Commuting stinks, etc.

Now that we got Obama, I mean Osama, Book Review

2011-08-07T01:16:00.000-04:00

Three months ago some Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden. When I think about the raid, I prefer to imagine a kid friendly version where actual seals enter the compound while barking for bait fish and balancing beach balls on their noses. As the seals bombard Osama with beach balls his multiple wives form a human shield forming the largest animal v. human game of dodge ball the world has ever known.

I suppose it also could have been this guy.

As meaningful as the Osama take down was for its retributive benefit and as an operation to fight terrorism around the world, it holds a different significance for me. It affirms a universal truth about men. No, I am not discussing our penchant for human shields. Rather, I refer to our undeniable exposure to pornography. In case you didn't hear, Osama had porn. The leader of jihadists throughout the world who was often referred to as pious was anything but. Surprised? I'm not. The skeptic in me has known for a long time that there are no truly pious men, just men biding their time until they have a some time alone with the Internet. Of course the issues involving global terrorism and jihad are way more serious and complex that every man's porn habit.

I recently finished a book which deals with some of those issues and more, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, ("TFQ"). Let me say first that I'm not a fan of books about Jews. I'm a Jew, (genetically at least) and I have read, mostly on my mother's suggestion, a shitload of novels that could best be described as Jew centered fiction. There was the one about the inquisition, the biblical one; she just tried convincing me to read one about a Jewish civil war soldier. I picked up TFQ because I heard the end of an interview with Jacobson on NPR where his response to a question about winning the Man Booker Prize was, "it was about time." So I read TFQ and was not disappointed.

The novel revolves around three friends (two Jewish and one who desperately wants to be Jewish) and touches upon the complexities of their relationships and their feelings about their own religion. The book, though not lengthy, is not what you'd call a fast read. What little action there is takes place early on and sets the stage for many chapters which can best be described as "discussion of earlier events". The entire novel is set against a backdrop of ever increasing European anti-semitism and its relationship to sympathy for Palestinians under Israeli occupation. One of the main characters has chosen to be an "ashamed Jew" speaking out against the occupation while the other Jewish character is less political and deeply mourning his wife. The main character, a gentile, longs to be a Jew; something which he perceives to be special with an intellectual flair which he cannot grasp. There are other minor characters all which play somehow into the themes of being Jewish in a Christian world. The book is funny at times, incredibly well written and rewarding. It may have Jews but my mother will probably hate it because it's not pulpy trash.

There is one overarching reminder throughout the book. This is a Christian world (at least Europe and America). My son is about to start public school after going to a temple school for pre-kindergarten. We didn't want to send him there but we quickly realized that the non-denominational schools were by default, Christian schools. Now we are faced with the same problem, public school is Christian. Christmas is in the curriculum. We are not religious people, really we are atheists. But if there is no true non-denominational option, we'd rather him have a Jewish education than a Christian one. Today we were at local public high school for my son's basketball trophy ceremony. The High School rents its cafeteria to a church on the weekends and there were church flyers everywhere. I wasn't offended but should I be, it's a public school. We're going to see how it goes with public school, but the second my kid tells me Jesus died for my sins I'm going to start saving up to get him back in the Jewish day school.

Anyone who thinks there is a war on Christianity should feel secure that the war is over and the Christians won.

CRUDBUMP: ____ You If You Don't Like Christmas

2010-12-06T09:49:00.000-05:00

Poem for winter in South Florida

2010-12-04T03:29:00.000-05:00

In winter the leaves don't fall
well, some leaves fall
but they do not fill bags on every lawn.
We do not own a rake
or a blower
because we are tropical
and have Cuban restaurants in every strip mall.

In winter the children still play soccer outside
in shorts and t-shirts,
and visit the beach
though the wind has picked up
and it is not
possible
to play frisbee.

In winter we wait for our friends from the snow
to visit
on their way to the new
cruise ships and their
gluttonous escapes
into the Carribean.
We drive them
to the airport.

In winter we unpack our one sweater
and wear it one time
and pack it up again
for next year.

We do not realize that spring has arrived.

