The Forkes Report

Are You Rockin’?

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:01:00 -0600

Sometimes rose-colored glasses can’t change the sad news. Last June my lovely sister Lainey succumbed to cancer. As much as we expected it, the loss was great and still, 11 months later, my heart is heavy with the weight of her absence. Lainey and I would, randomly, text one another lyrics from the Grateful Dead songs in our ears and brains. It was often a great boost in what is often the dreary dullness of our day-to-day lives.

This morning (Tuesday) my brother Rick reminded me we are at that age when this starts happening to our friends and family. Rick and I were in the Milwaukee Music Scene at the same time for a while, from about 1984 -1992. We saw a few concerts together, and I saw a few of his shows. He was often in one of the greatest hits bands that play weddings and bar mitzvahs so the opportunities to listen were rare.

In those years though we met a lot of people, world famous and otherwise, some of whom he still sees to this day. I’ve since moved away, but Rick still rocks the keyboards in Milwaukee, now with a country band. To this day the people who made an impression on us were the local Milwaukee people we came to know in that music scene.

One of the people Rick and I would often talk about in the 20 years I’ve been away from Milwaukee was a guy by the name of Mark Shurilla. The first words out of his mouth when we first met in 1986 were, “Are you rockin’?”

That was pretty fuckin’ weird I thought. He didn’t even know me. Up to that moment, my impression of Shurilla (totally unfounded I soon learned) was that he was a bit of a crackpot and shameless self-promoter. The latter are actually okay in my book. Most times an entertainer can’t get anywhere without promotion and self-promotion is often times the only promo you get.

As it turns out Shurilla was a great motivator. Why he never took up motivational speaking is a mystery. He would have been quite unconventional, but the theme of his life was to enjoy it and have fun! And always be doing something.

Shurilla always had something going on, be it his band the Blackholes, or his Buddy Holly tribute band, The Greatest Hits or his crusade to bring back polka, which he did. Oh, and his Irish band, McTavish.That’s when I learned Shurilla wasn’t so much about self-promotion as promoting the scene, the music and the people around him.

He had been a contributor and leader of The Express music paper in Milwaukee, a small publication that had a small circulation, but a devoted following. Sometime in 1986-87 Shurilla and one of the founders of The Crazy Shepherd, Jim McCarter, got it in their heads to merge the two papers and become a weekly publication. Up until then both had been monthly. The Shepherd was making plans to go weekly anyway and adding the music scene to our regular news coverage looked like a good idea.

On the flipside, it might have looked like a good idea for The Express to add some news coverage as well. It was at the time when I first really met Mark Shurilla. “Are you rockin!”

“No! I’m a serious journalist!”

Shurilla and I helped kick off the merger with a two part story covering the simultaneous releases of Roger Water’s first solo LP after leaving Pink Floyd, Radio KAOS and Floyd’s first studio album without Roger Waters. Here’s the thing: because Shurilla was one of the big dogs in the new Shepherd Express offices, which were located on East Wright Street in the Riverwest section of Milwaukee, Shurilla pulled rank and said he was doing the piece promoting Roger Waters, clearly the better story to cover. Man!

Well, Floyd wasn’t so bad. David Gilmore and company did a nice album, but it was the first Floyd album that wasn’t conceptual, not in the connected way Waters made the earlier Floyd works. The concert was typical Pink Floyd. If you were a Floyd fan you hardly noticed Roger Waters was not in attendance.

But the better show was, without question, the Roger Waters concert, held in the Milwaukee Arena. The Floyd show had been at County Stadium of course. Waters engaged with the audience and looked to genuinely enjoy performing for his audience. To this day I know Shurilla covered the better act. But, it was collaboration and we had fun with it.

After that Shurilla would stop in the offices on occasion, but most of the time we would see each other at shows, most notably at Shank Hall, although one time we both attended the G.G., Allin show at the Odd Rock Café. Once Allin started throwing his shit at people (literally), I left, but Shurilla stayed. He loved telling people, for years afterward I’m told, the story of G.G. Allin at the Odd Rock. The horror on the faces of the assembled audience, people running out the door, then running back in, then back out. I just never came back in.

After G.G. Allin died, the only place you could have feces thrown at you was in prison or at the zoo in front of the monkey cage. Yeah 20 years later we can say that was pretty fuckin’ funny! My G.G. Allin story; the promoter, Jack Koshick, called me up and asked if I’d go down to Chicago and pick up Allin and bring him to the show. “The whole band?”
Koshick, “No, just G.G. Allin. The band is coming up in their van.”
Me, “Why doesn’t he ride up with his band?”
Koshick, “They won’t let him ride in his van with them.”
Me, “You want me to pick him up in my car and drive two hours with him when his band doesn’t even want to ride with him? No fuckin’ way!”

Yeah Shurilla, that was funny!

Here’s a little fun fact about Shurilla, few (if any other) people know: when I moved to California in June 1992 Shurilla told me about a friend of his who worked at one of the two San Diego newspapers before they merged. Shurilla said his friend told him there would be some work available at the San Diego bureau of the Los Angeles Times and I should check it out. As it turns out, the morning I was driving to meet the bureau chief I heard on the radio the L.A. Times was closing its San Diego bureau.

The point is: I was leaving Milwaukee and Shurilla was helping me find a job here. That’s the kind of guy Shurilla was. Shameless self-promoter? Maybe, but he had a genuine interest in everyone else’s success as well.

Another little fun fact: in 1991 Ray Manzarek, once the keyboardist for The Doors, was on tour with poet Michael McClure. They did a show at Shank Hall. Manzarek needed some keyboards so Shurilla called my brother Rick and voila! Ray Manzarek had two keyboards with amps and outboard gear.

Rick and Ray met at Shank and played with the keyboards, setting them up for the show. In the meantime Shurilla calls me and says they need a music-poetry act to open for McClure and Manzarek, so he asks if I know anyone. It just so happens Rick and I had done a poetry-music thing under the name of The Forkestra. So, I told Shurilla we had a band. We actually didn’t, at the moment, but what the hell.

Shurilla was enthusiastic about us doing it and got pumped up like he did when he got excited about something. So, I called Rick, he was good to go, and then called Jim Eannelli and Bill Stace to see if they were willing. Both were and voila! The Forkestra was actually a band and opening for Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek! Thanks to Mark Shurilla.

He was never at a loss to say good things about the local music scene, but he had a cutting wit as well. Mark Shurilla was very smart and knew how to promote not only his bands, but also a lot of shows around Milwaukee. There are a lot of bands that benefited from Shurilla’s help and promotional talents, not to mention his uplifting, positive spirit. The guy was truly a gem.

Sadly, we now speak of him in the past tense because Monday, May 14, 2012, Mark Shurilla passed away from complications related to his triple bypass surgery about 10 days earlier. This crazy diamond shined every day of his life. On his Facebook page there are pictures of him smiling, wearing his signature shades, as he lay in his hospital bed, before and after the surgery. His spirit was indomitable.

We will forever remember Mark Shurilla. In 2011 he sent a Phi Zappa Krappa poster my way. Ever since I would think of him (every day) when looking at Frank Zappa sitting on the crapper. Now I will look at it with sadness, but also genuine affection and gratitude. Mark Shurilla’s message, if you followed his actions, was “keep moving forward, don’t stop!”

What I’ll never forget is: “Hey Forkes! Are you rockin’!?”

Now I am.

Reality 3.2

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:01:00 -0600

This is a strange topic for the day after Mothers Day. The other day I walked out into the living room to see The Real Housewives of Orange County blaring on the TV. Don’t ask me which episode, I don’t know, I don’t care! One of the housewife babes was having some other younger woman drive her to L.A., in a Range Rover, to audition for a television show.

The one being driven was kvetching about leaving the kids, even though they were old enough to fend for themselves, and not being a stay-at-home mom. We just had this discussion on the campaign trail. My thought was, “you’re already on a hit TV show!” And lady, if you’re not acting on that TV show, then to many Americans you live one fucked up life.

Well, let’s back up. Most people, or at least many of the people, who watch that show and all of its spin-offs, see that lifestyle as enviable. All that money, the segregated and gated neighborhoods, storybook mansion homes, and the multiple 100k automobiles — it’s like being a rap star without all the fat bottom girls hanging out at the pool.

 Personally speaking: if and when I’m that ostentatious the nice bottom girls will be hanging around the pool all day. Like Miss April 2012 Raquel Pomplun, of Chula Vista, CA.

Seriously, I couldn’t watch anymore, after about 10 … 20 … 30 minutes … or whatever. So off I went to look at nearly naked women on Facebook.

But I got to thinking: there are real housewives of Orange County (California), Atlanta, New Jersey, New York, Beverly Hills, Washington, D.C., all on the Bravo Network. I may have missed one, there are so many. On MTV you can see a show about NBA housewives. What do they talk about? Which of their husbands is going to break Wilt Chamberlain’s record? And I ain’t talking about his single game scoring record.
 Remember when Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain published his autobiography and claimed to have banged over 20,000 different women? Every heterosexual man in America, whether he wants to admit it or not, reads that and thinks, “Wow!” and nods his head in approval.

Okay, a few years ago I admitted to being an aficionado of the Orange County housewives. Back when Playmate Jeana Tomasino, Miss November 1980, was on the show. To be honest, I can’t tell which ones are holdovers from the first couple of seasons. There are five housewives in this seventh season, all but one are blonde.

The Brunette, Heather Dubrow, is the new housewife and the one being driven to L.A. for the audition.

Here’s what I find baffling. In the original version of Real Housewives of Orange County we got the impression anyway that these women were “friends” before the show, that they had known each other for years. But come to find out, they have to audition to get into a reality show?
 On The Real Housewives of New Jersey the women appear to be long-time associates. It would be a stretch to label them all as friends. The best part of that one is, they all talk with their hands. Fingers and palms getting thrust in each other’s faces; it’s White Trash on the Jersey Riviera.

How does that work? Looking at the website and the pictures of the new cast of the O.C. brand, I had to wonder: how does someone audition to be on a reality show? Specifically, one of these housewives shows. “Hi! I’m Amber and all my friends tell me I’m one bitchy drama queen!”
“Do you have breast implants?”
“Yes!”
“You’re hired!”And of course for the Orange County edition, their homes have to be in this one particular gated community where the homes are roughly in the 15-mil range — or more.

So they plop the new housewife into the existing cast and say, “Bitches! Here’s Heather! She used to be an actress, now she’s married to a plastic surgeon, she’s a bitchy drama queen so make her feel welcome and start scheming!”

