Jack Benny and his fans
Planned Parenthood has a terrific book sale in Des Moines twice a year. I went perusing their enormous showroom at the state fairgrounds this spring and walked off with a bag full of goodies; one, an original edition of Milt Josefsberg's 1977 biography of the man he wrote jokes for on radio and television, Jack Benny. The book is called "The Jack Benny Show" and it cost me five dollars.
This particular book, while entertaining and informative, also came with a prize inside. The used book was signed by its previous owner, a "James Rambow," who wrote his name inside the front cover along with the date 5/16/77, roughly 34 years and 11 months from the day I re-purchased it. Then, inside the back cover, there was a yellowed and faded cutout of Jack Benny's obituary, published in the old Des Moines Tribune. That one's dated-- if you know your facts about Jack Benny-- December 27, 1974. The article is actually a reprint the following day of the Benny obituary published in another long-ago-folded paper, The Chicago Daily News. Jack Benny, born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago, was raised in the nearby city of Waukegan, Illinois, so the two page article has a decidedly Chicago angle to it.
Being that this is 2012 and that I'm a little peculiar, I searched for James Rambow's name on the internet and I'm 95% sure I've found my man. At least the pieces seem to fit. A James Rambow died June 17, 2010 in Indianola, Iowa, a city 18 miles south of Des Moines. An online posting by the funeral home has him dead at the age of 67, preceded in death only "by his parents," and there are no surviving family members listed. James is remembered as a retired librarian who "maintained an active interest in trains and a passion for books and film his entire life." By my estimation here, this James Rambow passed away and his collection of books was donated to the Planned Parenthood Book Drive.
Of course I didn't know James. And yet I like him. He was 34 years old when he signed his name inside his brand new Jack Benny book, one that today is considered the definitive text in regards to Benny's show business career and his long-running broadcast program. I'm 37, and Jack was-- forever-- 39. I've inscribed books to others, as gifts, but I don't sign my name inside my own like James does. I do, however, cut stories out of the paper, staple the pages together, and save them, often inside books. A Pauline Kael obit (from 2001) rests comfortably inside a Pauline Kael text I own, an autograph of Stephen Colbert (collected at a Howard Dean political event in 2003) lives today on a campaign flyer inside my copy of the Jon Stewart book "Naked Pictures of Famous People." Evidently, James did this same kind of thing. And also, he loved Jack Benny.
James Rambow, thank you. I'm going to take good care of your book.
Mad Man
Mild "Mad Men" spoiler alert: The network suits never get it. How hilarious was it to watch an episode of TV's best show Sunday night in which the partners at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce literally pimp out their office manager for the financial betterment of the agency, then we go to commercial and see an advertisement for the new "Mad Men"-inspired AMC reality series "The Pitch"? The tagline on the ad: "How far will these people go to land the account? Next on 'The Pitch.'"
It's in this spirit of keeping a grip on my soul that I offer this idea I had for a TV commercial to the world free of charge. I'm not looking to profit. For me, it's only about internal gratification.
Imagine this being read by Jon Hamm...
We see a crowded city street. People are walking briskly. We hear only the sound of traffic. Men and women are moving in and out of focus, but our eyes are drawn to a couple slow dancing in the middle of the street, unhurried. They are sharing an iPod and a set of headphones, one earbud in his ear, one in hers. As we cut to camera two, we now hear what they hear. The street noise is completely tuned out, replaced with the song they're dancing to, let's say, "Tell It Like It Is," by Aaron Neville, or "If This World Were Mine," by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.
It still needs a tagline, but this could be an ad for iPods, of course, or blue jeans, boner pills, whatever. There you go. Million dollar image. From me to you.
Wars don't kill people, people kill people
As I was driving out of town Friday, I saw a Memorial Day billboard. It bore the visage of a bald eagle, the bird of prey that gets the honor of serving as a national symbol of the United States because the unfortunate anthropomorphism of its facial features translates as intimidating, noble, angry, and of course, humorless.
Here is a photo of a pair of bald eagles fucking.
On the billboard, beneath this image (well, not this image), three words appeared: Some Gave All.
