To Protect and To Serve

It's been a bad week for the cops in my area. Heck it's been a bad year really, but these week the blue s*** really hit the fan.

First we discovered that a convicted sex offender had been hiding a kidnapped girl in his backyard for 18 years until the police finally discovered the girl and the two daughters that the kidnapper had fathered. What is bothersome here is that the local law enforcement authorities, including the police, the sheriff, and the feds all knew about this guy. He was subject to frequent visits from parole officers and not once, not once, did any of them bother to check out the backyard. People reported seeing this guy with daughters that he was not supposed to have and yet no one bothered to check on that. The dude's next door neighbor even called the police a couple of years ago saying that there were kids living in the backyard, but the officer who responded to the call didn't search the backyard at all. He now claims that he needed a warrant to do the search, but don't you think he could have gotten one considering the man whose home he was searching was a registered sex offender? The cop also claimed that he didn't know the guy was a registered sex offender even though anybody, yes even you, could have found this out with a couple of mouse clicks here. Even more bizarre, a few months after the kidnapping the guy was caught growing marijuana and did time because it was a parole violation, but again nobody bothered to search the backyard even though he was caught growing weed.

The sheriff has issued an apology and claims "full responsibility" for what happened. What exactly does "full responsibility" mean though? He hasn't resigned, he hasn't fired any deputies, he hasn't taken a pay cut, he hasn't donated anything to the victims, he hasn't done anything except say that he was sorry. It is so easy to claim "full responsibility" when it does not mean anything. You have multiple lives who are ruined forever in part because of the incompetence of this guy and the people who he is responsible for, and yet he thinks, or perhaps hopes, that he can claim "full responsibility" and bring his involvement to closure. Quite honestly it should not work that way.

And then there is the case of a missing 5 year old boy here in my home town. The boy disappeared about two weeks ago from the back of a shoe store where his foster father left him while he went inside to visit the foster mother. The cops claim that they could not find any evidence that the boy was ever at the shoe store but found a text message from the father saying that he was so frustrated with the boy that he was going to live the kid at a train station. So what do these Barney Fife's do? Arrest both foster parents for murder and pressure them to rat on each other. Of course the DA has no evidence to support these arrests so both parents had to be set free, and now the cops have two angry and uncooperative parents on their hands who have hired an attorney who loves the TV news cameras and really loves high profile police misconduct lawsuits, not to mention a community that already distrusts the police and is still ticked off about the guy who got shot by a cop at a train station back on New Years. That's one hell of a risk to take when they have nothing to charge either of them with. Did they really think they would get that lucky? Now we may never know what happened to this boy.

Normally I would give the police the benefit of the doubt but neither of these incidents deserve that kind of leniency, and the cops are certainly not doing themselves any favors or inspiring any confidence among the citizenry that these folks are sworn to defend.

Now that my ranting is done I can briefly talk about a cop who always inspired confidence, T. J. Hooker. Variety says that T.J. is coming to the silver screen but it doesn't say whether or not the guy who played him, William Shatner, will be back in the saddle playing the part that allowed Shat to avoid being typecast as a starship captain with a dramatic flair.

Now see, this is what we need, more men in blue with a heart of gold and the ability to slide across a car hood without one hair out of place.



His mere look just exudes trust and confidence. You know if T.J. were on the case both kidnapped kids would have been found within an hour, or 52 minutes if you count the commercials.

All the Evil in the World

Is it just me, or have people become more combative about their personal space?

Yesterday I was at a signalled intersection waiting to turn left. There was a woman with two little kids in tow. Just before they get to the curb one of the little kids turns and stares at my truck, slowing her pace while doing so. I had already started sloooowly inching my way into the turn at this point but I was still a good 15-20 feet away. Nevertheless, the woman turns to see what her daughter is looking at and then gives me a evil look as if I was about to hit them!

Then a couple of weeks ago I was at another signalled intersection about a mile away from the previous one. This time I was waiting to make a right turn. The signal turned green as another woman, this time with a stroller and an adult friend in tow, starts into the intersection at the same time I am starting my turn. Again, I was a good 15-20 feet away, but this time the woman glared at me and shouts "you're an asshole!"

I had yet another similar incident the week before at an intersection a few miles away from the other two. Again I was about to make a right turn, but this time I stopped and allowed a small family at the intersection to enter the crosswalk. However, I guess I stopped too close to their personal space because they all, including the little girl, gave me an evil glare.

What the hell is up with these people? Must I stop 20 feet away and wait for you to mosey your way across the street and another half block after that before I make my turn?

Maybe it is my truck. I do live in a very liberal, I mean "progressive" area, so maybe it is the fact that I drive a gas guzzling pickup that is causing me to become public enemy #1. I guess if I drove a Prius instead I could run them over and still not be subjected to the hateful glare. Anybody want to buy a truck like this?