The next question is: do the women choose to leave these shows or are they fired? Maybe they weren’t overly melodramatic enough. Or maybe they got tired of camera crews following them around everywhere. The obvious solution would be to contact the producers and ask, but that would take too much time and it’s better to kvetch about it on the Internets. Adds more drama. Not to mention, could we trust the producers to answer honestly? These might be trade secrets.

Which brings up the most obvious question: do that many people watch these housewives shows? They keep churning out new versions. But, it wouldn’t be on television, even basic cable, if there wasn’t an audience for it. In fact, after checking TV By The Numbers, The Real Housewives of Orange County gets 2.5 million viewers. Granted, that’s less than 1% of the population, but think about it: if you’re selling sexy vodka or his and hers sex lube and you get 10% of the viewers to buy your product, that’s really a nice payday.
 Twenty bucks for a fifth of Grey Goose times 250k … That’s five mil, with a product that needs replenishing. For people like me that would be every day.

If the Housewives shows on Bravo aren’t bad enough, Lifetime Channel just announced they will be airing a “reality” show starring the family of Whitney Houston. How much sicker can reality show producers get?

Then there’s the family. Houston’s daughter will be in it, but it’s publicized as starring Houston’s sister and her husband. That should tell you everything you need to know about the character of the people putting this travesty together.

The one person you’d think would have Houston’s back, her mother Cissy, is all for the show. She says it will help the healing process by “… keeping the family as one.” Oh dear! I’m guessing by the end of the first season the family will be in court suing each other for breaching this, that and the other thing.
 Kudos to the Jackson Family for maintaining some dignity after Michaels untimely passing.

The big question is: will there be an audience for it? Probably. If there’s enough of an audience for a half dozen Real Housewives shows, then it’s very likely there is an audience for opportunists exploiting the life and death of a family member.

This should be a cautionary tale for young people on the verge of getting signed to a recording contract or rising fast in the film/TV business: don’t hire family members or friends as managers or agents. They can be even more predatory with your business than your average manager or agent.

And this all brings up one final question, the idea that spurred this rant: would anyone watch a program called, The Real Housewives of Who Gives a Fuck?

Happy Mothers Day!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 13 May 2012 12:01:00 -0600

Class Clown, School Bully

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:44:00 -0600

President Obama made the right decision Wednesday when he came out in support of marriage equality. There will of course be the multitudes that are against it, citing religious reasons, but nothing logical. The entire premise of religion is illogical, at least the Judeo-Christian-Islam variety that posits there is some supernatural being that resides in the clouds in a dimension far, far away. And of course we have the history revisionists who like to repaint the United States as being some kind of theological state — like Iran.

“The United States was founded as a Christian nation on Christian principles!”

No, actually it wasn’t. It was founded on the principles of the French Enlightenment, minus the guillotine. Well over half the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Deists who didn’t believe in the Christian concept of “God” and then there were a few notable atheists, like Benjamin Franklin.

But that’s a different rant altogether. The revisionists would like us to believe marriage is for one man and one woman only because we are a “Christian Nation” The Bible tells us marriage is for one man and one woman only — although The Bible is chock full of examples of men having multiple wives in the Old and New Testaments.

Monogamous marriages are a rather new construct in human history and polygamy is still practiced in certain cultures today. In fact, polygamy was common in the U.S. for many years until the Mormons made it part of their religion and then anti-Mormon crusaders starting using the issue to persecute the Church of Latter Day Saints. So the government made polygamy illegal to assist in the persecution of Mormons.

It’s only been in the last 20 years that the United States has been codifying heterosexual marriage as the law of the land, starting with the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Now 32 states have laws that define marriage as one man-one woman, North Carolina being the last to do it. Much to my embarrassment, my home state of Wisconsin, once a stalwart of progressive idealism, has an anti-equality marriage law and here in California Prop 8, which would have codified same-sex marriage, was defeated.

But the tide is turning in the United States. Over 50% of Americans believe same sex marriage should be legal.

This is funny — in a “I’m not sure I should laugh” kind of way. Romney and the Republicans don’t want to talk about marriage equality or their war on women and when asked they say they want to concentrate on the real issues facing America. But in the meantime Romney is talking about passing a one man, one woman marriage amendment to the constitution and the House Republicans wrote amendments to a House defense bill banning gays in the military from getting married; chaplains won’t have to perform same-sex marriages, even though chaplains are now allowed to opt out of ceremonies that violate their religious faith and the second provision bans same-sex wedding ceremonies on military and other federal installations.

The sponsor of the measures, Republican Todd Akin of Missouri, said he added the amendments because he seriously believes the president is promoting a “gay agenda.” The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Howard McKeon of California was against addition of the amendments, saying he wanted to pass “clean” bills, especially during times of war. Guess he loses out to the Teabaggers.

And then we have Republicans in Congress and in state legislatures around the country bringing up over 1,100 bills attacking women’s health, from “personhood” laws to forcing women to have ultrasound wands shoved up their vaginas for no medial reason.

But the Republicans don’t want to talk about their anti-gay and anti-women policies. They just want to go ahead with them without any discussion. For good reason: the vast majority of Americans are opposed to their social agenda.

Now, with the recent story in the Washington Post about Mitt Romney’s high school history of bullying, people are really starting to question Romney’s credibility and character. Five former classmates of Romney, four of them on the record, came forth and identified the presumptive Republican nominee as a bully and spoke of one case in particular when Romney led a group of his all male prep school mates on an attack of a fellow student who had had long, bleach blonde hair. They pinned him down and Romney cut his hair.

Pundits on TV, both left and right, question whether we should hold a candidate accountable for their high school activities. That’s a head scratcher because those on the Right want to hold President Obama accountable for his life experiences as a grade school student in Indonesia.

But okay, let’s give Romney a pass on it because it happened 48 years ago, as the presumptive Republican nominee stated. This is the interesting part: he doesn’t remember the incidents in particular, but he does remember he didn’t single them out for being homosexual or appearing to be effeminate. His five classmates vividly remember the presumed homosexuality was the exact reason for the attacks, which one of Romney’s co-attackers Philip Maxwell described as “vicious.”
 Maxwell said he met the victim of their assault years later and apologized for the attack.

Romney also claimed that in the 1960’s people didn’t talk about things like homosexuality and accuse other male students of being effeminate. Bullshit! Everybody who’s been to high school in the 1960’s knows that went on! It goes on even today! High school kids are committing suicide nearly every day as a result of bullying, the boys because they are singled out for being gay or appearing to be effeminate. So, we know Romney is lying about that.

We also have to question why five of Romney’s high school classmates remember in graphic detail Romney leading a group of boys on an assault of another student and Romney claims he has no memory of it? An act one classmate described as so searing it couldn’t be erased from memory.

So, okay, we give Romney a pass for being a high school bully, but he’s lying about it now. Not only lying about it, but when he went on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show to talk about it Romney found the incident amusing enough he laughed about it.

Romney remembers it. Like so many other aspects of Romney’s candidacy, he is looking for expedient answers to the sticky questions. When Chris Wallace (also of Fox News) in all seriousness pressed Romney about putting his dog in a carrier on top of the car, Romney laughed about that. Wallace even told him Massachusetts has a law against doing that and Romney, once the governor of that state, didn’t know that.

The Washington Post article is actually more about the positive opinions of Romney’s classmates at Cranbrook Prep School, in Bloomington Hills, Michigan. They talk about his leadership skills starting to develop at Cranbrook and it continued as he went on a Mormon mission in France and later when Romney was a student at Harvard. Remove Romney’s bullying and he looks like really decent guy.

But he lies. And he flip-flops on every issue. And now he doesn’t want to talk about the views he espouses on the rights of women and LGBT people despite the fact that his political party, the Republicans, are conspiring every day to take away the rights of others they don’t like (voter I.D. laws) and force indignities on others for doing things the Republicans don’t approve of, like shoving a sonogram wand up a woman’s vagina if she needs to get an abortion.

On the other hand it sounds just like a bully. Maybe Romney and the Republican Party are a perfect fit. In fact, I’ll bet there are right wing extremists getting excited about having a bully for a candidate — it fits their world view.

The Goddess of Music

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 08 May 2012 08:01:00 -0600

Nearly 50 years ago Blood, Sweat and Tears had this monster hit, “And When I Die.” I would listen to that album, Blood Sweat & Tears as if my life depended on it. In some ways it did. Things were not very pleasant at home; mom and dad were separated and music was an escape, like it is for many kinds growing up. So to get away, if even for the 40-plus minutes of one album, was great relief. Mostly this escape took place at my sister Cheryl’s apartment when I was babysitting my nephew Christopher.

At that age it never occurred to me to read who wrote the songs. Having started the coming of age period when the Beatles first hit the United States, it just seemed likely everyone wrote their own songs. Okay, even the Beatles covered Chuck Berry (among others), but for the most part the Beatles — John Lennon and Paul McCartney in particular — wrote their own songs.

Well, flash forward 44 years to the 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. One of the inductees was singer/songwriter Laura Nyro.

Laura Nyro was no stranger to my ears, I have listened to her now and then for decades. My beautiful sister Elaine at one time (maybe for all time) was a fan, but I was just a casual listener. Sure, I liked “Stony End” but that was about the extent of my knowledge of Laura Nyro. She wrote a lot of hit songs, but I was not so interested as to find out what songs she wrote. Turns out she wrote a lot of songs I’ve loved listening to over the years and even a few I didn’t run out and buy.
 For instance: “Eli’s Coming,” “Stoned Cold Picnic,” “Wedding Bell Blues” and of course “Stony End.”

Here’s a little factoid I didn’t know until researching this piece: right before Laura Nyro signed her record contract with Columbia Records, she was about to become the lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears after Al Kooper had left the band. David Geffen talked her out of it and voila! Enter David Clayton-Thomas and musical history is made. But what could have been?

Doesn’t matter. Nyro went on to fame and fortune on her own, putting out several critically acclaimed albums between 1968 and ’72: Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat and Gonna Take a Miracle. All of them were popular, but the one that sticks in my memory is the last, Gonna Take a Miracle. Ironically, the one album that is all covers of the music that inspired Nyro as a child. It also features the fabulous Labelle, with Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash, as back-up singers.

Nyro was at the height of her popularity when it was released, but tired of the music scene, Laura Nyro retired — but only for a few years. The marriage ended and she was back making music.
 About this time David Geffen acquired the rights to her only recording with Verve Records and re-released it as The First Songs.

After that though I never really paid attention to Nyro and had no idea what had become of the reclusive songwriter. Every now and then a musician would reference Nyro as an influence during interviews and someone would include one of her songs on a record, but other than that she remained a name from the past.

