Well, So Much for That Idea

Here at OMT, we’re always looking for new ways to make our fledgling news organization better, and to set us apart from the rabble.

The other day, trying to take advantage of the influx of new readers that we’ve acquired since we got some terrific exposure almost a fortnight ago, we came up with the Audience Participation post.

Even though in the past we have derided this business of everyone having to chip in with their own two cents that the Internet has made so pervasive, here at OMT, we’re nothing if not inconsistent, and so we decided to see if we could get a dialog started among our readers, some real give-and-take. These were among our thoughts when we solicited your opinions about the British family who were pissing all over their neighborhood in a vain attempt to get their lost dog to come home.

Not incidentally, it was also an easy way to dash out a column without much effort on our part (as is this one, quite frankly). We only had to set it up and let you finish it, we thought. How cool is that?

The response has been underwhelming, to say the least. Only one of you has bothered to register a comment as of this writing. We can see from the statistics that our blog hosts provide that a lot of people have read the column, but the majority of you have kept your opinions to yourselves.

Maybe it was the subject matter. It could well be that many of you were turned off at the very idea of a suburban London family spreading their piss around around their neighborhood. Our market research tells us that OMT plays to an audience of higher than average intellect, and of high sophistication, so we just figured, “hell, let’s go for it”. But the results speak for themselves.

Surprisingly, yesterday’s piece had the potential of generating a lively discussion between two of our readers about the dangers of McDonald’s coffee, but alas, even that one just sort of petered out.

The keen observation skills that serve us so well in our columns also allow us to gauge how our audience is responding to our efforts, and the feedback (or lack thereof) from our audience participation experiment has been pretty clear.

So, while you can always issue a comment to any post at OMT, you can rest easy, knowing that we will never explicitly solicit reader opinion moving forward.

Here at OMT, you can always count on us to balance our journalistic integrity with what our audience wants. We learn from our mistakes, and we use them to help us make OMT a better experience for you, our readers.

And you can take that to the bank, buddy-boy …

Happy Bastille day, one and all.

What Would Jacques Pépin Think?

Here at OMT, we avoid fast-food restaurants like the plague. The last time we ate something in a McDonalds was in 1987, when we had a hot apple pie with our coffee. Since then, we can count on one hand the number of times we’ve been in a McDonalds, and each time all we had was coffee. While we take a dim view of what passes for food at McDonald’s, we’ve always thought their coffee was pretty good, actually.

We were last in a Wendy’s in 1990, as we were in the midst of moving from our Shadyside apartment to a townhouse in Squirrel Hill. We were famished after moving, and since the kitchen was still mostly in boxes, and our ass was mostly dragging, we walked up to the Wendy’s that used to be at the corner of Forbes & Shady and had a bowl of chili. We’ve always thought Wendy’s chili was all right in a pinch, but we can now make a dynamite chili of our own which we’d put up against anyone’s.

Back in the ’70s when our arteries were more elastic and we were stationed at an Alabama Air Force base, our favorite fast food was at a southern regional burger chain called Jack’s. Their flagship burger, the Big Jack (we weren’t handing out points for originality back then), was a quarter pound of pure char-broiled delight, on a real kaiser roll. It had the standard additives for burgers in those days, but was also enhanced with tomato and thickly sliced purple onion.

Those were the days when McDonald’s onions were minced and seemed somehow artificial, sort of like translucent chads (working in computers, we knew what chads were back in the ’70s, long before Bush v. Gore made them a household word). Also back then, McDonald’s had not yet heard of that radical new invention called the tomato.

As for Jack’s french fries, they were slightly bigger than the fries of other chains. And they were wonderful; sort of chewy/crisp on the outside, and light and fluffy, almost like a potato mousse on the inside. We’ve never known their equal. We just couldn’t understand why everyone raved about McDonald’s limp, sometimes soggy, always wimpy, overly salty, slightly rancid-tasting french fries.

When we’d get high with our buds and everyone got the munchies, we’d all pile in the car, usually ours if there were a bunch of us, or Jeff’s MG Midget if it was just the two of us, and head for Jack’s. It was close, it was good, and we could drive the back alleys to get there, all the better to avoid being stopped by the cops. This was no small consideration given the deteriorating atmospheric conditions inside the car as we made our way through the soupy Alabama night. It was our practice not to open the car windows no matter how uncomfortable it was, lest the essence be wasted. And if a cop were to stop us, of course, we’d be compelled to to roll the window down, our doom then wafting out of the car and into the cop’s face.

Sometimes, of course, the gang decided that we were in the mood for chicken, in which case we’d head for Oulette’s, a local drive-in restaurant whose signature dish was their “broasted” chicken, something of a broil/roast technique that produced a juicy, tender chicken that was beyond beyond, as we used to say. Even their side dishes, from their home fries to their turnip greens to their corn on the cob to their cole slaw were just the thing to take the edge off of a reefer-induced hunger attack. Sopping up their lush gravy with one of their fresh, warm and fluffy biscuits was damn near a carnal experience, when under the influence of the devil’s weed.

