Summer Serial: Part III

Our second attempt at a rally was much more successful. Realizing that I didn’t possess the organizational skills that Ray did, I let him pick the day of the event. He took pity on me and sold me some new signs at cost for the rally that hadn’t been written on already. We held the rally on the Thursday before independence Day Weekend, thinking that most people who were planning on taking a long weekend would probably go into work the day before. To go with the forty mailroom employees I’d gathered together (though many of them were reluctant to trust me again), Ray brought in some outside help from other cities, making the rally a lot bigger and more effective.
The strategy worked, and we got the attention of our employers. Along with managing partners from McElroy-Levine, and LaPine-Waits, Jack showed up towards the end of the rally with our Managing partner, June Reid. I agreed to meet with Jack to talk over the possibility of unionizing, and he agreed to encourage other mailroom managers to do the same.
I was flying high that night. It had been a large victory for us, and it looked like we’d finally get some satisfaction. That night, I went drinking with Ray and a few of his trucking buddies. He introduced me to his assistant, Tim, who had been working with Ray since the 1980s.
Tim was bordering on suicidal when Ray found him. He was in the trucking industry after having spent ten years as a car dealer for Jaguar. Tim went through the training that all employees went through. This included seminars on how to sell the product, informational classes on the quality of Jags, and all other kinds of lessons designed to make him into the kind of salesman that the good people at Jaguar wanted. One of these classes taught employees to “look the part.”
“A good salesman will show the utmost confidence in his product,” went the crappy instructional video. “He will dress sharp at all times, own the car he’s trying to sell, and even prove his faith in the company by having it repaired at the dealer. “Such is the confidence of a Jaguar salesman in his product.”
Tim was probably the only person who bought that crap. With his shite salary, he leased a brand new Jag at an employee discount $500 under the sticker price. It had all the accoutrements, and he bought a couple of $1,000 suits on a credit card with an interest rate he couldn’t afford, and even rented an expensive apartment he didn’t have the money for. He told himself that by looking the part, he would have no problem earning enough on commission to support this lifestyle. After all, why would the video lie?
In the first three months, Tim’s car broke down, and like a faithful, confident employee, he took it to the dealer where they were able to fix it at the charge of a regular consumer. The second time it broke down, Tim was forced to give it up because he couldn’t afford all these things. He made his monthly quotas, but someone neglected to mention that rookies don’t receive commission until their second year (in which they would cease to be rookies). Tim’s tenure with Jaguar would end six months later when he would be fired for “not exhibiting the pride and class that goes with being a Jaguar employee.” Bankruptcy would strike three months later, and Tim would be forced to move to a crappy basement studio apartment (a few doors down from me, coincidentally) and give up the Rabbit he had used to replace his Jaguar. To this day, Tim is giving half of his paycheck to the IRS who will never be satisfied with the amount of money he gives them. Tim, as I like to say, is shark bait.
But perhaps that’s why I liked him so much. There was a naïve innocence that my mother used to sum up as having “blood in the heart, and shit in the head.” It was from her that I inherited my rapist’s wit. While people like Tim and I are constantly berated for our innocent nature, we have the luxury of never having to be trusted by anyone. Neither of us has had to deal with responsibility beyond the responsibility for ourselves, and neither of us could handle it if we did. I was starting to see why Ray liked me so much; I was just another schmuck he could push around.
But I didn’t mind at the time. I was more intent on getting my union. Over drinks, Tim, Ray and I discussed the best strategy for this meeting would be.
“I fucking wish I could go to this thing. I really hate to see you fuck all this up.”
“Thanks, Ray.” I was getting used to his blunt lack of faith in me.
“The problem is that they can just say they met with you, and not give you shit,” said Tim.
“Men are talking here, asshole. Shut your fucking mouth and you might learn something for once.” Ray didn’t allow Tim to talk; he was more of a listener. Ray continued, “The goddamn dilemma here is that they can fucking sit and smile nice at your dumb ass for an hour, and then piss off without having actually fuckin’ listened to you.”
“Can’t I promise to strike if they don’t compromise with me?”
“Fuck, no. You can, but they won’t give a shit. A team of monkeys tomorrow could replace you wet-heads and no one would notice. The only reason they don’t is for licensing reasons.”
“Well, what was the point to all of this?”
“Don’t fuckin’ question me, I’ll tell you what the point is. If you were to walk into this meeting with that asshole tomorrow and accidentally drop a bag of money on his desk and then leave, who knows how those conversations could have gone?”
“You mean, a bribe?”