Until this past Saturday when HBO aired their annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. Taped April 14 at the Public Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, the inductees included the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guns’n’Roses, Donavan, the Small Faces/Faces, Beastie Boys, Freddie King, Don Kirshner, The Crickets, Famous Flames (James Brown’s band), Midnighters, the Comets (of Bill Hailey fame), The Blue Caps, the Miracles, Cosimo Matassa, Tom Dowd, Glyn Johns and Laura Nyro.

Music icon Better Midler gave the induction speech for Nyro, a fitting tribute by one of the inductee’s close friends. It was then I learned Laura Nyro had penned one of my favorite songs of all time, “And When I Die.”

It’s almost funny! For all these years the sound of that Blood, Sweat & Tears classic has played in my head and once in a while through the computer, always a BS&T song. But then Midler informed us (me) of why Nyro had earned a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I was embarrassed. She wrote all those songs I’ve heard, done by other artists and I had never really paid any attention to her.

After Nyro’s only son, Gil Bianchini, accepted the award, Midler introduced Sara Bareilles who sang and played piano for Nyro’s timeless “Stony End.” That was a great rendition, possibly the best performance of the evening, or at least what we saw on HBO.
 Bareilles’ back up band was Paul Schaefer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band, David Letterman’s CBS Orchestra. They’ve been the house band for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since its inception.

It’s embarrassing to admit, having written about music for so many years, I never knew the impact Laura Nyro had on music. So many people say she influenced their songwriting, from Todd Rundgren to Elton John and Elvis Costello. And so many people made her songs hits: Three Dog Night, Barbra Streisand, the 5th Dimension, Peter, Paul and Mary and of course Blood, Sweat & Tears to name just the most famous.

Not knowing the breadth of Laura Nyro’s talent is less a commentary on how under-appreciated she was, and everyone agrees Laura Nyro hasn’t received the attention she deserves, it’s more a comment on my intellectual laziness. As Bette Midler put it, Laura Nyro is one of the original “originals,” a songwriter with a beautiful voice with the gift of writing songs everyone else wants to sing. And now I’ll be singing some of those hits too.

Celebrate!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sat, 05 May 2012 08:01:00 -0600

Sports fans, specifically baseball fans — which are different from your average sports fans — understand what a big deal it was on Wednesday when Jered Weaver of the California Angels pitched a no-hitter against the Minnesota Twins in Anaheim. That’s a big deal, regardless of who your team is — unless it’s your team on the losing end of that no-hitter.

It’s a big deal for a young man to be told he’s in the starting rotation and even more amazing when he’s told he’s part of the rotation. Some guys make the rotation for a while because one of the starters is injured. Once a pitcher gets that opportunity they try like hell to make the most of it because anyone in baseball will tell you time in the big leagues and as a starter no less, can be fleeting. Sometimes that effort pays off and the pitcher not only stays in the Big Leagues, he gets to stay in the rotation. That’s a major accomplishment in itself, but throw on a no-hitter or perfect game and every pitcher will tell you that’s way beyond their hopes and expectations.

The rarest feat in baseball, and sports in general, is the perfect game, when a pitcher throws 27 straight outs. That means no one on the other team reaches first base. There have been only 21 perfect games in the 147-year history of Major League Baseball, 19 of those since 1900, considered the beginning of the “Modern” era. There has been only one perfect game in post season: Don Larson pitching Game Five for the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1956 World Series.
 I guess that was more heartbreak than Dodger management could bear. They up and moved to Los Angeles in 1958.

Philip Humber of the Chicago White Sox threw a perfect game against the Seattle Mariners April 24, 2012 and it could be a few years before we see another.

To be honest, there isn’t a good reason I didn’t write about Humber’s perfect game, it being a major sporting accomplishment. I did mention it at the time, but my brain was probably scrambled by … half naked women on Facebook or something. Who knows?

Congratulations Philip Humber! You will be remembered forever in the Hall of Fame!

What spurred this screed though was the no-hitter thrown by Jered Weaver of the L.A. Angels at home in Anaheim, against the Minnesota Twins.

There have been only 274 no-hitters in the entire history of Major League Baseball. That seems like a lot, until you consider the number of games played each season: currently 2,430. That means in 147 years of baseball — that’s over 200,000 games — less than 1% of games result in no-hitters. That’s a rare event.

So, Jered Weaver goes down in the history books of being in that rarified air, with the likes of Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Randy Johnson, Warren Spahn, Catfish Hunter, Nolan Ryan (he has the most: seven) and Juan Nieves.
 Who?

Juan Nieves was an up and coming pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers, making his first major league appearance on April 10, 1986. He was 21 years old. Three hundred-seventy days later Nieves got his start against the Orioles in Baltimore on Tax Day 1987 (April 15).

At the time I had been in the Student Union of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, walking through the Gasthaus for some reason and happened to notice the game on one of the TV’s As it so happened, at the time I didn’t have a television at home and the chance to watch a game was rare. So I stopped to listen.
 There was a section of the Gasthaus, a beer and wine joint in the basement of the Union, that was dedicated to TV viewers so the audio from the TV was louder than everything else.

The television play-by-play man for the Brewers was usually Bob Ueker, but on this night I believe it was someone else. At any rate, it was the bottom of the sixth inning and the left-handed Juan Nieves was on the mound. The play-by-play man happened to say something like, “He hasn’t allowed any hits yet …” and my immediate thought went something like: “That sounds like a no-hitter!”

So I got me a Diet Coke, found an empty chair and plopped my ass in it.

It takes more than great pitching to score a no-hitter. The pitcher needs a defense that can make spectacular plays in the field and few errors. Lucky for Nieves, he had that team. Just five years past their one and only World Series appearance, the Brew Crew still had players like Jimmy Gantner, Paul Molitor and Robin Yount, the shortstop who made the heroic diving catch in the bottom of the Ninth to save the no-hitter for Nieves.

There’s nothing like watching “your” team win a no-hitter. The pitcher might be one of the stars in the rotation, or it could be a journeyman, like Juan Nieves. Although a solid young player with high prospects, Nieves was the unlikeliest of baseball heroes. At the time, Nieves was most known for being wildly unpredictable and was just as likely to throw an uncontrolled wild game as a good game. His major league pitching career to that point wasn’t noteworthy. In fact, his career ERA (Earned Run Average) is 4.71.

Part of that High ERA can be attributed to his short career. A year and a half after throwing his no-hitter, Nieves suffered a career-ending injury to his pitching arm.

So there we were, a bunch of college students sitting in a beer joint, watching the Brewers against the Baltimore Orioles. And with each pitch from the Puerto Rican kid came a roar from everyone in the room. This was a momentous occasion.

Bottom of the Ninth, two outs, nobody on, Nieves on the mound and catching for Nieves was Baltimore born, Bill Schroeder. Hall-of-Fame power-hitter Eddie Murray was at bat for the Orioles. He popped one up over second base into center field. Robin Yount, by then a Brewers’ outfielder, went running and leaped at the descending baseball, catching it inches before it hit the ground.
 It’s tremendously fitting that the greatest player in the history of the Milwaukee Brewers would make the catch that not only saved the no-hitter, but was also the final out. Yount later said he knew he didn’t need to make a diving catch, but did so to cap off a great game for Nieves.

The crowd in the Gasthaus went wild! Cheers, yells, tables getting pounded — if noise could be made it was. UW-M is a “commuter” school, meaning most of its students are local so all of us were cheering for the Brewers and Juan Nieves. It was a great feeling, giving us a sense that there would be a better tomorrow. It felt good to walk around talking to people, asking them, “Did you see the Brewers Game Wednesday?”

People who hadn’t seen it were disappointed, people who did see it were ecstatic. It was a great start to a pretty good season for the Brewers. Later that year Robin Yount got his 3,000th hit, Paul Molitor had a 39-game hitting streak and the Crew went on a 13-game winning streak.

Local hamburger chain George Webb’s made good on its offer to give away free burgers if the Crew ever achieved that string of wins and people were traveling from one Webb’s location to another scoring as many burgers as they could handle. I forget how many millions of burgers the chain gave away, but they were happy about it. I was anyway, but only made it to two Webb’s.

Immediately following the 13-game winning streak the Crew went on a 12-game losing streak, but they still finished third in the American League. And the Brewers could say they had a no-hitter in their record books.

Sadly for everyone, Nieves had that career-ending injury October 2, 1988. Who knows where he might have ended up in the annals of baseball history. His professional major league record is 32-25, a winning percentage of 78%. Had he played a full career he could have been another 300-game winner.

Today he’s the bullpen coach for the Chicago White Sox, ironically Milwaukee’s first rivalry. Oh man! The bleachers at County Stadium could turn into a riot when the White Sox came to town.

Special moments, like a relatively unknown pitcher throwing a no-hitter, can do a lot for a community. It gives us something else to think about, other than our sometimes dreary day-to-day. It’s probably the same for a lot of Angels fans today, even this many days after Weaver threw his no-hitter.

Something like a no-hitter is worth taking note of, even if it’s for another team. It’s an incredible achievement that requires not only excellent play by one person in particular (the pitcher), but the entire team. At the very least, the pitcher needs a good catcher.

So, on Cinco de Mayo I salute all the men who have pitched a no-hitter in Major League Baseball, one of the rarest of events in all of sports. And lets give a shoutout to all my friends of Mexican descent; this is your day! Be careful of how much tequila you drink and definitely, don’t drink and drive.

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

The Puppet Masters

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:01:00 -0600

Okay, whenever I say one thing, like, “I’m getting tired of writing about politics,’ something pops up and … we have the first exception to the new rule. This is one of those topics.

It occurred to me while watching the news programs on MSNBC, the news source of choice around here. First was the story about a new and quickly disposed of foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney’s campaign, Richard Grenell.

Grenell has a long neo-con history working for the Bush 43 Administration and then for John Bolton when he was ambassador to the United Nations. Grenell is no shrinking violet policy-wise. He’s a guy who enjoys torture (on people he considers enemies of the state), still believes Bush’s war in Iraq was a good idea and, for added benefit, he’s bashed women of every political persuasion on Twitter, based on their physical appearance; from Callista Gingrich to Rachel Maddow.
 Grenell has since removed the offending Tweets.

Of course the guy offends Lefties, he’s an asshole! It goes along with being a flaming neo-con. And for a Republican presidential candidate, there could be no better political credentials than being vilified by the Left.

What got Grenell “resigned” from the Romney campaign was his sexual orientation. It seems he took the Left to task for not pressing President Obama on gay marriage, a policy position Grenell apparently supports. This infuriated members of the extreme fringe of the Conservative movement so their radio lackeys agitated until Grenell departed.

