A ‘fiery sex scandal’ for a slow news day

Posted on January 30, 2015 by oddmanout215

On their way to a fire or a debauch?

On their way to a fire, or to a debauch?

Swamp Rabbit and I were arguing again. The primary goal of mainstream news organizations is to scare people, he said. Fear sells. Just look at the huge response to news coverage in PA, NJ and NY of the “monster snowstorm” that never hit those states.

“You’re wrong,” I said, showing him the front-page story in Wednesday’s Philadelphia Daily News:

A fiery sex scandal threatens to burn up multiple firefighters’ careers, including some top brass, according to former Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers.
Ayers told the Daily News today that the investigation into a young paramedic’s claims of sexual misconduct began shortly before he retired in June.
The paramedic filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging misconduct against another paramedic. Soon after, rumors surfaced that she had sexual encounters with numerous firefighters, paramedics and supervisors in firehouses while on- and off-duty all around the city.

“The goal is to is titillate,” I said, using one of my favorite words. “The story can be a monster storm, a sex scandal, a murder on Main Street. It doesn’t matter, so long as it titillates.”

“Use whatever fancy word you want, Odd Man. News stories is to scare people. Will I git snowed in? Is my husband screwin’ around? Will I get murdered on my way home from the SuperFridge?”

I told him we were both saying the same obvious thing. News outlets — tabloids, so-called broadsheets, TV news shows, whatever — exist to dish out infotainment, not news, especially now that they’re fighting Internet sites for people’s attention.

“The snow story scared me,” I said. “But it’s fun to read about firefighters having sex. What would you do with all that down time, hold Bible classes?”

The rabbit sniffed at my wood stove and said, “Wait till this here shack catches fire and all them firemen are off gettin’ laid. Have fun with that.”

I unlocked the cabinet near the stove and handed him a bottle of Wild Turkey. “Here,” I said. “You’re a real drag when you’re sober.”

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Apocalypse now, or just another dumb forecast?

Posted on January 27, 2015 by oddmanout215

It's the end of the world again!

What John Bolaris reads instead of tea leaves

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate,” I told Swamp Rabbit, quoting from an old movie but referring to Philly-based John Bolaris, one of the shiny happy people paid by the media machine to communicate weather forecasts.

Bolaris was on the radio, explaining why the “monster storm” predicted for us barely touched PA and NJ before rolling over New England, where big storms in the East usually end up. It seems he and his fellow weather swamis had to choose from a number of possible computer-generated storm models, meaning scenarios. He and they chose wrong, but better to be safe than sorry, blah blah.

“What a blowhard,” I said. “People in the real world get fired for being that wrong.”

The rabbit, sounding more savvy than he did last winter, said I was the one who was wrong. “His job ain’t to inform people, Odd Man. It’s to scare ’em, like them horror movies do. People like being scared. The more scared they is, the more they watch the TV news. Ain’t you learned that yet?”

I was still ranting. “I spent the whole night worrying that the roof of this shack might cave in from the snow that never fell.”

“Well there you go,” the rabbit replied. “The weatherman done his job, didn’t he?”

Footnote: Too bad the mainstream media would rather hype winter snowstorms — they’re so unusual! — than inform people about long-term climate change. But that’s another story — a real story.

Posted in apocalypse, humor, life in the big city, mainstream media, Philadelphia | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

New tickets to paradise from PA Lottery

Posted on January 26, 2015 by oddmanout215

Nothing says “lower-class desperation” more clearly than state-sponsored lotteries:

A new Pennsylvania Lottery game debuts Tuesday, while other longtime drawings are getting new names. The new game is called PICK 2, a twice-daily drawing that allows players to bet on any two-digit number. Other daily lottery drawings, in which players choose three to five digits, are being rebranded under the “PICK” name. The 38-year-old Daily Number, the lottery’s first daily draw game, will now be known as PICK 3.

lottery

And no one appreciates this desperation more than the hustlers who organize the lotteries and the politicians who use lotteries and casinos for back-door taxes, because they’re too crooked and cowardly to raise legitimate taxes on the well-to-do.