”Don’t act like a naïve bitch, cocksucker. Yes, a bribe.”
“What if I get caught?”
“You give him the right amount of money, and you won’t have to worry about that.”
“But, I don’t have that kind of money.”
“True. But the Teamsters pension fund may be willing to make a considerable donation to your cause if you promise to cooperate with us in the future.” I looked uncertain, so Ray showed me a softer side for the first and last time. “Look. I know it’s a hard fuckin’ world out there, and this isn’t really your type of thing. But just think, you’ll only have to do this once, and you’re home free. You’ll get your union, and we’ll have a lifelong partnership, working to make your trade a better one.”
“And you really think this is the only way?”

”With your negotiating skills, I can’t possibly imagine another fuckin’ way.”
And so it was agreed. Ray got me the money the next day, and I went to the meeting with a large duffel bag full of god knows how much money. I figured I’d tell Jack it was a few hundred thousand if he asked.

The plan didn’t work in the way I’d hoped it would. It could be argued that my failure was due to my lack of skills in negotiation, but I would urge that person to consider the fact that Ray’s plan wasn’t sound to begin with.
I showed up at the meeting and sat down. Jack immediately wanted to know what I was holding in my hand.
“What do you think it is?” It was all I could muster. My palms were sweating and I’d been breathing very heavily. I could feel the blood from my ulcer rising in my stomach, but I struggled to keep it down.
“I don’t know, is it for me?”
“Yes.” I sheepishly got up and handed him the bag. He opened it and stared at if for at least a minute. He started thumbing through it.
“How much is in here?”
“A few hundred thousand.”
“Bullshit. How much, exactly.”
“About…four…teen…hundred.” Jack looked up at me. I knew I should have counted it.
“You have no idea, do you?”
“No.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re pathetic.” He placed the bag back on the desk. “Well, I’m fairly certain there’s a lot more in there than fourteen hundred, but I’m still going to say no.”
“What?”
“That’s right you idiot.” He started walking for the door with the bag of money in his hand. “You know, just because I don’t give a fuck about you brain dead animals, it doesn’t mean that I’m corrupt. I’ve wanted to get rid of your worthless ass for a few weeks now, and now I have a reason. June is going to hear about this.”
He made his way for the managing partner’s office with me in tow. I begged with him not to tell her. I begged him to give me my job back, and I promised to not to bother him again about a union, but he wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t until he reached for June Reid’s door and knocked that our fortunes finally reversed. As we waited for June to get to the door, I begged him some more, his face started turning red, and he fell on the floor.

At first I thought it was a heart attack, but Betty, June’s secretary, would later inform us it was a stroke. She watched the whole thing happen. She watched Jack collapse. She watched me stand there without a clue as to what to do. She watched June open the door, look at me, look at the money, pick up the money, place it in her desk drawer and instruct Betty to call an ambulance. Jack would spend the next three days unconscious, the next three months unable to make an audible sound, and by the time he would be able to finally speak of my indiscretion six months later, I would be long gone from Young-Neil. We were in.