One of those agitators was Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association. That’s one of those extremist Christian groups, sort of like an extremist Islamic group, but in English. When you think of a ranting, hate-mongering, violence-inducing dick, Bryan Fischer fits that description. There’s video of him hollering in his radio studio and the way he works that mic, you’d think he was practicing his technique for fellatio.

Another of those agitators was Matthew Franck of the National Review. He wrote, “"I agree that Grenell’s being openly gay is, in itself, of no consequence for his service in the Romney campaign, but Grenell has made a particular crusade of the marriage issue, with a kind of unhinged devotion that suggests a man with questionable judgment.”

Adding that if Romney won the election and gave Grenell a position in his administration, “he could pursue his passion for that same agenda.”

So the Romney campaign hires this asshole Grenell, who just happens to be gay, and shortly there after starts getting slammed by the extreme far Righties that comprise the base of the Republican Party, without whom Romney can’t win the general election.

In true flip-flop fashion, the Romney management team decides Grenell can’t make any public appearances or statements, either verbally or written. Then, according to Romney staffers, Grenell was told to “sit down and shut up” in front of campaign subordinates during a staff meeting. They didn’t even want to hear his views on foreign policy.

After a couple weeks of this treatment Grenell “resigned.” In his resignation letter Grenell said the reason for leaving the campaign was “… the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign.” It wasn’t really the partisan sniping from the Left, but that volatile attacks from the Right. “While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished.”

The Romney campaign on the other hand said they begged Grenell to stay on, that he was highly qualified for his advisory position. But the candidate himself didn’t get out on the stump to defend his man, the task of publicly defending Grenell for the cameras was left to subordinates like neo-con foreign policy guru Dan Senor, himself a veteran of the Bush 43 White House.
 Romney admitted he doesn’t have a foreign policy agenda and that he would leave it to State Department types (Like Senor) to figure out. Well, that’s (not) comforting!

So now the vision of the Romney candidacy is that he is controlled by the Radical Religious Right. In fact, Fischer was bragging about how he got Grenell removed from the Romney campaign. Does the electorate want to hire someone to be president who is controlled by people who want to force a radical religious agenda on America? But it doesn’t end there.

Up pops Grover Norquist, the Fozzy Bear of the Radical Right. He doesn’t have a social or religious agenda, he’s all about cutting taxes! “Lower taxes! Lower taxes!” He even browbeat Republicans into signing a no new taxes pledge. “Be like Ronald Reagan,” he cries! But not the part where Reagan raised taxes seven times. We’ll just ignore that little paradox.

Norquist made a speech in February at the celebrated CPAC convention telling anyone willing to listen what the Republicans needed from a presidential candidate. They don’t need a leader, he said. The Republican Party already has leaders in the House of Representatives! That’s right! In particular Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan who put forth that awesome budget plan that decimates the poor, elderly, college students and the Middle Class to give more wealth to the wealthy.

He said, “All we have to do is replace Obama. We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House [of Representatives] and the Senate.”

Apparently, the only qualifications the Republican president will need are working fingers on his (or her) writing hand! “Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become President of the United States. His job is to be captain of the team; to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.”

Mitt Romney, in Grover Norquist’s eyes, would be the butler for the Congressional Republicans. A nice vision for the military of their Commander-in-Chief.

Here’s where we should take issue with the modern media. The only person to take note of this speech by Norquist, at the time he delivered it almost three months ago, was David Frum, himself a veteran of the Bush 43 Administration. Frum wrote about it for the Daily Beast in February while CPAC was rolling along in Washington, D.C.

Many on the Right consider Frum a traitor because he’s one of the strongest critics of the radically extreme shift to the right in the Republican Party. He hasn’t really done anything remotely treasonous towards the Republican Party, he’s just refused to get into lockstep with the direction the party has taken. And in today’s conservative movement, that’s treason!

Consequently, Frum doesn’t get quoted a lot, doesn’t make it onto the talk shows of the news networks, maybe CNN now and then and HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher. And maybe the news should have taken note at the time, instead of worrying about a dog on a car roof or the car elevator in Romney’s La Jolla, CA home.

What Frum pointed out then and what is becoming quickly apparent now is that the Republican nominee will be little more than a puppet for the radically extreme forces now controlling the so-called conservative movement.

First of all: a tip of the hat to Frum for pointing it out before everyone else. But more importantly, here’s the campaign strategy for the Obama campaign and frankly, any Democrat running in 2012: just have commercials featuring videos of Bryan Fischer and Grover Norquist running off at the mouth and then put it to the voters: “This is who you are really putting in the White House if you vote for Mitt Romney. Are these the people you want running the country?”

Brilliant campaign strategy. The question is, will the Left let go of the punchlines that have marked their campaign rhetoric so far? Make the argument about policy and who really controls that agenda: the nominee or the radically extreme wing of the so-called conservative movement.

Let’s hope the Obama campaign and the DNC is firing on all cylinders, we can’t afford four more years of Bush 43 and his Republican lackeys. Not to mention, I have other things to do like keeping up to date on all the Hooters Bikini Contests that have taken place this past month. So many women, so little time.

In The End

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:01:00 -0600

Here it is, two hours from my deadline and still nothing — bupkis. In fact, the most interesting thing about this screed (so far) is the word “bupkis.” Did you know the origin of it? Do you know what it means? It means you got nuthin’. Or what you have ain’t even worth nuthin’.

“C’mon Tim! What’s worse than ‘nothing’? Worth using a double negative?”

I’m glad another voice in my head asked! If you have “bupkis” that means what you have is, at best, nothing. The word is Yiddish, derived from Eastern Europe, most notably Russia. It’s a slanged-up shorting of the term “kozebupkes,” a compound word formed from “bob”, Russian for “little beans” and “koza,” the Russian word for goat. In other words, if you have “bupkis,” you have shit, goat shit to be exact.

Is goat shit nothing? No, it’s something. Having gotten into fights with neighboring farm boys back in the day and rolled in sheep shit, which is relatively similar to goat shit, I can tell you goat shit is something and it stinks.

So, having bupkis might be worse than not having no bupkis. Or not having no bupkis … okay, trying to justify a double negative is making me dizzy, but believe me when I say it makes sense in my head. Bupkis equals goat shit.

Anyway, aside from the above, I got bupkis. Talking politics has gotten tiresome. Our nation is so divided no one changes their point of view. We do listen to each other, but what results is a gathering of ammunition. If the Internets have done anything more than everything else, it has hyperventilated the political dialogue. Well, that might be second to Internet porn, but not by much.

We can read things on the Internets, Facebook in particular, that are so crazy, it boggles reality. But then we remember the infamous Karl Rove quote from Ron Susskind’s article in the New York Times Magazine, that explains how they (the Bush Administration) don’t live in reality, they invent new reality. There are those of us who “…believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality,” as opposed to those people (Karl Rove, et al.) who rely on their faith for answers, specifically in the Bush world, the Christian faith and they create new realities based on that faith.

How do you argue with people whose collective being is based in what amounts to fantasy? Mix in that their hyperbolic belief that President Obama is the spawn of Satan, the harbinger of socialism, the man who is dismantling the American way of life — there’s no point to discussion. You can’t argue with crazy talk.

Well, that noon deadline has come and gone and still there is no topic, just two sorta topics, semi-topics, demi-topics. Now what? We could always talk about Hooters bikini contests, but I’ve only been to one this year and it wasn’t the most inspiring. My friend Claudia is competing for the West Coast Hooters Viewers Choice Award. You can Click This and vote for her, once a day until May 12.

But it’s a good bet some might not appreciate the finer points of the Hooters bikini pageant rules and traditions. What the fuck, I’ll save it for another day.

Probably the most significant event on the horizon is the colonoscopy scheduled for Monday (April 30). The worst part of the procedure isn’t that someone will be introducing a long tube into your rectum. It really sounds worse than it is. You get doped up on some fine drugs and soon find yourself waking up after the procedure no worse for the wear.

Besides, everyone you know over the age of 45 has had at least one already so it’s not like you’re alone in this indignity. The worse part is the preparation.

If you have hemorrhoids, you will get to know them more intimately. There’s this stuff you must drink, an industrial strength laxative and it will cause you to spurt out your intestinal waste like a fire hose. Repeatedly, for hours. And then I gotta wake up at 4 a.m. and do it all over again.

Thankfully, this time I can forego the enema.

The actual colonoscopy procedure only takes 45 minutes, in most cases. You’re in, you’re out and then you wake up get dressed and out of the hospital, as medical procedures go, it’s pretty routine. But it requires some serious preparation and that’s the back-breaker. Basically, having a colonoscopy requires you to be a starving monk for the 48 hours leading up to the probe.

The Saturday before my butt probe, yesterday as I write this, there was a party I attended and the centerpiece of this get together was the fine array of tasty food I ought not eat anyway. And of course I ate it. Now, on the day before the anal annexation, comes the starvation and eventually the projectile bowel evacuations. Which has been the case for the past three days anyway.

Don’t know why that is happening. Some kind of stomach bug maybe? Who knows, but it’s made life these past four days tiresome. You know how it goes: We’re required to be close to a toilet at all times. The beauty of this is, today as I starve for tomorrow’s intestinal intrusion I’ll be getting a bit of a break from the uninvited diarrhea. I hope.

Eh … colonoscopies. Now, after having written all this I should have gone with the exposé on Hooters bikini contests. Much better to discuss their fine, fine derrieres than my not so fine ass. Thirty hours from now my ass will be in a sling, literally. Actually, it will be on a specially built gurney.

My lovely friend Liz will be my ride to and from the V.A. A ride is required because afterward I will be fairly stoned on whatever it is they use to knock me out. The last time I underwent a similar procedure, an endoscopy, the drug took about eight hours to completely wear off. So, there will be a happy ending.

That will be my focus today in preparation for the deed: the happy ending. I wonder if Liz would like to stop at Hooters on the way home, you know, just to break the fast. Just a suggestion.

The Regeneration of Dr. Who

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:01:00 -0600

What a racket. Are you familiar with the British, BBC franchise TV show — the longest running science fiction show in world history? You probably have no couth if you’re not at least aware of the program. There was a time about 30-plus years ago when Dr. Who was all the rage here in the Colonies. But, like all good things it came to an end. I think, I don’t really know. I stopped watching sometime around the early to mid 1980’s. Who can keep track of these little milestones in one’s history? Especially with mitigating circumstances the likes of which most parents would be horrified to learn were in their children’s lives. Well, maybe not horrified, but at least terribly disappointed.