I thought of these guys today when I ran to a convenience store to steal NyQuil for my sick friend Swamp Rabbit. One employee was ringing up overpriced junk food and another was collecting money from the faithful after taking their numbers and printing their lottery tickets. A crusty chap in a Cowboys cap intoned his numbers, as if the right combination would open the treasure chest: “4-6-9. 6-9-4. 9-4-6. 6-9-5…”

Then I had to fax something, my machine at the shack is beyond repair. I ran to one of those squalid little bunkers — there are chains of them — where people who can’t afford bank accounts buy money orders or place bets, or both. The employees work from behind a sheet of glass, or plastic, thick enough to stop an RPG. On the wall next to their little bomb shelter are messages on flyers:

Cigarettes
Tokens
Please specify day or night numbers
Sorry, we cannot cancel Cash 5, Powerball, Super 7, Quinto

Back at the shack, I commiserated with the rabbit. I told him check-cash joints provide one-stop shopping for the doomed. The lottery, cigarettes, money orders that cost an arm and a leg, all under the same roof. And four-dollar faxes! It’s like crossing the border to the land of the lost. If you go there, don’t expect to find your way back.

The rabbit coughed then took a swig of NyQuil. “You done crossed the border, too, in case you ain’t noticed.”

Not for the first time, I wanted to grab him by his ears and toss him in the swamp. “I’m just going through a rough patch, you dumb rodent. Any day now I’m gonna sell my new novel and blow this dive.”

“Right,” he said. “The same day I win a million bucks playing PICK 2.”

Posted in casinos, economic collapse, humor, life in the big city, mainstream media, taxes, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

If Comcast’s CEO had sucked up to Teddy Roosevelt

Posted on January 24, 2015 by oddmanout215

"Did I hear you right? You want Time-Warner? You're a funny guy, Roberts.

‘Did I hear you right? You want Time Warner, too? You’re a funny guy, Roberts.’

Swamp Rabbit had an interesting thought today. You’ve got to wonder, he said, how many media companies Comcast CEO Brian Roberts would have gobbled up if recent U.S. presidents hadn’t been stooges for big business.

Net neutrality is only one of Comcast’s big battles right now: the other is getting approval for its merger with Time Warner Cable. Here, too, Comcast’s lobbyists have close connections in Washington. In fact, the [Wall Street] Journal reports that Comcast actually invited a senior antitrust official with the Justice Department to a party a month before it announced the merger. The official declined. Comcast has also had a relationship with President Obama for some time now. The Journal reports that Comcast employees contributed $337,000 to his reelection campaign and that he’s gone golfing with Roberts.

Imagine Roberts sucking up to Teddy Roosevelt to acquire even more riches and power. The rabbit thinks the bull moose, speaking softly, would have called Roberts a malefactor of great wealth, then whacked him with a big stick, probably a 5-iron.

“You’re way off,” I said. “Golf is the sport of corrupt cornballs. Teddy Roosevelt didn’t play golf. He played real sports, the kind that get your heart rate up.”

“Whatever,’ the rabbit replied. “Point is, there wouldn’t be no so-called relationship with Roberts. There would be a law against him.”

Footnote: Being a monopoly means never having to say you’re sorry when thousands of customers say you suck.

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‘Deflategate’ a bigger story than state of union

Posted on January 22, 2015 by oddmanout215

deflategate-425x239

I was on the porch at the shack with Swamp Rabbit, critiquing Barack Obama’s sixth State of the Union address. Obama was the embodiment of magical thinking for American liberals, an icon of hope because he was an articulate outsider. He turned out to be the consummate insider, a good pal of Jamie Dimon and other elite fraudsters, but put him onstage and he still sounds like a crusader against income inequality:

It’s now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next fifteen years, and for decades to come. Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?

I told the rabbit that the questions Obama posed have been answered many times since the Reagan years, when the income gap between the rich and poor already was widening. But our silver-tongued leader obviously enjoys re-asking it, especially now that both the Senate and House are in Republican hands and his opportunity to fight income inequality has come and gone.

“The man is a lame duck,” the rabbit said. “Don’t matter what he says or what you say. How ’bout you git down off that soapbox? There’s real news goin’ on out there.”

I pointed out to him that I was standing on his case of Wild Turkey, not on a soapbox. “What’s the real news?” I said.

It was “Deflategate.” Someone from the New England Patriots, prior to the team’s game against the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday, may have let some of the air out of the footballs the Patriots would use. Slightly deflated balls might be easier to throw and catch, so the balls may have been a factor in the Patriots’ lopsided victory. In other words, the Patriots have been accused of cheating. Stop the presses!

“That’s crazy talk,” I said. “Everybody knew the Patriots were going to win that game. You’re just mad because you didn’t have the money to bet on them, and because you lost money on them the week before. How come the Patriots are news but Obama isn’t?”

The rabbit twitched his nose and spat in the swamp. “Because nobody knows yet how the Patriots story is gonna turn out. That’s more than you can say for the Obama story.”