Of course, Oulette’s was not fast food, but it was worth the wait. And besides, we’d just sit outside at one of the picnic tables and laugh until our orders arrived. The people who ran Oulette’s suspected that there was something up when three or four of us would suddenly materialize out of nowhere, ordering a scandalous amount of food, all the while acting not quite normally and laughing the entire time. But to his credit, owner Bob Oulette felt that our money was as green as anyone else’s. And since we’d eat our food quietly without disturbing his other customers, and leave as soon as we were finished, he didn’t hassle us. In fact, one time he even gave us complimentary fritters.

And they were damn good fritters.

But we digress.

Erik Trinidad’s blog, Fancy Fast Food caught our attention recently. When Erick was a kid, he and his brother would take Chinese buffet dishes and “re-style” them into other kinds of dishes. This served as the inspiration for Erick’s blog, in which he takes meals that he purchases at fast food restaurants and converts them into haught cuisine, or near enough, with photos and complete instructions as to how you can produce these dishes in your own kitchen.

Although he covers his ass with the tag line, “Yeah, it’s still bad for you – but see how good it can look!”, Trinidad does some pretty amazing things with fast food fare.

For example, he converts a KFC Original Recipe two-piece Breast & Wing Meal with some sides into “The Colonel’s Chicken Corn Chowder“, which he garnishes with cut organic chives, thereby adding that elusive 12th herb to the Colonel’s famous “eleven herbs and spices”.

A Burger King Croissan’wich with ham and hash browns, along with a Burger King Ham, Egg & Cheese biscuit meal are transformed into a BK Quiche that would probably go quite nicely with a crisp chardonnay.

And a McDonald’s Big Mac Extra Value Meal with a large fries is changed beyond recognition into McSteak & Potatoes that, unlike its source material, actually looks good enough to eat.

Although, we’d probably settle for just coffee.

For our money though, the most interesting dish is his Tacobellini, in which he converts two Taco Bell Burrito Supremes into tortellini. This has to be seen to be believed.

But you can check out the dishes yourselves. As we indicated, Trinidad bends over backwards to give readers profusely illustrated instructions, so anyone should be able to pull these off.

His web site amounts to Jacques Pépin’s Fast Food My Way from hell.

And here at OMT, surprisingly, we approve. We give Erick Trinidad credit for originality and for the obvious effort he’s put in to creating what for all intents and purposes are classy dishes out of the low rung of the cuisine ladder.

We might even be tempted to throw one of them together ourselves.

But not likely.

An Audience-Participation Post

OMT’s news partners over at the BBC have reported the story of a family from Clifton, Bristol, the Baltesz family, who recently lost their dog, Simon, a 10-year-old black lab, and who have come up with a rather novel approach to lure the dog back home.

Now, here in our neighborhood when someone loses a pet, they generally put up fliers on utility poles and other public spaces, usually with a description of the pet or sometimes even a picture, along with contact information should you come across their furry loved one.

But the Balteszes thought they’d try something different.

Way different.

After checking a web site that offered advice for owners of dogs who had flown the coop, as it were, the family left trails of their own urine around the neighborhood.

Mom Louise Baltesz said that she knew her neighbors wouldn’t be too thrilled about this, but that they were willing to do anything to get Simon back.

Obviously.

“Apparently it’s quite a normal way of doing it”, Louise says. “You just put a little bit in a bottle and then top it up with water”.

Not so, says Ian Wills, the local vet in Bristol. “If the dog was going to follow the owner’s scent it would be from something they wore, like a jumper. Unless they have an incontinence problem”.

A spokeswoman for the Bristol city council said: “We would not consider this to be a good idea from an environmental health point of view”, but that they probably wouldn’t cite the Baltesz family for pissing on their neighbor’s lawns.

Now, as regular OMT readers are by this time acutely aware, we recently made a BFD out of the issue of neighbors putting unwanted things on our property without our consent, but this makes takes the whole subject into an entirely different dimension.

We’re sure that many of you are gearing up right now to read the unique take that we would have on something like this, but here at OMT, we like to keep our readers on their toes. So, we’re going to keep our thoughts to ourselves this time, and invite you, our readers, to sound off about this. What do you think about a family of four spreading their piss around the neighborhood in order to get their lost dog back (something which hasn’t worked up to now, by the way)?

We’ll leave you with this observation from Louise Baltesz: “There are people who are upset about it, but I’m too emotionally drained to think about it”.

Emotionally and otherwise, we would think …

Let us have your thoughts on this.

C’mon, do we have to do all the writing around here?

The Whole Truth … And Nothing But

One of the more disturbing stories in the news last week was that of the cemetery in Illinois, near Chicago, that was being investigated by authorities in an ugly scheme by four former cemetery employees who apparently dug up bodies and re-sold the graves over a period of four years. As grotesque as this crime is, it is made even more so by the fact that this was the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, a historic black cemetery that was the final resting place of such notables as Dinah Washington, Willie Dixon and Emmett Till.