Cover Songs and Video Games

2010-11-27T00:58:00.001-05:00

I am listening to an album of cover songs (the one pictured above) and thinking about how great they can be. Sara Watkins singing Late John Garfield Blues by John Prine is beautiful and it creates something wonderful while paying homage to the original. The whole idea has me considering the originality and its necessity, or lack thereof, in the creative process. The other thing that has me thinking about this issue is video games, or rather, a lawsuit about video games. A former Arizona State Quarterback has sued EA Sports regarding prior versions of their NCAA football game which used the accurate numbers and information of college players.

The case raises 1st Amendment questions about the use of likenesses in video games and other mediums. What is it about an expression, video game or otherwise, which qualifies it as protected speech? Video games have already been determined to be the kind of creative expression covered by the 1st Amendment. So why does this use of a college player's likeness seem so unjust. I have no good answer. My problem with this is likely related to Greg Ostertag. That's the big man up there. When Ostertag was in college at Kansas, a college basketball mecca, he already had his own family and lived on campus in family housing. The digs were barely basic but probably what most people would consider acceptable for an amateur athlete in school on a scholarship. Fine. Except that while Ostertag and his family were handling their meager existence, the KU store was selling out of Ostertag jerseys, t-shirts and dolls (yes, dolls). Here was a school, a public institution of higher learning, profiting from the likeness and efforts of one of their student-athletes. They were not the first or the last to do so. I know that schools make money from the television broadcasts, etc. of their successful teams, but the Ostertag thing did not seem right to me.

Same thing goes for the EA case. We can certainly understand that a video game is a creative endeavor, but can't we weigh how creative. Aren't the EA sports games more commercial than creative. It's seems unlikely to me that the 9th Circuit will split hairs betwixt video games and apply some kind of creativity sniff test. And I understand that is probably the correct decision because we do not want courts drawing fine distinctions about what is creative and what is commercial when so many mediums are both creative and for commercial gain. However, just like the Ostertag dolls, something about it just doesn't feel right. We will see what the 9th Circuit does with the case and whether freedoms trump fairness. Stay tuned for a case update.

Good Radiation (public radio rap)

2010-11-16T13:52:00.000-05:00

Halloween, Fat Guy in Driveway

2010-10-30T20:10:00.046-04:00

My son was Batman for Halloween, I was a fat guy sitting in my driveway. I wish I had been a Minotaur.

This was our first Halloween in our new neighborhood and I was generally impressed. There were abundant balloons of orange and black with the fancier balloons in the form of ghosts interspersed. The children were polite despite the proliferation of high school kids sans costume looking for candy hand outs. Surely their parents must not be Tea Party members, how could they sanction candy entitlement programs. At the end of the night we had the requisite (and quite dangerous) surplus of chocolate and candy which is now available gratis in the office kitchen.

When I was considering this post I had a varied list of subjects to discuss. (Talking Bird by Death Cab for Cutie just came on my Pandora Station) I could write about why women in an alarming majority uniformly wear slutty costumes at Halloween, or about the disappointing results of the mid-term elections, or about how so many of us wear disguises in our daily life. (A Father and A Son by Loudon Wainwright III just came on my Pandora Station) Ultimately I have decided to incorporate all three subjects because they are undoubtedly related.

Women in Sexy Costumes

(Cocaine Blues by Johnny Cash just came on my Pandora Station (it's the Folsom Prison live version)) Like any guy, I am 100% in support of women in sexy costumes. What I'm more curious about is the psychology behind it. (Give it Up by The Format just came on my Pandora Station) When you put on a costume are you revealing a part of yourself, (Let it Ride by Ryan Adams just came on my Pandora Station) or are you pretending to be something you always wanted to be, or is there nothing special at all about wearing a costume. Don't misunderstand, the sexy permutations are not the point. I am not saying that sexy nurse wants to be a nurse. (The Hazards of Love 4 by The Decemberists just came on my Pandora Station) What I am asking is whether sexy nurse is someone who is always wishing she could have her IV bags on display or is she someone who wouldn't dream of that in her daily life and embraces those few occasions when she can be someone else. I believe it is an important question about motivation: Are you trying to be someone else or exhibiting who you always were?

