Video Killed the Radio Star

I was 19 years old when I landed in Honolulu in the very early morning of July 31^st, 1981. I got off the plane, threw my canvas duffle bag over my shoulder, brutally stiff because it was new, (the bag, not my shoulder) and wandered into the wet heat of Hawaii. I was dressed in what was called my Tropic Coast Guard uniform; navy blue slacks, polished leather shoes, a light blue short-sleeved shirt, clean white T-shirt underneath, and a white bus driver’s type hat. It had all been neatly pressed when I started my journey, but five hours in the middle seat in a row of eleven on the 747 had long ago taken out of it anything resembling a crease. I stood at the curb for a few minutes, wondering how I was going to get to my first duty station, the cutter Jarvis, moored somewhere southeast of the airport.

Cabs were lined up out front like candy in a PEZ dispenser, waiting for their turn to pop out of Donald Duck’s neck, and swing up to the curb for the $20 ride to Honolulu Harbor. I contemplated hailing one but stopped when a beat up Ford van started up and rolled toward me. The driver, dressed in an all navy blue Coast Guard uniform, this one splattered with paint, leaned over, rolled down the passenger side window, and said, “You goin’ to the Jarvis?”

During the drive through the streets and along the highways of Hawaii, the driver, whose name has long ago escaped me, chain smoked with the reckless abandon of a guy in a pie eating contest, only rather than stuffing blueberry or apple filling into his mouth, it was cigarette after cigarette. I kept expecting someone to call out, “time” and a judge with a besashed beauty queen at his side to appear and hand the guy a large blue ribbon. At one point, although I’m not certain because I had trouble seeing in the dark and through the smoke, he may have had two or three in there at the same time. I don’t remember a thing I saw out the windows that night, it was dark, but I do remember the condition of the van; it was like a farm laborers van with less upkeep or regard for safety. I also remember that Foghat’s version of "I Just Want to Make Love to You" was on the radio. Which I’ll get back to in a little bit.

We got to the ship and my driver leapt from the van, scurried up the gangway, and disappeared below. Probably because he wanted to get to his next pack of smokes before the one currently in his mouth went out. I trudged up behind him and was met by a Second Class Radioman who looked me up and down, carefully read my nametag out loud, Wruuiiittt, said, “I knew a guy named Wright in Pensacola. He sucker-punched me one night at a bar. You any relation?”

Having no relatives in Florida, and not being a puncher, sucker or otherwise, I answered, “No sir.”

He barked, “Don’t call me sir goddamnit, I work for a living.” This pleasant gentleman led me to a bunk; affectionately called a rack, and said, “You sleep here. Breakfast is at 6:00 and muster is at 7:00.” His name also escaped me, but I added and abetted in that.

I brushed my teeth and not really feeling tired, although it was something like 1:00AM, I found my way to a small compartment with three couches arranged in a U shape with a TV at the open side. The compartment was about the size of three couches and a TV. On one of the couches was the van driver, watching TV, and (of course), smoking. I asked, “What are you watching.”

The driver/smoker pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and pointing with the two fingers that held it answered, “Some rich fucks getting married.” The TV showed a giant cathedral, filled with people, with Prince Charles and Diana Spencer at the altar.

For the two years I was on that ship, whatever was on that little TV in that little compartment was all the TV I watched. We watched broadcast television while in port, and movies on video while underway. Aside from the two rich…um...people getting married, the only other thing I remember watching on that TV specifically was Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, and the fledgling MTV. Mr. Kirshner’s show was simply a rock concert with no lip-syncing. With real rock bands like the Stones, Led Zep, and one night that I remember while on the Jarvis; Foghat. I remember the intro to “I Just Want to Make Love to You" with the guitar and bass building up over several minutes to the lead singer belting out, “I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed.” Pure garage band goodness.

Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert was the opposite of MTV. Where his show was pretty much a camera and a band, MTV was processed, prepackaged images of attractive people warbling their commercial jingle quality music while pretty dancers popped and slid around and behind them. MTV led to the single most horrifying and miserable moment in pop music history; Madonna "singing" Don Mclean’s American Pie.