Emmett Till, you may recall, was the 14-year-old black boy from Chicago who was visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955 when he was beaten and lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Tens of thousands filed past his coffin at his funeral in Chicago, which his mother insisted be open so that the world could see what ugly white racists had done to her boy. And the world did see. Till’s murder was a seminal event that helped spark the modern civil rights movement.

News stories coming out of Illinois yesterday, however, suggested that Emmett Till may have been lynched once again in way more gruesome, but every bit as terrible and unjust as in 1955. In stories of the discovery of bones scattered around the cemetery and of empty plots where bodies at one time were buried, it was reported that Emmett Till’s glass-topped casket had been found rusting in a shack, its interior shredded by animals who were apparently living in it.

This suggested that Emmett Till had been among those whose graves had been violated. For hours yesterday, we were unable to get further information about this. All of the stories we were able to find in the afternoon and into the evening told of the fact that the coffin had been found, but gave no further information, as though the complete story was to horrible to report. In fact, everywhere we went, it seemed like it was the exact same story, almost word-for-word, being reprinted all over the web.

It wasn’t until later in the evening that we were able to find a story that reported that Till’s body had been exhumed in 2005 in a new investigation of his death, that his remains had been reburied in a new casket, that the old casket was to be used as part of a memorial to be built, and that Till’s grave had been undisturbed by the people who had perpetrated the grave reselling scheme.

Needless to say, this was a profound relief for us. We were already on edge yesterday after a friend of ours provided us with an indication in no uncertain terms that the same kind of thinking that lead to the death of Emmett Till over 50 years ago is still alive and doing quite well in American society today. In light of this, to have to grapple with the thought that Till once again had been violated was more than we could bear.

Here at OMT, we take a dim view of our colleagues in the fourth estate who are so bound and determined to get the story first that getting the story complete takes a back seat. A short, cryptic news item that suggested that Emmett Till’s bones had been dug up and thrown away had been allowed to make the rounds for hours yesterday, and it wasn’t until much later that the whole story came out. What was the purpose of this? Did someone deliberately say, “Hey, let’s just run with this .. we’ll get the facts later .. this should get some profile“, and then just dump it out on the news wires?

Where is the voice of reason, of reflection, on the editorial staff that says, “Now, wait a minute … there are too many unanswered questions here. Get out there and get me some answers, dammit”.

Is the public out here to be informed or to be manipulated?

We remember when sensationalism and titillation weren’t the driving forces in journalism. We’d do well to get back to that kind of thinking.

——————–
In happier news, today would have been the 110th birthday of E. B. White, author of such children’s books as Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. Here at OMT, we were much more familiar with White’s adult works; his essays in the New Yorker, and his collections like, The Second Tree From the Corner, Essays of E. B. White, Poems and Sketches of E. B. White, and of course, One Man’s Meat, a collection of essays that White wrote for Harpers in a column of the same name. It was as an homage to White that we named this blog One Man’s Tofu.

White was the master of the simple, declarative English sentence. His writing is a refuge for us, sustaining us when our spirits sag, nourishing us when we are famished for thought, making us chuckle when our heart is heavy.

Although it’s quite clear, judging from the excesses and shortcomings in our own writing, that we haven’t taken very much away from White’s lessons about economy, clarity, and the importance of being concise, we keep on going to his class anyway, in the hope that one day our work will do him proud.

That’s hardly likely, though.

Still, we muddle on.

A Pre-Weekend Ramble

Michael Moore, director of such notable documentaries as Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 911, and most recently Sicko, has announced his forthcoming film, which he plans to release this fall.

Capitalism: A Love Story, will be in theaters on October 2nd … One year and one day after the US Senate voted to approve the $750 billion bail out of the crooks and thieves on Wall Street. Of the film, Moore says, “It’s got it all – lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It’s a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let’s just say it: It’s capitalism”.

Here at OMT, we’re a big fan of Moore’s films, and we eagerly anticipate his likely skewering of the bastards and cocksuckers that orchestrated our current economic crisis. The same bastards who soft-landed while the rest of us were left on board as the economy broke up in a spectacular light show that stretched from one horizon to the other.

If the worst that happens to them is to be torn apart on film by Michael Moore (and it probably will be), they’re getting off a lot easier than they deserve.

——————–
It was a red-letter day on Wednesday for feminists as scientists in Britain announced that they had created human sperm cells from stem cells. This, according to one or two who have written about it this week, effectively renders men obsolete. Emily Cook in The Daily Mirror, a UK trash rag, said, “Women have always known that men are a bit of a waste of space … Now British scientists have proved how unnecessary blokes truly are by creating the first human sperm from stem cells. And as if that’s not a big enough problem for fellas everywhere, the expert behind this revolutionary move is a man“.

Here at OMT, we could probably come up with a spirited counter-argument to Cook’s position, filling the page with our eloquence as we completely refute her entire argument. But why should we bother going to that effort when it’s obvious that she likely hasn’t been in flagrante delicto with one of those “unnecessary blokes” since the Carter administration.

We think we’ll just leave it at that.