This got me to thinking. Of course, the slogan is referring to those that died in war in defense of their country-- their deaths exponentially more tragic when we consider that our enemies for more than half a century pose little or no actual threat to the safety of the nation's borders or our well-publicized "freedoms." But the enterprise of war is actually so heinous in reality, so destructive, that, for "Some," death eventually becomes the preferred choice. In the United States, military veterans have been killing themselves at a rate of about one every two days.
Results of a study released found that suicides were up over 80% between 2004 and 2008. Army physicians dismissed the charge that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were causing these suicides. Instead, they say, the study suggests "that an Army engaged in prolonged combat operations is a population under stress, and that mental health conditions and suicide can be expected to increase under these circumstances." Oh, I see the difference. Army officials blame just this "stress" combined with other factors like money troubles, substance abuse, and relationship issues-- you know, life's ups and downs-- for the prolonged spike in the rate over the last decade. This is a rather sickening lack of accountability, almost enough to make you vomit up your apple pie.
More than 2,000 U.S. soldiers committed suicide between 2004 and 2010. Our government and its military are the ones killing them, not Muslim insurgents in far-off lands. In 2007, at its peak, the U.S. Armed Forces collectively
issued 1,307 waivers for drug and alcohol violations committed by soldiers and veterans. Was the military establishment becoming more lenient with the purpose of decriminalizing the disease of addiction to alcohol and painkillers? Hardly, they issued the waivers so that these soldiers could be redeployed.
The waivers have been reduced since, but expect the alarming rate of suicides to persist as long as we continue our global policing efforts in defense of low oil prices. Deaths by suicide are not counted in the military's statistics for "combat" deaths. Also rarely publicized is the fact that 11 to 20 percent of U.S. combat veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan will be eventually diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), or that 23 percent of female soldiers will report being sexually assaulted by their colleagues during their service.
We're exterminating both the bodies and minds of our soldiers in our nation's quest for power. Let's call it "imperial rot." Even as chicken hawks like President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton continue to send soldiers off to war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, they continue to fail in their efforts at science fiction. It's still impossible to turn human beings into machines.
The "evolution" revolution
The Obama re-election campaign has launched a website promoting the president's purported "evolution" on the issue of gay marriage. The news has caused me to contemplate not the political implications of the president's newly outlined position, and not his more-accurately-described support for "state's rights" on the issue of gay marriage (which is almost the very opposite of support for federal executive protection for gay marriage rights), but instead, the ongoing, bewildering gullibility of Obama's "liberal" supporters and a little insert word here called "evolution."
If the president's recent, supposedly-genuine civil rights epiphany fills you with a wave of "warm fuzzies," rather than cynical, raging anger, than you are, quite simply, a fool. Barack Obama has not "evolved" on this issue. He was publicly in favor of gay marriage rights way back in 2004. He only switched his position when he ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate for the first time. This is not mere speculation on my part. It's not a fabrication constructed from whole cloth by his political enemies. It's a matter of the public record. Obama has not "personally evolved" on this issue. He. Is. Lying. He has always supported it. Or maybe he never has. Who can tell when the guy makes his political decisions based on every other factor besides personal principle? What brave member of the Washington press corps will ask the president to explain his support for gay marriage rights a decade ago?
Be happy with his public announcement, or don't. Be satisfied, or don't. But for Christ's sake, be more cynical. Are you so used to being lied to at this point by all of them that you've abandoned your self-respect? Obama thinks you're dumb. Or so desperate for any political hero that you'll accept the shiniest one. He has not "evolved." He made a politically-expedient policy reversal eight years ago, and now he's making another one.
Return to sender
This isn't the type of story that anybody in the traditional news media gives a sticky shit about, but a group of veterans that served the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan
returned their service medals to their government yesterday in Chicago.
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Your pooch
is costing you $580 to $875 a year-- and that's only the
recurring costs, not the "start-up" elements like license, vaccinations, and "cute" accessories.
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One of my favorite shows is "Community." It's the finest comedy on TV right now actually. Despite its renewal for next fall, I fear for its future without showrunner Dan Harmon, who was canned by Sony Studios on Friday. This was
Harmon's response to his firing on Tumblr. Sad, almost unbelievable news, but a funny online post by Harmon nevertheless. I hope they put a photo or text link to it in the Season 3 box set.
