When Doves Cry

I'm always a week or so behind the HOT topics, mostly because I really try and avoid them. But when the voices in my head insist, I write about them. Such is the case with the whole Alec Baldwin fracas.

If you haven't heard about it (I applaud you), actor Alec Baldwin leaves a ripping voice mail to his daughter, voicing frustration over the fact she never answers the phone when he calls at the court appointed time.

He's pretty mad, and doesn't hide it. Now that his anger issues are out in the public, Alec has decided to do penance on Doctor Phil'd show, where he will no doubt learn how to be a good daddy in 59 minutes. Then Alec will hug it out with the know-it-all Dr. and be done with it.

The incident was reminiscent of something that happened here in Albany a bunch of years back. A famous local Newsman had a daughter going to my college, and he left a message for her that rivaled the Baldwin call. The daughter forwarded the message to her friend, who sent it to another friend, and so on... until everybody on campus (and off) had a copy. It was so funny to hear this guy who we all heard reading the news every night talking like a man possessed by the spirit of an angry merchant marine sailor.

Apparently, the ungrateful daughter had neglected to send her Grandma a note or call about a birthday present. The f-bomb was dropped every third word, and the tone in his voice was menacing. It was effing classic. To augment the experience, we would turn down the sound on his 6 o'clock newscast and play his message, so that we could see his face as we heard the tirade. It added a whole new dimension to the call.

Like Mr. Baldwin, this newsman is not a bad guy. I even interviewed him a few years before the incident and he was nothing if not a cool guy. But he's human, and we have our good and bad days. And if anybody can make us mad, it's your kids. Sometimes they can be so evil.

By the way, the Newsman currently has a blog where he talks about issues of the day. I noticed he didn't comment on the Mr. Baldwin, which was prudent.

The Impressions That You Get

My 9 year old accompanied me to work with me yesterday for the annual "Bring Your Child To Work Day". My company does a whole day long event with speeches by departments, tours, lunches, snack time and prizes. I don't get much work done, and the kids don't get a fair representation of what the workday is like. At 3pm I asked Emily how her day was going and she said, "Great! Your work is fun!". First off, she spent most of the day working for our department admin, who had a bunch of fun things set aside for her to do (shredding, labelling, stapling, etc). I showed her a few of my applications and she seemed moderately interested, but was soon asking to go back to see if Frankie had any other things for her to do.

That's when it hit me that this day is merely to expose our kids to an unreal expectation, that work is fun. Work CAN be fun, but it's called work for a reason - because it's not play. Colleges do the same trick when recruiting star students. They invite them to stay over night in a dorm with some upperclassmen to take them around and give them the "feel" of the campus life.

My cross-country running coach though that the overnight stay was a great idea and brought in a high school running star from downstate who was considering our little school. The orders from coach were to (and I quote) "show him a good time". It was our fist overnight recruit, so we took our coach at his command. We started with a game of quarters in the dorm, then took him off-campus to a SUNY party. Later, we ended up at The Copper Penny where a large brawl broke out. The place is small, so any fight soon involves everyone in the place, if only with shoves and flailing arms. Bruised and a little drunk, we found our way to sanctuary at the Partridge Pub, where we ended up drinking just a little more. It was a classic night.

The next day my phone rang angrily at the crack of noon. It was Coach, and he wasn't happy. "What the hell did you do to that kid?" he sputtered. I had never heard him so pissed, which sobered me up quickly, although I couldn't remember exactly how the previous evening had ended. Coach went on with his rant - apparently the kid's parents has arrived on campus to pick him up at a special brunch for all the high school students. Our star runner wasn't among them. The parents went to the dorm he had been assigned to stay, thinking maybe he had overslept. Approaching the dorm from the campus lawn they found their boy huddled in the shrubs wrapped in his sleeping bag, sporting a beard of puke. His main caretaker (who's room they were supposed to be in) was laying nearby, wrapped in a sheet with a motorcycle helmet on.

As you can imagine, the folks were not impressed.

Minding Ones' Beeswax

Science is a bitch. Scientists are reporting that bees are disappearing. It seems like just yesterday we were hearing about the killer bees swarming up from Mexico and carrying off small children and making poisonous honey. Now bees have been leaving their hives and not their game.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihood's but also the production of numerous crops...

So big deal, a few bees are gone. A few fruit trees and flowers won't be pollenated. Agriculture is all engineered anyways, right? We can use mechanical bees to do the same thing.

Nope. Turns out we need them. A huge part of the ecosystem relies on those little buggars.

One of the possible links they are examining is to cell phones. That's right, my arch nemesis is not only hurting humans with their radiation, but they are throwing the yellow and black fliers off their game.

A German study shows that radiation from cell phones can disrupt bees' navigation systems. That keeps the bees from returning to their hives. In some cases, 70 per cent of bees exposed to radiation failed to find their way back to the hive after searching for pollen and nectar, according to the research by Landau University.

Humans are effected the same way. I was talking to a vendor from out of town who was on his way to our building and since he was late we had started the meeting via cell phone. When I asked them where he was, the guy responded, "I have no idea!"