——————–
By this time, everybody has probably heard that California, the state in which democracy has run amuck, is teetering on a fiscal precipice, having been reduced to writing IOUs to state workers instead of paying them. The state is on the verge of fiscal collapse, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is fit to be tied. Arnold and the legislature are grappling with a $26 billion-plus deficit, and a solution is apparently not forthcoming. Probably the only happy camper in all of California these days is former Governor Gray Davis, who was recalled by California’s voters in mid-term and eventually replaced by The Governator.

But as this is California, after all, who should come riding to the rescue but a bunch of pot heads? The Marijuana Policy Project, the largest marijuana reform organization in the United States, with 27,000 active members and over 100,000 e-mail subscribers across the country, is politely suggesting that marijuana be legalized and taxed. They’ve created a commercial spot (which you can see on their web site) in which they put forth the argument that pot smokers would be “happy to be taxed” (wow, must be good stuff), and that legalization and taxation could be the solution to California’s revenue shortfall.

The star of the commercial is Nadene Herndon of Fair Oaks, near Sacramento, an “actual marijuana consumer”, who argues, “The governor and legislators are ignoring millions of Californians who want to pay taxes. We’re marijuana consumers. Instead of being treated like criminals for using a substance safer than alcohol, we want to pay our fair share”.

Wow, man … must be great stuff.

Of course, TV program directors being the spineless bastards that they are, both the NBC and ABC affiliates in the Bay Area and the ABC affiliate in Los Angeles have refused to air the ad. However, it will be airing on other broadcast stations in the state, as well as on cable outlets CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC and CNBC in California’s major markets.

Here at OMT, we have long believed that America’s has had its head up its ass with its insane drug policy. Our jails are packed to the rafters with non-violent small-time drug offenders who learn all about violence while they’re behind bars, living among the truly violent. We spend an obscene amount of money in our increasingly ineffective drug war, money that could be better spent doing things like .. well, just about anything you could name, actually.

We’re not talking about coke, or crack, or smack, or PCP, or ecstasy, or any of the truly dangerous drugs out there that turn otherwise ordinary people into zombies who turn to crime to feed their habits. We’re just talking about reefer here. Something that a lot of people are doing anyway, every single day, probably right next door to you.

Doesn’t it make sense to take this out of the hands of the street dealers and take a shot at eliminating all the attendant crime associated with it, regulate it, and then use it to generate some much-needed revenue? Almost 7 out of 10 people surveyed said that if marijuana were legalized they would at least try it, and many of those would probably use it on a regular basis.

Doesn’t this make just a bit more sense than raising our taxes in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression?

Sometimes we think that the people running things are the ones smoking the pipe.

There’s money just lying there. Why wouldn’t we use it, and leave our property taxes and income taxes alone?

——————–
Levi Johnston, estranged nearly-son-in-law of Sarah Palin has come forward with his own theory of why Sarah is stepping down as governor; money. Lots of money.

Levi said that while he was living with the Palins over the holidays last year, all Sarah could talk about was the offers of money that were being made to her, and how much the family could use the dough. There were evidently all kinds of deals on the table, from the book which she’s recently signed on for, to a reality show (just what this country needs).

“I think the big deal was the book. That was millions of dollars”, Levi says.

For his part, Levi is working as a carpenter while he pursues a book deal of his own, a movie deal, and some acting jobs.

Thank you John McCain.

Thank you for being so woefully inept that instead of choosing someone as your Vice Presidential running mate who was actually qualified for the job, someone who might have helped you win, and afterwards might actually have been a useful person to have around to help formulate and execute policy, you dragged some trailer park trash woman of profound ignorance out of the backwoods, cynically thinking that this would somehow bring disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters over to your side. Thank you for saddling us with the burden of having to tolerate this embarrassing virago and her equally embarrassing family (and their hangers-on like Levi and his embarrassing family) who cannot accept that their 15 minutes of fame are over and refuse to leave the public stage.

Thanks, John, you incompetent son-of-a-bitch.

And to think you were almost President.

In the Pocket With Jesus

Like any serious news organization, here at OMT we sometimes worry that we are perhaps spending too much time on stories of a similar vein. This is especially true when those stores appear in rapid succession. You may remember last week our lamenting about how many stories we’ve devoted over the past year to Sarah Palin, something that culminated in our having to seek treatment for APCS.

The same is true about OMT’s coverage of religion. We’ve done quite a few stories, mostly about the Roman Catholics, that a person of faith might find to be objectionable. Doing stories that openly mock religion is a minefield, journalistically speaking, but we think that most of our readers know that it’s all in good fun. We were raised Catholic, and while it’s been nearly 40 years since we left the Church, one can never really cleanse oneself fully of the imprint of a Catholic upbringing. Even though we profess a profound belief in the randomness of the universe, we still feel a rush of adrenaline when some stupid shit like Jimmy Swaggart or Pat Robertson betray their anti-Catholic prejudices. It reminds us of something that John Lennon once said; “I can knock The Beatles, but don’t let Mick Jagger knock them”.