I was taken back to this/these moment(s) when I read this week that Don Kirshner had passed away. He was 76 and living in Florida. Maybe he was a neighbor of those famous Floridians, The Sucker-Punching Wright family. He was credited with making the careers of people like Neil Diamond, James Taylor, Carole King and many others. Plus he created the Monkees who lip-synced but never other artist's songs. He is not, however in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Sadly, Madonna is.

At a time when the Best Rock Vocal Grammy award goes to Coldplay, I’ll raise a glass and say, “Thanks Mr. Kirshner. For a handful of memories of real bands, warts and all, in free televised concerts, at a time when I felt very alone and was questioning my decision to fly to a tiny rock in the center of the largest ocean in the known universe. Seeing those same bands in such a simple, unprocessed, format was like being at home, and I'm sure it helped me make friends in that lonely green chain of rocks.

Looking Backwards

When I was a kid we took a big vacation to Patrick’s Point State Park in Northern California. It was just this side of 500 miles from Fresno, and the drive took nearly 12 hours with rest stops and meal breaks. Every mile of it and every minute of it I spent facing backwards. It wasn’t that I was being particularly unfriendly, far from it. You see we were in our 1968 Chevrolet BelAir station wagon and the third seat, the seat to which two of my brothers and I had been assigned via age bias, faced to the rear.

So my younger brother, Steve, and my older brother, Bill to whom I’m nearly an Irish Twin, and I sat facing not only the other way, but our entire view to the rear was taken by the front of a travel trailer. Only by looking to the side could we tell whether we were rolling along the dusty oleanders of Highway 99 or the massive, dripping redwoods of 101. If we craned our necks all the way around in Linda Blair fashion, we could actually see what some of the signs said before they flashed by showing their silvery backs. “Hey, I saw a Deer Crossing sign,” Bill would yell. “I think that one said something about a junction,” I would counter, raising the bet. Steve, who had the worst seat in the car, facing backwards in the middle, and could see even less than his brothers, would just sulk and whisper something about putting a banana slug in someone’s sleeping bag.

Now if you’ve never had the opportunity to ride for an extended period facing the wrong way, you’ve missed out. Imagine never knowing what was coming next or being the last to know you’ve arrived. Think about never being able to participate in conversations and when playing license plate bingo, you miss out on those Idaho, Colorado, and Texas plates because six people have seen the car bearing it before you even knew it was coming. I didn’t even get a California for Pete’s sake, and I cheated and said I got an Oregon from a temporary paper license plate from Joe Orabone's Haus of Fine Cars dealership. At one point I thought I heard the burp of Tupperware being opened and felt certain I smelled chocolate chip cookies from what I began to call the first class lounge. But down in steerage we only had peanut butter and celery; light on the peanut butter and heavy on the celery.

At some point in the trip our view was directed exclusively out the side windows because an animal had the misfortune to run under our Chevy, get hit, and deposit his mortal coil on the aforementioned trailer’s front end. It was just a few feet away, framed in the back window like a scene from a George Romero movie. Judging by the earthly remains, when I worked up enough stomach to look at it, it was probably a well fed raccoon with penchant for mussels and Slim Jims, designed by Jackson Pollack.

We didn't complain too much though. If we did, dad would open the back window slightly and for some reason that made us really sleepy.

Eventually we arrived at the grassy meadows, giant forests, and pebbly beaches of Patrick’s’ Point. We had a great time and I didn’t want to leave, at least until I discovered that somehow my sleeping bag had become the home of a herd of banana slugs.

Punchless

"I remember throwin' punches around and preachin' from my chair." - The Who, Who Are You?

Sometimes I get so pissed, I just want to hit someone, but I’ve never been a punch thrower, so my blows, while deserved, will remain virtual.