Thank you come again

It's funny, because it's true.

Tragically Hyped

The Virginia Tech incident was horrible. The massive news coverage of the event was predictable - self-important anchors exploiting shocked students and school administrators by dragging them through the events over and over and over and over.

But that wasn't the worst part. Not 2 hours after the shootings the hard-hitting questions started, and by that I mean the Monday-morning quarterbacking. The news anchors asked questions like "shouldn't they have locked the campus down at the first sign of trouble?" or "shouldn't the students have been warned?". In a perfect world, yes. The security team could have predicted that this was only the precursor to a larger shooting incident. They could have pressed a button which would have immediately notified thousands of students, some on campus, some in cars, some off-campus, some sleeping over a friends house - all would get a concise, detailed email or text message informing them to immediately go somewhere safe. Or better yet, thousands of armed security men would suddenly descend on the campus to cover the area in a blanket of security. Totally practical.

The most insane suggestion I heard was on a talk show where someone suggested ARMING THE PROFESSORS, much in the way people suggested arming the pilots of airplanes after 911. I don't know about you, but I haven't met too many teachers that I'd want to be packing heat.

For the sake of discussion, let's say one of those teachers at VT had a gun. What do you think would the discussion be if the gunman had been killed before he shot all those students? The pundits would be questioning why the teacher did not try and reason with the student before shooting him. And what if the teacher killed an innocent student in the shootout with the gunman?

You can see where I'm going with this, right? Knowing the gunman killed 30 innocent students means we would call the teacher a hero for pulling his weapon and killing the gunman before he did his damage. But in the case where the gunman dies before he has a chance to kill anyone, the news people would crucify the teacher as killing a troubled student. It's always a no-win situation when dealing with the Monday-morning quarterback mentality.

It reminded me of the Minority Report, where Mr. Thomas Cruise is a cop in the future who can anticipate crimes before they occur.



Until Tom and his Scientology pals perfect the technology that will anticipate the mental state and twisted intentions of the population, we're stuck with what we have. There is no way to plan for the evil that the human mind can conceive, no matter what Katie Couric says.

I know what you're thinking

Cute, right?

Well, in 7 years this guy will be able to strip a human to the bone in 20 minutes using his razor sharp claws and teeth. Not so cute now, is he?

Going Freestyle

So I'm watching the extra features on the Casino Royale DVD (greatest Bond movie so far, by the way) and was amazed at the description of the stunts used in the movie. The director talks about an action sequence which is a construction site roof-top chase that implements many aspects of something called "parkour". I looked it up in Wikipedia, which is my source of all knowledge, besides The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. According to the big W:

Parkour is a physical art of French origin, the aim of which is to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the possibilities of the human body. It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls.

If you saw the chase scene, you know what I mean. It reminds you of a Jackie Chan fight sequence, without the goofy facial expressions. The bad guy, actor Sébastien Foucan, plays a small-time terrorist after whom James Bond is chasing. Foucan is the founder of the sport of Free Running, which is basically the same thing as Parkour. The guy jumps, dives, climbs and slithers up and through a construction site in an amazing display of the sport. He did his own stunts, and the jumps, climbing and dives as all real. He climbs a vertical steel beam and traverses an elevator shaft by hopping from side to side downward.

I checked out a few videos on this wild sport, and this is my favorite. It's a guy demonstrating his abilities in a mall, and other public buildings.

ESPN has got to get this on.

Maybe Shirley MacLaine Isn't So Crazy After All

One of my favorite movies is an Albert Brooks flick from several years ago called "Defending Your Life" The story was a meld of religious takes on the afterlife, predominantly leaning toward a Buddhist/Christian vision. It goes like this: after you die, you spend time *somewhere* (kind of like Limbo) reviewing a certain number of days from you life. Based on that, you either go back to Earth as a new life or you move on to another place to continue evolving as a member of the universe. Earth is one of the "lower" levels, the planet where you learn to conquer fear. Fear clouds the mind and prevents the brain from being used more than the 3% that humans use. Overcoming your fear means you're ready for the "next" level.

Since it's a Brooks film, it is laced with satire. He cracks on everything from our collective ideas about the afterlife to what we would do for fun in such a place. For example, he visits the Past Life Pavilion, where you can see a bunch of your former lives. The guy learns he once was a native, which he sees in a vision running from a lion. When someone asks him what he was in a past life, he says "Lunch."

The Phoenix has an amazing entry on this topic on his site which revolves around a case called "James 3". He's a kid who as early as 20 months old has been displaying unusual knowledge of World War II, fighter aircraft, and a specific pilot in particular. As the Phoenix writes:

"James Leininger is a playful and very normal eight year old today. But two years ago, the boy made national news while being featured on Good Morning America, The Montell Williams Show, and ABC News. Little James was conveying knowledge and experiences no child would have recollection of. What many people believed was that six year-old James Leininger was a reincarnation of a World War II pilot, James Huston Jr."

Check it out, it's a startling story, regardless of what you believe.