A few weeks ago, superblogger Ken Levine
published a piece regarding the office feud between Harmon and Chevy Chase. Levine knows from the dynamics of a television set, having been a writer on "Cheers," "Wings," "Frasier," and "The Simpsons," and a showrunner on "M*A*S*H." Levine suggested that a "pendulum" was starting to swing in the industry. Once upon a time in television, when a star and a showrunner (head writer) feuded, it was the writer that had to go. Not so anymore, said Levine back in April. At the time, I filed that little thought away in case I ever had the chance to steal it and use it as my own "insight" into television.
Today I can safely give Levine all the credit for it. Looks like he was wrong.
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Des Moines Olympian Lolo Jones is a virgin. The "hardest thing (she's) ever done." I stayed a virgin into my 20s too. Not that hard.
Kroenke forces St. Louis out of the pocket
The city of St. Louis is being held hostage by its football team. Nearly two decades ago, city leaders wooing the Los Angeles Rams offered a preposterous lease agreement that allowed the contract to be torn up after the 2014 season if the Your Name Here Dome that was being built for them downtown was determined to be outside the top 25% tier of NFL stadiums through a series of agreed-upon indices. The Dome, completed in 1995, was almost "out-of-date" from the start-- add to that the fact that more than half the league's franchises have had a new facility built since-- and Rams' owner Stan Kroenke clearly has a contractual "out" after '14 if he chooses to take it.
He may or he may not, but what Kroenke, the billionaire son-in-law of Sam Walton, does want for sure is to bleed St. Louis taxpayers for all they're worth. The citizens of the state of Missouri, the city of St. Louis, and St. Louis County paid for the Dome's construction to begin with-- that is, they continue to pay for it, and now a city that's laying off police officers and fire fighters, dropping city services, and has a public school system so broken that it lost state accreditation in 2007, is being asked to pony up even more. Each year since construction-- and for the next 10 years-- the state already pays $12 million towards the Dome's debt, with the city and the county each kicking in another $6 million. The St. Louis Convention and Visitors Bureau, which operates the Dome, already offered Kroenke an upgrade deal worth more than $120 million and "as expected," he rejected it. Eventually, the bid is expected to surpass $500 million. Just what are a city's priorities when you're in a recession economy, have a crumbling infrastructure, and you offer any subsidy at all to a man that Forbes Magazine says is worth more than $3 billion? And how does that man get to be called a "civic leader"?
What really are the stakes here in this hostage situation? To further the metaphor, does Kroenke even have a bullet in the chamber? What benefit does the NFL actually offer the city of St. Louis? The Rams have 15 wins and 65 losses over the last five years. The team does not attract visitors from out of town the way the baseball Cardinals do-- or anything close to it. The baseball team plays 81 home games annually, filling hotels and restaurants nightly for almost a quarter of the year. The Rams play only eight games, and Kroenke recently signed a deal to move one of those eight to London for each of the next three years (a deal that really has to be interpreted as an "up yours" gesture to the city in light of its timing.)
As the Rams' home crowd is comprised primarily of season ticket holders and/or St. Louis residents, it brings, especially relative to a "regional sports franchise" like the Cardinals, a negligible economic benefit to the city. Study after study confirms that money spent by locals on major sporting events is only money that's displaced from being spent elsewhere in the community. Additionally, professional football is a weekend-only sport so it competes more aggressively than does baseball with the rest of a community's entertainment calendar. In fact the argument can be made that the Rams rob dollars from the region in the sense that a greater percentage of money spent on the Rams (as opposed to other local entertainment) goes to individuals who don't live in the community, providing a smaller percentage of dollars to re-circulate-- and it provides even fewer well-paid jobs than the others as a whole-- virtually none. Even the parking attendants, concessionaires, etc. employed by the Rams can't do the work full-time as they only work eight, now seven days a year.