So, Dr. Who was wildly popular in the U.S. for a while and even more so in Great Britain for decades. The gimmick was — what makes it a great racket is, well, let’s put it like this: built in to the character is the plot twisting metamorphosis Dr. Who goes through every so often and changes from one person to another. It’s called “regeneration.” Back in the day it was from one man to another, but this is the 21st Century when women can be equally geeky and nerdy, so Dr. Who could be a woman! Who knows, Dr. Who may have made that leap already and I just don’t know it because I haven’t been following the franchise, not since the early 1980’s.
 I just checked on Wikipedia, the Bible for all things about all things, and there has never been a woman Doctor. C’mon man! It’s the 21st Century already!

And let’s be honest here: most of what I have to say on Dr. Who will most likely be bullshit surrounded by the minimal amount of facts necessary to make this post not only “accurate” to some degree, but (hopefully) interesting as well. And, it must be noted, I wasn’t all that into Dr. Who even when it was on my nightly viewing schedule. It was part of the late night regime: The Bob Newhart Show, Letterman and Dr. Who.

Back in the day, Dr. Who was a stoner’s show. It didn’t aspire to be a stoner’s show, the really good ones don’t, it just appealed to that kind of personality. You know: intellectual, or pseudo-intellectual, people with their intelligence stunted by daily abusive usage of marijuana and other mind-altering substances.
 My humble opinion: Dr. Who was never an LSD kind of show, it was more of a marijuana kind of show. The show was frustrating and slow while tripping on hallucinogens, but warm, fuzzy and thought provoking when smoking pot.

Dr. Who fans were, and maybe still are, like Star Trek fans: obsessive in their idolatry, so much so that when Comic-Con rolls around every year here in Sandy Eggo, Dr. Who-philes will be seen dressed as their favorite version of the character.

Oh yes … and like Trekkies, Whokkies have their favorite era, personage of Dr. Who. There are some Trekkies who swear by the original series, or the original with its spin-off movies. Then there is the Next Generation crowd and they show up to Comic-Con dressed in those costumes and still other Trekkies slavishly adhere to … err … one of the other permutations of the Star Trek franchise.
 This is something I found to be curious. That commercial for the Tribeca Film Festival On Demand with Robert De Niro just flashed on the TV. The question is: Why hasn’t De Niro ever showed up as a villain in a Star Trek movie? Okay, totally unrelated tangent.

The point is (getting back to the original thesis of this screed) Dr. Who has a following going back at least one generation, over 40 years to be not so exact. Actually 50 years! Back in the late 1970’s is when I watched the show, up until about 1982. The actor who played The Doctor was Tom Baker. Sadly I can’t recall anything specific about the show with Mr. Baker as the Doctor because, as mentioned earlier, it was a show for stoners and … err … it’s hard to retain specifics for 30 years.

As often as I’ve watched every episode of The Bob Newhart Show in syndication, I couldn’t point to any specific episode and explain why I liked it. But with Newhart, we laughed long and loud in every episode, every time we saw the episodes, repeatedly.

Same with Dr. Who, sort of. It was fun watching the Doctor and his lovely assistant, and the Doctor had many “companions” throughout the years. The universal favorite was Mary Jane Smith, played by Elizabeth Sladen. Sadly, Sladen passed away last year at the age of 65. Cancer once again robbing the world of another great figure in the arts. Now that I think of it, Mary Jane was a principle reason the show was so popular.

As I recall there was never any sexual tension between the Time Lord and his female companion (there was a male companion on occasion) because the Time Lord isn’t human like us, he just looks like us. But c’mon, they’re jumping through both time and space, saving planet and galaxy alike in those human forms one would automatically assume were completely anatomically correct. Wouldn’t he feel a little something stirring when his female companions are around?

Just saying, maybe the Doctor and Mary Jane had a long strange trip from some far-flung galaxy to Earth and in the down time Dr. Who says, “You know Mary Jane, I’ve got this anatomically correct male human form and, well, every time I look at you I get this tingly, throbbing sensation in the part they call the crotch!”

“I dare say Doctor, I get a little wobbly myself! It’s called being horny!”

“Well then Mary Jane, let’s experiment with the human sexual activity, see what happens!”

“Yes, lets, Doctor! Do you have a manual on human sexuality and sexual practices, or would you prefer I show you? … Oh my Doctor! It’s so big!”

And off they go to some comfortable room in the TARDIS to experiment with sex. And we would hope they read the chapters in the manual that include “foreplay” in the title.

Just a theory. As we can find out from the wildly popular Wikipedia the producers of the latest iteration of the show (started in 2005) relented on the old rule about no sexual or romantic tension between the Doctor and his companions and had the good doctor going so far as to marry one of his assistants.
 Elisabeth Sladen starred in a Dr. Who spin-off called The Sarah Jane Adventures, but obviously that show has ceased filming. The last episode with Sladen was “The Man Who Never Was.”

And then there’s the TARDIS, the transporter used by the Doctor and his companions to go from one Earthly place to another or some unearthly place. On the outside it looks like a London Police Box, all blue and shiny with a blinking light on top, but inside it’s a palatial manse complete with control room, and rooms for … err … everything else. It takes a special kind of key to get inside and the good Doctor does his thing in it.

There is a “history” to the particular TARDIS used in the show. It malfunctions, sending the Doctor to places unexpected, but where he needs to be and its cloaking device … I’m sorry, I’m confusing Star Trek with Dr. Who, the chameleon circuit is broke and the TARDIS is stuck in the police box motif.

Crazy show, right? It’s one of the most popular programs ever on TV anywhere. On this planet anyway. There might be some longer running hit series on some cable network in a galaxy far, far away from a long time ago … You know, Dr. Who pre-dates Star Trek and Star Wars and not only outlasted both, but has managed to remain more interesting than the two American creations. But I don’t want to be accused (again) of America bashing.

If you watch The Late, Late Show With Craig Ferguson, you know the “American On Purpose” is a big fan of Dr. Who. he has a little toy replica of the TARDIS on his desk. Every once in a while he will have a guest who is equally enamored with the Time Lord and their entire segment will be devoted to all things in the Dr. Who universe. I couldn’t swear to it, but I would bet Craig Ferguson shows up at Comic-Con dressed as the Doctor.

So, as you might have found out watching Ferguson every night for the past seven years, Dr. Who is back on the air and now is more popular than ever—and with an entirely new generation venerating the good Doctor, number 11 being played by Matt Smith. I haven’t seen the latest regeneration of The Doctor, and haven’t seen any since Peter Davison became the Fifth Doctor after Tom Baker. But if past is prologue, and with the Doctor, the past can be the future too, this latest regeneration is great television.

Unfortunately, it isn’t aired on PBS these days. If you want to watch it you need to get BBC America. Damn! I have a niece living in London at the moment and she watches it religiously on what would be regular TV over there. Lucky girl.

And Who knows, you may not have to be stoned to watch it these days.

Danger At Every Corner

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:01:00 -0600

The “Most Trusted Name in News” (CNN) asked the question: “Bicycle Injuries: Is the Right-of-Way Fight Getting Ugly?” For those of us who ride bicycles as a primary mode of transportation, the answer is no — it’s been ugly for a long time already.

The CNN report, which has a written counterpart online, concentrated on the bicycle accidents in New York City, but since the entire United States has been built with a culture and infrastructure designed around automobiles, this is a nation-wide issue. Sure, there are some localities in these United States that are more bike-friendly than others, but with an increasing number of bicyclists sharing the roads with motorists, the problems just escalate.

At the end of November 2009 I was pedaling to work one day, a distance of 3.5 miles, along the busy thoroughfare Mira Mesa Blvd. Generally I stick to the sidewalks on Mira Mesa; the motor vehicle traffic is heavy and fast, but on this day, due to construction on the sidewalk I was in the street.

The cars coming out of the Park’n’Ride were stopped waiting for traffic, but the first car, an Infiniti SUV, was inching ever closer to the street. As I got closer I could see the man was texting on his Blackberry. I was close enough to this man’s vehicle I could make out the Blackberry logo on his phone. He wasn’t paying attention to the traffic and he sure as hell didn’t see me coming, despite my yelling at him.

Obviously, his foot on the brake pedal would occasionally let the brake slip and his car would inch closer to the street. When I was with a few feet of that SUV it lurched forward and I instinctively yanked my way to the right to avoid the fast-moving traffic on my left, hit the curb at about 12 MPH, flew over the handle bars and landed on the other side of the sidewalk.

The man just looked at me and drove off once the traffic cleared. No one else bothered to stop either. My left wrist pulsing with pain and my legs and arms raging from the road burns, I put my Trek bicycle on the bike rack of the next available bus and took the mass transit as far as possible.

To its credit, the Trusty Trek suffered no severe problems, but trying to ride with my wrist in such severe pain was nearly impossible. Once at work the pain and swelling were so severe getting anything done was impossible. So a friend came and picked up me up and took me home and then the next morning to the hospital.

For the next three months my left arm was in casts and a splint and there went riding to and from work on the Trusty Trek. Never got the license plate number of the SUV so there was no legal action I could take. Months before that incident a pedestrian was mowed down by a motorist as he tried to cross the I-15 off ramp onto Mira Mesa Blvd and the pedestrian had the “Walk” light.

That was a fatal hit-and-run, but the driver got away with it. The one policeman left at the scene when I got there just shrugged his shoulders; he knew the drivers coming off that ramp rarely stopped if there was a red light, but there was nothing he could do about it. I told him about a woman who had chased me through a gas station lot after she was forced to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting me (and several pedestrians in the crosswalk) despite the fact that we had the “Walk” light. Apparently she thought she, in her SUV (it always seems to be these monster-size vehicles), had the right-of-way!

It had been my intention to ride into the as station and use the restroom and get a Diet Coke so into the gas station lot I went, not giving any more thought to the crazy woman in the SUV who gave me the finger when she had to stop to let me pass. Bu I looked up to my left and there was that same vehicle with the crazed woman yelling something I couldn’t hear, gunning her SUV in my direction! I quickly changed course and she followed.

To stymie her chase I pedaled between cars where I hoped the SUV couldn’t follow, a risky maneuver itself when you consider the chance someone might open a car door. Anyway, I ended up using the restroom in the Jack-in-the-Box restaurant instead.

These are the worst experiences of course, but there have been many other times when people weren’t paying attention to the entire traffic pattern and nearly hit me or other pedestrians. Motorists routinely block crosswalks when they are waiting for red lights or traffic to move. Anyone who depends on a bicycle or is a daily pedestrian knows this isn’t just a daily occurrence, it’s a constant occurrence at every crosswalk.