Based on dreams I've had, I'm pretty sure I was a blacksmith in a previous life. I have a reoccurring vision where I bang my finger with one of those big hammers that they use to bend the heated metal. Every time it hurts like a sonofaBitch

Restless

I've been neglecting my need for prank material, so here's a fun site. Lot's a great ideas there for idle hands.

This is one I would definitely do. When I hit the lottery, it will be my full time job to do this kind of stuff every day. So you've all been warned.

Whistle While You Work

There's a guy at work who loves to whistle in the men's room. It's less annoying than people using the cell phone in there, but only slightly.

I understand people do weird things in their expunging rituals I used to work in a law office where a partner used to have to psych himself up for the urinal activity. He would stand there and say quietly (but aloud) "pee....pee....pee....pee". Kinda psyching himself up for the big event, I guess.

I always wondered if he used that same technique for number 2. At least if you overheard that, you would just think he was having a really bad day.

The Whistler choose a wide range of songs to PIS to. Some days he selects a contemporary hit, some days it's country or easy listening. Here are a few recent choices.

Back In Black (AC/DC)
Moon River (Standard)
Don't You Want Me Baby (Human League)
Who's Cryin Now (Journey)
My Humps (Black-Eyed Peas)

Ok, so I made up the "My Humps" one. I was going to use the Blue Oyster Cult song, "I'm Burning For You", but I liked Humps better. It's just such a great song.

It's makes me wish I had perfected my "human beat box" moves, then I could join in and provide an strong beat for the Whistler. That would really annoy those cell-phone users in the next stall.

Flaming Space Junk

Pieces of space junk from a Russian satellite coming out of orbit narrowly missed hitting a jetliner over the Pacific Ocean last week. (story)

Great. So let me check my list of flying issues:

1. Invasive security checks. ("Dude, that's attached!")

2. Weather-delays which could have me sitting on the tarmac for hours as the lavatory fills with human waste.

3. Other passengers who might wig out for various reasons, most of which can be traced back to the fact they did not join boy/girl scouts as a child.

4. An aircraft which may have not been serviced correctly, depending on how a certain mechanic was feeling that day.

Now let me add this beauty:
5. Space crap falling to Earth may punch a hole in the airframe causing rapid cabin decompression or loss of flight control surfaces.

The really disturbing detail about this story as the fact that the airline was WARNED that items might be screaming toward Earth at that location prior to the incident, but the airline decided to let planes fly the route anyways.

Can't wait to book my summer flights!

Let's Go For A Hike

That was the suggestion I made Saturday afternoon, a sunny and warm Northeastern beauty of a weekend day. My son was up for a stroll through the woods, as it would allow him a chance to throw rocks into the creek along side the town park trail. And you know how much kids love to throw rocks into water.

Ok, so do I.

The 40 acre town park was mostly deserted despite the nice weather. It is under-used as it is, this being a rural area where most people have a few acres to call their own, what do they need to go to the park? We like it because you can do a few miles through moderate, varying terrain and have the place all to yourself.

I tooled along the gravel path in my little Mazda, past the pull off parking to instead go right to the gate where the trail starts. I have never been back here so early in the year, and the gravel path was actually quite soft and made me a little concerned. When I got to the fence I decided to turn around, so I would be pointing back up the path if someone came in behind me. I instigated a six point turn during which time I went off the path a bit, onto the field. My tires spun on the wet hay and wouldn't bite. I could get going forward, so I took a chance and ventured further out on the field, hoping it was going to be more solid out there. It wasn't. After a few feet the car was not moving forward or backward.

Climbing out, I realized what a hoser I was. It was springtime. Everything is WET. I should have parked back on the gravel and been fine, but NOoooo I had to get right up to the trail.

Cheese and effin crackers.

Luck was with me in one respect. My wife and daughter were at a place right across from the park, although still a bit of hike to get back to the main road. So Dan and I started off. "We're going the wrong way!" Dan pointed out. I explained to him that Daddy was a moron and had gotten car stuck and needed to go get the other car to pull it out. "Why don't we get a tow-truck?" he asked, sensibly. "Because Daddy doesn't want everyone in town to know he's and idiot." I said gently. News of foibles like this one travels faster than the free coffee at the dollar store.

We found the girls arranging my daughter's birthday party at "Linda's World of Miniatures". I quietly absconded with the car keys to the Explorer, saying would return in a few minutes. I ran home and picked up a long climbing rope and a few other things I might need, then got back to pick up the girls.

The Mazda was right where I left it, and I set the Explorer up behind it. I tied the climbing rope between the two and then backed the muddy Mazda clear as the kids yelled advice and cheers from the back window of the Explorer. Dan kept saying he felt a tow truck was the right tool for the job, but I think he just wanted to see more trucks involved. He's big on trucks.

I made the hike up to the kids on Sunday. I parked on the gravel like a normal person and we had a few hours hiking and throwing rocks in the swollen creek. Dan couldn't help but point out the tire tracks showing where the Mazda had been stuck. "Hey Dad, remember when you parked there?"

Smartass.