My wife has just informed me that I am foolish and trying to create meaning where there is none. She also suspects that this post is an excuse to peruse the proliferation of sexy costume pictures on the internet. (You've Got to Hide Your Love Away by The Beatles just came on my Pandora Station) She is probably right, the desire to dress sexy (probably evolutionary) may have nothing to do with deeper seeded thinking about disguises and a person's sense of self but to the extent people are kidding themselves when they put on these costumes, it belies a truth about how we represent ourselves to the world.

The Mid-Term Election

Despite all that Obama has accomplished, the democrats had very little hope of retaining the House. We know that historically the country unseats the ruling party when times are tough, regardless of who created the problem or the progress being made to improve things. What is special about this election is the level of delusion exhibited by voters in comparison to prior elections. The Tea Party has made libertarianism (See Rand Paul) the momentary fashion while simultaneously selling the idea to the same people it would hurt the most. Voting Republican in this last cycle amounted to farmers voting against farm subsidies. More strikingly, but not new in any respect, people without means voted to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, increasing the divide between our working poor and the rich to an even wider chasm. They also voted against funding the programs which prevent our middle class from falling into poverty as they get old or if they become sick.

Part of the reason has to be a deluded self image. My co-worker told me once a while ago that people vote against benefits becasue they believe they'll be rich one day and will get stuck with the bill. Are we really so deluded that we vote R because we think the lottery ticket is a winner or possibly less likely, because we think our hard work will get us to the top. Hard work will not get you to the top, not usually. So everyone should lose that rich guy costume in the polling booth and vote in a way that might positively affect their life. (I and Love and You by The Avett Brothers just came on my iTunes set to shuffle). Instead, the rallying cry is small government and reducing benefits. Because that worked so well before the 1950's. Everyone voting Tea Party should be forced to read the entire Steinbeck collection and then answer book club questions about how much harder life was without government intervention.

Unfortunately, this might be our American nature. I highly suggest you pause in your reading and watch this video animating a lecture by the author of Nickel and Dimed.

We Delude Ourselves

We simply do not value realism, let alone skepticism. Both of which are absolutely necessary if we want to be a society which takes care of its least fortunate and which protects those without means from the people and businesses who would take advantage of an unregulated marketplace. So it is sad that in our daily lives we disguise ourselves as "the guy who will make it big one day," because that is all it is; a disguise which is also a delusion. I am not encouraging laziness, or implying in any way that people are resigned to a life of financial mediocrity. I'm only saying what is true, that most people in the lower to middle income levels are likely to stay that way and will not be a part of that top .2% which is actually affected by the tax cut expiring. In fact, during the Bush administration the wealthiest Americans saw an average yearly income increase of 6% while the middle class and poorer Americans experienced no wage increase at all. So why do we do it, why do we vote with a rich guy costume on? Unfortunately, it may be the American Dream. We are taught early on to measure success in terms of wealth and material things. We also believe that we are one big idea away from easy street. I'm no hippie, but if we want people to be less deluded (I think we do), then we might have to look at our values first.

Review of Last Night in Twisted River, Etc.

2010-10-20T15:28:00.000-04:00

I recently finished the latest novel by John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River. While I enjoyed it, the sad moments stayed with me longer than I would have liked and it lacked the satisfying, ongoing reveal of Until I Find You. If you intend to read the novel and don't want any detail spoiled, stop reading now.

The book takes us into another little know world much in the same way that his last novel brought out the history of the modern tattoo though this time we see the business, the New Hampshire logging industry, from the point of view of a camp cook. The same camp cook is later a restaurant chef and owner which provides another interesting backdrop for the novel. Some of the other Irving elements are also present, familial though not incestuous relationships, a private school education (with wrestling), and extended view of a single life. None of Irving's novels including and since Garp could be considered snapshots and LNiTR is no different. The story is a saga and follows a single family of men from the New Hamphire woods to Boston's North End to Iowa to Vermont and ultimately to Toronto. The book is riddled with death of several varieties which the drive the book to its conclusion and its suspense is not of the usual kind. The story is a long chase over the course of many years without the violence of No Country for Old Men and it's enjoyable if not on the same level as some of Irving's other novels.

Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann

I read this after LNiTR and it was easily the greatest reading experience I have had in the last five years. The characters are wonderful, their interactions are moving, the language is terrific. A truly great book in my humble opinion. That is all I will say except to tell you that you should read it, then we can meet for a drink and talk about it. I have read a couple of other books since, Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle and A Geography of Time by Robert Levine. They were both fine but nothing compared to the experience of LtGWS. Looking forward to reading The Finkler Question and to writing about it when I'm done.

Thanksgiving and a Birthday

2010-10-20T03:16:00.003-04:00

I am publishing this post almost a year after I started drafting it. It's been a good year for my family though not a great year at work or for the country in general. Here's hoping that by the time I publish a post for Thanksgiving 2010, things have turned around.

November 24, 2009 - November 25, 2009

My son is not sleeping tonight; he is waking up every half hour with another perceived need or complaint. He has woken up to urinate, to get a drink of water (related), to tell me he doesn't have any "company is his room for sleeping," to ask for his toy cars, and to get tucked in more tightly. It is actually a wonderful way to begin my birthday because I was not at home when he went to bed tonight at a ridiculously early hour. His early bedtime is the result of a convergence of a singular process and a yearly one; we (the parents) are taking away his nap and we have just set the clock's back reverting to Standard Time from Daylight Savings Time.

It's easy to understand why the nap deprivation is doing some damage. He had two hours of slumber every day beginning at noon and it's easy understand why he is getting tired earlier. But we've been through days with him without naps before and there was never a direct correlation to his bedtime. The real culprit is our reversion to standard time. On the first Sunday in November we set the clocks back an hour (last Sunday in October in the E.U.). It is pitch black out at 5:30 these days and my kid can't handle it.

In all respects my kid is essentially a farm animal or a farmer, more likely the livestock. It gets dark, he wants to sleep. The unfortunate product of the early bedtime is my son waking up repeatedly beginning anywhere between 2 and 4 AM. There is significant controversy in the history and practice of DST, my complaint about my kid's inability to stay awake past Six pm is a drop in the bucket.

November 25-26, 2009

Despite the lack of sleep because of my son's frequent requests and complaints, we piled in the car for Tampa on Wednesday morning. After a stop at the library, a run for 3 dozen bagels to be frozen in my mother-in-law's freezer #2, and a fill-up at the gas station, we left in the pouring rain for the 4.6 hour drive to Odessa, Florida. It was uneventful apart from the numerous accidents we passed in the deluge. The boy had to pee once and I pulled past the shoulder onto the grass where he peed while standing on the door frame and never stepped outside of the Toyota. I got some birthday calls en route.

I had a nice birthday steak dinner and an ice cream pie with a candle in it. Yeah, 35.

On Thanksgiving morning my mother-in-law was twittering around the house pretending to have something to do. My father-in-law was deep frying the turkeys for later in the day. People came and drank and ate and fun was had by all. End of story.

*I hope everyone and their children have a wonderful Halloween and Thanksgiving*

Up Late and Rambling

2009-11-11T02:40:00.012-05:00

Thanksgiving is coming up (as well as my birthday) and though I'm not prone to introspective moments I am inspired to review the things I'm thankful for outside of the obvious. Hopefully the obvious, wife and child, know that I'm appreciative daily, not just in November.
I am thankful for television. Though I enjoy reading (am currently reading John Irving's latest and enjoying it), playing with my son, and speaking with my wife; there is something wonderful about the lack of effort necessary to watch television. This has been an especially good season with The Office and 30 Rock at the height of their powers, an excellent episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm on this past week, and continuously satisfying episodes of The Amazing Race.

Recently on The Amazing Race, Super Christian Couple had a moment at the top of a water slide that was must-see TV. Jerky guy practically throws her down the slide.

Classy guy. This episode led to more of the aforementioned enjoyable discussion with my wife where she accused me of trying to throw her down the slide in the fictional world where we are contestants on TAR. I told her that she would never wear that silly looking bathing suit and floaties. The wife has actually sabotaged videotaped applications for the show and I am looking for a new potential teammate. My favorite part was the trash talking exhibited by the Globetrotters when they arrived.

After the fact, jerky guy thought he wasn't abusive. I guess attempting to throw your girlfriend off a six story platform isn't abusive, it's just competition. Don't you love America, trying to win a million dollars is an excuse for anything.

How to Eat a Chicken Wing

2009-11-03T12:42:00.001-05:00

I've been preaching the split and suck method for years. Let's go get some wings.

Big Brass Balls

2009-09-25T16:21:00.006-04:00

Missouri, really, please tell me this is not happening. But it is. A high school band, long the refuge of the socially advanced, had a clever idea for a shirt that matched with their theme: Brass Evolutions. It reeks of Mingus and Davis and had those band kids on the road to respectability, at least until the wackos got wind of it.

The shirts had the ever so recognizable, though scientifically inaccurate, image of ape transforming slowly to man. Band parent, Sherry Melby, who also happens to be a teacher in the district (kids in this district are totally screwed), was offended by the t-shirt.

"I was disappointed with the image on the shirt.” Melby said. “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school."

I wonder what class Ms. Melby teaches, "Science is for Wizards," or perhaps, "How I Can Damage Today's Youth and Send Them Off to College to be Mocked," or even, "Why God Put the Fossils Here to Trick Us."

And shame on you Brad Politt, Assistant Superintendent of the district with idiotic parents. You are supposed to be a beacon of learning, a pillar of the educational system. And yet, you compare the clever reference to Darwin's theory on a t-shirt to an image of Jesus on the cross.

"I made the decision to have the band members turn the shirts in after several concerned parents brought the shirts to my attention,” Pollitt said. Pollitt said the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned.“If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing,” he said.

No wonder Ms. Melby has a job. How many times does a Federal Court need to say it before someone blasting evangelical rock in a mega church hears it: Evolution is science, religion is religion. The fact that Mr. Pollitt would equate an understanding and acceptance of evolution with any religion is something that should make us all concerned. Even worse is the unnamed booster/asshole who refused to pay for half the shirts when he saw the evolution motif.

If you didn't already know, Kirk Cameron is also an anti-evolution loon and here's his plan to defeat Darwin in the afterlife followed by an exasperated response in a heavy accent.

Not Enough Money

2009-09-02T12:53:00.014-04:00

One of the issues bad faith attorneys have encountered over the years is a particular problem in Florida, the multiple claimant/short limit, ("MC/SL"), dillema. MC/SL issues arise whenever there are insufficient proceeds to resolve all of the claims arising from an incident and the number claimants exceeds the the number which results from the division of the aggregate limit of insurance by the per person limit of insurance. It sounds more complex than it is. If you have an insurance policy with per person limits of 100 and an aggregate limit of 300, you would need to have more than 3 claims to have an MC/SL situation (the total value of all the claims would also need to exceed 300).

Some jurisdictions have adopted a first come, first serve rule which protects carriers from bad faith allegations. This allows an insurer to settle a third party claim against its insured without regard for other potential claims arising from the same loss. In those states (Texas is one), the insurer has no duty to try and resolve as many claims as possible against the insured thereby preserving the maximum available coverage for the insured. Rather, third party insurers in First Come/First Serve states are free to resolve claims as they are presented without regard to protecting the insured's assets or obtaining the greatest value for the contracted liability limits. The insured is left to deal with any judgment in excess of their contracted limit because the insurer can pay claims as they arrive without concern for limiting the overall value of claims against their insured.

Why should it be that someone purchasing insurance in Texas should get less benefit from the same policy as a purchaser in identical circumstances in Florida. In what other industry does state regulation substantially diminish a product being purchased, let alone a product so necessary and regulated.

A man walks into a bar...

2009-08-29T07:19:00.011-04:00

Joke from my colleague:
A man says to his wife, "Can you tell me something which will make me happy and sad at the same time?" She thinks for a few minutes and then tells him, " You have a bigger dick then all of your friends."

The video above qualifies: so funny, so so sad. I'm frequently surprised at the absence of plain simple logic and truth telling that has become a part of our political system and which is so clearly protected by our First Amendment protections. Lying has so many ramifications in the real world, I threaten a defamation suit on behalf of clients weekly. But lie about a politician or his policies and you are protected. Seemingly ridiculous when you consider the damage misinformation in the political realm does, i.e., we elect the wrong people. I know it's not original of me to point out but people eat up this Glenn Beck bullshit regardless of how it's spelled. This reminds me of another joke that more aptly summarizes the relationship of Glenn Beck to his fans.

A bear and a rabbit are sitting next to each other in the woods shitting. The bear looks down at the rabbit and says, "Hey rabbit, you ever have trouble with shit sticking to your fur?" The rabbit says no, so the bear wipes his ass with the rabbit.

P.S. Regardless of his hilarious spelling error (which I have to believe was meant for me personally), someone should tell Glenn Beck what an oligarchy is.

Barney Frank Confronts Woman At Townhall Comparing Obama To Hitler

2009-08-19T14:24:00.001-04:00

A tribute to the 1st Amendment.

Science is Kool and Why My Niece is so Advanced

2009-08-19T07:00:00.005-04:00

My Son and his Cousin (my niece) love each other. It's really very sweet. They love each other in the way only a three and a half year old and a four year old can love each other. They run to each other, they embrace freely and chase each other into a frenzy. They keep up with each other throughout the day at a pace that exhausts any witness to their reunions. Throughout the day some differences become apparent: princesses and baseball. Though my niece is game and enjoys her time at bat and my son will push a doll around the house in a stroller, their minds quickly wander to their own areas of interest.

It's at the end of the day where my niece enjoys a competitive advantage in the game to see who can play longer. As they get ready for bed and get tucked into the upper and lower levels of the trundle bed my son is justifiably exhausted; my niece, who should be tired, has a gleam in her eye and through the intercom we hear her whispering for my son to wake up and play at 11:00 PM. She wakes him at 6. She is invincible and my son is exhausted. Why the difference, I had no idea until the Times laid it out for me. My niece is the next rung on the evolutionary ladder. Or a mutant, but she's such a cute kid I'd hate to use that label. Can you imagine if this mutation becomes more prevalent, a small group of people (led by my niece) may take over the world because they are awake and feeling refreshed at 4:30 in the morning while the rest of are still asleep. In a pre-dawn offensive the world could change because of these new less fantastic X-Men.

Just think of their advantages. They can stare at you while you sleep and examine your numerous flaws, the chinks in your armor. They can read the morning paper before you and redact the portions they don't want you to know about. They can eat breakfast while you sleep and be ready for lunch when you are eating breakfast, they may always be a meal ahead. So maybe the advantages of this mutation are not as far reaching. But what if the mutation becomes more prevalent. If one third of the world was awake and ready for work at 5 in the morning what else would change. It's too horrible to think about.

I know that technically the mutation may not be an evolutionary development but how incredible would it be if it was. A mutation influenced by the amount of time needed to accomplish a day's work would be an incredible development. It would almost be a little sad if we discovered the mutation only affected Americans. Other organisms have made adaptations which make the sleep thing look like a lame card trick. Several months ago a friend posted this link to his facebook page. I read it, thought it was cool, then forgot about it. Then I watched "The Happening." It is not a good movie but it was not so horrible that it has been denied full rotation on the HBO networks. For those who have not seen it, the premise is that foliage develops a neurotoxin that it releases into the wind which affects human brains in such a way that anyone exposed to the toxin commits suicide. Pretty cool. Well it was cool when it was a joke of a movie. Not so funny when you find out that fungus already does this to insects. That's right, there is mind control fungus which forces ants to die facing certain directions and at certain heights. All of my sister's theories about sharks taking over the world now pale in comparison to the threat posed by Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. For now, they only threaten ants but it can only be a matter of time until we are laying face down, biting a leaf on the north side of a tree. Who will protect us from the fungus among us? (Picture is property of The American Naturalist/University of Chicago Press)

Deposition in St. Petersburg and Mutiny

2009-08-15T19:06:00.002-04:00

Unfortunately this seems to be a pattern. I don't post for a long time and then find myself with a private moment where I can jot something down. Current Facebook Status: sitting in a court reporter's office in St. Petersburg, Florida with some time to myself. I just got back from a short walk up and down Central Avenue. There are a lot of closed storefronts, a lot of homeless folks, some new trendy restaurants and plenty of parking. There are some older coffee shops and restaurants on the street that I wish I had time to try, but I didn't. There are also a ton of music venues I can remember going to with friends when I was in college. I listened to my iPod throughout my stroll and was pleased to hear "Wanna be Startin Something" by MJ (so glad I put Thriller on this contraption). After MJ was a version of "Rawhide" by Ricky Skaggs, then Shlomo Artzi.

I really couldn't prepare anymore for the witness. The room I was in was vintage shared corporate office space. There was a painting of a tree done in three colors, red white and black that was reminiscent of every garage sale ever conducted, 4 glass jars of candy (I have had two caramels, not Kraft), 1 Costco sized container of UTZ holiday shaped pretzels (the holiday was clearly Christmas with pretzels in the shape of Christmas trees). There were also the obligatory colored drawings of St. Pete/Tampa landmarks of which I recognized none, though one may have been the Stetson Law School campus in Gulfport. My iPod then switched to "Last Date" by Floyd Cramer and I wondered if all the oohs and ahs in the song mean it's not an instrumental piece. There is a TV in the corner with a mounted apparatus for video conferencing which we won't need today. The receptionist just told me I can't park where I parked so I move my car wondering how she knew where I parked.

The deposition lasted too long and without revealing any details let me just say that the witness is a horrible person. I actually think he is a sociopath and who has been taking advantage of weaker people his whole life with impunity. In fact, this case, this current deposition is not being taken about those issues, he is a mere fact witness and my questioning is no deterrence to his future activities. Worst of all, he is not alone. Though I cannot mention details I only say that this man's behavior is part of a larger conspiracy and I am immediately reminded of the men of the Pitcairn Islands.

The Pitcairn Islands are where the descendants of Fletcher Christian the the mutineers of the HMS Bounty settled after setting Captain William Bligh adrift on rowboat. It's an incredible true story, as documented by numerous websites, that far surpasses the romanticized versions of the films. I have never seen the 1962 version but we can all picture the later incarnation with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins. The movie also has Daniel-Day Lewis, Liam Neeson and an aged Lawrence Olivier as the admiral. I've digressed. The thing about the movie and its predecessors is that they are bullshit. There was no falling in love with Tahitian women, there was the kidnapping of Tahitian women. The mutineers kidnapped as many women as they could and settled on Pitcairn Island establishing their own society.

The settlers were left alone for their part without the judgment of the world to affect their habits and until relatively recently they sexually abused all the young girls who had the unfortunate fate of being born to a Pitcairn family. I suggest listening to the interview at the link with Kathy Marks who wrote "Lost Paradise" about the trial of the Pitcairn men. In summary, these islands with a population which hovers around 50 have created a tradition out of having sex with with the islands' young women against their will. Nobody says anything and the practice has continued for as long as the residents remember. I should mention that the Pitcairn Islands are a British Overseas Territory. They are part of the British Empire, but they are also so far from anything and everything that their connection to the world around them has been for most of the society's existence, tenuous at best. Just read Ms. Mark's telling of how to reach the island:

"Ms. MARKS: Pitcairn, in 2009, still has no airstrip, not even a safe harbor. I traveled there from Australia. It took about a week to get there.
DAVIES: A week.
Ms. MARKS: A series of flights from Australia, followed by a very rough, 30-hour boat voyage from a distant corner of French Polynesia. Now, having made that rather grueling journey, you then anchor about a mile off Pitcairn and wait for the island's men to bring out the longboat. That's the only way of getting on and off the island still - is the traditional boats that the men steer.
What I found curious when I first arrived in 2004 to report on the first trials of Pitcairn men, the islanders brought out their longboat - it drew up alongside us and I was quite astonished. I looked out and saw that the two men who were driving the longboat were two of the men who were about to go on trial for very serious child sex offenses. And I thought gosh, this is going to be quite an unusual assignment, and this is quite an unusual place."