With few exceptions, motorists don’t really care about pedestrians or bicyclists.

About that same time there was a man who received a relatively light sentence after targeting bicyclists on his street in the affluent suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. The man said he was tired of seeing these big groups of bicycle enthusiasts riding on his street in Rancho Santa Fe so he decided to do something about it: mow’em all down with his car. He was surprised and angry the court didn’t take his side in the matter. In his mind bicyclists did not have a right to pedal their bikes on his street! And he said as much to the police after the incident and then again in court.

The man is no doubt out of jail by now and seething with even more hatred towards bicyclists. Despite the bike lanes there, I won’t be pedaling through Rancho Santa Fe any time soon.

Yes, bicyclists need to be mindful of the traffic and the laws and more importantly, be respectful of the other people using the roadway, which is why I primarily stick to the sidewalks, even if there’s a bike lane. I too look at these large groups of cyclists pedaling up and down the streets, sometimes three-to-four abreast, and wonder what the hell are they doing? There are other people trying to use that same roadway. Even two-abreast is a bad idea on the road.

But the onus is really on the motorists — they are in control of a one-ton (or larger) weapon. All too often they are distracted by smoking, lighting up cigarettes, eating, talking on phones — texting — you name it, for those of us who commute on bicycles we see it hundreds of times every day. I’ll never forget the look of horror on the face of a woman at that off ramp as she sat in the passenger seat of a car as I started to cross with the “Walk” light and the man driving the car had his complete attention on the westbound traffic, totally ignoring the pedestrian traffic—me—heading in the opposite direction. Not even the woman talking to him could get the driver to focus on all the traffic. And of course he had blocked the crosswalk so to get around him I had to pedal outside the lines, almost into on-coming traffic.

This isn’t a plea for motorists to be more watchful of bicyclists and pedestrians because I know it will go unheeded. Most people are too selfish and self-centered; and being as they are in an automobile they are also in a hurry and well, they need to get where they need to be — fast! Bicyclists and pedestrians are just more impediments to their commute.

All my friends drive motor vehicles of one type or another and all are guilty at one time or another of not paying complete attention to their driving. For the most part it isn’t a constant problem, but with some it nearly is. And if this is ever the subject of conversation nearly all of them will defend their “rights” as motorists and try to put at least some of the blame on pedestrians and bicyclists.

Most of the commuter bicyclists I encounter obey the traffic laws, cross intersections with the “Walk” lights and rarely pedal outside the bike lanes, despite the bike lanes being horribly mangled sections of pavement.

About the only traffic law some of us violate on a regular basis is riding on the sidewalk, but as I told a policeman one day, I wasn’t going to pedal my bike in traffic on Mira Mesa Blvd, I was riding on the sidewalk. He agreed the sidewalk was safer.

Creating more bike lanes isn’t the answer; putting bicycles on the same roadways with motor vehicles is inherently dangerous. To do it right we have to make roadways specifically for bicycles and pedestrians, mega sidewalks if you will. But that would take billions of dollars. There are two close by my place, one that runs along side the I-15 for about a mile and then another that runs nearly the entire length, 10 miles, of California Highway 56.

Cities could partition off bike lanes from the automobile traffic with those orange poles we now see in roads. That would provide some relief and the vast majority of drivers are diligent enough to respect that kind of barrier.

It wouldn’t do much for intersections, especially ones like the on and off ramps we bicyclists encounter every day, like the ones getting on and off the I-15 at Mira Mesa Blvd., but it’s a start. But this is just a rant, blowing off steam.

Earlier I wrote the onus is on the motorists, but in reality the responsibility lies with bicyclists and pedestrians. We always have to be diligent and watch out for motorists who are only looking out for themselves. No listening to the iPod while pedaling, no talking on the phone. If you’re going to commute by bicycle, you have to be alert 100% of the time. And that includes the traffic coming up behind you. If it’s possible, avoid the street and ride on the sidewalk.

A motorist can often avoid injury if in an accident on a city street, but all too often it just takes one accident for a bicyclist to wind up in the emergency room or the morgue.

An American Icon

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:01:00 -0600

If you were a teenager in the 1950’s, ’60’s and ’70’s, then you probably watched American Bandstand every week. Even into the 1980’s, although by then it was beginning to lose its luster. Every band, every musician, every singer that hit the top 40 in those years found their way on to the American Bandstand stage. It was for the most part a dance show, so in the 1960’s and ’70’s the show tried to adapt a little to meet the hippie and punk influences on the Top 40.

What the show would do was play a bunch of records from the Top 40 and the kids who attended would get to dance on TV to the music. Then there would be the guest, a band or singer making a splash on the Top 40, and they would lip sync their big hit.

It’s a long list of acts that include A-ha, the 5th Dimension, Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Aerosmith — seriously, Aerosmith — Anita Baker, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, the Bay City Rollers (remember the “new” Beatles?), Debbie Boone, Pat Boone, David Bowie, Bread, Bow Wow Wow, the hardest working man in show business, James Brown, The Byrds, Boomtown Rats, Bee Gees, Beach Boys, Johnny Cash and Rosanne Cash, David Cassidy and Shaun Cassidy, Sam Cooke, Patsy Cline, Chubby Checker, the Cowsills, Dick Dale, Dr. John, Dr. Hook, Fats Domino, Sonny and Cher, The Doors, Duane Eddy, Dokken, the Everly Brothers and Righteous Brothers, the Mamas and Papas, Fabian, the Four Seasons, Four Tops, the Box Tops, Aretha Franklin, Connie Francis, Norman Greenbaum (remember him?), Iron Butterfly, Isaac Hayes, Buddy Holly, Pointer Sisters, Gene Pitney, Roy Orbison … it’s a long list, too long to post here, but click This Link if you’re interested in the entire catalogue of performers.
 Interestingly enough, the two most influential acts in the history of rock’n’roll never appeared on American Bandstand: the Beatles and Elvis Presley.

American Bandstand was thee show for decades. It was like Casey Kasem’s American Top 40, but cooler, more popular. And of course it pre-dated AT40 by 16 years. July 4th, 1970 for the latter and … some time in 1952 for the former, with Bob Horn as the host and then in 1956, after Horn was busted for a DUI and doing naughty things with the teens on American bandstand, Dick Clark, who went on to host the show for the next 33 years. He was the host when it went national and then again when it moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles in 1964.
 Try as I might, I can’t find an actual airdate for AB or for the exact date Dick Clark started as host.

In 1964 Clark became the executive producer of AB and eventually the big boss of all, his fame and influence growing with each episode. He formed Dick Clark Productions and started producing everything from variety shows to Rockin’ New Years Eve to TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes and the American Music Awards which Clark created when his network, ABC, lost the contract to broadcast the Grammy Awards. Although the AMA’s never surpassed the Grammy’s, it became a serious awards program.

Dick Clark produced so many programs through his company, he touched anyone and everyone who watched television for 40 years. It’s a common belief that Elvis Presley and the Beatles were the most influential acts in rock and roll, but Dick Clark was the most powerful and influential person in the business.

Dick Clark was the man! If he spotlighted an entertainer’s new single on American Bandstand, it was guaranteed to go gold. At the time, Dick Clark actually was the Most Interesting Man in the World. By 1960 American Bandstand was so popular, it was being quoted and noted in all the major media. The theme song became a hit itself — everyone recognized it. I would bet that those reading this and remember the show are probably humming or singing it right now.

Although Elvis never performed on AB, his music was prominently featured for years. When the King was drafted into the Army, Clark devoted an entire show, 90 minutes, to Elvis on his 24th birthday, January 8, 1959. If Elvis Presley was the king, Dick Clark was the kingmaker.

And then for years the Beatles dominated the Top 40 and always found their way on to American Bandstand, but never as guest performers. Not as a band or solo artists.

But everyone else who was in the Top 40 at one time or another made his or her way to the Bandstand stage. If that wasn’t groundbreaking enough, American Bandstand led the way on Civil Rights on television: it was the first desegregated show on television. Besides hosting African-American acts, right from the beginning, the fans in the seats and the dancers were desegregated. And Clark did it without any fanfare or expectation of getting any accolades for being so forward thinking. He just did it.

Desegregating his show was good business sense of course. Much of the best, most popular music of the day was coming from African-Americans. The Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Ike and Tina Turner, Fats Domino; you name the band, or any act from the Motown label, and they were on American Bandstand.

If Dick Clark and his TV show were to have any credibility with his target audience, teenagers, he had to feature all the music and musicians the teens were listening to at the time. And if he was going to feature Black artists then he was going to have Black dancers and audience members as well. It seems pretty quaint now, but 50 years ago, when Blacks had to ride in the back of the bus and Black Children couldn’t go to the same schools as White kids, an integrated TV show was a big deal.

Of course, as a young viewer it never occurred to me AB was breaking down any barriers, I was just interested in the music and when I became old enough to appreciate the female gender … err … the female dancers. It was like Playboy After Dark for teen boys with exploding hormones.
 What can I say? My lecherous ways started early.
 And I watched Playboy After Dark as well.
 But once my brother Rick started stealing Playboys from Kubiak’s Drug Store, my prurient interest in AB waned.

Richard Wagstaff Clark was born on November 30, 1929 in Bronxville, NY and passed away on April 18, 2012, after having a heart attack following an outpatient procedure at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA.

One of the central figures that brought a musical genre to the American public and then to the world, his influence cannot be overstated. Dick Clark, America’s Oldest Teenager, will be missed.

Titanic Blur

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:01:00 -0600

You know what’s really funny? There are people who think the primary legacy of the Titanic disaster is a love story. Thank you James Cameron.

There was an ad on TV for some company hawking replica Titanic memorabilia, the centerpiece being that pendant from the fictional account of the ship’s fateful cruise in the popular movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

So, just how significant is that blue diamond? Did such a jewel actually exist on the Titanic? Well, almost. In fact, there was a love story similar to the one depicted in the film and could have been the inspiration for the ill-fated love story between Jack and Rose. And the guy in that story, Samuel Morley, gave his true love, Kate Florence Phillips, a very expensive sapphire!

Like the movie, Morley perished and Phillips survived, but the broken-hearted Phillips was able to keep her sapphire without having to hide it or her romance. She actually went back to England to have the child conceived on the Titanic.

Now that would have been a great story for a film. Married man runs off to America on the Titanic with his mistress, they conceive a child, ship goes down, blah-blah-blah.

That story just wasn’t compelling enough for Cameron, and who am I to criticize? His film won 11 Academy Awards and grossed over a billion dollars before he re-released it in 3-D. It made household names out of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and James Cameron became the most powerful director in Hollywood. In the world.