By the way, this is not my actual truck, just a simulation. Still, it does look kind of evil...

Yes We Can, Now In Fruity Flavors!

One of my co-workers just returned from a trip to Africa and brought us this souvenir from Kenya, a box of Obama chewing gum. Yes, Obama chewing gum. It appears some entrepreneur in Barack Obama's ancestral land has decided to honor the 44th President of the United States by naming chewing gum after him. What is interesting here is that not only does the box feature the now standard photo of Obama in his presidential pose, it also features Michelle Obama and the two kids Sasha and Malia too. In fact the girls get more screen time than their dad. Like the old adage about ads goes, you can't go wrong with kids or dogs.

The co-worker who brought this into the office left a note tagged to the box: "Don't expect the flavor to last more than 5 minutes." I wasn't sure if that was a criticism of the gum or a political statement. Or both.

Funny, I don't recall anyone making a Bush chewing gum, though I can understand why there was no Cheney chewing gum. I would have been really hard to make those bugging devices chewable.

Oh The Humanity

Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Walter Cronkite, Ed McMahon, David Carradine, Robert McNamera, Frank McCourt, Billy Mays, Steve McNair, Karl Malden, all in the last month, and now this:

Taco Bell Chihuahua Dies
By Rennie Dyball
Originally posted Wednesday July 22, 2009 11:40 AM EDT

She charmed millions without ever saying a word, and managed to make fast food tacos adorable. Gidget, the Chihuahua best known for her Taco Bell ad campaign, died from a stroke on Tuesday night at age 15.

"She made so many people happy," says Gidget's trainer, Sue Chipperton. PEOPLE met both Gidget and Sue at a Hollywood animals photo shoot in February, where the pup was a consummate pro and delighted the crew with her playful nature. The mostly retired actor lived out her days laying in the sun – "I like to joke that it's like looking after a plant," says Chipperton – and entertaining at shoots when her trainer brought her along. "Gidget," says Chipperton, "always knew where the camera was."

Forget about celebrities always dying in threes, we have an epidemic of celebrity deaths on our hands! Me, I blame global warming. Or maybe it's the Rapture. If it is then somebody better call Pat Robertson and break the news to him that he's been left behind.

Musical Intelligence

Picking up on the theme of my last post, all this attention paid to Michael Jackson led me to do something I never thought I would do, download songs from Thriller. After listening to "Billie Jean", "Beat It", and "Thriller" again for the first time in many years it occurred to me that there were a few things that I had forgotten:

1. Quincy Jones is a genius.
2. Michael Jackson was one hell of a performer.
3. Both of them should have quit while they were ahead.

Quincy Jones is a genius because he was the one who wrote the songs and created the cross-over buzz that made Thriller the biggest selling album of all time. He was the one that got Paul McCartney to sing the duet on "The Girl Is Mine", Eddie Van Halen to play the guitar solo on "Beat It", and got Vincent Price to do the voice over on the title track. Also, each of these songs plus "Billie Jean" all sounded different, and that too was mostly Jones' doing. Of course, it took someone with Jackson's talent to sell all this, but without Jones by his side Michael Jackson would not have become The King of Pop.

I suppose you could argue, though, that without Thriller Jackson would not have become Wacko Jacko. But hey, JFK could have listened to his secretary and not gone to Dallas, the FBI could have been paying more attention to all the Saudis that were taking flying lessons in 2001, and Robb Nen could have pitched around Troy Glaus. Such is the fickle finger of fate.

While I was downloading Thriller I noticed that Chris Daughtry's new album was available, so I went ahead and purchased that too. Now some of you music snobs out there might poo-poo that, as well as the purchase of Thriller, but I happen to enjoy listening to his music (and it was on sale too). He remains the only former American Idol contestant whose albums I have bought. Daughtry's music often gets dismissed as lightweight but those who claim to be in the know, but the artists that those people like don't sell records while Daughtry's flies off the shelf. I wonder if one of the reasons why these music snobs only like artists that don't sell is because it allows them to feel smarter than everyone else because they know something that the rest of us don't. Well, maybe they do, but I for one will continue to enjoy my ignorance. For one thing it makes watching American Idol much more enjoyable.

Wacko Jacko, R.I.P.

