jimbo: road warrior

Jimbo is on the road tonight. The Fairfield Inn has an indoor pool, but even though his girlfriend told him to take his swim trunks, he didn't do it. There is no one in the pool or the hot tub, so jimbo would have felt self-conscious in there by himself. There are windows in the lobby through which everyone can observe the pool area.

There are mostly businessmen here, but I think there might be a lower division college basketball team staying here. I didn’t see a bus, but I saw a guy in the lobby who had the eyes of someone who plays the one spot and there was a rather tall young gentleman heating up something in the microwave in the lobby—probably a three or four man.

Jimbo has never been a road warrior, but he has been out on average a couple of times a year throughout his career. He’s done it enough to know the basics. First, you get your room and get your stuff into it. Hang up all your work clothes, rather than leave them in the suitcase. This place has an iron and ironing board, so a wrinkle won’t be a problem. The second step is to check out the restaurant in the hotel to make sure the food is good. If so, and it usually is, then you eat virtually all of your meals there. The place I’m staying doesn’t have a restaurant, just continental breakfast served in the lobby from six to nine in the morning, so this would have necessitated a search for someplace to eat, but Jimbo lucked into his place within a half hour of checking in. I checked the yellow pages and found what I assumed would be a fast food place a block down the street. I figured I'd go there and get a burger and bring it back and eat it. It turned out to be a sit down restaurant, so I had supper there and it was pretty good. There are a number of hotels, motels and extended stays in the area and I noticed a lot of guys at tables eating by themselves—the confirmation this was a good place to eat. When you see people by themselves (and there were a couple of lone women there, too) you figure them to be road warriors and if there are road warriors eating there, it means the food is good. The logic is that road warriors are on expense accounts and they can afford to eat at better places because someone else is paying. If you see road warriors, eating on someone else’s money, it is confirmation that the place passes muster. This one did, in Jimbo’s opinion.

The next important thing is to make sure you pay for everything on a credit card. Good road warriors have a separate credit card just for work-related travel. They charge everything on it, submit their expense reports and are usually reimbursed within a week. They get 28 days grace on the card, so they always have positive cash flow. You also use the credit card so you always have a receipt to turn in. Try collecting something from your accounting department if you fail to obtain a receipt and you’ll understand what I mean.

One of my favorite feature newsmen of all time was Charles Kuralt of CBS. It seems he spent the majority of his career on the road. I had the pleasure once of seeing him lecture at a big-city Midwestern university, and it was worth it. He was an interesting man in person as well as television. In that same lecture series I had a chance to see Ralph Nader when he was a younger man. He too was worth the time.

Charles Kuralt would always end his reports with a tagline “on the road” from wherever he was. That will be my tagline for tonight. This is Jimbo saying good night from somewhere on road in the great Midwest.

Because even in Jimbo’s world, we need to venture out sometimes.

clampett loads and other baggage

On Friday, Jimbo moved the last items out of his house and into chez Jimbo’s girlfriend. The first items I moved several weeks ago were things I definitely needed and that I would use every day, like my desk, computer and clothes that I wore frequently. The last load Friday was what I refer to as a “Clampett load,” which included things I had thought about weeding out of my life, but decided to keep, just in case. I use the term Clampett load because it reminds me of the old Beverly Hillbillies television series and the items they had on their truck. A true Clampett load would always have an old lady in a rocking chair on the back, but I sold my truck and my bentwood rocker to my ex-wife (whom some might refer to as my former old lady). A week or so ago, when I helped tie down the rocker on the back of the truck, I believe I may have referred to that as a Clampett load, also.

I sold or gave away pretty much all of the contents of my three-bedroom house. It is kind of like starting a new life. Not that the old life was bad. I will miss sharing a house with my son. We co-existed for eight years as perfectly as any two people ever could. I raised my voice about something he did the first night he moved in, and I never felt I needed to raise my voice again. Thanks for the good times.

I don’t often get attached to material possessions, but I have to admit that, as it got dark Friday night and my house was virtually empty, I knew I was going to miss the place a little. Life is about starting over but when you start over you can take what you learned before and try to get it exactly right the next time. You may recall the Clampetts landed on their feet.

After all the good stuff is gone, the Clampett loads remain and you can’t just leave them behind. Even if the only logical place to take them is the dump, it is still necessary to do something with them. A true Clampett load consists of things that will make up that last Clampett load a few years down the road when you move again, but you’ll continue to think that someday you may use them. And, maybe you will, but more than likely you’ll just move them again, sometime.

Because in Jimbo’s world, no matter how light we travel, we always carry some baggage we probably don’t need.

i read it in the bottom of a trash can

I’m glad that Jimbo’s girlfriend is not the heiress to the throne of some foreign country. If she was and someone from one of the tabloid newspapers saw us together, the press would have a field day reminding everyone that Jimbo is not a really attractive man. As a matter of fact, they would make constant humor about how grotesquely ugly I was.

The particular notion that has me thanking my lucky stars this evening is the press coverage of the marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. Now I will be the first to concede that Ms. Bowles is not blessed with super-model looks, nor is her fiancé likely to grace the cover of GQ anytime soon. I would say they are an average-looking couple and there is nothing wrong with that. I would also strongly argue that neither of them are ghoulish in appearance, but if you read about them-- especially Ms. Bowles-- you might conclude that a lengthy observation of them would induce projectile vomiting. We are a society that tends toward hyperbole, especially those in the tabloid newspapers and on tabloid television. Am I wrong or are the racks ahead of the supermarket checkout lanes and the televised airways way too full of the tabloid crap? It’s like our lives are so meaningless that the only way we can be fulfilled is to have minute-to-minute updates on the doings of Brad and Jennifer, or reading about a space alien mother who repeatedly ejaculates tiny Elvis clones.

I think we need to get over the fact that Prince Charles and Ms. Bowles are not the world’s homeliest couple and that Jen and Brad can live their lives in peace and the invasion of Elvis clones is not coming. Why do we set the standards for our celebrities so high and our politicians so low?

All I can hope for tonight is that the tabloids don’t start following my girlfriend around and Entertainment Tonight doesn’t interrupt their coverage of Brad and Jen to question Jimbo’s girlfriend’s taste in men. Or wondering aloud if she may be dating a James Lipton look-alike. Or the headline blazes from the National Enquirer:

Jimbo’s girlfriend dates ghoul from another world

And they have pictures to prove it. It is likely, however, we will sneak under the radar of the pulp media and my fears about ridicule by the tabloids will be unrealized.

Sometimes in Jimbo’s world dreams do come true.

doctor gonzo

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

No, that’s not Jimbo talking. It’s the first line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The first time I saw the movie made from the book, I went back and read the first chapter because I thought whoever had made the movie had made it seem like a totally drug-induced fantasy. I thought the movie maker had turned it into a satire, but a re-reading of the book confirmed the movie followed the book verbatim. Jimbo was never a doper nor a drinker nor was he a member of the counter-culture, but he was a big fan of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson committed suicide yesterday. We’ll miss him.

What I liked most about Thompson was his “gonzo journalism,” where he inserted himself in the center of the story. When you read his articles and books they were always written from his own twisted point of view. You might conclude that Thompson and Jimbo were as different as night and day, but basically he was blogging fifty years before blogging was even thought of.

I remember when I heard him speak a number of years ago at a major Midwestern University, I was looking forward to his lecture. Instead, he came out on stage and someone in the audience lowered a can of beer on a string from the balcony above him and he said “thank you.” Then he said, “I want the biggest, meanest, ugliest son of a bitch in here to ask me a question.” Someone did. The entire evening people in the audience of a thousand or so shouted out questions. I wasn’t the biggest or meanest, but eventually I shouted to him, “Will you ever run for public office again?”

He said, no, that one met too many dirty people in politics. It was a weird coincidence that I wrote about that night and last week I came across what I had written. That night had sort of faded in my memory, but I have thought about it a couple of times, now, in the last few days. Now, I guess I’ll think about it again.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, 1937-2005.

too much monkey business, or a tall, cold, refreshing bottle of urine with my lunch, please

In the news today is a story about two female caretakers for a gorilla famous for his hand signals, who are suing the foundation that houses the gorilla for sex and employment discrimination. The women allege that the Gorilla Foundation wrongfully terminated them after they reported health and safety violations, and that they were victims of sexual discrimination. They claim they were asked to expose their breasts to Koko, the gorilla.

A number of things around this story are causing me confusion. Most notably, there is an ad for Verizon right next to the story on Yahoo! depicting a gorilla. What’s the deal with that?

The two women reported violations to OSHA and were fired after OSHA found violations. The story goes on to tell that that the two claimed the Gorilla Foundation stored bottles of gorilla urine in the refrigerator where employees kept their lunches. It also says that Koko is a female gorilla.

Now it is a known fact that gorillas love boobies, or at least that is what I’ve been told, so you wouldn’t blame the simian for wanting to see some, if it were a male. I think it is just plain wrong that a female gorilla would drool over hooters. This is one smart ape, however, so maybe her interest is purely for scientific reasons, but even so, you’d think that they could buy her some magazines depicting women with extremely impressive racks, for her “research” purposes.

Speaking of jugs, what about those containers of gorilla urine stored in the employee refrigerator. I know that gorilla urine is best served at a refreshing forty-five degrees, but not at lunch, and not on this planet.

I know many of you are thinking right now, “Jimbo, what kinds of psychoses wrack your brain that cause you to make up wild stories like these?”

My answer to you is that this is a true story. With real life being this crazy, I could never in a million years invent something crazier. Nor would I want to. I’d like to see reality television come up with something that would top this.

Until then, we’ll rely on the truth.

In Jimbo’s world truth is stranger than fiction.

an anniversary and an event

Today is my sister's and brother-in-law's anniversary. I had long hair and muttonchop sideburns when they got married. Happy anniversary.

It was also an eventful day in another regard. Hell froze over.

I had a job interview on Monday and met with five people, including the top man at the facility. It took about two and a half hours and I thought I did well. Today they called me and offered me a temporary job, to see how I liked them and to see how they liked me. I said okay. I will be working for them for the next four to six weeks, and perhaps longer (no less, I hope).

I can tell that this is not going to be a forty hour a week job, but as a temp, I will experience something I haven't in twenty years-- time and a half for overtime.

This blog and the people who read it are important to me and I will continue to write for you. Being honest, however, I am sure I won't be posting quite as often, so if I miss a day or two now and then, please keep checking back. Please put me in your favorites or something so you can click in to see what I'm up to.

As Jimbo tells his girlfriend frequently, and it applies to you, too, thank you for being there for me.

Because in Jimbo's world and everywhere else, we get by with a little help from our friends.

don't bogart that game

Games are in the news this morning. The paintings of dogs playing poker sold at auction yesterday for more than half a million dollars. The picture I saw this morning shows a St. Bernard in a draw poker game with a hand full of rags and apparently no paint at all pushing it in and stealing the pot. It’s a nice picture, but it seems pricey. It’d look good on the wall of my office, but Jimbo doesn’t play five-card draw-- just no limit hold ‘em. Plus that, Jimbo doesn’t have the free cash flow right now to spend more than half a million on a picture, as the private bidder from New York must have had.

The other game I read about in the news is one that was discarded from the New York toy fair. It is a board game (marketed by a company called Bored Games) like monopoly, in which the players try successfully to run a marijuana growing operation. The story says the guy who conceived the game did so while serving time in jail. It doesn’t say why he was in jail; we just have to leave that to our imaginations. It does say, however, that the inventor wanted to demonstrate the pitfalls of the business. This, I infer, gives the game redeeming social value. The spokesman for Bored Games says that they consider the game to be like an education and that it will show you that running a dope farm will be hard.

By the way, the name of the company is a great play on words, but don’t you imagine the name would create marketing challenges?

I’m also wondering whether selling such a game would limit your market to dopers and “hip” teenagers. I can’t see many parents buying the game for their children. Let’s buy little Johnny that game for his birthday. It’ll teach him not to grow the ganja when he grows up.

And what is next? Will someone come up with a new version of the monopoly game in which, instead of building houses and hotels, the players find more lucrative illegal activities with which to build wealth? Will players find it is more profitable to run a crack house out of a tenement down on Baltic Avenue? Or will they make book out of a storefront on St. James Place? Will someone sell “protection” to the upper middle class merchants along Connecticut Avenue? Will someone run a high priced call girl operation out of a penthouse somewhere along Park Place? Or, will someone realize the ultimate, sure-fire method of milking the cash cow and become a public official and make “free parking” a thing of the past?

Either way, we are not going to learn morality from board games. Board games should have fun objectives, like monopoly, where the object is to bankrupt your opponents and take all their money. Or chess, where the object is to wage war and capture or kill your opponent. Okay, I guess I have talked myself into a corner, again. But somehow, I’m thinking that a game based on growing dope is not going to catch on with the kiddies. Although I have been wrong before…

In Jimbo’s world we say what we mean, even when it doesn’t mean anything.

i'm glad he didn't step in it

I read this morning a story from China in which a farmer there had seen poop from a giant panda and that is good news. The story went on to say that the farmer saw an animal that looked very much like a giant panda while collecting bamboo leaves, and then later on he saw what he believed to be panda poop.

I remember one time when I was cutting my grass, I saw an animal that looked very much like a dog and then later I saw what I believed to be dog poop in the path of my lawn mower. I will admit that I went ahead and ran over it (the poop; not the dog), but made sure I sidestepped the ground-up defecation the next couple of trips around the yard.

Some more environmentally conscious readers may ask, “Jimbo, how did you know it wasn’t panda poop? You may have destroyed valuable evidence of panda migration onto the rural Midwestern lawn you were cutting?”

A tough question, but justified, so let me address it.

Once, I was taking a walk near a farm where cattle were grazing in the pasture. I noticed a steaming brown gelatinous pile on the ground and I concluded (without formal training) that it was bovine defecation. When I was a child, my family went to a parade and there were people dressed as cowboys and cowgirls on horses. After the parade we walked across the street and I saw a brown pile of something in front of me. Even without extensive equine exposure, I was able to ascertain it was horseshit. In both instances, I walked around, rather than through, these malodorous leavings.

At various times in my life, my family has had pet dogs and it has been necessary at times to move their droppings to areas less traveled in order to avoid family, friends and strangers from striding through them. Through these exercises I have learned to identify canine feces, so on that warm summer afternoon as I negotiated my lawn mower over the yard in a pattern of rectangles of decreasing size, I could be confident in my positive identification of the dog dung.

I would like to believe that had I been in the situation of the Chinese farmer and I had seen the animal he saw, I would have concluded the som’ bitch was a panda. Shortly after, seeing the droppings, I would like to think that I would have concluded they were panda droppings. However, this is not a common animal, so I can understand why the farmer called in the feds. The wildlife management experts he told about it came in and made a positive ID. I'd prefer not to be familiar with their testing methods.

Somehow, however, I can’t help but be reminded of the old Cheech and Chong routine where they come across some dung on the sidewalk and they examine it. They smell it, feel it, taste it and finally conclude, “I’m glad we didn’t step in it.”

Because in Jimbo’s world we like to watch where we step.

a bug's life

Do you know what is the last thing that goes through an insect’s mind when he hits the windshield of a car going seventy miles per hour?

His ass.

At least, that is what someone told us once in Jimbo's world.

work days

I’m pretty impressed with how far computer technology has come. I remember one morning just before Thanksgiving I got out of bed, booted up my computer and glanced at the news stories on line. One particular one caught my eye and I wrote a blog about it, while sitting my office, which was the third bedroom of my house, in a rural town, miles from nowhere. Within two hours, a gentleman from Great Britain commented to me that a couple of lines from my blog had been quoted in an on-line British publication, a fourth of the distance around the world from where I was. I think the most amazing thing is how fast we got here, while I‘m sure you are thinking, “Jimbo, how many times are you going to tell us that story? Your fifteen minutes are over. Get over it.”

I say, it’s my blogsite. I’ll tell it as many times as I wish, but I digress.

It wasn’t that many years ago that the company I worked for had only five personal computers in the entire organization, and my department didn’t have access to any of them. We all had CRTs on our desks, but the DOS based system we had only allowed us to look at screens of records and the system was not interactive. The records we could access were from the end of the previous day and anything that happened in the last twelve hours was not yet available. The company had a mainframe computer and it generated tons of computer reports. We would do our work off of 11 1/2” X 14 7/8” green bar and gray bar fanfold reports. Then we would take action depending on what we interpreted on the reports and secretaries would type letters and faxes for us and manually type orders to our supply chain.

I accepted a position in another area of the company-- what is generally referred to as a “sideways move”-- meaning that I got no extra money or prestige for changing positions and I kept all of the duties I had before and took on more work. But I had access to a personal computer. I wanted to be able to spend all day at the computer to get myself more computer literate. Since there were only five computers in the company, it was necessary for me to share the computer with several other people, but I quickly dominated it and the others that used it would come to me occasionally to use it for ten or fifteen minutes. The computer had no modem, so I had no internet access, but I had the ability to compose and send faxes on our network, so I had some communication ability.

I had a small office and the computer sat just outside my office, in a large community work area, on an L-shaped desk. Frequently at lunch, the people that worked in the community area would come over and play solitaire on the computer. Once, I deleted the games and got everyone mad at me and someone had them re-installed. I told everyone that we had more important things to do than play games at work, so every time someone used the computer, they initiated a game of solitaire and left it on the screen, making it appear as if it were mine, since, by then, the PC had been designated as Jimbo‘s computer. Prior to accepting the position that allowed me computer access, I used to work with a group of serious professionals and I was considered to be the office wit. Sometimes, during meetings, one of my co-workers would ask me to do my imitation of the wicked witch of the west. I would , of course, comply.

“I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little dog, too. He, he, he, he, he.”

When I moved to where the computer was, my co-workers were a wild bunch and I was considered to be too businesslike.

They were all young; all had tattoos, they drank late into the night and smoked cigars and they spoke with language that I hadn‘t heard around the office much-- only out in the manufacturing plant. They would come in on Monday mornings and brag of their sexual exploits over the weekend and hint that poor Jimbo might not be a stallion, sexually. Now, I know your first thought is, “Something is wrong, here. The Jimbo we all know and love would come over the desk like a Tasmanian devil at the mere suggestion that he would take a back seat to anyone. He would bust open a can of whup-ass like Popeye breaking out a can of spinach. And when the smoke had cleared he would be doing a ceremonial dance of victory over the defeated rabble of these young toughs.”

Well, the problem was that I was the only man in the office. The second part of the problem was that any of these young women probably could whip my ass. You remember that Joey Buttafuco thing on Celebrity boxing. Sure, he won, but no man is ever really going to win when he enters the ring with a woman. As a middle manager, the option of suggesting a demonstration of my prowess would not have been acceptable, so, I just had to sit and take the abuse. The up side, however was that it was a good way of keeping a running conversation with young chicks who talked dirty.

In the late 1990s, when the internet was coming of age, I volunteered to research a web-based supply chain management system for the company for whom I worked. By that time we had a DSL connection and we all had internet access. You are probably thinking, “Jimbo, you dummy. Didn’t it occur to you that by streamlining your supply chain using internet technology, you were in danger of eliminating your job and those of your co-workers?”

The answer was that many of us were working long hours anyway, so I figured that by making the process more automated that we would free up time so we could see first-hand was sunlight was really like. These were modern times and we were not living in conditions like the ones Upton Sinclair described in his book The Jungle.

Okay, you’re right. I was a dummy.

The bottom line was, however, that the internet was not yet ready for the company I was working for and the company I was working for was not yet ready to take advantage of internet technology. So the conclusion I reached was: not now; maybe later.

Fast forward to the last position I held, and we did almost everything on the computer. We communicated primarily by e-mail and most of our clerical work was done on the keyboard and input into the manufacturing software system. Every time I apply for a job, the technical requirements are strenuous and I think it will continue to be even more so in the future. The computer has made our lives better in that we can do things quicker and better and it has made our lives more complicated in that we are expected to do more, do it better and do it faster. It isn’t the simple life anymore. And, I predict, it will get less simple. A frightening view of things to come.

In Jimbo’s world, however, we take what comes and we try to roll with the punches.

journey into k-mart

In 2000 I changed jobs and it necessitated a lifestyle change. Well, not all that much of a lifestyle change, but a change in habits. Every Sunday morning in the newspaper there was an advertisement for K-Mart and every week there would be specials on items I used on a regular basis. There was sale pricing on things like deodorant, laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, bars of soap, and Pepsi and Coke. Most of all there were occasional sales on coffee-- Folgers gourmet supreme, Jimbo’s favorite blend-- and a frugal shopper could shave a couple of dollars a week off his purchases, if one shopped wisely.

Prior to 2000, I worked in an affluent suburb and there was a K-Mart close to work and directly on the way home. After 2000, I worked in an older, industrial area of town, far from affluence and closer to the mean streets. There was another K-Mart close to work and almost directly on the way home, but it bordered an area where real estate agents fear to tread. As far as I was concerned, both stores were laid out similarly, the prices were the same and the selection was just as good. From the checkout lanes back, there was no discernable difference. The stores resided in different socio-economic strata, and were separate, but equal.

The notable difference, however, was from the checkout lanes forward.

In the southern suburb, when one reached the checkout lanes to finalize one’s purchases, there were rarely more than one or two people ahead of you in line. Usually there was no one and you could check out and breeze right through. If a line began to form, the manager would dispatch another clerk to open another lane and they would bust their ass to get there. Okay, I guess I never actually saw any asses broken, but they got there in a hurry. Frequently, there were more lanes open than there were people having their purchases rung up. When you reached the checkout area, often a clerk would invite you into an empty checkout lane, so there was no waiting.

On the edge of the industrial area, one could always plan to stand on line for at least a few minutes, but usually longer as it always seemed as if there were only one or two checkout lanes open any time one went there. Most of the time the lines stretched back into the store and waits of ten minutes or more were common. I remember I always felt uncomfortable waiting in these lines for long periods of time and I remember many times black, Hispanic and Asian people in line with me mumbled the same complaints I was thinking.

I’m sure many of you are now saying, “Oh, now the truth comes out. Jimbo, for all his progressive ideas is, in fact, uncomfortable around blacks and minorities. What’s the matter, Jimbo, are you only comfortable being in contact with minorities when you are on your horse and wearing that pointy white hood and carrying a torch and burning those crosses in their yards?”

No! No! It’s not that. I just hate wasting time in line, and I don’t think merchants should force anyone to do it. After all, we are the buyers and they are the sellers and the guy who puts up the bucks is the guy that calls the shots. So why is it okay to make customers stand in line in the city and not expose them to that inconvenience in the suburbs? Is it an economic issue? Does the merchant know that suburban customers won’t put up with long lines and they will go somewhere else? Or it is a social issue? Does the merchant think that the urban people will just have to put up with his crap because there is nowhere else to go, except the long drive to the suburbs, where everyone is treated as they should be?

I’ll grant you, my conclusion is derived from some pretty slim data-- just a visual comparison of two stores during visits of duration of only fifteen minutes to half an hour. It strikes me, though, as if something is wrong. If not with my conclusion, then with the merchant or with our society. Maybe we just have a situation where a store manager is trying to cut some labor costs. If so, he will be cutting his own throat, if capitalism works as it should. Or maybe we have a society that is in need of some repair. If so, we need to fix it. And not just so Jimbo won’t have to stand in line.

In Jimbo’s world if we see something is wrong, we try to make it right. Or, at least we tell everyone about it.

return of the prodigal

There is good news on the web this morning from Sri Lanka regarding the tsunami that hit the day after Christmas. DNA testing has confirmed the parents of the infant that miraculously survived the tsunami and is known as “baby 81.” After more than six weeks, he will be reunited with his parents. The parents, naturally, are pretty happy about this. The baby’s actual name is Abilass Jeyarajah and he is a few days short of being four months old.

He has been known as “baby 81” because he was the 81st person admitted that day to the local hospital. Now that his parents have been identified he has a name, but I’m sure we’ll read about him for the next twenty years and the media will keep us informed of his progress and I’m also sure it will not be the last time he is referred to, in subtext, as “baby 81.”

The story says a lot about parents’ love for their children, but it also says a lot about the advantages of monotheism. The child’s parents lost all of their worldly possessions to the tsunami, but in celebration of the child’s return the mother plans to perform the following religious rituals.

She will smash 100 coconuts as an offering to the Hindu god Ganesh, a dude who apparently has an elephant’s head.

She will offer sweet rice to the warrior god Murugan.

She will sacrifice a rooster to the goddess Kali.

These are noble sacrifices I admit, but for someone who has nothing material left, is homeless and is living in a camp for survivors, it is an inefficient expenditure of net worth. If the same thing were to happen here, we would also celebrate our fortune, but we would probably only offer a prayer to the god, er, God, and that would be sufficient.

Perhaps the child’s mother is media savvy and she realizes that with all the media coverage of her child that people all over the world will be touched by the story and will probably donate money to the family. Therefore she can throw away some meager possessions in celebration knowing there will be more coming to fill the void. I’m suggesting, however, that a hundred coconuts and some rice might come in handy right now for people living in an area of the world that is still in need of food and supplies (or so I read).

Anyway, the good news is the child will be reunited with his parents and I guess it is their prerogative to celebrate the in the way they prefer, and we can all celebrate a happy ending.

Because here in Jimbo’s world good news is always welcome.

the forgotten: no. blockbuster: definitely not

Last night Jimbo and his girlfriend rented The Forgotten at Blockbuster. I have a brief review of the former and a comment on the latter. My review of The Forgotten is as follows:

Forget it.

And my comment on Blockbuster? I think it is great that they have done away with late fees and you can keep their movies longer without penalty, but I believe they have made a tactical error from an infrastructural standpoint. By that, I am speaking specifically to their supply chain management (something about which Jimbo knows a thing or two). Because some of their customers will keep movies longer without the fear of late fees, the inventory on their shelves needs to be sized to match the longer customer retention times, notably the inventories of popular movies. Either they have underestimated the popularity of their new program or they failed to match their inventory to the demand. In a perfect world there is enough to go around for everyone. In the imperfect world of Blockbuster, or at least the one we go to, there is not. We rented The Forgotten because the more popular movies that were not in stock when we wanted to rent them last week were again not there when we went to rent them this week. Fortunately, last week we were able to find a movie, The Door In The Floor, which I liked a lot and said so on these virtual pages last Sunday. This week, we were not as lucky. As a customer, we should get what we want and as a provider of material or services, Blockbuster should be able to put supply into our demand, and they should fill our demand with supply that we want.

As far as unpopular movies go, it seems that they have those in stock. They have the Britney Spears movie Crossroads, but they don’t have the one with Ralph Macchio and Joe Seneca. I have somehow misplaced my VHS copy and I want my girlfriend to see it. I want her to understand who Robert Johnson was before I expose her to The Texas Sessions, music for which some people need to acquire a taste as with fine wine. I have also misplaced the title for my truck. If anyone knows what I did with them, please let me know.

The elimination of late fees was a very good idea; the execution of the promotion has not been so successful.

Hang your head in shame, Blockbuster. Hang your head in shame.

If any of you at Blockbuster need any more advise, please e-mail me.

In Jimbo’s world we are full of it (unsolicited advice, that is).

a drug-induced stupor

I read on Yahoo! that the prescription benefit for Medicare recipients that Bush bragged about during the presidential debates and took credit for is going to cost us $724 billion over the next ten years. Bush said there was “an unfunded liability inherent in Medicare” that the administration and congress would have to address, someday. But he doesn’t have time to work on that, now, because he is going to be spending his time screwing up social security more than he already has. It’s hard work.

Back when I was working, the guy that worked for me felt he got screwed over by upper management and quit and I started doing his job, too. I told everyone I was doing the work of two men. The presidency is obviously a much more responsible position that I have ever occupied, so we could say that Bush is doing the work of three men.

Moe, Larry and Curly.

Now, I know many of you are saying, “Jimbo, you tight-ass piece of crap. Your own gray-haired mother, who scrimped and sacrificed so you could be where you are today, is one of the group eligible for the Medicare prescription benefit. How can you be so cheap that you aren’t willing to pay a little extra in taxes so the woman who brought you into this world could save some big money on the medicines that she needs to be able to stay healthy and active?”

A tough question, but fair.

And, my answer is that if I were paying extra taxes so my mother could live better, I would do it without question. Retirees who collect social security and who are covered by Medicare deserve all they receive. They tacitly agreed to a social contract that stipulated if they worked and paid into the system that they would receive a defined benefit when they turned 65. I have also paid into it and I expect a benefit when I retire. My problem with this is that the current administration and congress have blown our money on meaningless crap over the last four years and spent more than we have taken in. It’s kind of like they have taken out one of those thirty year mortgages where you only pay the interest the first fifteen years, and the sixteenth year the payments go way up. And it is like they are paying the minimum payments on our credit cards, charging more and signing up for more new credit cards. We’ve never seen this kind of fiscal irresponsibility. It is our progeny that will pay the bills for all of these excesses. You can’t borrow money forever without bills coming due eventually.

Then, to top it all off, my mother has done the hard math-- she’s crunched the numbers to see how huge the savings on her prescriptions will be. She put on the green eyeshade and ran the calculations to see how large a benefit will be realized from this outlay of $724 billion. I won’t bore you will the figures, although I’m sure many of you would like to see the work-up, but here is the result.

Squat.

How much will my mother benefit?

Zero. Nada. Zilch. Squat.

There. That is an efficient use of my son’s money. Because it will be the next generation that pays for this.

Now, I will grant you, there will be some Medicare recipients, whose prescription costs are outrageous who will benefit from the prescription coverage, because some prescription medicines are so high priced. And the high cost of health care has to be addressed. Twenty years ago it was the primary drain on our economy. It still is and this administration has done nothing about it. As more people lose their healthcare coverage, the more expensive it becomes for everyone else. The more people that have healthcare coverage, the more economical it becomes, because of economies of scale. If we could get everyone covered, the cost would be affordable. And congress and the administration would have to spend their $724 billion on something else. Of course, knowing how our government thinks today, that would probably be a war in Iran or Korea.

You know how politicians are when they’ve got an extra $724 billion burning a hole in their pocket. I guess they just need to come to Jimbo to find out how it should be spent properly.

Because in Jimbo’s world we watch our pennies and nickels and we know the value of a dollar.

year of the cock

It is snowing here this afternoon and Jimbo is trying to navigate his girlfriend home through the snow by long distance, so I am cooking a chicken pot pie from scratch and watching the Weather Channel to keep track of the storm. The guy on the Weather Channel just said that in China they are celebrating the New Year, and he said it was the year of the rooster. The placemat at our favorite local Chinese restaurant says that it is the year of the cock. Since the people that run the place, wait on you and clean up after you are all obviously Asian, I am going to make the leap of the imagination that the place is authentic, so I am going with their translation. By the way, the beef with green peppers there is excellent as is the egg drop soup. Jimbo’s girlfriend, however, swears by the hot and sour soup. When you get the hot tea, they serve it in cups about the volume of a shot glass. It make drinking tea seem really exotic, even though it is only a couple of miles from home.

Kung hei fat choi. Xīnián kuàilè.

Those are two traditional Chinese salutations for the New Year. The former means congratulations and be prosperous. The latter means happy New Year. I remember the first time I ever heard of the Chinese New Year was when I was a child and a local radio station was having a promotion based on the occasion. They used the phrase gung ho fat hoi as their New Year’s greeting. You are probably aware that we have modified the way we pronounce Chinese words over the last couple of decades, for example, Peking has become Beijing and we have started putting a lot of the letter X into Chinese words. Therefore, it is not surprising that we have done a better job of translating this expression.

Years ago I was dating a woman and we had our own favorite Chinese restaurant that also had those placemats that have the signs of the Chinese animal zodiac on them. I remember the placemats because it was the year of the rat or the monkey and I always joked that I wished it was the year of the cock. Like those who know me well, she learned to ignore me, so she wasn’t aware that I was a human laugh factory, pushing the humor out the door in assembly line fashion. She asked me the year of my birth and told me I was a tiger. She said I was assertive, I knew what I wanted and I usually got what I wanted. I never gave much thought to the zodiac before, but it had me pegged and so I started thinking there was something to it.

Later it dawned on me that approximately 8 percent of the people on the earth were tigers and that it was probably a statistical fluke that it had me right. On the other hand, a billion Chinese couldn’t be wrong. Well, I guess they could. They are celebrating New Year’s in the middle of February, after all.

I don’t think I’ll make any new resolutions; I’ll just try to find the ones I made six weeks ago and maybe I’ll actually try to keep them.

Xīnián kuàilè.

Kung hei fat choi.

Remember, this year half of the Chinese New Year falls on Fat Tuesday and half falls on Ash Wednesday. What’s the statistical probability of that? I think we should ask the Chinese to change New Years on their calendar so they won’t fall on any of our holidays. That way we will have more reasons to celebrate. Anyway, Happy New Year.

Because in Jimbo’s world we can always use another reason to celebrate.

a rose by any other name...

I’ll take potent potables for $100 please, Art.

Back when I was a kid and Art James used to host the game show Jeopardy, I remember they used to have the potent potables category where they would describe an alcoholic drink and you would have to identify the drink, in the form of a question.

What is a martini, Art?

The reason I bring this up is that, excepting Art James and Alex Trebek, I’ve known people who have had trouble with the pronunciation of the word potable. The second letter of the word is pronounced with an O sound, and over the years, I’ve mostly heard it pronounced the same way you would pronounce the word pot (like the thing you put on the stove to apply heat to food, or the stuff they roll up in zig-zag papers and...well, never mind). I used to work for a company that made equipment for water treatment and some of our equipment made water drinkable. When I first started working for the company, and we would have meetings about potable water equipment, everyone mispronounced the word, including the Sales Manager who always chaired the meetings, and when it came my turn to talk, I pronounced it correctly. My obvious superior knowledge of the language failed to change anyone’s mind and by the end of my tenure with the company, I remember once articulating the word and using their pronunciation. By the way, the word comes from two Latin words, potare: to drink, akin to bibere: also to drink. But, you probably already knew that. I'm sure there are groups of you right now who are discussing the proper conjugation of these verbs.

I suspect that right now others of you are saying, “Big freaking woop, Jimbo. What does it really matter? Why don’t you get a life?”

Well, yesterday I was at a job interview and having researched the company’s product line on their website and seen the name of a former competitor of the company for which I worked referenced, I used their name several times. I told the guy who was interviewing me how they were a competitor and how we used to do the job and how they did it. About the third time I mentioned their name, he said they were a sister company of his and he advised me the correct pronunciation of their name. Oops! I had gotten my pronunciation from the same sales manager who couldn’t pronounce potable.

The point is that even though my former employer was populated by people who couldn’t correctly pronounce the word, we were able to deliver a quality product that did what it was supposed to do. Even though I couldn’t correctly pronounce the name of my former competitor, I think I convinced the guy that was interviewing me yesterday that I knew my stuff. Sometimes, I guess, it is more important to know what you are talking about than pronouncing the words correctly.

However, in Jimbo’s world, we try to do both, whenever we can.

the budget: voodoo or hoodoo

Thank God we live in a country in which our leader will cut health care for poor people, aid to farmers and environmental funding to pay for the excesses of the last four years. Okay, I’m just being a jerk. I’ve been reading about President Bush’s budget and I’m not liking what I see. I believe it was the President’s father whom I remember used the phrase voodoo economics, and I think President Bush must have a Jimbo doll and he is pressing pins into it, because I am not feeling comfortable right now.

I was reading in the Business Week online edition that Bush is proposing a five year budget instead of the usual ten year plan and Business Week says there will be huge costs generated by the President’s budget proposal that won’t be realized until 2011 to 2015. In his social security proposals laid out in the State of the Union speech, Bush seemed to be making sure we would provide for the next generation. Most of us boomers had it good when we were growing up, and we have tried to make it even better for our progeny, so that is understandable. But if the goal is to make it better for our kids, how can he justify saddling them with huge budget deficits, that, according to the article in Business Week, will make interest rates higher and the value of the dollar lower? And why is he revealing only the first five years’ effects of his proposal and hiding away the slimy dark underbelly so no one will see it until he is gone.

You know how sometimes you do something and you can’t explain why you did when someone asks you to explain? Do you remember in the movie Forrest Gump that Forrest rescued his girlfriend Jenny from a boyfriend who was hitting her and then she went back to him the next morning? While Forrest was staring him down, he explained that it was that “lyin’ Johnson.” For you younger readers, that was not some vague phallic reference. The Johnson he was talking about was President from 1963 to 1969. Like Bush, he was from Texas and he did some questionable things, but unlike Bush, he did some good. Last night, Jimbo’s girlfriend asked if she had done something to make him mad, because he seemed to be angry at her. I assured her that was not the case and apologized profusely. Then I explained that it was “that lyin’ Bush.”

“There are times in the lives of man,” said W. C. Fields, “that we must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.” This is one of those times. The current administration and congress have squandered our legacy over the past four years and there is nothing we can do about going back in time to try to undo their mess. We had our chance to try to correct our mistakes in November, but the voting public was more interested in bashing gays, making sure we’d all say the same prayer and giving Osama Bin Laden even more of a head start in getting away from us than they were in protecting our fiscal future.

Hang your head in shame, Mr. President. Hang your head in shame.

You are probably saying to yourself right now, “Are you mad Jimbo? Did we do something wrong? Did we do something to make you angry?”

No, it’s not you. I love all of you. It’s that lyin’ Bush.

Because sometimes in Jimbo’s world we just need to let off a little steam.

behind, er, under the door

Last night Jimbo and his girlfriend rented the DVD The Door in the Floor. I liked it. Jimbo’s girlfriend said it was a movie we wanted to see at the theater, but either it didn’t show in any of our local theaters or it played for too short a time and we missed it. She tells me I’m smart and I can remember things she can’t, but in this case, I was the victim of a moment of seniority, and I just nodded my head and said, “Oh, yeah.”

Anyway, the movie is about a famous writer of children’s stories, played by Jeff Bridges and his wife, played by Kim Basinger, and an aspiring writer, played by Jon Foster, who comes to intern with Bridges during his summer vacation from school. The title comes from a children’s book Bridges has written and illustrated, which we see Bridges read to an audience as slides of the illustrations are shown. The story is about a mother who lives in a cabin that has a door in the floor. Her unborn child is trying to decide whether he wants to be born into a world with a door in the floor. The story tells how some children came by one day and went down through the door, never to be seen again. The mother had looked through the door and heard horrible noises and knew there was a terrible place on the other side of the door. Eventually, the child decides to be born.

The children’s story is sort of an allegory for the movie. Bridges and Basinger had two teenaged sons who were killed in an auto accident during a trip to a ski resort, when their car was rear-ended and pushed into the path of a snowplow that cut the car in half. One of the boys was driving and the other in the front seat. Bridges and Basinger were in the back seat, after spending the day in the bar at the ski resort, too inebriated to drive. The front half of the car was demolished by the snowplow; the back half survived, along with the two back-seat passengers, intoxicated but unhurt. Near the end of the movie, Bridges tells the story of the accident to Foster, and, of course, punctuates the story with the usual “if I would have” things he could have done in advance to prevent the accident.

Bridges and Basinger have a young daughter they conceived after the accident to reprise their family, but even though they lived through it, their marriage has been dealt a fatal blow by the accident, and during the summer of internship of Foster, they are separated and alternate days in their rural house and in an apartment in town. We find that the reason that Foster has been offered his opportunity, is primarily because he reminds Bridges of one of his late sons and because Bridges needs someone to drive him places.

Bridges has a squash court in the upper level of his barn where he never loses and is the admitted master of the domain. There’s a “dead spot” in the floor, and he is apparently the only one that knows how to deal with it. The first few days of the summer, Foster develops an attraction for Basinger and he also becomes “master of his own domain,” until Basinger walks in on him in a moment of autoeroticism. After that uncomfortable incident, Foster and Basinger begin an affair that lasts throughout the summer, while it becomes apparent that Bridges is also having an affair and looking for opportunities for even more.

Basinger becomes almost catatonic at the mere discussion of the accident, but Bridges seems to be detached and doesn’t outwardly dwell on the tragedy, but it becomes obvious that the two simply have different ways of dealing with the situation and that it controls both of their lives. They are both living in a hell from which they will not escape.

I thought the ending of the movie was particularly poignant. Bridges is on his squash court, the place he is most comfortable, practicing by himself. When he is finished he sits down to rest near the “dead spot” and then opens the door to leave the court. The door is in the floor. He leaves the court, through the door in the floor, and back into the terrible place on the other side of the door.

This is a dark movie, with some nudity. It’s not for the kids, but it is definitely worth renting and seeing, if you are not needing some laughs, at that moment.

In Jimbo’s world we like a movie that makes us think a little, and this one fit’s the bill.

the long goodbye

Yesterday, I said goodbye to a companion that’s been by my side for the last seven or eight years-- one with which I have spent more time over that period than anyone I know. Well, I sort of said goodbye. I said adieu come the end of the month. Lest you think I’m going to get all mushy, I best explain. It was my internet service provider, and my best summation of the situation is, good riddance. I now have access to DSL and it is the dawn of a beautiful day.

Years ago I moved to a rural community where we had no local internet service provider. My ISP at the time was Prodigy, but they didn’t have a local access dial up number, so I used an 800 number and paid them a dime a minute while I was on line. Needless to say, I got on and off in a hurry. Schwab gave me an 800 number I could use without charge to trade stocks, so for a year or so my internet access was limited. Sometimes my son would give me back his allowance, so he could surf the web for an hour. I know it’s hard for you to imagine living like that, but I’m told back in the old days they lived without central air, so I guess my sacrifice wasn’t unprecedented.

Lo and behold, one day one of my son’s friends told us about a local ISP that had just come into being. It seems one of my neighbors started an ISP and added a local number so he could get on line from home. When rural folk do something, they do it right, and it was a pretty darned good service. It was an epiphany in my coming into the internet age. In the year or so I had been dormant, the internet had changed. It was now a wonderful place where free information was only a mouse click away and where you could purchase almost anything you wanted by tapping on a keyboard and the postman or UPS guy would deliver it right to your door. You could buy a book, a CD, a belt for the lawn mower or a shelf bracket for the door of your refrigerator (how was I supposed to know that it wouldn’t hold six two-liters?). I found, however, there was a seamier side to the new and improved web. There were porn shops, and I confess I may have glanced in through the window once or twice. There were guys who would sneak up behind you and steal your money (via your credit card number) when you weren’t looking. There was also the lowest form of humanity (using the term loosely). Yes, there were the people that sent you the junk mail, who turned the beautiful virgin innocence of the internet into a cesspool. But I am way off subject, here. Let me get back to my story.

A couple of years ago my neighbor was bought out by a larger company and the service began to deteriorate. Oh, heck, let’s put it in the proper perspective: the service turned to defecation. You may recall an earlier blog, customer disservice, where I lamented problems I had with them. As a faithful reader, I’m sure you remember it vividly and you probably made some annotations in the margins on the copy in your computer. Some of you probably memorized it verbatim. In the off chance you are a new reader who hasn’t gotten back to that one, yet, here is the address:

http://jimboandhisfriends.blogspot.com/2004/12/customer-disservice.html

My ISP bills my credit card at the first of the month, so during the last week of last month, I sent them an e-mail, using their web mail site, asking them to cancel my subscription. I didn’t hear from them. The final day of the month, I e-mailed them again. Again, I got no response. The day before yesterday, I e-mailed them again. This time, they responded with an e-mail saying they would not accept e-mail cancellations and that I had to call their phone number between 9 and 4 during the day. They also said that partial month cancellations were not accepted so I couldn’t cancel the service until the end of this month. I hurriedly composed a reply in which I began by saying:

That’s a bunch of shit.

I went on to remind them I had sent previous e-mails and that I would be glad to be rid of them. You are probably saying to yourself right now, “Jimbo, you are kind of a prick.”

Yes. Yes I am.

You are probably also thinking that I was dealing with a customer service person who was simply doing as they were instructed and following the company line, and the decision to sleaze an extra month’s charges from their customer was probably a corporate mantra directed by an upper management sleaze ball. Incidentally, I was sort of ticked off about having to call them and sit on hold, being told how much they appreciate my business, for ten minutes before I was able to talk to a human and cancel the service, but I remained cordial when I told them what they could do with their service.


The way I look at it is this. I have a fiscal and moral obligation as a dues-paying member of a capitalist society to withdraw my support of companies that don’t deliver quality in the product they sell. This is economic social Darwinism at its basic. My current service provider does a better job and we are willing to pay them a few dollars more a month to do it. My former provider (at least I can say that next month) didn’t deliver the goods and I will stop my contribution of funding for them. If they treated all their customers as they treated me, eventually everyone will switch to someone better, and their species will disappear from the face of the earth, and they will only be a paragraph in an economic history book. And, if you don’t mind my borrowing a couple of titles from Raymond Chandler, they can sleep The Big Sleep and say The Long Goodbye, and no one will miss them.

Because in Jimbo’s would, when some big company does us wrong, we don’t just get mad, we get even.

thank you for being an american legend

I am not a fan of political candidates, as a rule. I supported John Kerry in the last election, but if the entire population of the United States stood before me and I had to pick someone out of the group to run for President, John Kerry probably would not have been my choice. When it became a choice between him and the current President, however, he was definitely the best man for the job, in my humble opinion. Today, I found out there was someone running for public office whom I would have no trouble supporting, but, as fate would have it, I will not be able to vote for him.

Kinky Friedman is running for Governor of Texas. I am not a Texan, so I will not be voting for Kinky. Kinky is not a professional politician. His website quotes him as saying “The professionals gave us the Titanic, amateurs gave us the Ark.” Granted, Kinky is somewhat of a nut, but I can think of another nut who was elected Governor of Texas. I have been a fan of Kinky for decades. The story begins when I was just a mere child…

One Friday evening, a friend of mine named Charles and I went to our local convenience store and I purchased a copy of Playboy magazine. When I was a young man, I enjoyed the publication, especially the articles. It was in Playboy magazine I was first introduced to the writings of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, my personal idol and the man I want to be like when I grow up. But, I digress. That particular evening, I was reading the music reviews and I was intrigued by the review of the Kinky Friedman album, “Sold American.” I went to my local mall the next day, bought the record and played it all day. That evening, Charles and I were listening to the radio and it was announced that Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys (a play on the name Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys) were going to be in concert in about two hours at a local college. Charles had been with me when I played the album and he enjoyed it, too, so we jumped into his car and we booked it (that was a popular phrase of the day meaning to go someplace). When we arrived at the small college, we found that the concert was going to be in a small chapel on campus. We bought our tickets and went inside. There were a couple of hippy-types in the front pew, so we sat down in the second row, on the aisle. By the time the concert started, there were only a hundred or so people there. The Jewboys came out and took up their instruments and an announcer came out and said something like:

“Ladies and gentlemen, from deep in the heart of Texas, the original wolly-bully from Austin, Mr. Kinky Friedman.”

Kinky strolled out on stage and said, “Thank you for being an American. It‘s a financial pleasure.”

I remember he did a number of his songs from “Sold American,” including the title song and “Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in bed,” “Western Union wire,” and “Silver Eagle express.” I particularly liked the following lines from the latter.

And I ride the Silver Eagle to the last town on the line
Railroad ties are not, my friend, the only ties that bind.

I remember, when they sang the song, "High on Jesus," the hippies in the front row were up on their feet and dancing around. At the time I wore my coiffure somewhat longer than I do today. Actually, my hair was almost down to my shoulders, as was the style at the time. The hippies had sort of hopped down to the end of their pew and I was about ten feet from Kinky and we had a direct line of sight. I remember he looked right at me as he sang:

A long-haired youth said, c’mon man,
The spirit of America has died.
Now I don’t get my kicks
Startin’ fires and throwin’ bricks…

To this day, I tell people that Kinky was singing directly to me. He probably wasn’t, but it doesn’t matter, as long as I think he was.

It’s kind of funny how one’s mind sort of anticipates something happening. I started thinking about Kinky last week because my girlfriend has Saturday Night Live set up on the TiVo season pass, which means every time it is on it is recorded. A couple of stations, Comedy Central and a local station show old Saturday Night Live programs, so we record it about ten times a week. We delete most of them without watching, but I have been previewing all of them to see if they show the episode where Kinky performs the song “Dear Abby.” My recollection was that Abigail Van Buren sued Kinky over the song, but it is actually a song about someone wondering whatever happened to the 1960s radical Abbie Hoffman.

I also recall that Kinky never had any top forty hits and he sort of faded from the public scene for a number of years only to show up later as a mystery writer. I’m a big fan of his novels. I’m sure that literary critics would disagree, but he’s one of my three favorite mystery writers, the other two being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler. Wait a minute. I was once a literary critic, so I just contradicted myself. Whereas Doyle’s detective was Sherlock Holmes and Chandler’s was Phillip Marlowe, Kinky’s detective is himself. Friedman’s quirky detective has a desk with twin telephones, a bust of William Shakespeare and an Imus in the morning coffee mug. He has a wooden puppet head with a parachute and a key to the door that sits on his refrigerator. When guests arrive and announce themselves, Kinky throws the puppet head out the window and it glides down with the key to the street below.

Now you are probably asking, “Jimbo, how does being a nut and a songwriter qualify one to be a southern governor? Where is the precedent?”

Well, Jimmie Davis, former governor of Louisiana co-wrote “You are my sunshine,” along with many other songs. Huey P. Long, also governor of Louisiana wrote “Every man a king.”

So, unless the Texas voters reach back into the archives to Kinky Friedman’s song “We reserve the right to refuse service to you,“ and echo the following lines, we may be entertained by Mr. Friedman for the next year or so.

Our quota’s filled up this year for singing Texas Jews
We reserve the right to refuse service to you.

Well, hell, they voted Bush into the governorship. We’ll just have to see what happens.