On November 30^th a 59-year-old female crossing guard was guiding about 20 children across the street in Florence, California - that is to say L.A. - when a Ford Expedition refused to stop at the crosswalk. The Expedition is in a line of Ford SUVs that include the Explorer, the Excursion, and if the naming convention continues presumably coming soon, the Exaltation, the Exasperation and finally the Excretion. The crossing guard said something like, “The children come first” to the driver of the big stupid boat and before she could get back to the safety the curb, that driver’s girlfriend jumped overboard and started punching her. The driver joined his lovely partner and the two of them punched and hit the crossing guard to the ground, and then stole her whistle and stop sign, I suppose as souvenirs. They have been arrested and charged with robbery, but for some reason not assault.

Some speculate that the charming couple was suffering from road rage, as if road rage a virus that can be breathed in to settle in some corner of the brain, ready to cause tomfoolery. I think they are suffering from being insufferable narcissists. Especially when you consider that he was unwilling to stop for the children crossing the street, but had no problem stopping to deliver a beating to a woman 6 years from retirement, making $9.50 an hour to see those same children safely to school, because she disrespected the authority of his truck.

When I read about this charming couple I wished I could start throwing punches but I’m sure both of them have been on the receiving end of beatings before and likely failed to understand whoever was delivering them, considering how poorly they seem to react to mundane daily obstacles, and another beating would hardly equal the devastation their attack caused to the crossing guard. She had a mild heart attack and has since quit her job. They will probably end up in jail for awhile, and then get released into the wild, free to attack the next poor soul to have the audacity to “dis” them or their car. And what the hell is it with cars anyway? I’ve owned a few but none whose honor I would defend with physical violence. Aren’t cars just appliances like toasters or washing machines?

Punch: Expedition driver and girlfriend.

This month a 23-year-old woman in San Francisco went to the San Francisco DMV to change her name and her gender on her San Francisco addressed California driver’s license. I mention San Francisco several times in the preceding sentence because most people think of San Francisco as the most gay friendly place in our nation, even more than professional wrestling, and what happened to this woman when she made these requests of the DMV seems very unfriendly, to say the least.

The DMV clerk, Thomas Demartini, processed her request and it should have ended there, but it didn’t. Mr. Demartini then sent a letter to the woman’s home telling her that her homosexual behavior was "an abomination that leads to hell," as if a day spent at the DMV isn't already hell. He also sent her name and address to his church, The Most Holy Family Monastery, who then sent a DVD to the woman, arriving the same day as the letter. The DVD, it has been reported, warned of “eternal damnation for anyone ‘possessed by demons’ of homosexuality.” Included in the package with the DVD was a charming little pamphlet that showed hearts torn from bodies. Pardon my texting but WTF? The DMV suspended Mr. Demartini and said his actions were unpresented, although this same man reportedly refused to process a gender change on a license for another woman in 2009. Mr. Demartini has since resigned.

I work at a place where I have access to our customer’s private information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, logins, passwords, and even social security numbers. I had to go through training and sign a paper saying that I understood if I divulged any of this information I could/would face criminal prosecution. I would think employees of the Department of Motor Vehicles would go though similar training and most likely sign a similar document. Also, if there is a form or process to change your gender at the DMV, then it is outside of Mr. Demartini’s authority to deny these requests. The DMV is currently investigating this and will come to a decision soon. But what is soon for the DMV? Nothing less than criminal prosecution is acceptable. Oh, and Mr. Demartini, considering your views on homosexual behavior, you might want to keep a tight grip on that soap in the jailhouse shower.

Punch: Thomas Demartini.

Texas Rangers pitcher Cliff Lee just signed a $120 million+ contract with the Philadelphia Phillies. A lot has been said about him turning down a contract for more money, $30 million more, to play for the Yankees. But that was for more years and the $120 million he did get is still quite a bit of money. In fact, if he is so inclined, he could purchase 2 private jets with what he will earn the first year. His lowest paying year. Also, when his contract is over with Philly he could negotiate a deal with them or another team at the 2015 prices, which should be considerably more. So there is no need to put Mr. Lee on a pedestal as the first professional athlete to turn away from greed.

With his signing the Phillies have a very powerful starting rotation in Halladay, Oswalt, Hamels, and now Lee. Most, hell all, of the baseball reporters at ESPN have ordained it as the best in baseball and one of the best of all time. The only thing left to speculation is who they will face in the World Series in 2011. But the lowly Giants, just happened to win the World Series in 2010 by defeating Halladay, defeating Oswalt, defeating Hamels, and defeating Lee twice. Sure, the Phillies have and amazing rotation and will most likely be around in the playoffs, but to anoint them all the way to late October, or early November without a single pitch having been thrown is just lazy. Or is it just the East Coast bias that is as much a part of ESPN as rehearsed banter and migraine inducing set design?

Punch and pile driver: ESPN and all other baseball “journalists” who wrote “Phillies National League Championship 2011” in stone.

Berets, Bill Nye, and Arthur C. Clarke

"The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be."
— Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey)

I was probably a 14-year-old Boy Scout when I first became CPR certified. I remember putting my official CPR card in my Velcro wallet where it would be easily accessible should I ever come across someone in need of my newly acquired services. I imagined that I would whip it out, flash it to bystanders like Jake Blues flashed a pack of Chesterfields to “The Good Old Boys” band in the Blues Brothers, and make a path to the lucky recipient of my heroic ability to save a life. “Who was that boy in the jaunty red beret and the yellow neckerchief?” the nameless multitudes would ask. My plan was to tip my cap wade through their applause, and off into the sunset.

Fortunately the opportunity never presented itself.

Years later, maybe 8 or 9, when I had a newer CPR card in my now grown up leather wallet and I worked on search and rescue boats in Southern California, the opportunity, unfortunately, did present itself. A boat full of scuba divers, returning at the end of the day, capsized in the entrance to our harbor. All the divers, still in wetsuits, just swam to a nearby sailboat that stopped to help. But the skipper of the boat was trapped in the pilot house.

When we got on scene we found a sailboat, greatly over loaded with shivering divers who were all standing on one side, looking over at the keel of the capsized dive boat; like mourners at a grave site. My partner and I jumped in and found the skipper of the dive boat, pulled him to our boat, and handed him off to other crew members who laid him in the stern well deck. On the ride back to our dock, just a couple of hundred yards away, the two of us performed CPR on him.

I think the ride too maybe three minutes. When we got to the dock there were paramedics waiting for us. They came aboard and instantly pronounced the skipper dead. Later I found out he had a broken neck and had probably been dead before we even got the call. So our efforts at CPR would never have worked, but for three minutes I thought I was going to save a life.

Right here I must apologize for neither remembering the name of that boat or my partner.

This week I got CPR certified again. I don’t think my certification has lapsed since my days of Velcro wallets and red berets. Also this week Bill Nye of the educational TV show, “Bill Nye the Science Guy” collapsed on stage during a lecture at the University of Southern California. He got back up and continued his lecture, but after slurring some words and stumbling he was removed from the stage and turned over to L.A. County Fire Department paramedics. I understand he is now doing okay. He was passed out for what one witness said was probably 10 seconds. Probably because he had made a late night speech the night before. What is unusual was that during the entire time he was unconscious no one, not one person, went up to him to check on how he was. Now I know 10 seconds doesn’t seem like time enough to offer help, but for many of the students watching the lecture, it was plenty of time to text and tweet about it. Yes, texts and Twitter tweets flooded across the Internet, describing what happened to the Mr. Nye. There are even videos.

These young men and women, at the same age I found my self when I tried to save that dive boat skipper down south, decided that texting their most trvial observances took priority over just touching a fallen man's shoulder and asking if he was okay.

Now I am neither a fan of texting or the greater Los Angeles area, but come on! Could not one person put down their IPhone, Droid, or other device and at least stand up? The quote at the top of the blog today was written by Mr. Clarke in 1969, and I can’t believe how accurately it seems to describe the technology that allows Twitter and other forms of social communication. Amazing technology / trivial and depressing content.

Can You Hear Me Then?