The NFL is an enormous business entity, but it makes its money almost entirely through television and media agreements, and from branding products. This reality exists to such a degree now that, in many ways, a team's geographic region only matters to the degree that it impacts and informs fan identification. This perpetuates popularity for the sport, of course, but as a result of this new reality, the team gets to share an increasingly smaller percentage of the overall financial pie of its product with surrounding ventures. I'd be curious to see a study that examined what percentage of St. Louis Rams fans go to a game on a Sunday afternoon, eating first at the house, or eating and drinking only inside at the Dome or outside in team-sponsored tailgate locations, visiting and returning from the city without spending any money whatsoever other than the cost to park their car. To put it in football terms, I suspect it's probably closer to the size of an offensive lineman than a kicker.
The most ridiculous argument made is the one that says you need a big league sports team to be considered a "big league" town-- that for St. Louis, a city dropping nationally in population rank, it's all about holding on to a reputation of being a "big city." Of course this says nothing of the fact, in this case, that St. Louis has two other major pro sports teams already-- a pair, incidentally, that are currently having much more success than the Rams on the field of play. Los Angeles doesn't have a professional football team, and it seems to suffer few ill effects economically or psychologically from the absence.
The city of St. Louis should actually be 'case in point' as to why you don't grab ankle for the cartels of pro sports. The city has gone through extended periods of time both with and without an NFL Team (without, most recently, from 1988-1995), and with no discernible difference in their economic standing either way. City negotiators acting from their current posture of needless panic and emotion are put at a specific disadvantage when you consider that the business leader they're being extorted by... oops, I mean bargaining with, operates from a purposefully emotionless angle. The city should have plenty of leverage in negotiations like this, when we consider the actual economics, but a city that chooses to define itself by its football team loses any of that leverage before the negotiations even commence.
Dimon in the rough
Jaime Dimon, Obama's "favorite banker," is in a few inches of boiling water after his bank, JPMorgan Chase, reported a $2 billion loss in the last quarter as a result of risky trading. The company's stock value dropped 12% in one day last Thursday upon news of its losses and the Justice Department launched an investigation into the investments that Dimon admitted were "flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed, and poorly monitored."
Dimon, a Democrat, reportedly makes $100 million annually, and Chase Bank was the recipient of $390 billion in emergency fed money under the TARP plan. Furthermore, Dimon has been an outspoken opponent of greater government oversight of the banks, particularly critical of the "Volcker Rule" that restricts banks from engaging in particular kinds of speculative investments.
The lesson here is that perhaps even the most respected of our Wall Street casino gamblers shouldn't be allowed to act as his own boss. The assets of JPMorgan Chase equal $2.3 trillion, which is roughly the same value as the GDP of Great Britain, yet Chase's Big Cheese knows he's gambling with house money as there's approximately 0.0 chance the bank won't be bailed out by taxpayers every time it's needed. The next crash should be arriving, oh, about a week from Thursday.
Say what you will about Dimon though, at least he never gave Albert Pujols a $254 million contract.
Emanuel's nightmare
The city of Chicago still operates by political machine and that machine is evidently afraid of a little rage. The National Nurses United organization was planning a May 18th public protest, during the upcoming NATO conference being held in the city, but the group's permit for a gathering at Daley Plaza was revoked after Rage Against the Machine guitarist, Chicago native, and fellow Wobbly Tom Morello was added to the event bill.
"We won't be silenced and we won't be stopped," said Morello in a written statement, "if Rahm Emmanuel is so afraid of my popularity in Chicago, maybe I should run against him in the next election." From Morello's lips to Oprah's ears.
Adoring Lillian Musial
When I was away from the news last week in New Orleans, Lillian Musial died at the age of 91. The woman known best to baseball fans in St. Louis as "Lil" was the wife of Stan Musial, the greatest Cardinal of them all, who survives her at the same age. She died last Thursday in St. Louis after a lengthy illness, with her extended family at her side, her husband holding her hand.
Lil was Stan's high school sweetheart in the coal-mining town of Donora, Pennsylvania during the late '30s. They married in 1940, just before his 22-year Major League career began. They had 4 children, then 11 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. She lived largely out of the limelight, but she did local television commercials with her husband in the '50s and '60s, and raised a ton of money for charity over the years, first as the founder of the Pinch-Hitters group, a first-of-its-kind organization made up of Cardinals players' spouses, then with Covenant House St. Louis, a shelter for homeless, runaway, and at-risk youths.