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, globalization, Great Recession, humor, mainstream media, Obama, plutocracy, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pope Francis vs. Bill Maher, pope of snark

Posted on January 18, 2015 by oddmanout215

Pope Francis in the PH

Poor Pope Francis, cast into eternal darkness by comedian Bill Maher, host of Real Time and unofficial head of the Church of the Latter Day Snarks:

“I was starting to really like this pope,” Maher said during his monologue on Friday. “He’s dead to me now. Oh yeah, f*ck the Pope. Look, George Bush said it: you’re either with us or against us. Apparently the Pope is not with us.”

Maher was disappointed that the Pope said religion should be off-limits for insults at the same time that he condemned the attack against the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left 12 staff members killed.

I say, f*ck Bill Maher. He prides himself on being politically incorrect but his knee-jerk rejection of ideas that clash with his point of view is just the opposite — politically predictable. His snarky act has gotten old.

I don’t agree with Pope Francis on this one — no institution should be “off-limits for insults” — but most of his other social criticisms are on target. Bottom line, he always takes the side of the poor against the obscenely wealthy, the oppressed against the oppressors. Which is more than you can say for Maher and his fellow limousine liberals, who have more in common with hardcore Republicans than with progressives.

Credit where it’s due: Swamp Rabbit just reminded me that Maher’s golden moment as a social critic came soon after 9/11, when he told Middle America that people who crash airplanes into skyscrapers are anything but cowards — that we were the cowards for “lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.” “Now that was politically incorrect,” the rabbit said.

Correction: When Francis became pope, I thought he’d turn out to be another corrupt figurehead who wore funny hats. I was wrong, except for the hats.

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Seeking disaster’s bright side in Atlantic City

Posted on January 17, 2015 by oddmanout215

Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian is like Voltaire’s Pangloss, or Eric Idle in Life of Brian. He always looks on the bright side of life, even life in Atlantic City, which has been in a downward spiral for years thanks to corrupt and incompetent public officials and casino executives.

In his State of the City speech this week, Guardian argued that A.C. could get back on the winning track by diversifying its economy instead of continuing to depend almost entirely on revenues from crumbling casino businesses. Fittingly, Guardian made his speech in the ballroom at Caesars, whose parent company had just filed for bankruptcy protection.

Smart people warned A.C. to diversify decades ago, to make it more “family-friendly” before casinos became legal in nearby states and drew away a large percentage of the gamblers. It didn’t happen. Four of 12 A.C. casinos went dark in 2014, throwing thousands of people out of work. Gaming revenues have shrunk to almost half of what they were eight years ago. You might say Guardian is planning radical surgery for a patient who has already been wheeled to the morgue — unless you look on the bright side.

Give the mayor credit for appreciating the absurd and for giving a good pep talk, even though he hit a sour note when he said, “At least we are not Detroit.” This was like saying we are not London during the plague years, or Dresden after the fire bombs.

Atlantic City is many times smaller than Detroit and should have been much easier to fix. It has a beach and a boardwalk and an ocean, and it once had legions of chumps journeying from far and wide to blow their money on games of chance. It was a test case for the argument that legalized gambling was a good way to jump-start depressed communities.

So much for that argument. Casinos care about casinos, not communities. When they can no longer plunder, they run.

Posted in arts, casinos, down and out, economic collapse, humor, movies, pop music, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cat Stevens still can’t abide ‘blasphemy’

Posted on January 14, 2015 by oddmanout215

He didn't mean to hurt you... He's just a zealous guy.

He didn’t mean to hurt you… He’s just a zealous guy.

The hippie-era troubadour and Muslim convert Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, is on the comeback trail and already putting his foot in his mouth. For a recent Rolling Stone article, Yusuf was asked about his declaration that “[Salman Rushdie] must be killed. The Quran makes it clear: If someone defames the prophet, then he must die.” He said this way back in 1989, shortly after the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against Rushdie for blaspheming the prophet Muhammad in his novel The Satanic Verses.

One might assume that the 2015 version of Cat Stevens, singing and playing again in the secular world, would unambiguously disavow his old statements about Rushdie, who was forced into hiding for many years because of the fatwa. But one would be wrong. Instead, Yusuf told RS:

I’m a firm believer in the law… I was never a supporter of the fatwa [against Rushdie], but people don’t want to hear that because they keep saying that I believe in the law of blasphemy. All I’m saying is, how can you deny the Third Commandment? It’s an Islamic principle that you must follow the law of the land where you reside.

