch, 54, and then drove home. He was
arrested within hours after the cops found a side-view mirror in the
road. The windshield was also cracked, and the headlight, fender and
roof were damaged.
Shasho, who owns the Brooklyn-based 212 Motoring, which customizes
luxury cars, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of a crime without
reporting it.”
HIS SENTENCE?
“He served 20 days of community service, lost his license for six months
and was put on probation for five years.
Now Shasho claims the “the car was in excellent condition, proper
working order and fully functional . . .with no noticeable defects or
damage” when the police impounded it.
In the year and a half cops parked it in a Queens impound as evidence,
they allowed mould to grow inside and water damage to occur, “rendering
the vehicle inoperable,” the suit claims.
He claims they violated his property rights by not returning it to him
“in good condition.” Shasho wants the city to fork over $190,000. He did
not return messages and his lawyers refused to comment on the case.”
I’ll bet his lawyers refused comment. In the interest of justice lets
hope his lawsuit doesn’t draw the same judge who slapped him on the
wrist for the vehicular homicide of the late and apparently unlamented,
by Mr. Shasho, Louis Couch.
I’m sure ace reporter Cohn will be watching this story closely and if
you’d like to send her a word or two of encouragement here’s her e-mail
address:
stephanie.cohen@nypost.com
TOO MUCH INFORMATION
Senator McCain’s running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin calls her real
life running mate (as in hubby) “The #1 Dude”.
Does that mean McCain’s #2 considers him the #2 Dude?
Ok, Ok, so she’s a lifetime member of the NRA but am I the only one who
was a bit queasy seeing her little girl posed with Mommy Sarah next to a
reindeer she had just shot? Hope she didn’t tell the kid it was Rudolph.
RM 8/30/08 First Publication.
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Monday
1 September
Box Car Willie o
Edgar Rice Burroughs o
Yvonne De Carlo o
Alan Dershowitz o
Gloria Estefan o
Vittorio Gassman o
Barry Gibb o
Engelbert Humperdinck o
George Maharis o
Rocky Marciano o
Dr. Phil McGraw o
Marilyn Miller o
Seiji Ozawa o
Walter Reuther o
Leonard Slatkin o
Lily Tomlin o
Conway Twitty o
Don Wilson
Tuesday 2 September
Laurindo Almeida o
Cleveland Amory o
Romare Beardon o
Terry Bradshaw o
Marge Champion o
Jimmy Connors o
Allen Drury o
Mark Harmon o
Salma Hayek o
Erin Hershey o
Lennox Lewis o
Christa McAuliffe o
Martha Mitchell o
Linda Purl o
Keanu Reeves o
Peter Ueberroth o
Giovanni Verga |
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Labor looks to heaven without a blush.
There is no strength without solidarity.
Honest labor is the best profession in the
world.
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AMERICAN LANGUAGE |
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American names
go rolling off the tongue
like rivers of rain down silver sidings
Chippewa and Idaho, Connecticut and Maine,
California, Arkansas, Georgia and Seattle.
Like stairs climbed often they lead us upward,
forward, even onward
Wisconsin, Savannah, Corpus Christi, Kansas City.
Not just great states and awesome cities
but nicknames, too, ring out -
Yankee, Buckeye, Hoosier, and High Pockets.
More color finds its way into our speech
than all the Arizona sunsets.
Wolverine and Wahoo, Beaver Dam and Boulder Dam.
Sometimes it seems as though collectors
in Salvation Army uniforms
complete with tambourines
hiked across the land
picking this word up and dropping that
until a cornucopia of thoughts became so full
it overflowed and spit out sentences
that started an evolutionary dictionary.
Consider the rivers.
Mississippi, Allegheny, and the River Platt.
The lakes like Erie, Huron and Mead
the waters that somersault over Niagara.
Consider the names of American tribes
the true pioneers who founded this land
Chattahoochee, Arapaho, Navajo, Crow,
Comanche, Chickasaw, Chapolapec, Sioux.
And Spain by way of Mexico
charged in and changed the old vocabularies
from squared-off English to American
Caliente comes to mind and Amarillo
and all the names derived from saints -
San Angelo and San Francisco, Santa Barbara
and Saint Pete.
Some settlers brought their own names
out of Europe
contributing and distributing
a spate of words so spacious
that to list them would be just to make a list.
Pride from mother countries came
and with them Little Italy,
Chinatown, New Orleans, and New England.
The slang that ambled out of Africa -
honed in Harlem, washed in Watts -
now stretches coast to crowded coast
like some new copper pipeline.
But the continent itself let go of words
that ring like sleigh bells
clang like cymbals
beat like drumming
and blast the ear like God’s own trumpets.
Few states within the States
do not have resting-places
that when said aloud
provoke a conversation.
Cathedral Gorge in Utah, California’s Capistrano,
The Poconos, Tuckahoe, and Tonawanda.
Rivers, tribes and mountain peaks
cities
and the plains
meet and mix in mad profusion
till who’s to say - not history books -
which came first, the tribe or river
the tribesman called his home.
It is a rich and ruddy language
full of sweet and salty talk,
one that should be held aloft as badge and banner..
It even sounds good mispronounced.
And where but in America
could weaponry contribute ?
Bazooka, Tommy, the Gattling gun
and Sunday Musket.
As we survey the now no longer
distant stars
and count the new heads
still on their way
to seek out freedom here,
so many words of wonder brush the ear
that dictionaries in the making
die on publication date.
Every day some new word stops,
looks around, then settles in the land.
A poet, among other things, should help protect
his country’s language.
Even as he versifies, he adds,
subtracts and multiplies.
This poem, then, inspired by the land
the love and luck of living here
observing and conserving words
is by necessity and not neglect
to be continued.
What I’ve left out this time ‘round
I’ll pick up another - and another
until the time when speech
with new words being added
is drawn and done and ending.
But since a language has no ends
and no beginnings
I’ll be long in dust before it’s over.
I charge new bards to take it up
these remarks and this go-round
add, amplify, and explain away
the talk they hear that no book
nor The Daily News
picks up and uses.
And for every metaphor she adds
and for every adjective he chooses
drops an older one that’s worn
or wasn’t right enough to find
its place upon the tongue
the first time out.
- from The Power Bright And Shining, 1980 |
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AND FINALLY Here are a couple of
paragraphs from my 1998 Labor Day Flight Plan where I salute the then
Clinton-Gore administration (six years into its 8 year run) for the strides
they had made in labor relations.
“Today is Labor Day in the USA. Our last great summer holiday. This is a day
when we celebrate the working man and woman and give them the day off. And
today we honor America's labor unions as well. Those organizations that
against great odds gave us the 40 hour week, did away with child labor,
helped make safety in the workplace a must, initiated overtime pay for
overtime work and is still fighting for women in the work force to be paid
on a parity with men.
Labor unions are much maligned and we have had a succession of
administrations in our country that has tried with the help of big business
to weaken and bring labor unions down. Today, then, seems like a good time
to say something very positive about the Clinton/Gore administration. They
gave us family leave. That’s a law now, not just a dream. They go on
fighting for equality in the workplace whatever your gender, color,
religious belief or sexual orientation may be. During the six years of this
administration we've seen laws enacted that protect the health coverage of
people who move from one job to another.”
Times change.
For my complete 1998 Labor Day Flight Plan click on Archives at the bottom
of this page and go to 7 September, 1998.
Sleep warm and join Webmaster Ken Blackie on Wednesday for his weekly
outing. I’ll be back on Thursday.
RM Holmby Hills, CA / August
30, 2008 8:51PM PDST |