She was a fixture at the ballpark through the years, bringing her friendly countenance, and a sense of warmth, grace, and humility to the intersections of three different Busch Stadiums over seven decades. Lil and her family came to define the city of St. Louis in all of the best ways imaginable. As a Cards fan, I feel I know her best because of her presence in a made-for-video film called "The Legend of Stan the Man Musial." Filmed when she was in her 70s, she gets a lot of screen time to talk about the Musials' shared life and marriage. My favorite anecdote is the one where a crowd of autograph seekers surrounding Stan becomes too aggressive, knocking Lil to the ground. She gets up and pushes the offending fan in the chest. "What did you do thatshouldn't have done that. That was my fan."for?!" she says. When the Musials are alone together later in the day, Stan tells her, "You
I'm not willing to state today that Lillian Musial is the fully-idealized companion figure for any citizen of the United States desiring to be married, but I will say that Joe DiMaggio married the most iconic woman in the world, Marilyn Monroe, and he died a prideful, bitter, resentful man. Stan Musial married Lillian Labash and he became a universally-beloved and legendary baseball figure, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who for all his diamond exploits (and they are extensive) is still best known as the sports figure who has worn an incessant smile on his face for 72 friggin' years. The deepest condolences and respect to the family of Lillian Musial.
Stan & Lil (and a close friend in background)
And the one she called "her Hollywood pic"...
Obama tilts
Return vacation report from New Orleans: The city is deteriorating as beautifully as ever.
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President Obama's public endorsement today of same-sex marriage is an enormous victory for the gay rights movement. When such a congenitally-cowardly figure like Obama, and his ceaselessly-triangulating advisers, get sufficiently uncomfortable and reach the conclusion that they can gain politically in his re-election year by announcing his mythical conversion on the issue three days after trying out the new public stance first through Vice President Biden, it is testament to the tireless work the core movement has done over a period of decades to pressure their elected officials into action and to sway public allowance for such an announcement. Bringing Obama to the Dick Cheney-level of public support for gay rights-- and back to the position he held publicly himself before running for Senate in Illinois-- certainly proved to be no easy task. To all of the human rights organizations that have done the heavy lifting on this-- today is yours. A more perfect union indeed.
6:17pm update: Now that ABC has released the full statement by the president, it appears that he's only stating his "personal position" on gay marriage. He still supports the idea of states deciding the issue for themselves-- and therefore opposes the idea that this individual right for gays is covered by the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Nobody would have stated-- or did-- during the 1960s that a politician supported the idea of civil rights for African-Americans if he or she called it a "state's rights" issue. Ron Paul calls abortion a "state's rights" issue and nobody calls him "pro-choice." The Southern states thought slavery to be a "state's rights" issue. That actually made them "pro-slavery."
Forty-four states currently make it illegal for same-sex couples to wed, and though he told us today that he would vote differently, President Obama has no problem with that. A day after the North Carolina referendum to constitutionally deny marriage rights arbitrarily to part of their consenting adult population, Obama is endorsing their verdict to do so. Human rights groups still have much more heavy lifting to do.
Hamm's rap
How terrific is Jon Hamm? He's a Midwestern boy, a big Cardinals fan, and he's both witty and handsome as hell. Come to think of it, he and I have a lot in common. And now there's this: It turns out Hamm loves the show "Taxi." Recently, he rapped the show's theme song, which a few people know is called "Angela," (composed and performed by jazzman Bob James), named after a character in the series' second episode. The rap version doesn't include her name, but does include a Reverend Jim impersonation...
Following the river
I'm out for a week. Off to the only place in the nation where a three hour lunch is more important than business. Where the culture of America was born, and the last place it will still live before it dies; where living it is more important than selling it. The Land of Dreams. The Land of Dreamy Dreams. Way down yonder, heaven on Earth, they call it New Orleans. Don't try to contact me unless you're planning to join me.