As we were perusing the wire for subject matter last night, we encountered a news item that set us to brooding about all of this. We’ve only very recently done a couple of light-hearted religious pieces that we’d had a bit of fun with, and we weren’t at all sure that we wanted to go down that path again so soon.

But, what the hell …

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper caused nothing short of a scandal among Catholics last Friday when attending the funeral of Governor General Romeo LeBlanc. Harper, a non-Catholic, accepted a communion wafer, and, apparently not knowing what to do next, put the host into his pocket. This video of the incident shows Harper nonchalantly stuffing Jesus away, looking as though he didn’t know what to do with Him, even though he presumably could see what those around him were doing.

This incited outrage among Canadian Catholics from the Bay of Fundy to Vancouver Island. The consecrated host is considered sacred to Catholics. Monsignor Brian Henneberry, vicar general and chancellor in the Diocese of Saint John, wanted some answers. “It’s a scandal from the Catholic point of view. I would hope the Prime Minister’s Office would have enough respect for the Catholic Church and for faith in general to make clear whatever happened”. If Harper really did slip the host into his pocket, then, according to Henneberry, it’s “worse than a faux pas“.

That’s French for “serious fuck-up”, and when a Canadian starts speaking French, you know they mean business.

Also fanning the flames of anger among the faithful is the fact that Harper, as a Protestant, is technically ineligible to receive a Catholic sacrament. But Reverend Arthur Bourgeois (we promise you we’re not making that name up), who delivered the sermon at LeBlanc’s funeral, said that on occasions like a funeral or some other event, ”exceptions can be made. You’re not going to stop and ask everyone if they are Catholic. You say the Lord provides”.

We called up OMT’s religion consultant, the Rear Reverend Arthur “Sport” Trendleburg of the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese about Harper’s faux pas, and he’s not so quick to agree with Reverend Bourgeois.

“It should never have been given to a non-Catholic. They just don’t appreciate the Eucharist. Catholics doctrine dictates that once the host has been consecrated by a priest it is the body and blood of Jesus Christ”, Father Sport says. “To casually stick him in your pocket is a disgrace of Jovian proportions. It’s simply undignified”.

We reminded Father Sport that just last month in these very pages he discussed with us some of the ways that the Church distributes consecrated hosts, both in the mails and in vending machines. How is it that these are “dignified”, we wondered, while simply putting the host in a nice, warm pocket is not?

“There’s a difference”, Father Sport maintained. “The ‘Host in the Post’ program as well as the vending machine system are both approved methods of host distribution. We’ve thoroughly vetted these methods, and fully understand the theological implications behind them. Plus, they bring in revenue. But when an individual puts the host in his pocket, not only is there no thought for what this means theologically, but the Church has nothing to gain”.

Harper does have his defenders, some of whom even claim to have seen Harper consume the host. Dimitri Soudas, the Prime Minister’s press secretary said, “It’s totally absurd. The priest offered the host to the prime minister, the prime minister accepted the host and he consumed it”.

Of course, we have come to expect that a press secretary says whatever is necessary to put his boss in a good light. But also speaking up for Harper is Noel Kinsella, speaker of the Canadian Senate. “I would like to state that I personally witnessed Prime Minister Harper consume the host that was given to him by Archbishop André Richard. Sitting only a few seats behind him I had a full view of the proceedings and clearly saw the Prime Minister accept the host after Archbishop Richard offered it. The Prime Minister consumed it”.

Well, there you have it.

Still, Harper is going to need more than just Noel Kinsella’s say-so this weekend. On Saturday, he’ll be in Rome where he has an audience with Pope Benedict XVI.

Luuucy … you got some ’splaining to do.

The Prince and the Pauper

Prince William, the somewhat dull, not-too-bright, dangerously inbred eldest son of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, was made an honorary barrister recently, one of the perks associated with being second in line for the throne of Great Britain. A “barrister” is what Americans call a lawyer, and William manages to achieve this without having spent a single day in law school. They just sort of handed it to him.

Well, not exactly.

Tradition dictates that he has to “describe his hobbies and passions” in order to be “called to the bench” by the governing body of the “Ancient Inns of Court”. Sounds like one of the rutuals of the Bohemian Club.

William did his best to fulfill that obligation just the other day.

“I play football, rugby and water polo, not very well, but particularly pride myself in being a quite magnificent armchair center-back at football and flanker at rugby. And now you have made me a barrister – I promise not to practice, except for the odd speeding ticket”, the pampered prince told the crowd of nearly 300 well-wishers.

Well at least he’s leading a life of service to his people. We’re sure he’ll make a magnificent king some day. Whatever were Franklin, Jefferson and Washington thinking when they denied our country the leadership of a family of spoiled, dim-witted brats with too much money and too much time on their hands?

Of course, we do have the Bushes.

We wonder how Robert Bowman might feel about Prince William being handed on a silver platter something Bowman has been struggling to attain his entire adult life.

Our news partners over at the New York Times tell us that Bowman, 47, spent 26 years working himself through community college, graduate school, and law school. He took the New York bar exam 4 times before he finally passed early in 2008. When he applied for admission to the bar, the panel of lawyers who review the applicants and make recommendations called his persistence in the face of all his challenges “remarkable”, and they recommended that he be admitted.

But the group of five state appellate judges, a bunch of old farts without a heart among them, ruled this past spring that Bowman’s student loans were too big, and that he hadn’t made sufficient effort to repay them. So they denied his application.

“Applicant has not made any substantial payments on the loans. Applicant has not presently established the character and general fitness requisite for an attorney and counselor-at-law”.

Character and fitness?

Bowman admits that he’s not yet attempted to repay his loans, largely because of medical deferments he’s received, and because of complications with his lender, Sallie Mae. But not everyone who has student loans is a deadbeat, and that doesn’t seem to be the case with Bowman.

He spent most of his childhood shuttling between various foster families. As a result of this, he was exposed to a lot of legal proceedings as a child, and felt a pull toward the legal profession.

He spent 10 years getting his undergraduate degree, because for six of those years, he was in rehab, learning to walk again after an ATV hit him while he was stopped in traffic on his motorcycle, very nearly severing his leg. He finally got his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York in 1995. In 2000, he entered the University of California in San Francisco to attend its Hastings College of Law. He graduated in December of 2004, having by this time racked up a debt of $230,000 in student loans. But with the help of his girlfriend who agreed to support him, he set about studying for the bar exam.

Two years ago, Bowman contacted Sallie Mae asking for an accounting of his loans to see where he stood, and he requested information as to what his options for repayment were. According to Bowman, they didn’t respond to his repeated requests for two years. Sallie Mae denies this; in fact, they claim to have been trying to reach Bowman throughout 2007.

After he passed the bar exam last year, he went to Florida to live with his formerly-estranged mother. It was during this period that a Jet Ski lost control and hit him while he was swimming at a beach. This accident broke his other leg, the good one, in four places. He contacted Sallie Mae asking for another medical deferment, but they told him go pound salt.

Taking advantage of having finally tracked him down though, Sallie Mae turned his $230,000 loan over to a federal collection agency which started attaching on fees and penalties. They attached one 25% fee before transferring it to yet another collection agency which attached another 25% fee of its own, and before you know it, Bowman was staring down the barrels of a $400,000 student loan debt.

It was this amount that shocked the sensibilities of the judges who rejected his application to the bar, and the fact that Bowman hadn’t made any payments against it shocked them even further.

The panel of lawyers who recommended Bowman to the judges for admission knew about the loan situation, and knew about Bowman’s history. Still, when recommending him, they showed some compassion for what he’d been through (remarkable in and of itself for a group of lawyers), saying “it appears unconscionable that a student loan indebtedness could go from $270,000 to $435,000 in four years”.

But the judges were having not of it.

Bowman, for his part, is trying to get the court to reverse its decision, and he’s also bring suit against Sallie Mae. Of course, he’ll have to hire a lawyer for that since he isn’t one himself.

And then there is the obvious question, how do the judges expect Bowman to pay back his debt if they deny him the opportunity to practice law? We’re entering Joseph Heller territory here.

Here at OMT, we think that there’s something inherently nauseating about some child of privilege, like Prince William, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a silver thermometer up his ass, getting something for nothing while some guy who’s never seemed to get a break in his life (apart from his legs), but who has worked through his troubles, putting in the effort, doing his homework, and still getting screwed by both circumstance as well as the system, ends up being denied the very thing that the Prince gets just because of an accident of birth.

Prince William’s being given something that he obviously has no appreciation for (”I promise not to practice, except for the odd speeding ticket”) makes a mockery of the effort and hardship that Robert Bowman has gone through in what turns out to be a fruitless pursuit of his dream.

We wish Bowman the best of luck in getting the judges to have a change of heart.

And we hope that Britain gets its head out of its ass and abolishes the monarchy before this spoiled, worthless shit has the chance to ascend to the throne.

TV or not TV

Here at OMT, we don’t watch much TV as a rule, and so when our Comcast cable bill comes every month, we have a hard time writing out the check for the $62 they want from us. Comcast is probably the most hated institution in the city, after city council, and for good reason. Their prices keep going up while the number of channels keep going down, and God help you if you should try to get them on the phone for some reason. We’ve never had less than a 20-minute wait until some surly dullard comes on the line to treat us like a schmuck.

Comcast is the only game in town, and they know it. They remind us of the old Lily Tomlin bit in which she plays Ernestine the telephone operator, who treats customers shabbily and then regales them with, “We don’t care … we don’t have to … we’re the phone company”.

Change that to “cable company” and that could just as well be Comcast’s motto.

When the time came for us to upgrade to high-speed Internet a few years back, we just couldn’t face climbing into bed with Comcast for Internet service as well, and so we went with Verizon’s fiber-optic FiOS service … one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. Not only is the service super-fast (we downloaded the 700mb Ubuntu ISO in less than 12 minutes), but on those rare occasions when we’ve needed them, they always answered promptly, courteously, and knowledgeably, and we would be back on the air surfing the web in no time.

In fact, less than a week after we had FiOS installed, we came home to find our Internet down and our phone dead. One of our neighbors had seen us come home, and right about the time we were arriving at the fact that something must have happened to our Verizon service, she rang the doorbell to tell us that a large moving van had come up our street that afternoon and yanked out the cable leading from the pole across the street to our house. When we went outside to look, it had just pulled the sucker out by the root. All the little optic fibers were splayed out on the end of the cable like a little broom. Most of it was lying down in our yard, while there was about a 3-foot frizzy stub left on the pole. This was Friday evening, and so we figured we were screwed until Monday at the earliest.

But when we got Verizon on our cell phone, they said, “we’re sorry we can’t get someone out there tonight, but will you be around at 7:00 on Saturday morning?” “Sure”, we said, and by 8:00 not only were be back on line, but the technician had rigged it so that the only thing that could pull it out again would be a low-flying plane.

Service on a weekend in an emergency situation with just a little over 12-hours downtime. We can live with that.

So, we’ve been very pleased with Verizon since we came on board.

They also offer FiOS TV service, and when they wired our house for Internet and phone, they made us “TV-ready”. We were thrilled with this, because we loathed Comcast, and Verizon offered a better selection of channels — digital and hi-def channels — than Comcast, and for a better price.

But, alas, we live in the city, and Pittsburgh had an exclusive agreement with Comcast for cable services, and no other vendor can compete.

This is especially unnerving when one considers that the border between Pittsburgh and Swissvale, whose residents can enjoy Verizon TV, is right down at the end of the street. The seam in the pavement on corner of Raymond Street and Oak Grove, less than the length of a football field away from our front porch, runs diagonally though the intersection; the black asphalt was laid down by Pittsburgh, the cobblestones by Swissvale.

So for a few years now, we’ve been standing out in the cold with our face pressed to the glass, looking through the window into the warm living room of Swissvale as they watched all those great, high-quality TV channels, while we were stuck with the bastards who took our C-SPAN2 away and jacked up the price for their trouble.

No more.

The city’s Cable Communications Advisory Committee and city council are working on a deal that would open Pittsburgh up to competition for cable TV at long last. According to the Post-Gazette, Verizon plans to offer FiOS-TV in some neighborhoods as soon as they get approval. Within three years, half of the city would be ready to be hooked up, and within six, everybody.

In the case of Raymond Street, it’s just a matter of turning it on … when Verizon was installing fiber-optic phone and Internet on our street, the TV connections were wired in but just not switched on, since they had the Swissvale right around the corner, according to the technician who was installing it. So, we’ll probably be among the first.

The city thinks that this will bring everybody’s prices down, as now Comcast will have to actually compete for service.

But we dont’ care if they bring it down to $1 a month.

Comcast is OTFD, as far as we’re concerned.

—————–
The “Where Are They Now” department:

Joyce DeWitt, the actress who was best known as being the one on the TV show Three’s Company who wasn’t Suzanne Somers, was picked up for drunken driving in Southern California, according to our news partners over at the San Francisco Chronicle. She was pulled over after she drove past a barricade on Saturday afternoon near a park in El Segundo, north of Santa Monica.

After being given a field sobriety test, she was booked and released by the El Segundo police.

Three’s Company was a pretty stupid show, even for the 1970s, which didn’t exactly represent television’s golden years. Of course when compared with what the networks are offering up now, it doesn’t look so bad anymore.

We always admired DeWitt for being the one who wasn’t a breakout star (both Somers and John Ritter went on to greater success). But she hung in there anyway, coming to work and doing her job every day, content do be the one that didn’t soak up the accolades.

We hope that her run-in with the law was just an aberration, and that she can go back to living her life without this kind of publicity.

We’ll Be Right Back

The BBC reports that Vatican Radio has started airing commercial advertisements on its broadcasts for the first time since it was founded back in 1931 by none other than Guglielmo Marconi.

That’s right, Marconi. Of course, who else would you expect to put the Holy See on the air but the very inventor of radio himself?

Turns out that the Vatican, which used to completely fund their broadcasting arm, has been suffering from the global economic downturn just like everybody else, and so has had to turn to advertisements as a means to raise funds for day-to-day operations at the FM station. It’s been costing the Vatican around $30 million a year to keep the station on the air. When the Vatican released their finances to the press recently, it was revealed that they’ve been running a deficit for two years now. Vatican officials blame Vatican radio for the lion’s share of the problem. Apparently, once a priest gets a large radio audience, he starts hitting his bosses up for more money, just like in the secular world.

Here at OMT, we just don’t get this. The Vatican owns one of the largest and most valuable art collections in the world, not to mention their vast real estate holdings. Couldn’t they just sell off a couple of tapestries or something to make up the deficit?

Right now, the only sponsor is Enel SpA, a large European gas and electricity conglomerate. Enel promises its commercials will be in keeping with the generally conservative vibe of the station. They say that they are “honored” to be the Vatican’s first corporate sponsor, and that they have “some of the shared values of the Catholic Church”.