The real story of Sam and Kate was one of an illicit love affair between a cheating husband and a much younger woman, not exactly the “innocence of love” story one wants to make the centerpiece of a $200,000,000 movie. Some people might not like watching a guy cheating on his wife, leaving her in the lurch to run off with his teenage mistress. Hell, the audience might cheer when the man gets what’s coming to him in the end.

So, set up this clash of the classes story. Roust about ne’er-do-well (by the time’s standards) Jack Dawson wins two steerage tickets on the Titanic in a poker game (nice touch) and grabs his best bud and rushes off to make the voyage.

Rose DeWitt Bukater, from a wealthy family with a good name, is heading to America with her mother to be the sad and reluctant bride in a planned marriage to an egotistical bully who treats her like a possession. The love story gets started when Jack saves her from committing suicide. She’s about to jump off the fantail into the prop wash, Jack sweet talks her and … blah-blah-blah.

Who doesn’t love a love story like that? Well, most of us heterosexual manly men really don’t give a shit — outwardly anyway. Okay, raise your hand if you’re a manly man and shed a tear at the end. We’ll wait.
 I fuckin’ knew it! What a bunch of namby-pamby wimpy boys! I bet you all snuck into all three Twilight movies too, or went with your wives and acted like you were doing them a favor!
 I’m going to rent them from Red Box …

Men have feelings too ya know. We loved it when Kate stripped down so Leo could do his sketch (thanks for satisfying our baser instincts Kate and James) and then in the cargo hold when they got that old car all sweaty. But in the end when Jack and Rose are floating on that piece of furniture, talking about the future, then he dies from exposure … as he sinks beneath the surface to join the rest of the dead — man! It just ain’t fair! The rich bully survived! Rose lost her one true love!

But at the very end when Rose finally slips this Mortal Coil she is reunited with Jack on that grand staircase in the Titanic, pre-sinking of course. The worst part is, she flings that nearly priceless jewel into the ocean where the Titanic rests! Why couldn’t she do the right thing — just once in this movie — and give it either to her granddaughter or to the explorer who was searching for the wreck and that jewel? Or sell it!

No, she has to do the romantic thing and throw the jewel into the ocean … sigh

There is so much wrong with that movie, but if Cameron had made it to satisfy knuckleheads like me (and so many others) he probably wouldn’t have the second highest grossing movie of all time. He is also the master of the highest grossing movie of all time, Avatar.
 My take on Avatar: predictable plot, predictable plot points, boring, boring, boring. A retelling of the American Indian Wars, but this time the Indians win and unbridled greed loses. A nice story, but unbridled greed always wins in real life. It has more and better-paid lawyers.
 But who am I to argue? It grossed over two billion dollars.

Back to the Titanic. This past weekend marked the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic and while there were some shows about the real story of the ill-fated voyage on TV, the most popular shows centered around the movie version — which is a fairly accurate depiction of what happened to the ship in general on that voyage, but that most important story of that film, for most people, is the one between Jack and Rose.

But this is the part that is at least a little disturbing: to “commemorate” the anniversary of the sinking, companies like the one I saw advertising on TV all weekend are commemorating the actual sinking by hawking a replica of the fictional “Heart of the Ocean” pendant at the center of the film. That would be a nice touch were someone selling memorabilia to mark the 15th anniversary of the movie’s release (which comes up in December), but to commemorate the actual event?
 Actually, we can bet this same merchandise will be on sale when that anniversary rolls around.

All anyone has to do to make some money off the Titanic is pay the licensing fees for the White Star Line and Titanic the movie and voila! The money tree starts a shaking! But does that really honor those brave souls who died 100 years ago? Or the survivors? It’s probably a good bet that none of the estates of the dead or survivors get recompensed by any of this commercialism.

Some, like Samuel Morley and Kate Florence Phillips, will be remembered in news stories found on the inside pages of the Weekend or entertainment sections of the newspapers and they might even get mentioned on British TV, but that’s about all the remembrance they will get this week.

The lion’s share of coverage about the Titanic will be tied to the movie, and with good reason. Titanic was just re-released in 3-D. No wonder the predominant “memories” people have about the sinking of R.M.S. Titanic include fictional characters and a prop from the movie.

It’s no crime for James Cameron (and Universal and 20th Century Fox) to re-release one of the most popular movies of all time and make even more millions from it. Not at all. And just for the record, I would love to have a teeny piece of that pie, maybe even just a sizable crumb, but the movie has over shadowed the actual event.

Maybe it’s unavoidable. The Titanic sunk 100 years and two days ago and as far as anyone knows, there are no living survivors of the voyage. Even their children have passed on for the most part. The event itself is deep in the receding collective memory of society and the freshest memory of the Titanic comes from an iconic film starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. And a fictional jewel.

To his great credit, James Cameron is involved in efforts to save the Titanic from tourists and scavengers with actual Titanic explorer Dr. Robert D. Ballard. Really! When Ballard was on the Colbert Report he said that for $66,000 (give or take a few bucks) one could get in a deep water submersible and go visit the Titanic.

That’s two miles down! Kudos to anyone with the cajones to make that trip! Anyway, the tourism is breaking up the old ship and people like Ballard want to preserve what’s left.

But this is America where greed is the religion and money is god, so maybe it’s as it should be. Anyone with an idea (notice, I didn’t say “good” idea) and the means to pay the licensing fees gets to make some money off both the actual sinking and the film. And they can mix the facts of the former with the fiction of the latter and make it all one — to make said buck.

Doing that though just seems immoral. Real people died or lost loved ones on the ship. Tying their memories to the fictional characters and artifacts of the film — and replicas of those props no less — diminishes the memory of the actual victims. They deserve to be remembered more than Kate Winslet, Leo DiCaprio and James Cameron.

For the record, I like the movie and admire the principle actors in the film, including Kathy Bates (playing Molly Brown) and Tom Paxton and I really admire James Cameron. He knows how to tell a good story. Let’s not forget he gave us the Terminator.

But this latest trend to make the fictional story of Jack and Rose a part of the actual sinking of R.M.S. Titanic, that’s immoral and “they” should stop doing it. It sullies not just the memory of the Titanic, but the movie and its participants as well.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll go see a matinee of the 3-D re-release — by myself — and if you see or hear me sniffling at the end it’s because I have a cold … no, allergies. Yeah, that’s it allergies.

Friday the 13th and Other Ghostly Activities

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:01:00 -0600

It’s Friday the 13th. Do you know where your ghosts are?

The last time I tried to write about Ghost Hunters, I got off into some ethereal tangent about fun parks … what the hell are they called? Amusement parks. Anyway, Ghosts. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it — I hope.

As any fan of the super popular SyFy network show Ghost Hunters knows, this is the last season that will have T.A.P.S. co-founder Grant Wilson in the cast. It’s kind of sad, if you’ve been following the show for years and it’s really sad for the cast members who have been working with Wilson and co-founder Jason Hawes for many years.
 Hawes and Wilson started The Atlantic Paranormal Society as a side project to their day jobs as plumbers for Roto-Rooter in Warwick, Rhode Island. Once the show went on the air and became popular it became their primary occupation. Since then they have become honorary plumbers for Roto-Rooter and work occasional plumbing jobs ... as guest plumbers? Whatever works for them!

It looks like tech master Steve Gonsalves will take over as the second Lead Investigator, which makes sense because he’s been with this crew the longest. But, you never know. They could pull someone from Ghost Hunters International to take the lead. Kris Williams just moved to GHI for this past season and she said on her Facebook page she had big news coming. Of course her big news could be completely unrelated.
 Also, in her first season on Ghost Hunters International Kris Williams had a serious disagreement with fellow investigators after some of them cut themselves in a “bloodletting” incident in hopes of drawing out the spirits of an ancient South American culture. She may want to leave that show, considering it was so upsetting for her that Williams wrote about it on her Facebook page.

Anyway, I’ve been watching for six years, give or take, and have seen the cast change many times. To be honest, in all that time it never occurred to me there would be detractors and people out there debunking, or trying expose, Ghost Hunters. I liked the show, so why would it matter what others thought?

But, last week I did a little research on the show and was mildly surprised there are not only detractors, but people who have formed groups specifically to refute and expose Ghost Hunters, in particular, The Skeptical Analysis of the Paranormal Society (SAPS). Well, maybe the pusillanimous naysayers are saps!

Seriously though, TAPS needs someone looking over their shoulders, skeptics to debunk TAPS and their investigations. It may hurt some feelings in the Ghost Hunters crews, but someone needs to keep you honest, and by “you,” I mean them, not me.

Some of the criticisms: what TAPS does is pseudo-science. Well, yeah, but anything not accepted by “real” scientists is considered pseudo-science. Next? Their methodology has been called illogical as well as unscientific. I’ll go with that, a little. In GH’s defense, they actually do try to test things repeatedly during investigations. If say they hear a voice in an attic they will be sure to send other investigators into the attic to see if those other investigators encounter the same activity.

Here’s what bothers me on occasion when Jay and Grant send other investigators into the attic (or any other area) looking to see if a phenomenon occurs with others: they often tell the other investigators, “We heard voices in the attic, go check it out and see if you have the same experience.”

Okay, now Hawes and Wilson have just set up an expectation and let’s be honest, the entire team enters an investigation with expectations. They may deny it, but when you hear them speak during the show, especially when they are on their way to a location, their less than solid skepticism comes out.

It would be better for the team’s credibility if they stopped telling each other, during the investigation, what any of them have experienced. So, if say Amy Bruni and Adam Berry see a hobby horse move on its own in the basement, they should steer the others to the basement without any encouragement of what the other investigators should experience.
 The investigators usually travel in pairs and Bruni and Berry are usually paired up together.

And of course the Ghost Hunters’ use of equipment comes under scrutiny, like it’s being used incorrectly or, the team just assumes activity on a meter means paranormal activity. There is some truth to that. Sometimes I’ve seen them use an infrared thermometer and come to a paranormal conclusion, and I’m wondering, “Why?”

The one piece of equipment that troubles me, and it gets used quite a bit, is the K2 meter. It detects electro-magnetic fields, EMF’s. Okay, none of the lights on it are lit when they put it on a bed or dresser, etc. Then all of a sudden it starts to light up when the investigators start asking questions. Okay, that’s pretty mysterious and looks to be more than coincidental, but is it really evidence of paranormal activity? I’m voting “no.”

To their credit, the TAPS crew has never told a client their location was haunted because of just K2 or infrared thermometer readings, or any other pieces of equipment that don’t record noise/voice or visual phenomenon.