While watching the extra content on a DVD of Charlie Chaplin’s “The Circus,” an Irish filmmaker says he has discovered what looks like a woman talking on a cell phone, in 1928. Of course cellular phones had not been invented yet so the likelihood that she is having a “can you hear me now” moment is slim. So did this woman have access to some sort of pre-1940s walkie-talkie, or pre-1970s cellular phone wireless communication device, or is she just a time traveler?

The time traveler scenario has taken some hits online because the necessary infrastructure to support cell phones was not in place in 1928. Namely, cell towers. Also the walkie-talkie was not to be invented for 12 years, and when it was invented and used extensively in World War II, it was the size of basset hound and had an antenna that could double as a fishing pole. What this woman is holding up to her head is no basset hound. But as any conspiracy theorists worth his salt will tell you, time travelers have extremely sophisticated communication devices that not only don’t need cell towers to operate, but they are powered by nuclear fission, can broadcast through wormholes, and have very reasonable family plans that let your kids text free. Or so I understand.

But I still don’t think it was a time traveler for a different reason. If you could travel back in time to anywhere, why would you go to the set of an obscure silent movie in 1928 Los Angeles? Why would you travel back in time to Los Angeles at all unless it was to kill Sarah Conner? Would not there be more interesting places you could visit? What about the birth of Christ, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or Willie Mays’ catch in the 1954 World Series?

What we are probably looking at is a woman who is walking along just taking out loud, to nobody, and happens to have her hand to the side of her head. With the miserable invention Bluetooth, the people talking out loud, loudly, in public, are movers and shakers. They are tomorrow’s entrepreneur working the deal. Back in 1928 they were just considered nuts and when you came across one you just crossed the street.

The Della Effect

In physics there is the term “The Observation Effect.” What it means is sometimes just observing something can have an effect on that thing. I’ll use an example from my job. Sometimes I have to watch a router to determine why it may be using too many resources to provide the services for which it has been installed. It may have been purchased to translate IP addresses from our private network to the Internet’s public network. A process called NAT. So I’ll crank up that router and start the NAT process, and see how much memory or CPU usage it uses for that process. The rub is, I have to start another process to observe this, usually a debug process, and it uses these same resources. There are ways to calculate out the debug’s usages, but I’m just using that as an example to show how watching something can affect it behaves. Here ends the technical portion of my essay.

This Observation Effect shows up in other disciplines. For instance park rangers tranquilizing bears, interrupting their behavior, to take samples; and mechanics measuring the pressure of a tire, releasing some of that pressure, to read it on a gauge.

There is another place where the Observation Effect happens but I can’t prove how. Most of my family believes that the act of observing a Giants’ baseball game has an effect on the outcome. We get this from our maternal grandmother Della. She wasn’t actually our grandmother, but a great aunt, but we called her Grandma Della from the moment any of us could speak. Kind of like calling 2000 the first year of the 21^st Century, it’s not technically correct, but most people understand what you mean.

Our Grandma would turn off the radio when the Giants would fall behind, and then later turn it back on to check to see if they won. As if somehow her listening, and later in life watching, affected their play. But how? Could it be that the players, knowing that thousands, millions, were watching became either nervous or amped up and it changed their play? Could it be that somehow radio and TV signals changed the electricity of the atmosphere, causing minute changes in the physiology of the players that affected pitches and swings, or perhaps the path of the ball? Does glove leather interact with radio waves to change the structural integrity of the mitt turning soft-handed Brooks Robinsons into an iron-fisted any dodger?

Here’s what I think. I figure that the baseball gods, seeing that she had a stake in the outcome of the game, punished her, as gods are want to do, by having easy grounders doink off of shins, fastball strikes right down Broadway called balls, and monster fly balls suddenly bend their trajectory and drop into outfielder’s gloves. How else? Ulysses ran afoul of numerous disasters until he finally admitted that the gods controlled his destiny. So maybe if we Giants fans admit that the baseball gods control the destiny of the good old Orange and Black, the winds of fortune will blow them past the Girl Horses from the City of Brotherly Love and on to victory over the Evil Empire in the city formally known as New Amsterdam. It couldn't hurt.