Swamp Rabbit and I scratched our heads when we read this. Was the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer saying that Rushdie shouldn’t be killed, period, or that he should only be killed in countries where Islam and the law are the same thing?

The rabbit took a swig of Wild Turkey — to help him think more clearly, I guess. He said, “Sounds to me like Yusuf ain’t honest enough to admit he talked like a jackass back in the day. He should apologize to Rushdie, or keep his yap shut.”

I almost agreed with the rabbit. Yusuf should be able to say whatever he wants to say, but no way would I ride the peace train with a guy who can’t quite renouce the ultimate form of censorship. Even if I could afford the ticket.

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Notes on Anita Ekberg, ‘sex goddess’

Posted on January 13, 2015 by oddmanout215

News of Anita Ekberg’s death at 83 got Swamp Rabbit and I and other Federico Fellini fans thinking of Ekberg’s small but memorable role in La Dolce Vita (1960), her only good movie and one of the greatest movies ever shown at my shack in the Tinicum swamp.

I liked the photo of Ekberg in People magazine’s obit, but I took issue with how the writer described La Dolce Vita:

In the Fellini classic, which starred Marcello Mastroianni in what was essentially one long hedonistic romp through the Eternal City, Ekberg ignited her own eternal sex goddess image when she alluringly waded through the Fountain of Trevi in a black, strapless dress.

Calling La Dolce Vita a hedonistic romp is like calling Hamlet a revenge thriller — the description is reductive, to say the least. The movie’s anti-hero, Marcello, is an exceedingly charming fellow who parties non-stop because he can’t think of anything meaningful to do with his talents. His misery is compounded by the fact that he works as a journalist/publicist at a time when the media is evolving into an all-seeing monster that trivializes people, ideas and institutions.

“I don’t like that cat on her head,” the rabbit said as we watched Ekberg in the movie’s famous fountain scene. “But she’s one of them sex goddesses, for sure.”

I explained to the rabbit that Ekberg’s Sylvia is more than a sex goddess to Marcello. She’s the great novel he’ll never write, the undying love he’ll never experience, the faith — and faithfulness — that will forever elude him. Ultimately, she’s like the other loves in his life, in that she embodies his dread as well as his aspirations.

“Whatever you say,” the rabbit said. “But if she ain’t no sex goddess, I don’t know who is.”

Posted in arts, fiction, humor, mainstream media, movies | 1 Comment

Ivan Klima covers the NFL playoffs

Posted on January 12, 2015 by oddmanout215

klima

Swamp Rabbit and I were hungry, so we took a two-day job — strictly commission, unfortunately — peddling magical electricity in a suburban mall. There were flat-screen TVs and football fans all over the place. We caught some of the New England Patriots-Baltimore Ravens playoff game as we worked. The rabbit had bet on the Patriots to win by seven points, but they only won by four, so he lost his bet and was in no mood to join the Patriots fans as they cheered.

But the fans quickly shut up and went back to gawking at the shiny toys in the mall. Tom Brady is a great QB, I told the rabbit, but who really cares about the Patriots where we live, in Philadelphia Eagles country? In fact, who cares about the Eagles? They’re done. Show me the next distraction, please.

“In the end, it’s all garbage,” I added.

Magical electricity sales were a bit slow, so I pulled from my backpack a dog-eared copy of Czech novelist Ivan Klima’s Love and Garbage and read to the rabbit a relevant passage about consumers:

They fill the streets, the squares, the stadiums and the department stores. When they burst into cheers over a winning goal, a successful pop song or a revolution, it seems as if that roar would go on forever, but it is followed at once by the deathly silence of emptiness and oblivion.

“Don’t give me no high-falutin’ lectures, I ain’t in the mood,” the rabbit replied. “I just lost fifty bucks on them freakin’ Patriots. Now I gotta stand here and watch these here consumers consume all them toys I can’t afford.”

I told him all is good, the toys won’t make the consumers any happier than he is, not for more than a few minutes. “What these people need, they can’t buy at the mall,” I said.

I added. “You’re just looking to fill the void inside you where your soul should be.”

“You got that right, Odd Man. Any liquor stores in this dump?”

We folded up our table and left the mall, still hungry. On the way back to the swamp I stole some wieners at the SuperFridge and a liter of Wild Turkey at Tinicum Beer & Spirits.

“Here you go, rabbit,” I said, handing him the bourbon when we were back at the shack. “But this poison won’t fill the void.”

He guzzled straight from the bottle and said, “Maybe not, but at least it’ll stop the shakes.”

Posted in fiction, humor, life in the big city, Philadelphia, sports, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment