The New York City Subways

So many things have drastically changed since I lived in NYC, but maybe nothing has changed more dramatically than the subways. In the 1977-82 era when I lived here, the subways were dirty, mostly not air conditioned, smelling of urine, and there were frequent service outages, track fires, and the people related hazards like muggings, panhandling, street hassles, etc.



As I arrived in NYC on the bus after missing the train in Boston, I walked around Times Square--another dramatic change. Then I was going to hop on the train to get to my hotel on the Upper West Side. I went down to grab the No. 1 local to 79th Street--the train arrived in five minutes (this was 1:30 am). It was clean, air conditioned, and full of people! Earlier when I used to come home late, there would be almost no one on the trains and you could end up waiting 1/2 hour or more.

What an amazing transformation. I'm kind of glad it happened after I left--maybe I would have never left...
---o0o---

The 1st Amendment and those seven (really about 11) dirty words

A federal court found yesterday that a Federal Communications Commission policy punishing the unintentional airing of sporadic and unexpected expletives was invalid, calling it "arbitrary and capricious" and would probably not pass a First Amendment sanity check. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not go all the way. The FCC found in favor of a Fox challenge to the policy and sent the case back to the FCC for a "reasoned analysis" of its new approach to "indecency."

Some examples of infelicities that got the pot boiling:

Bono: During a January 2003 Golden Globes awards broadcast on NBC, U2 lead singer Bono said the words "f------ brilliant." The FCC contended the "F word" in any context "inherently has a sexual connotation. It might if you are over the age of about 70. But, for everyone under the age of 70, the F word is pretty normal, everyday language and while it has grown at least a dozen meanings, ir is not really

Cher: In a Dec. 9, 2002, broadcast of the Billboard Music Awards the performer Cher used the phrase "F--- 'em."

Richie: "Have you ever tried to get cow s--- out of a Prada purse? It's not so f------ simple."

Perhaps the best part of the ruling is that--as FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told The Associated Pres--the ruling will make it difficult to impose fines for indecency. Heh heh. "Practically, this makes it difficult to go forward on a lot of the cases that are in front of us," he said. and added that an appeal was being considered."

The appeals court said some of the FCC's explanations for a 180-degree change in its policy were "divorced from reality." It countered the FCC argument that broadcasters might now air expletives all day, saying broadcasters had never done so in the 30 years before the policy was changed.

In a statement, Martin said: "It is the New York court, not the commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding that the word 'f---' does not invoke a sexual connotation."

You have to love the FCC because all they want do it protect the children! Interestingly, the court cited both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney as people who had used "fleeting expletives" on the airwaves in the last few years. Both of them were caught on hot mikes using "indecent" language that could have netted $325,000 fines.

In a statement, Fox Broadcasting said: "We are very pleased with the court's decision and continue to believe that government regulation of content serves no purpose other than to chill artistic expression in violation of the First Amendment. Viewers should be allowed to determine for themselves and their families, through the many parental control technologies available, what is appropriate viewing for their home."

The appeals court said agencies are free to revise their rules and policies, but they must provide a reasoned analysis, which the FCC had failed to do. In fact the FCC has never actually been able to provide a reasoned analysis of anything at all. In a majority opinion written by Judge Rosemary Pooler, the appeals court said all speech covered by the FCC's indecency policy is fully protected by the First Amendment.

"With that backdrop in mind, we question whether the FCC's indecency test can survive First Amendment scrutiny," she said. "For instance, we are sympathetic to the networks' contention that the FCC's indecency test is undefined, indiscernible, inconsistent and consequently unconstitutionally vague."

The appeals court said some of the FCC's explanations for a 180-degree change in its policy were "divorced from reality." It then countered the FCC argument that broadcasters might without the new policy air expletives all day by saying broadcasters had never done so in the 30 years before the policy was changed.

jack, from Boston, Massachusetts (Thursday on to NYC)
---o0o---

Down With People Rock Again!

My friend Scott Boggan singing with Down With People.
Click to enlarge.

We went to the Sunset Tavern in Ballard once again last week to see Down With People--one of my favorite local bands these days. They played last on a triple bill with The Republic of Chuck (one of the most bizarre musical acts I have ever seen in my life. He made Wesley Willis seem pretty normal). The other act (whose name I am blanking on and cannot find) included Ballard resident Dan Peters, who was/is the drummer for Mudhoney and who was also the drummer for Nirvana in its early years. They played a good set. Their singer was fun to watch, and they cranked out a yeomen's set. Down With People played an rousing set of their mind-expanding psychedelic pop rock (with theremin!).

Down With People are Ron Nine, the former member of the highly-regarded Love Battery, (guitar, theremin, vox), my old workmate and pal, Scott Boggan (bass, vox), and Scott Vanderpool (drums, vox). And. . .Michael Laton who projects an amazing and wonderful light show over and behind the band (and who also happens to be the father of my neighbor Cassady, who is in the band Dear John Letters). Alas, no go go dancers this time! If you ever get the chance, go out to see these guys play. In my booklet, they are one of the most interesting bands in Seattle.
---o0o---

Fixing Mick Jagger's petite penis, how he didn't measure up to Bob Barker, and an interesting experiment he performed

Janice Dickinson had sex with both Mick Jagger and Bob Barker. Only Bob measured up.

One time musical innovator Mick Jagger was also ahead of his time on another front: Mick was at the vanguard of the "penis enhancement" movement well before it became the provenance of junk mailers and spammers. While you have probably spent a great deal of time over the last several years clearing out "penis enhancement" spams from your email--whether you actually owned one or not--Mick Jagger was personally blazing a trail through the wilderness of tallywhacker growth.

Yeeeeeeeeeeowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!

The frontman covered his pride and joy with bees to swell its size, film director Julien Temple, who worked with Jagger on the the 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, revealed in a recent interview on Britain's Radio 4.

"It involved putting bamboo over the male member and filling it with stinger bees so the member attained the size of the bamboo," said Temple. "Mick spent months in the jungle in Peru. He was going mad out there I think."

Jagger has acquired a reputation as a "cocksman" over the years and been linked with dozens of beautiful women, four of whom bore him seven children. His current squeeze is the American fashion designer L'Wren Scott. L'Wren would not comment on Jagger and refused to return calls to All This Is That.

The former Price Is Right model and actress on The Surreal Life, Janice Dickinson, told U.K. talk show host Jonathan Ross recently that "Mick has a very small penis." This leads us to the inevitable conclusion that Mr. Jagger does not measure up to Bob Barker, whom she also, ahem, evaluated. ---o0o---

A pre-Doors Jim Morrison acting in a public service announcement

This is a fascinating clip of Jim Morrison well before The Doors, in 1963, acting in a PSA video. Not what you might have expected from the singer who exposed himself in Miami, because he "wanted to see what it looked like in the spotlight."



---o0o---

Poem: Pentateuch Tales/The story of a beautiful garden

This great big blue world—
Whirling like a merry-go-round—
Is broken-in but not broken-out.

Even before there was an earth,
Stars, nebulae, planets, black holes, or moons,
There was The Man Upstairs:

God was God
Because God never began to be.
He always was.

Earth was blacker than midnight
Until God sent the sun.
Dark clouds arrayed around earth

Broke apart and light tumbled in
To create day and night.
God drew the oceans together,

The land rose up,
And He said it was good.
He added grass, trees, flowers, and fruit

On the third day
And things were even better.
On the fourth day God rolled away the dew

And the stars and sun came into view.
He added fish to the sea and birds to the air
And took a handful of dust and created Adam

In a beautiful garden
Where the four rivers met,
And built a woman from Adam's rib.

Adam and Eve broke the one rule
God laid down
And the garden was cancelled.

Breaking God's rule led to thistles and work,
Disease and poverty, masters and slaves,
Lust ambition and madness,

Life and death, cooties and germs,
And the one never-ending war—
Like His one ocean—

That starts with Cain and Abel
And merges with every other skirmish,
Battle, imbrogilio, tilt, and holocaust

And forms a ring
That runs circles
Around our world.
---o0o---
[Next: The First Children & The First Murder]

Quotes for Sunday

The only wayto entertain some folks is to listen to them. - Kin Hubbard [1]

It's a dangerous business going out your front door. - JRR Tolkien [2]

Never face facts; if you do, you'll never get up in the morning. - Marlo Thomas [3]



[1] Eulogy by Will Rogers, published 27 December 1930: "Kin Hubbard is dead. To us folks that attempt to write a little humor his death is just like Edison's would be to the world of invention. No man in our generation was within a mile of him, and I am so glad that I didn't wait for him to go to send flowers. I have said it from the stage and in print for twenty years. Just think -- only two lines a day, yet he expressed more original philosophy in 'em than all the rest of the paper combined. What a kick Twain and all that gang will get out of Kin.


[2] Fantasy authors such as William Morris, Robert E. Howard and E. R. Eddison preceded Tolkien, but the enduring influence of his works have led to him being popularly identified as the "father of modern fantasy literature." In any case, Tolkien has had an indisputable and lasting effect on later works, as well as the genre as a whole. On the whole, he is a better writer than most of the puffed up academics and lit school grads. that scoff at him.


[3] Marlo Thomas is the recipient of four Emmy Awards (for her show That Girl). She has been married to talk show host Phil Donahue since 1980. The couple lives in New York City, but Thomas travels to Los Angeles for work or to receive donations to her charity, Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital. Producer David Geffen contributed $1,000,000 by simply writing Thomas a check when she was on location in L.A. filming Friends some years ago.

---o0o---

At Last! Dean Ericksen Begins Blogging!

Dean Ericksen finally leapt in and started a blog. . .right here on BlogSpot. Dean is a longtime contributor of weird links, stories, and ideas to All This Is That.

Some of the articles by/about Dean that have appeared over the years on All This Is That:

Dean Ericksen's review of the Grammys

Dean Ericksen's dream!

Dean Ericksen's Metro Melodrama

President Bush drunk at Camp David (references Dean's Eggnog recipe)

Photograph: Dean & Jack In California

Welcome Dean. . .this should be fun.

---o0o---

Mark Yeend/Milo Petersen and others

This is a video clip of some Seattle jazz guys. . .as it happens, two friends of mine are in the clip. Mark Yeend a long time co-worker on drums, and Milo Petersen, a friend since I was one year old, on his seven string guitar. Mark and Milo are playing in Jake Bergevin's Javatown Swing Orchestra. . .


---o0o---

The "TB Dude" Speaks Out

The T.B. Dude And Wife

Everyone's up in arms about the TSA/the border inspector who allowed the TB "typhoid Annie" into the U.S. Especially me. And all the 80 year olds with his replacements. . .as the drug smugglers and others waltz right up the jetway. As I stepped onto the 737 in California last night, I had been frisked and patted down 12 times by the TSA times this month alone (due to my stainless steel femur).[1] And yet this guy, teeming with deadly cooties gets passed right onto the plane. Even though the "system" had flagged him as a risk:

An Associated Press article today said: "A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the U.S. by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said Thursday. The inspector has been removed from border duty."

From ABC News: Andrew Speaker has asked for forgiveness from the airline passengers he exposed to a rare strain of tuberculosis, and told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview that he has a tape recording of a meeting with health officials that he claims will confirm his view that it was all right to travel in his condition.

Germs Lurk on Planes, Trains and Buses

Tuberculosis -- Are You at Risk?

"He says he wants everyone to know how he made the decision, why he felt so strongly that it was not endangering anybody else and [is] also asking forgiveness of those onboard who are now having to be tested," Diane Sawyer said after spending an hour with the TB patient and his wife, Sarah Speaker, at the National Jewish Research Center in Denver, where he is currently in isolation.

"He talks at length about the decision first of all to go abroad, to hold his wedding abroad, and … there is a tape recording of the meeting that he had with health officials, and they say it confirms completely their view that it was all right for him to travel," Sawyer said.

You can see a video of Diane Sawyer on her interview here.

[1] Let me also note that I have now been patted down and frisked by the same TSA agent in Newport Beach three different times. He stands out in my mind, because of all the searches I get, his are the most, shall we say, extensive or intensive? This guy is thorough, and I started wondering this time if he doesn't enjoy his work a little too much?
---o0o---

Painting: President Bush Dissembles And Disassembles

click to enlarge

---o0o---

Cindy Sheehan now outside the tent, pissing in

click to enlarge

From Jack in Newport Beach, California:

"Good riddance, attention whore," wrote Cindy Sheehan on Monday's Daily Kos blog, "I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called "Face" of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such "liberal blogs" as the Democratic Underground. Being called an "attention whore" and being told "good riddance" are some of the more milder rebukes." Her rambling and raving screed blamed just about everyone, and ended with her "resigning" as the face of the anti-war movement. How do you resign from that post??

The last straw for Sheehan was what liberal blogs are calling the "Memorial Day Betrayal," where the Democratic-majority congress voted to continue funding the Iraq War with no real restrictions.

“There is absolutely no sane or defensible reason for you to hand Bloody King George more money to condemn more of our brave, tired, and damaged soldiers and the people of Iraq to more death and carnage,” she wrote in another diary entry on Saturday.

As she was leaving the now pretty big anti-war tent, he couldn't resist whizzing on her former peace pals: “I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.”

That seems just a little disingenuous since Sheehan helped engender plenty of factionalism herself! She had a falling out with Move on!--they were too moderate! She ended up working with Code Pink, a left-wing anti-war group.

So now the anti-war movement is eating its own. But hasn't it ever been thus? The bottom line, however, seems to be that Cindy Sheehan had no stomach for politics. She was a passionate mother who suffered a great loss. Yes, if you speak as loud, as vitriolically, and as up front publicly as she did, you are going to be attacked. They will try to marginalize you like a Michael Moore today, or a Jane Fonda in 1971. Not being as poltical as they were--or maybe they were just immune to the politics?--Sheehan just couldn't take it any longer. I don't really blame her. But then, I am not really going to miss her much either.

Previous stories on Cindy Sheehan on All This Is That:

Cindy Sheehan rides again

Cindy Sheen picks up the cudgel again

Matt "Sleazeball" Drudge Strikes Again

Sheehan arrested at President's speech

---o0o---