Like most people around my age, I have memories of Michael Jackson from back when he really was the king of pop. I remember attending a "Thriller" video premiere party, I remember my sister once getting all excited about the song "Thriller" (mostly because of Vincent Price's voice over though). I know somebody in my house owned the album but I don't remember who it was that bought it. I remember where I was when I heard "We Are The World" for the first time (sitting in a college cafeteria eating a late breakfast). I remember watching the Motown 25 special live that more than anything put Jackson on the map. My most personal memory was when I was in Auckland, New Zealand in 1996. Jackson was on tour and performing in Auckland at the same time I was there, and I remember the cab driver who drove me from the airport to my hotel asking me if I was in town for the concert and then talking about nothing but Michael Jackson the whole rest of the way. It was also in Auckland that I saw the newspaper headline that called him "Wacko Jacko." I thought it was so good that I have been using it ever since, even in my American Idol recap of the show that Fox is re-airing as a "tribute" to Jackson on Monday. Of course now that he has passed away this may be the last time I do.

To be honest, the guy was a freak show for the last 10, 15 years or so. I liken it to a car crash; everyone will slow down to take a look, but then they will turn there heads and drive away. It also occurred to me today that Jackson was a real life Benjamin Button. Here you had this 8 year old kid singing about love and girlfriends who turned into a 48 year old man hosting slumber parties and riding Ferris wheels every day. I suspect that this is why he had kids around him all the time, even in situations that everyone else thought was inappropriate. I think he thought he wasn't acting like a creepy 48 year old, he was an 8 year old in a 48 year old body.

I listen to "I Want You Back", one of the Jackson 5's first hits (I think it may have even been their first) and I wonder what happened to the enthusiasm, the maturity, even the toughness that Jackson exhibited in his voice back then. He somehow went from being a confident and mature person to a very fragile, brittle figure both physically and mentally. He seemed to be someone who was one false step away from a total breakdown.

While the suddenness of Jackson's departure was surprising, the fact that he died at such a young age perhaps was not. Icons like Michael Jackson, Elvis, John Lennon, and so on typically don't go slowly into that good night (well, except maybe Sinatra, but he had connections). That Neil Young lyric that Kurt Cobain allegedly wrote at the end of his suicide note, "It's better to burn out than to fade away," seems to apply to icons like Jackson even if their departure was of no fault of their own, and if Lisa Marie Presley is to be believed even Jackson thought that this was his final fate.

While he was a freak show there is no denying the impact this cat had on the entertainment business. Justin Timberlake, among many others, have been imitating him for years to some degree. MTV owes its very existence to him. Indeed, I think every cable and satellite operator in the world do to. I would bet that there were millions of kids in 1983, including friends of mine, who pushed their parents to get cable TV just so that they could see the next Michael Jackson video. Music videos before 1983 featured white guys lip syncing their songs. Music videos after 1983 became 5 minute movies (or in the case of "Thriller" 13 minute epics) that told a story with pictures as well as words. In the age of New Wave he made R&B cool again, and in the process opened the door for the rap and hip-hop movements that now dominate the airways and music downloads. I think in terms of the extent of his talent and his impact on the music business Michael Jackson ranks right up there with Sinatra, Elvis, and The Beatles. There may be others that will one day reach similar heights (U2 comes to mind as one possibility) but there won't be another one quite like Michael Jackson, even if he was wacko.

Ironically I was in an electronics store on Sunday (4 days before Jackson died) buying a new battery for my camera, and on the TVs there they were playing the full length "Thriller" video, the first time I had seen it in years. Now that really is creepy.

The Commencement Address That I Never Had

In honor of my sister finally become respectable and earning her B.A. degree from the University of Oregon, I felt inspired to write a graduation speech that I would give to graduates today were there anyone to ask me to do so. Part of what inspired me to do this is because her graduation speaker, an editorial writer for The Oregonian who is an alumnus of Oregon (go Ducks), gave a pretty good speech that was also relatively short. I also still feel cheated that we did not have a graduation speaker when I graduated from Cal Poly 20 years ago (John Madden was rumored but alas this was just a rumor – we ended up with just the university president boring us all), and thanks to Alaska Airlines I had an longer than expected flight up to Oregon and I needed to keep myself occupied while sitting in the Sacramento airport waiting for my unplanned connecting flight to Portland.

"First I want to of course offer up my congratulations to you, the graduating class of 2009, and to everyone who helped you achieve the goal that we are here today to celebrate.

"Usually these speeches are intended to provide you with a glimpse into the future, the quote real world, and to give you words of inspiration as you set off into this world. Well, this isn't going to be one of those speeches, because let’s face it, the real world kind of sucks right now. I would guess that most of you know this already, probably better than I do, so there is no use going on with false platitudes about how there are a lot of opportunities out there for you because, well, there aren't a lot of opportunities out there for anybody. Instead, I hope to provide you with some advice on how to proceed from here. Hopefully this advice will one day be useful to you, or at least will not put you to sleep.