What a positive declaration of a haunting requires for the TAPS crew has to be recording on either audio or visual equipment. The team could be wrong in some of their conclusions with video especially, but for the most part the recordings get analyzed by several of the members and if one doesn’t consider it evidence, then it is discarded.

In fact, there have been occasions when the team recorded voices, but it wasn’t enough for Hawes and Wilson to tell the client their home or building was haunted, but I’m thinking, “No way! That place is haunted!”

That’s one of the things I like about Ghost Hunters. Not every investigation used on TV results in a haunting and often enough, the TAPS crew finds logical explanations for much of the phenomenon.

Pseudo-science or not, Ghost Hunters is a very entertaining show. The participants seem very earnest in their quest for the truth and I would be totally surprised to find out Jason, Grant and their crew were faking any findings or altering video to create images. It’s possible of course.

Back when I was a producer for local access broadcasting in Milwaukee, WI, I learned all the tricks for doing just that and not just visually, but aurally as well. So it’s not out of the question. I just don’t believe the producers or crew of Ghost Hunters engage in fraud.

And the crews have come up with some pretty startling voices with clearly discernable sentences and words, laughter, crying and threats, some so audible and creepy they’ve sent chills down my spine. The visual evidence isn’t nearly as convincing, but they have recorded picture frames, toys and other objects moving on their own and, on a couple occasions, recorded ghostly human forms on their various cameras.

On several episodes the crew’s remote cameras mysteriously moved on their own, the entire tripod being turned around or the camera tilting in one direction and then another. There could be any number of explanations, but when the investigators check out the cameras, they cameras are usually solidly locked in place and could not be pushed or twisted by sudden drafts or even gravity. And, as stated earlier, they don’t stage any of it.

You might be wondering why I would be interested in a show about ghosts and why would I choose to believe such entities exist? Personal experience. Years ago I encountered the ghost of my father, not once, but several times. And this is the really creepy part: it was in my third floor flat, a place my father had never visited. These events occurred over ten years after his death.

Now Grant Wilson is in his final episodes. He’s listed in the credits as an executive producer, along with Jason Hawes and we can expect that won’t change. In his statement, Hawes said that his friendship, as well as his business partnership, with Wilson would continue. As of a couple seasons ago, the Wilson and Hawes families have co-owned a hotel somewhere in New England. Don’t remember exactly where, but GH fans learned of it because the hotel was having all sorts of alleged paranormal activity. So, Hawes and Wilson called in the GHI crew to do an investigation.
 It’s the Spalding Inn, in Whitefield, New Hampshire.

GHI? Ghost Hunters International. They are an offshoot of Ghost Hunters and that crew goes all over the world investigating allegedly haunted locations. That show isn’t as interesting as the original series, mainly because when it first came on my impression was that the skepticism of the GHI crew wasn’t as vigorous as that of GH.

That’s changed somewhat, most especially this last season when Kris Williams, once a member of the Ghost Hunters crew, joined the international team. Her presence seems to have added some credibility to the show, although it’s a good guess they would all disagree.

Of course Kris Williams is quite attractive so she brings that element to Ghost Hunters International as well. Ah yes, Kris Williams and Susan Slaughter on GHI and Amy Bruni on Ghost Hunters, the eye candy of the shows.

The crews and producers might deny it, but that’s a big deal for the show and why not? Sex appeal adds viewers. Sadly, for the women there are few men on either show to match the sex appeal of Slaughter, Williams and Bruni, although I’m sure Steve Gonsalves and Dave Tango have their share of amorous admirers.

Regardless of their sex appeal, the women investigators of the Ghost Hunters franchise are dedicated paranormal investigators and anyone who took them to be fools or bimbos would be seriously rebuked. They are relative experts in their fiends, which for Kris Williams includes genealogy and history.

Ghost Hunters … Grant Wilson is leaving. What a shame. But I’ll continue to watch, it’s one of my favorite TV shows. I’m waiting to see a ghost appear and smile for one of their remote cameras. And if it doesn’t happen in my lifetime, I’ll try to do it in my afterlife. It looks almost cool to be a ghost. Think of all the mischief one could cause as a ghost! Just saying.
•••• •••• ••••• •••• ••••
On a side note: This is my brother Rick’s birthday. We grew up rather close as kids, despite the fighting and constant terror he inflicted upon me in my wee years. No doubt I’m seriously scarred for life. Regardless, he’s my brother and I love him very much.

It just so happens that in our last phone call a couple days ago we found out — in the first two minutes no less — that our depravity and penchant for the tasteless had lowered the bottom once again! You know, some people grow up as they get older, but some of us just get better!

Happy Birthday Rick!

Good Order and Discipline

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:01:00 -0600

Don’t know how many people have been following this, but a while ago a young Marine, who identified himself as such, said on his Facebook page that he is aligned with the Tea Party and he hates President Obama and would not follow the president’s orders or salute him. Now he’s to get kicked out of the Marine Corps with an other-than-honorable discharge.

Since the Civil War, service members have been forbidden from speaking their minds about such things and insulting the chain-of-command, regardless of what a president, the Commander-in-Chief, might say or do. It just isn’t done. It was that way when I was in, hell, we couldn’t even make jokes about President Jerry Ford and if you remember, Ford was one of the funniest presidents we’ve ever had!

If you don’t remember, just check Youtube for Jerry Ford, Saturday Night Live and you’ll see.

Sergeant Gary Stein sets up a Facebook page specifically to bash President Obama and gets caught by his command. Well, the actual title of the page is The Armed Forces Tea Party, but even that in itself would be violating the rules of the military because service members are forbidden from promoting political causes publicly. But then to insult someone in the chain-of-command on top of that, it’s an affront to morale and unit cohesion.

Now, we have former military serving in government and all of them know the rules of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and we know that military personnel serving during the Bush 43 Administration were dealt with the same when they criticized President Bush over the Iraq War.

What do San Diego Congressmen Duncan Hunter II and Darrell Issa say? Sgt. Stein is within his rights and shouldn’t be kicked out of the military? Really Duncan? You served as a Marine Corps officer in Iraq and you think insulting someone in the chain-of-command is okay? Talk about a double fucking standard!

As for Darrell Issa, he’s always been one of the most virulent partisans in the Republican Party ever since he was first elected in 2000. He was also a low quality enlisted man when first in the Army. He got out on a hardship discharge, but later re-entered the Army as an officer and performed with excellence, receiving accolades from all his superior officers. So, Darrell Issa should know better.

But this is partisan politics, the meanest it’s been in decades, so if you’re a Republican politician the bottom line is you have to support the Tea Party, no matter how insane or disrespectful the position.

When the “Four Generals” criticized President Bush in 2004 over the Iraq War, the right wing was demanding their retirements be cut or taken away completely over their remarks — and they waited until they retired to voice their opinions. They were called traitors, among other names for saying publicly what happened to be true.
 The Four Generals: Barry McCaffery, Jack Keane, William Odom and John Batiste.

Then there was General Eric Shinseki. Army Chief of Staff right before the Iraq War, he told a senate committee the military would need several hundred thousand troops in Iraq to hold the occupation. That was the end of his career. He had clashed with Donald Rumsfeld and his chief advisor, Paul Wolfowitz, over the number of troops that would be needed during the occupation of Iraq up to that point and like many good officers, Shinseki chose to end his career, years earlier than he had to, rather than be involved in a war he didn’t support.

While Shinseki disagreed with his civilian bosses on how to prosecute the war, he didn’t insult anyone in his chain-of-command, not while he wore the uniform. His criticism, like that of the Four Generals, came after his retirement.

And then in October 2006, General John Abizaid told the same committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Shinseki had been essentially correct in his troop assessments before the Iraq War. That was when the military and President Bush were pushing for the surge that many claim worked. But that’s a topic for another day.

The point is, none of these generals were insubordinate while in uniform. Like most people in the military, they understood the ramifications of criticizing their chain-of-command publicly and didn’t do it while they wore the uniform.

Sgt Stein, on the other hand, did criticize and insult his Commander-in-Chief publicly, a gross act of insubordination. And it affects morale and unit cohesion. Everyone in his command will be on edge about what the say, when they say it and what’s on their Facebook pages. And they won’t completely trust those they serve with, an important facet of military life. If a service member insults or criticizes someone in their chain-of-command, just in off-the-cuff remarks, like many of us have done, could it get back to command and end their career? I can guarantee there are people in Camp Pendleton walking on eggshells today.

The most troubling aspect of the Sgt. Stein case is that a number of my friends who are veterans and are conservative in their political views, support Sgt. Stein. I assumed their political views would stop at the military’s door. Apparently not. Like Duncan Hunter and Darrell Issa, my friends believe Sgt. Stein is perfectly within his rights to be insubordinate.

That’s less a comment on the case itself, and really a comment on how polarized we as a nation have become. When we can’t even agree on whether military personnel have a right to be insubordinate, or more precisely the definition of insubordination, things have gotten pretty bad.

The military board that heard his case, a board that no doubt has more than a couple conservatives on it, recommended Stein be given an other-than-honorable discharge on grounds that the sergeant violated “good order and discipline” with his remarks.

Sgt. Stein, through his lawyers, will appeal the decision in both military and civilian courts, but I don’t see this decision being overturned. Cooler heads, both conservative and otherwise, won’t undermine the authority of the military command over those they lead. In the larger sense, this is a national security issue: if soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are allowed to be insubordinate based on political views, it undermines the entire command structure of the Defense Department.

The military doesn’t work without that discipline. Kicking Sgt. Gary Stein out of the Marines is the correct decision.

Happy Easter!

nospam@example.com (Tim Forkes) — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 06:01:00 -0600

To all my Family, Happy Easter! I hope you and your families are having a wonderful day! Especially the family of my Lovely Sister Mary Lou! Two new children: Kaylyn, daughter of Anthony and Jen, and Jaxson, son of Nancy and Josh! Gramma is ecstatic!

To all my friends, Happy Easter! For my closest friends here in San Diego, you are the closest to family as a person can have and having no family in California, you’re it for me! Thank you for your friendship!

There are so many things that can be written about Easter, from its origins to the various observances in practice today and much of it has been posted here in the past. For me, it’s another opportunity to express my gratitude for all those people in my life who make it fun, interesting, warm and loved.

May everyone have a wonderful day filled with love and serenity — and chocolate bunnies! And peeps! We gotta have Peeps! I love Peeps — and chocolate eggs! Peeps and chocolate bunnies and eggs! And jelly beans!

My glucose reading is going to be through the roof!