In Jimbo’s world sometimes we like just to sit back and watch.

deus ex machina for "his" machine

Everywhere I’ve worked since the advent of the personal computer, the IS or IT guy or gal has always had a one-word answer to any initial call to them about computer malfunctions. Your computer freezes up and you call them on the phone and they say:

“Reboot.”

You reboot your computer and everything is all right. Then a week later, you can’t get Excel to work right, or everything in Word is bold and you can’t change it back. You call IS and they give you a one word answer.

“Reboot.”

And, it works. From then on, anytime the computer freezes up, you know to reboot and you don’t even have to call them. That is, until a few weeks later when you realize something spiritual is going on with your computer, and you quickly figure out what is wrong and you call the IS guy.

“My computer is possessed by the devil.”

“Reboot.”

Again, it works. The next month, you are working along when blood begins to gush from your computer. You call IS and, this time, the guy comes over in person. He takes one look, gets on the phone, and the next thing you know all his staff is there.

“This reminds me of that one in Marketing last year,” says some Poindexter junior IS guy.

“Dammit, that was pus,” says the IS manager.

“Yeah, but it was liquid,” says Poindexter, pushing his horned rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Have you tried rebooting?” asks the IS Manager.

All of this brings me to what I was telling you yesterday about our TiVo going on the blink. When Jimbo is making supper, he likes to turn on the television and listen to the news and sort of watch it out of the corner of his eye, but last night the television was frozen and I couldn’t watch anything. When Jimbo’s girlfriend got home from work, late, after a long day, Jimbo had used up all of his ideas, like turning it on and off and changing channels. Nothing seemed to work. When Jimbo’s girlfriend got home, Jimbo was kind of in that same state of mind that the marine played by Bill Paxton in the movie Aliens was in after he realized the aliens were more formidable than he thought.

“Aw, Jesus, man, we’re screwed now!”

Jimbo’s girlfriend had a suggestion that we click our way to the “troubleshoot” menu and reset the TiVo, which we did. After about five minutes of the messages on the screen telling us the TiVo was doing things and searching for the satellite signal, the picture came back, along with the sound and the ability to record.

All we had to do was reboot.

Hallelujah! Life is beautiful again. I just hope it stays fixed. We are right with the world and “God’s machine.” Coincidentally, this morning the sun is shining and the weather is supposed to be unseasonably warm. As for me, I have a hallway and a bathroom to paint and an entire house of carpeting I need to shampoo. There’s no way I’ll get it all done today, but I will see how far I can get. With the weight of the TiVo problem off my shoulders, I’m optimistic it’ll be a good day. I hope it’s a good day for you, too.

Because in Jimbo’s world, and I’m sure your world, too, you can’t have too many good days.

laughing into the wind

“God’s machine” has turned atheist on us here at chez Jimbo’s girlfriend. You may recall that FCC Chairman Michael Powell once referred to TiVo as “God’s machine,” and in a blog I wrote back in November I said I agreed with his characterization entirely. Unfortunately, the TiVo in the living room-- the one that is connected to the big screen television-- is going bad on us. It records only sporadically and, because it doubles as the receiver for the satellite, sometimes it freezes and messes up live television, too.

O tempora. O mores.

If you don’t mind my borrowing a phrase that Cicero used in describing the Catilinarian conspiracy.

I know you are thinking, “Now, Jimbo, don’t be so dramatic. You’ve lived most of your adult life without TiVo. You can get by without it now.”

My answer is, but I don’t want to.

Anyway, we were watching live television last night, and fortunately it was working, and A Mighty Wind was playing on HBO. We got in in the middle, but we watched the last half of the movie. This morning I turned on the guide and found it was playing again. Normally I would have recorded it, but knowing TiVo was probably not going to record it right, I made a note of the time and did something I rarely do during the day, I watched something other than CNBC. I rarely turn on the TV during the day, and usually I only watch CNBC for a few minutes, when I get bored. Today, I watched an entire movie.

I’ve seen the movie This Is Spinal Tap a dozen times. I believe it was my son who bought me the DVD, but I watched it on VHS a lot over the last fifteen years. It’s one of those movies you can watch twenty times and see and hear new things each time you watch it. A number of the actors from This Is Spinal Tap also appear in A Mighty Wind. Both movies are fictional documentaries about fictional musical groups, the former about a rock group and the later about folk groups. In both movies, the story is told in the form of interviews with the various musicians, publicists, agents and peripheral characters interspersed throughout the film. You learn what is going on in bits and pieces in what is known as an unreliable narration. That means the people in the movie don’t always know what is going on, but you are able to figure it out. It was like in the movie Forrest Gump. You were able to know from his story what was going on, even though he didn’t know, himself.

Anyway, I particularly liked the performance of Mitch Cohen, played by Eugene Levy, a burned out musician, half of a folk duet called Mitch and Mickey, even though he reminds me too much of my ex-wife‘s seventh ex-husband, a gentleman with whom I am also estranged. Note to my son: if you ever see the movie, tell me if you agree.

As John Prine sang in his song Donald and Lydia, “There were spaces between” Mitch “and whatever he said.” Mitch and Mickey reunite after thirty or forty years to do a memorial concert for the late Irving Steinbloom, a folk music promoter who has recently passed on. The “Ode to Irving” concert around which this movie gravitates, will feature three groups formerly promoted by Steinbloom. In addition to Mitch and Mickey, a trio called the Folksmen, made up of Harry Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guess (yes, the three principles of the band Spinal Tap) and The New Main Street Singers will perform. The New Main Street Singers are a re-incarnation of a group from the 1960s called the Main Street Singers, with one elderly original member and eight fresh faced youngsters.

The concert is being organized by Steinbloom’s family, his two sons and his wife, who appears to be the same age or younger than the progeny. In an interview, the family tells us they are not close and it appears that is also understated.

A married couple, the Bohners, in The New Main Street Singers tell us how they met and then they describe their faith to us. When the original Main Street Singers broke up, one of the founders started a pornography store. Mrs. Bohner worked for him and made movies, doing things “the other girls wouldn’t do.” Through this career she met Mr. Bohner who is sort of the front man for The New Main Street Singers. Their religion is based on color. “Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the forty-ninth vibration,” they tell us.

I think this movie would be a lot like This Is Spinal Tap in that the third or fourth time it is viewed it is the funniest, and when the words to the songs start to sink in, it becomes the most humorous part of the movie. Therefore I probably won’t have the full appreciation of A Mighty Wind until I see it a few more times. Damn that TiVo.

At one point The Folksmen are singing a song called Old Joe’s Place about a diner with a burned out neon sign, and one of the lines they sing is:

“I often think about a place I’ve never seen.”

That struck me funny, in a twisted sort of way.

There are a number of peripheral characters in this movie who add a lot in just a few sparse lines. Larry Miller as a public relations person for the concert says he doesn’t really like folk music, but “It doesn’t matter what we think, it’s what we make you think.” And Fred Willard as Agent Mike LaFontaine tells us about how thirty years ago he starred in a television series for one season and popularized the phrase “Wha’ Happened?” And we conclude his fifteen minutes ended there.

This is a movie that doesn’t have you rolling on the floor, but the dry, cerebral wit makes it worthwhile to watch. And, although I’ve only seen it once, in toto, I’d recommend seeing it several times, at the risk of sounding like The Folksmen and thinking about a place I’ve never seen.

Because in Jimbo’s world we like to see a good movie, especially in the comfort of our own living room.