To Be Continued…

Summer Serial: Part II

Starting a union wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. I figured that it wouldn’t be too difficult, given that groups were legal and even encouraged, but I was wrong. I started off by doing some research into what my options were. I discovered that I could register with an association, even if they hadn’t traditionally worked with people in the service industry.
I started out with those who were most likely to help us. I tried everyone from the AFL/CIO to the American Bar Association. I know that last one was a stretch, but I was getting desperate. It wasn’t until a representative of the Teamsters contacted me that I felt like I actually stood a chance of being selected. His name was Ray Pistone, and he’d been the local representative of truckers in our town. He’d been around for years, starting out as a truck driver, and soon finding that he had a knack for organizing people. He’d started his local chapter in the 1960s, and had been running it ever since. I was a little surprised that he wanted anything to do with me, but when I spoke with him, he let me know he felt that mailrooms were an untapped resource.
“You guys have been working under the oppressive arm of some of the country’s sleaziest fuckin’ people. You take all their shit, and you do it with a fuckin’ smile. I think this particular episode with your boss shows just how much you fuckers need some fuckin’ representation. It’s a dirty goddamn world out there, and we want to get your fuckin’ backs.” Pistone was born in New Jersey, a fact that was obvious both from his accent and his colorful vocabulary. But he said all the right things, and I was prepared to do whatever I needed to do.
“Go in and talk to this fuckin’ jagoff boss of yours. See how his shit turns when you bring up the fuckin’ idea.”
“See how his shit turns?” This wasn’t a local term.
“Yeah, goddamnit. See what the fuck kind of goddamn fuckin’ shit this asshole takes from you when you piss on his goddamn sense of self respect…goddamnit.”
I didn’t understand that last part either, but I sensed that he wanted me to talk to Jack, and see if he’d agree to our unionizing. So I went and brought my idea up with Jack. I didn’t mention that we had already found the Teamsters when I spoke with him. I wanted to see what he was going to say first.
“Only on the coldest of cold days in hell when Satan himself freezes his nipples off, and has to come up to earth just to keep from freezing solid will I agree to this. You worthless people don’t need this crap and you’re a dime a dozen. I could find three monkeys to do this job better than you ingrates, but the lawyers won’t let me do it; something about working in a dangerous environment. So if you think you can strong arm me into this crap, you’re dead wrong my friend.”
It wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for. I was crushed at his reaction, and I couldn’t see why he wouldn’t want this for us. After all, wouldn’t it mean that he could get better trained, more qualified employees? I was surprised at what he’d said, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I went to Ray, and he suggested that I hold a rally. “That’ll turn those ambulance-chasing pussies on their ends. There’s nothing these shyster-bastards want more than to keep their name intact. They’ll fucking do it, the fucks,” were his exact words.

There were only four of us in the Young-Neil mailroom. I knew I’d need more people to get involved, so I went to some other firms, and approached them with my idea. They were receptive to the idea, getting very excited when they heard about the rally. There’s nothing that people love more than to stand up to their cruel oppressors. I got all the mailroom employees from McElroy-Levine, Rosenbaum-Fouche and LaPine-Waits. All together, we had about forty people.
I was very excited on the day of the rally. I’d been putting together posters that Ray sold to me from his rallying days at a reasonable price. I had to replace “piano tuners” with “mailroom employees,” but it wasn’t too bad. We started as seven in the morning, being sure that people would see us as they came into the office. We started out at our building, and made our way to the other firms’ offices.
I had one of my coworkers, Allen keep tabs on how many people saw us, and how many people came to ask about what we were doing. At first, Allen didn’t really know what was going on. He thought we were there for a picnic, and he’d brought a sandwich and a Frisbee. I had to explain to him exactly why we were there, and he suddenly got very upset. Apparently, he didn’t want to unionize. He was a little slow. He thought it was a gay-rights march, so I had to explain to him that we were in fact not there to support gay marriage. I made a note that he may have some pent-up insecurities there. Allen had come to work at Young-Neil as a parolee from California. He had learned to read in prison, and was now proud of the fact that he could read the newspaper. He’d do it every morning while we were doing his work for him. He knew that we knew he was on parole, and so he used it to threaten us. None of us were interested in going against him, so we did what he said.
The rally seemed to be energetic. We circled the buildings with gusto, and in no time, we had covered half the city before noon. After a few hours, I realized that we didn’t have the kind of audience I was hoping for, but we kept going. I realized that when you do something like this, you want to call the local news stations so they can cover it. It was a mistake that Ray would make painfully obvious to me later on.
Periodically, I would go to Allen ask him what kind of audience we had, “how many people do you have so far?”
“I haven’t been keeping track asshole. Do something, bitch.”
It wasn’t until around two in the afternoon that I saw Ray. He pulled up in a burgundy Cadillac and grabbed me by the arm.
“Are you so fuckin’ stupid you can’t organize a goddamn rally without fuckin’ it up you dumb shit? I swear to god I’ll have to fuckin’ do this myself if you can’t pull your head out of your ass you little fart.” This was obviously a shock to me. I knew there weren’t as many people at the rally as I would have liked, but I thought we were doing okay. “How the fuck do you expect to get anyone’s attention like this you fuckwit.”
“Fuckwit?”
“Don’t get smart with me you little puke. I’ve got a lot riding on this right now, and you’re fucking me up.”
“I don’t get what you’re talking about. I’m doing fine. We’ve got a big rally, and we’re being loud.”
“IT’S SATURDAY YOU LITTLE SHIT! How the fuck are your employers going to see you when they’re not even working? And where the fuck are the TV cameras, you fucking idiot!”
It felt like someone kicked me in the gut. Ray had gone downtown to do some shopping only to find us holding a rally on an empty street. Slowly, people started to realize the mistake we’d made. There was an awkward silence in the otherwise empty downtown block. Some of us subconsciously looked at our watches to make sure Ray was right. After a few seconds, we started to disperse. Allen scrawled something on the paper I’d given to him, punched me in the gut and shoved the piece of paper in my mouth while calling me a shithead. I struggled to pick myself up, grabbing the paper and looking at it. It had two zeros written on it.

To Be Continued...

Summer Serial: Part I

It’s easy for me to tell you about how all this started now. It didn’t used to be, though. Only months of shock therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous were able to bring me to the point where I could openly talk about the day that started it all. I had just come back from my lunch break where I worked as a mailroom employee at a large firm in a medium-sized city on the west coast. I’ll leave the name of the firm out of this so as to avoid another of many lawsuits I am currently facing (for our purposes, we’ll call them Young, Neil, Crosby and Garcia), but let’s just say that if you’ve ever sneered at a dirty corporate crook being defended by only the most powerful swine in the country, odds are you were sneering at our client.
I returned from my lunch break that day to find my boss, Jack asking me to serve a summons for him. This was the kind of thing we usually had professionals do, but this was a pro bono case, so we had to save money. I refused to do it, begging him to find someone else. I had the unfortunate experience of serving a man whose ex-wife was suing him for custody of their six-month-old child. He wasn’t happy about this, and decided not to shoot the messenger so much as punch him repeatedly and drag him to a ditch where he was kicked a few more times. It was a painful experience, one that caused me to spend the night in the hospital. Jack was understanding of my refusal, though I could detect a sign of resentment in the tone of his voice.
A few hours later, I went to the restroom to vomit. It was the result of a stomach ulcer I had developed as a result of the beating I had taken. It didn’t require much more than taking a few pills every day, and the occasional vomiting of blood. Thankfully, Young-Neil reluctantly agreed to pay for the doctor’s bills, something I wouldn’t have been able to afford at minimum wage. I left the urinal after a few minutes only to find a few of our younger litigators standing in front of the sink, snorting cocaine. It was well known throughout the firm that the younger lawyers were all into that shit. They’d fight a case, work for hours and then blow off some steam by getting coked up and hitting a club, looking for a fight.
When they saw me, I was offered a hit.
“No, thanks. I have to work.”
“Fuck, we’re out of shit,” said Alex Behrne, the newest lawyer of our firm. He’d only been with us for a few months, but it didn’t take him long to adapt to the rest of the firm’s mentality.
“You know the rules, new guy. Find Tito and get us some more blow.” But Behrne wasn’t in the mood, and he quickly realized he had a messenger right at his disposable. I explained to him that I didn’t have time. Not only that, but I wouldn’t know where to go, and I wouldn’t know who to ask. Behrne quickly filled me in on who their dealer was. Apparently, Tito dealt right outside our large corporate office, making it an easy score for our lawyers. The amount of business he generated from our firm alone made him richer than I could have ever hoped to be.
But I was steadfast in my refusal. I had learned a long time ago that you had to know when to say no to these people. They’d never stop making ridiculous requests unless we drew the line ourselves. Buying them cocaine was beyond any line that had ever been drawn before. I refused, so they beat the crap out of me. Behrne, probably eager to impress his colleagues, was the first to bash my head against the bathroom mirror. The other three took turns kicking me in the gut, forcing me to cough up more blood, while Behrne got on his knees and punched me in the face, saying “DON’T FUCK WITH US, FAGGOT.” They left me there with my head in a toilet, half dead.
It’s hard to say if anyone saw me in that condition because I was only semi-conscious. But it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had and chose not to do anything. Things move fast at Young-Neil, and harsh injustices like this often go unnoticed unless the victim makes enough noise. I was humiliated, and in more pain than I’d ever experienced in my life. I knew these people couldn’t get away with this, so I went to my boss and explained to him what happened.
“So, isn’t there something you can do? I know we work for these people, but I could have died in there.”
“What exactly would you like me to do?” I was a little surprised by the lack of sympathy in his voice.
“Maybe you could talk to someone in human resources, and see if I have any cause to sue.”
“So, you would like me to do this service for you?”
“Of course. These people have to realize that we’re humans, you know?” He started smiling out of the corner of his mouth, I could tell right away that I would get no satisfaction. My boss continued rubbing salt in my wounds.
“I just find it interesting that you would ask me to do you a service. After all, it was I who asked you to do a service for me not four hours ago, and you said no. And now you want me to go out of my way to help you? I don’t think it’s something I’d like to do. I’ll tell you what I will do. You look like you’re going to die at any second, and I can tell you that the firm looks unfavorably on you people dying while on the clock, so I’ll give you the rest of the day off. Get the fuck out of my office you douche bag.”
There was nothing for me to do but leave, and sleep off the pain and humiliation. That night wasn’t easy. I spent half the time vomiting blood, and the other half of the time sitting shiver in the corner of my crappy basement studio apartment. It was in a high crime area, and someone had stolen all my furniture the week before, so I’d been sleeping on the ground.

The next day is when it all started to turn around for me. I woke up feeling much better, and I started to plot the deaths of the three lawyers who had done this to me. I was going to shoot them, but I didn’t know how to get my hands on a gun. I was going to strangle them, but I was a smoker, and something like that takes endurance. I was going to stab them to death, but it seemed a little messy, and I don’t think I’d have had the balls to do it.
In the end, I realized I’d have to have my revenge another way. And that’s when it hit me. “I need to form a union!” It all seemed so obvious to me now. I’d form a union for all mailroom employees, and we’d finally have a voice of our own. No longer will we have to deal with harassment from spoiled-shitless lawyers who never put in an honest day’s work in their lives. Our bosses would be forced to listen to us when we had complaints. We would receive total medical benefits and be paid a decent wage. We’d also be able to work without fear of being asked to do something illegal, or have ourselves beaten and left for dead with our heads in a toilet. Yes, we would have a voice, and I was just the guy to give it to us. After all, who better than an actual mail employee with actual knowledge of the trials we face everyday. Life was looking up already.

To Be Continued…

Summer Showers

I woke up this morning with the slightest hope that we’d actually gotten into the part of summer where it’s actually sunny. By noon, that feeling had gone away. Right now, it’s raining pretty hard, and those idiot meteorologists are saying the rain will continue through the weekend. It seems funny to me that despite the fact that we bitch about weather people and the fact that they’re so inaccurate, the first thing you will always here when discussing the weather is what the weather person said it was going to be. You’d have thought we’d learned our lesson right now. Actually, I guess we have because the second thing you will always hear is, “Yeah, but what does that jagoff know?”
And it’s certainly fair for us to get pissed at these people. After all, they tease us with their fucking commercials, saying things like, “stay tuned tonight to find out if a tsunami could be coming towards YOU.” Or they’ll give you just a little bit, but they’ll never tell you what you want to know until the last possible second. I remember when I was younger, I was always frustrated watching those celebrity shows (before they were on 24/7) because they’d always tease you with a story about some hot models in some small foreign banana republic getting sweaty and naked, and of course it was always the last segment of the show. But how can you criticize a winning strategy?
And this is where I’d like to praise the service that the weather channel does for us. It consistently gives us a comprehensive local weather report that is even right most of the time. My favorite part of the Weather Channel is that they won’t just tell you the daily high temperature and the general cloudiness, but they rather break it down in three-hour intervals. And that’s perfect for someone like me in a city like this, because I want to know what the weather is going to be like on my way to and from work. I don’t give a damn what the weather will be like at two, or ten, I want to know what it’ll be like when I’m actually outside, and the Weather Channel gives me that.
I also have to give them credit for being incredibly accurate. I’ve rarely seen a time when they’ve been completely off the mark, and when they are, it’s usually in a good direction. So, kudos and huzzahs to the Weather Channel. Keep up the good work, fellas.
But I still have to say that I’m a little disappointed in the weather here. Now’s the time when some jackass will remind me where we live, and while this jackass may be right in saying it, can’t he/she just give me a little sympathy? Johnny Rivers took to waxing poetic about the virtues of summer rain in his song, “Summer Rain.” It’s a tacky sentimental song, one of those that you grew up with and liked to listen to when feeling nostalgic. But it was nevertheless, an impressive accomplishment for a man who had made a name for himself by covering old 50s standards. His highly melodic version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis" became so popular during his stint at the Whiskey A Go-Go in Los Angeles, that many people today think he wrote it, and not the great axeman. Rivers was sucked into the allure of nature and hippidom like so many mediocre artists in the late 1960s. Unwilling to be written off as just another Joe Cocker, Rivers had the gumption to attempt repeatedly to market his own music. Yes, "Summer Rain" certainly is a success in its own right, and there are few songs that can better this attempt to attach a soundtrack to those rainy Sunday afternoons in July. But one can't forget that Rivers was singing this song from California where rain at any time of the year is a novelty. Johnny obviously never spent much time in Oregon.
Anyways, we do live in Oregon, and that means summer doesn’t start until July. That also means that springtime is filled with what my English friends call “unstable weather.” I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth saying again; there is nothing more demoralizing than unstable weather. Try living with it all your life, and you’ll turn into a crazy, eccentric fool with funny mannerisms and a dry-to-the-point-of-sour sense of…well…I guess what I mean to say is that you’ll turn into a Brit. You leave the house and it’s sunny and 75-degrees out. You get to the corner and you’re drenched in rain. There’s nothing like it. God’s basically telling you that you’re his bitch, and all you can to is bark at him.
But the unstable weather always yields a good two months of intense sun and heat, and there’s nothing I like more than Portland in the summertime. There are all kinds of events and locations to go along with the general laziness that one feels in this city when the mercury is pushing 90. It’s the perfect weather for doing nothing, and no city has as many places for that as Portland. The waterfront, Council Crest, Hawthorne or basically anywhere in the city opens to slackers with a lot of time and little money.So I guess I can wait for the summer to come, but I’m going to do it with the same amount of bitching with which I wait for everything else. And one more thing to anyone who still wants Portland to buy a baseball team, I would remind you that we’re coming up on the end of June and it’s still raining on a regular basis. An open air field would have caused a rain out on almost every day (just ask the Beavers) and what the fuck are you people thinking anyways? Have you ever been to a Beavers game not on a Thursday? The seats are empty, and even when they’re not; no one cares what’s happening. We can’t afford to pay the little amount of educating that we do, but let’s go build a new stadium in a city with no more room, and buy a team that will only lose us money every year. I know that Portlanders don’t make the best business-people, but even I can see that this would be a tragic mistake. Baseball is a dead sport anyways and I say we should invest in the future; cricket. I know, you laugh now, but we could be at the forefront of this revolutionary game. All it takes is a flattened baseball bat, a couple of sticks made out of unused baseball bats, a baseball and a dream. I leave you with that to ponder, and also to mention that along with soccer, cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world. They like it everywhere except here. Maybe we should think about that. I should also mention that a true cricket test lasts up to five days. That’s like ten times the excitement. Imagine that. And until next time, this is the Wolfman howling out to you. Selah.

Useless Waste Of Time-Gate

“If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you’d better be prepared to produce the pig.”
-HST

We Americans love our scandals. There’s no doubt about that, and anyone who doesn’t agree only needs to look at the great trials and scandals of the past forty years, and think about just how important many of these news items have been. Perhaps the most surprising revelation will come when one sees the lack of overlapping that has occurred within the scandals. We only have enough time for one thing. When the eyes of the world were focused on Robert Blake, our attention only lasted as long as it took for us to find a more attractive murderer with a more attractive victim. Scott Peterson stole Blake’s spotlight, and to this day, I have no idea what happened with his trial.
Michael Jackson was acquitted today, and I couldn’t care less. Before that, it was Scott Peterson, and before that, it was Robert Blake succeeding the mother of all trials, Orenthal James. The press was fishing around a story of Phil Spector waking up with a dead girl in his home, but as soon as they saw there was nothing there, the media stopped listening. Skip back a few years, and one dares to remember Monica-gate. Our President had been fooling around with the help, and with his position as a moral leader, the American people felt an explanation was owed. And of course, Monica-gate was one in a series of political scandals that have occurred over the past thirty years.
There was Whitewater, Iran-Contra, and even the story of a senator with a missing aide. Keep going back, and one will eventually happen upon the mother of all gates, Watergate. Perhaps it’s a cruel reminder of our sick fetish with scandals that the ghost of Watergate pulled back the curtain last week to reveal an old, sickly man suffering from dementia. Former Nixon staffers cried out in disgust at the idea of a G-Man going to the press rather than keeping the fight within the family. News outlets left and right praised the dying icon of a once idealistic time when the press was doing its job, and they had the power to bring down a President. These same outlets simultaneously bemoaned the disdain people have for the press today. Yes, we certainly love our gates, and we love the heroes of those gates. Without a doubt, an anonymous source will one day tip off a young reporter about a study done by the NSA that looks into walking styles and tendencies of terrorists and how that information can be used to deport Arabs to Guantanamo Bay in the middle of the night without a reason in the world other than that they walked kind of funny. We’ll call it Gait-gate (rim shot!).
But make no mistake about it, no matter how much we blame the press, we’re all going to hell when it comes to the scandals. The press may be a bunch of filthy-capitalistic bastards, but capitalism only exists when there is an open market, and the rash of people coming to me today to inform me of the Jackson verdict did nothing more than prove my case, we love anything that makes us feel morally superior. When someone asked me why people had such a ferocious hate for Bill Clinton, I couldn’t answer him, all I could do was confirm his thoughts.
“But Clinton was a moral leader who has to lead by example. His actions are viewed by everyone and he sets an example for the rest of us.”
“Well, tell that to our current President who has been busted for possession of cocaine, as well as receiving two DUIs.”
My comment was met with the kind of eye-rolling that I do every time I see Jessica Simpson on television, or everytime I hear a Kenny G song. The kid had obviously been learning from the master.
But I stray from my point, and we all know how bad that can be. The question is, why do we have this sick obsession with scandal? Some of you may say that it’s because there’s so much of it, and that’s all there is on the news. I’ll grant the second point, but it’s only because we keep watching, and what do these people have to say about the Canadians who seem to experience political scandal on a daily basis? I know that their scandals have less to do with murders and pedophilia, and more to do with general greed and hunger for power, things that don’t translate so loudly to our ever-deafening ears. But if you’re anything like me, you can’t name any of these scandals, and it’s because not even Canadians care about this kind of thing. When something happens, the problem is taken care of, and life goes on. What I wouldn’t give.
But here I am talking about us wanting to feel morally superior when that’s exactly what I’m doing right now. I’ve called an entire generation of reporters thieving pig fuckers, but doesn’t that make us the pig? Perhaps.
People are like snowflakes; we come in all different shapes, sizes and depths (remember that one?) But in the end, we’re all still made of water. Maybe we don’t all share the same lust for blood, but I’ve spent many a night going off on the political exploits of Republicans, and there’s nothing I find more fascinating. Who am I, indeed. Maybe we all need to get a life. When that happens, the sadistic side of our news-addled minds will most likely wither away, and we’ll start to remember the things that are truly important like the fact that Dr. Phil is a fucking asshole.
Maybe this will happen, and maybe it won’t. I guarantee you that news-editors all over the country right now are looking for the next scandal, or the next gate. Maybe DeLay will finally get caught in our cross hairs and have to face the American people in court of public opinion. Or maybe some celebrity will murder a group of women after having an S&M orgy with them in the corner of a girl-scout’s bedroom while she watches on in horror. Barring that, any semi-attractive murderer with a hot enough wife will do. We’ll feed our subconscious urges to rape by getting off on the idea of a beauty queen being murdered by her high school sweetheart who just wasn’t good enough to play in the NFL, or maybe he was. Anyways, I can now see that I’m getting a little too dark even for myself, and I’m probably not even making sense anymore. Disregard this last bit of rubbish as a need to get the willies out of my system. I’m up for a happy movie right now, and I suggest you do the same. Something with a happy ending is definitely needed; I think I’ll go with Back to the Future. As for our media woes, Atlantic Monthly seems to be staying away from the swill, as well as NPR (I just put that one in to sound smart). I’m outta here. Don’t take any wooden nickels.