"Some of you may not care to hear any words of advice from me. You already know what you’ll be doing tomorrow and next week and beyond. All of your plans are set and you are ready to go. To you I can only say good luck and god speed, with the knowledge that most of the graduates who feel this way are skipping this ceremony and have probably already left campus for good such that I don’t need to worry about finding something witty or profound to say to them.

"No, my advice is for those of you who are not sure what you’ll be doing tomorrow or next week or beyond. Maybe you have a job or a grad school seat lined up, maybe you don’t. I would guess that you are feeling a mixture of emotions right now. Part of you is happy that you are finally done with school and will receive the diploma that you worked so hard the last 2, 3, 4, 5, or even more years to attain. I would bet, though, that part of you is sad to see this day come, because you are about to say goodbye to the world that you have built for yourself here and basically start all over again, and that can be one scary thought.

"If you ever want to know what a ghost town feels like, visit the campus tomorrow. All of the buildings, quads, and sidewalks that just yesterday were teeming with students will be empty. All of the students will be gone, all of the faculty will be back home, all of the buildings will be closed and locked, all of the dorms will be empty, and only the janitors will be around to clean up after the ceremonies. It is kind of eerie and spooky, perhaps even scary, to be surrounded by all that emptiness. It perhaps mirrors the feelings that some of you may have now, the scary emptiness that comes with saying those final goodbyes to your friends, your classmates, your professors, and the campus community that you have called home. You hope that by staying in contact with your friends and professors that you’ll be able to maintain some semblance of the life that you have enjoyed here, but deep down you know that it won’t be the same.

"And now you face the challenge of having to find a new home with new friends, new co-workers, new advisors, and a new life. This could seem daunting, especially with the current economic climate, but it is not as big of a challenge as it might now appear to be. For many of you your college experience was your first time away from home, the first time you got to decide what to eat for dinner or which roommates you lived with or even whether or not you were going to attend classes that day or which party to attend that night. Even if someone else was paying for it you still got to decide, or at least have a say, in how the money was spent. By surviving and perhaps even thriving in this environment you proved that you could make a life for yourself and that you could establish an identity of your own. The survival skills that you learned while being here will also help you establish a new life, a new identity for yourself, when you leave. And these skills are just as important as the technical skills and body of knowledge that you gained in pursuit of the degree that you will be awarded today.

"I would also advice you all to be patient. If you already have a career path laid out for yourself that’s great, but don’t panic if you don’t have any idea what to do. You still have plenty of time to figure that out. I know you hear all these platitudes about living for today and only doing what you want to do for a living, but unless you are very lucky or very crazy this is probably not the live that you will end up leading. Indeed, chances are that the life you will one day have will be very different from the one you now think you will have. It may turn out that you’ll end up in a career that is different from what you studied. I know plenty of people who have successful careers in fields that were not the ones that that they studied in college. That is not to say that your time here would have been wasted. My brother, for example, went to college with the intent on being an athletic trainer, but then signed up for an art class that he liked so much that he turned it into a career. If you are patient and flexible you will eventually be able to establish a career for yourself no matter what condition the economy or the job market is in, and who knows, you might even one day get that dream job where you get paid for doing what you want to do.

"I graduated from college with a degree in architectural engineering, but at the time I didn't really want to be a structural engineer. I did not share the same enthusiasm for structures and buildings that many of my classmates had, and unlike most of them I did not have a job lined up yet when I graduated. So I really did not know if I would be able and willing to last in this profession beyond a few years or so. After 20 years in the business I've come to the conclusion that this was the right profession for me, but it took a long time to come to that realization. I learned that structural engineering was the best combination of what I most wanted to do and what I was best capable of doing. I knew I was good at math but I didn't want to be someone that only calculated a bunch of numbers. I wanted to do something that I could see and show off to my parents, and also something that gave me opportunities to create new and interesting things. However, I also learned that my creative skills had their limits and that I would never be happy doing something that required a skill set that I just did not have. Structural engineering allows me to use my math and logic skills in creative and tangible ways without having to attempt to sketch a work of art. It provides an opportunity to give back to the community in visible ways that, yes, I can show off to my parents. While I still don’t get teary eyed and gushy talking about the latest building by the "it" architect of the day I now have a greater appreciation for the buildings engineered by others because I better understand the challenges that those other engineers faced and overcame, an appreciation that I did not have when I graduated.

"So my parting thoughts to you are this. It is perfectly natural to feel unsure and even a little bit scared about what will happen to you after today. Your life will be different and it will be a challenge to establish a new life for yourself, but the fact that you are standing here today is proof that you have the ability to overcome these challenges and succeed. It may take a while for it to happen, but if you were able to survive college and walk out of here with a degree in your hand then you stand a good chance to surviving life after college and walking onward into a successful career and a successful life. My hope is that this will one day happen for all of you. I wish you all the best. Thank you and good luck."