Just “some”?

The commercials are just in a test phase for the time being, but if the audience accepts them, the Vatican plans to march full steam ahead into the lucrative, sexy world of commercial advertising.

Who knows, maybe they could channel the spirit of Billy Mays to pitch for them.

We can hear him now …

Just call 1-800-et cum spiri-220.

That’s 1-800-et cum spiri-220.

Call now.

Make Mine a Lapsang Souchong

As we were on our bike ride yesterday, we noticed a lot of cars parked along Schenely Drive in Schenely Park, many more than usual, and we assumed that there were some fun Fourth-of-July goings on nearby. As we rounded the curve near Phipps Conservatory, we encountered people carrying signs, saying things like, “no more taxes”, “Stop socialism now”, “Obama = Mussolini”, and the provocative, “Obama wants your guns – Let’s give it to him”, which to us sounded a little like something that the Secret Service might be interested in.

On Flagstaff Hill, across from the Conservatory, we saw several hundred people, angry people, gathered, listening while a speaker yelled, shook his fist and bitched that their freedoms were under assault. We found out later, from our news partners over at the Post-Gazette, that we’d stumbled into one of those infamous “tea parties” that Republicans have been having to show their paranoia, which we supposed is justified, toward a nation that has apparently turned its back on them and is moving forward to create a society in which there is liberty and justice for all, not just for simple-minded, paranoid white people.

Tea parties, after the Boston Tea Party, are all the rage among those who like to vent their rage because it seems like everybody but them have decided that the high-minded principles enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are more than just cheap slogans to be used by idiots who have no idea what they mean. That maybe, just maybe we should make at least a token effort to living up to them.

As evidenced from the license plates on some of the cars, a few of which were from Ohio and West Virginia, as well as from what the PG reported, most, if not nearly all, of the people in attendance were non-city residents.

Right. So, another group of narrow-minded imbeciles descend upon the city and play in our park, yelling about how city people are responsible for setting this country on the path to socialism, what with our welfare, our poor people, our abortions, our homosexuality, and out black socialist President.

Not only do we have to listen to this shit in our own backyard, but we have to pay our city cops overtime to make sure that things don’t get out of hand, and pay our Public Works department to clean up after they’ve trashed Flagstaff Hill.

And God forbid we should even suggest raising the occupation tax (currently $52 a year) to cover the impact made on city services by these out-of-towners who work in the city but live in places like Cranberry, Upper St. Clair, Murraysville, and other Republican strongholds. They can come here and piss in our alleys when they’ve left the bar after a couple of post-work brewskies and are on their way to the parking garage, but we’re not allowed to ask them to pony up for the guy that we have to hire to hose down the alley at 6:00 AM. Who do they think has to pay for his health care coverage?

But we digress …

We can understand that these people are angry about something, but we think that with perhaps a little bit of homework they might be more effective in getting their message across. For instance, one minute they’re comparing President Obama with Benito Mussolini, who was a fascist. In the next breath, they’re saying that Obama’s a socialist.

Well, which is it? Fascism and socialism are on completely opposite sides of the ideological scale, like acids and alkalis, heat and cold, night and day, black and white. Obama is a pretty nimble guy, but even he can’t be a fascist and a socialist at the same time.

Pick one, you morons, and stick with it.

In the PG article, reporter Moriah Balingit spoke with Michel Sadaka, from Cranberry, who said, “I’m not happy with the way things are. It’s an attack on the Constitution. It’s an attack on the freedoms that American citizens are used to“.

What is, exactly?

Is it Obama’s attempt to undo the damage from the Bush administration turning a blind eye to the financial industry and letting them rout our banks and financial institutions, bringing our economy to the brink of complete collapse?

Or how about Bush’s suspension of due process and habeas corpus in the name of “national security” (as if a collapsing economy isn’t a security threat). Or the forced submission of average citizens to unreasonable searches and seizures at our airports. Or arresting people not for what they actually have done, but for what they might do, as happened to an members of an unfortunate, law-abiding Muslim family in Chicago, who, because of their religion, were arrested because they “might be influenced” by terrorists.

Or for sanctioning torture in the name of the United States government.

These things aren’t an “attack on the Constitution”?

There are a lot of things wrong with this country, and plenty of blame to go around (although the lion’s share of it belongs squarely in the lap of the Republican Party), but engaging in paranoid fantasies that the country is under siege by a socialist (or fascist, take your pick), menace does nothing to get this country moving forward, and a good deal to send us backwards. That people not only choose to be ill-informed, but take pride in this lack of achievement, as if the problem is that the smart people have fucked up this country and now it’s the stupid people’s turn, actually is a one-way ticket to authoritarianism.

That these morons are armed to the teeth really is a national security problem.

They talk about how all they want from the government is to be left alone. What they really want is to be left alone while they tell everybody else what to do.

That’s not what America is about, and it never has been.

That’s not what America’s future is, and it never will be.