La Dolce Vita My Ass

I’ve been watching a lot of foreign films lately, and it’s starting to feel kind of weird to me. When I was growing up, I laughed at the idea of people watching those stupid artsy fartsy films that didn’t make sense to any normal person. I had to watch “Meshes in the Afternoon” for a film class, and it made me want to puke. There’s a great scene in “Annie Hall” where Woodie Allen is complaining (surprise) about some pretentious jerk who can’t stop boring his date with his insight into Fellini films. I just saw “La Dolce Vita” and I have to say I don’t get it. There seems to be some pretty basic messages about fame and its effects on people, but I can’t help but feel there’s a bigger message I’m missing. Can someone help me with this?
I’m not one of those jack asses who feel that foreign films aren’t for real men, or that only snotty wine-drinking, New Yorker reading fancy pants can understand them, but I just spent the weekend watching films I wouldn’t have been caught dead watching a few years ago. A few years ago, I would have been watching “National Treasure” and the third “Blade” movie, but now I can’t find any that I like. What happened to the good mindless movies, like “Die Hard” and “Pulp Fiction”? I spent hours watching that crap and I’m dumber for it, but damnit, I was happier. Two drugged up gangsters acting out terrible stereotypes is much more interesting than three hours of a reporter in Rome who wanders aimlessly from scene to scene, hitting on every woman he can, and looking really cool in his Italian sports car. I guess that’s the only kind of sports car they had in Italy back then, but still, talk about a cliché.
And what happened to those feel good movies that weren’t very good, but there was something about them that you liked? They were all around when I was in college. You couldn’t turn on the Turner-owned stations without running into one. Now, it’s all “Ya-Ya Sisterhood” and other such nonsense. I remember when “Shawshank Redemption” was on TV at least four times a day. That’s what I call good programming, but I guess the times they are a changin’ as the fella once said.

But do we really need to hear about this crap? I didn’t think so. Raging Bull just came out on DVD, Platoon can still be seen once a day on channel 57 (whatever the hell that channel is) and if you can’t afford to rent a movie on your own, just call the man with the yellow phone.
The real news is what we’re here to talk about, not this movie business, and it is in that spirit that I’d like to announce that Newsweek has finally hit a new low. After mistakenly reporting that troops at Guantanamo Bay had been flushing Qu’rans down the toilet, they recently retracted their story, wrote an apology, and then went on to write in the same issue about how bad confidential sources are these days. It was a shameful game they were playing, and someone has to slap them around. As the voice of the people, I feel it is my responsibility. When you fuck up by being lazy, you should have at least a one-month moratorium before you get to blame it on other people. Of course anonymous sources have ulterior motives, and of course they’re not always accurate, but you’re the ones who are dumb enough to print the shit before proving it.
In the same article, the writer claimed that the two-source standard for reporting something is a myth that was started during Watergate. What a bunch of horseshit. If you can’t fucking get it right with one source, you’d goddamn better get another one. What a fucking dolt.
But speaking of idiocracy (yeah, I made up a word, live with it) I think I’m a little less concerned with Newsweek’s lack of journalistic standards, and a little more concerned with their lack of common sense. Has anyone at the magazine seen a copy of the Qu’ran? They’re huge! Even the dumbest of dumbass soldiers knows you couldn’t fit that thing down a toilet. I’m sure there was plenty of abuse of the good Muslim book along with the kind of abuse that actually matters, but reporting that anyone would try to flush a three-square-foot book down a toilet really isn’t doing their fact checking.
But, being a blogger, I shouldn’t be too hard on these guys. I know the pain of living up to the standard that the legitimate print media has to, and it isn’t pretty. My stories are dissected word by word, and even the smallest of errors (like claiming that something happened in Montana instead of Minnesota, honestly) spells credibility castration. I’ll never know the love of a devoted reader again.But let us move to an inside source, and two reporters who know how to keep a secret. Mark Phelps (I think) has come out today and said he was Deep Throat. I was astonished to find out at work that not a lot of people know who that is. Granted, we have a lot of Republicans in our office, and this is one of those things that goes in the selective memory bin, but Jesus, they hadn’t even heard of Deep Throat. This guy kept a secret for over thirty years, that’s friggin impressive, and there’s really not much I can say about it. I’m happy as a little girl tonight, and I think it’s good to end on a happy note for once, so kudos and huzzahs to FBI leakers, and I’ll see you again soon.