If you familiarize yourself with the story you'll learn that ultimately several of the men were ultimately punished for their crime despite the punishments being woefully inadequate. But the men were only found out because a British policewoman was stationed on the island who was confided in by a 15 year old girl. What's more shocking about the story is that women who had left Pitcairn did not speak up until after the case of the 15 year old was being investigated. ( I assume, not trying to blame the victims here). Pitcairn was a place dominated by men because of its rugged and harsh existence and the confluence of isolation and dominance led to a tragic outcome. But there is no remorse on Pitcairn because they don't believe they've done anything wrong. One can imagine the pleas of Pitcairn men not to be saddled with the judgment of the outside world. The lesson we should all take away form this story is that isolation leads to bad things. Cruel things. And a compromised set of values unhindered by a watchful eye.

We can see it in smaller ways in our own society when we consider isolation by economic means, by race, religion and political persuasion. It may be many people's dream to have that large piece of property with no neighbor in sight but in my opinion it does more harm than we imagine. Let's all live in one giant condo, they are really cheap right now.

Gay Marriage Would Be Great for the Economy

2008-12-04T08:37:00.001-05:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Sarah Palin and Dead Turkeys

2008-11-21T10:54:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving.

Diary of a Third Party Bad Faith Trial (This Will Be Boring)

2008-11-15T11:21:00.004-05:00

We recently went to trial in a common law third party bad faith case in Hillsborough County, Tampa, Florida. It was a rare occurence because the risk involved with a bad faith trial usually pushes the insurer to settlement. A brief primer on insurance bad faith and the difference between third and first party cases would be helpful for understanding this post, luckily I already wrote one. In the first party context there are often issues at play which can inflate the value of a case against an insurer which are not present in a third party case. Furthermore, damages are usually limited in a third party bad faith case to the extent of the excess judgment in the underlying case. For example, if you have an insurance policy with $10,000.00 in bodily injury coverage (like most auto policies in Florida) and your insurance company misses an opportunity to settle a case against you within that $10,000.00, the excess judgment of the Plaintiff from that underlying case is the most that can be recovered in a bad faith case against the insurer; e.g., if the Plaintiff was awarded $110,000.00 at the underlying trial of the injury claim then the total exposure for the insurer in a common law third party bad faith case would be $100,000.00. Generally, (there may be some exceptions), the jury does not determine the amount of the award in the common law third party bad faith case because the jury from the underlying case has already set the value of the damages; the common law third party bad faith jury is only charged with determining whether an insurer acted in bad faith, yes or no.

This is a tremendous advantage over a first party situation where a bad faith jury could be determining values for additional damages related to an insurer's failure to treat it's own insured fairly. Because there is no opportunity for a jury to negotiate a value among its members, I believe that the third party scenario presents a problem for jurors resulting in a hung jury, assuming that you can convince a single stalwart juror that the insurer has acted reasonably. Alternatively, the third party bad faith case presents a problem for the Plaintiff because a single factor in favor of the insurer may prevent a Plaintiff's verdict. I've digressed, back to the case at hand.

Our recent trial mirrored a specific kind of common law third party bad faith scenario wherein there are multiple claimants against in insureds limited policy proceeds. Florida courts have dealt with the situation previously and one case in particular has laid out an insurer's specific duties in a multiple claimant situation, Farinas v. Florida Farm Bureau. Generally, an insurer has to attempt to resolve as much exposure for their insured as possible and must act to achieve that goal by reasonably investigating the claim and keeping their insured advised throughout. The Farinas case also mentions that a good way to try and resolve all the claims might be to schedule a mediation inviting all the claimants, presumably to have them reach an amicable split of the insurance proceeds.

In our case there had been four serious injuries. The three potential claimants in the insured's vehicle, plus one potential claimant from the other car in the accident. The three potential claimants from the insured's vehicle all had serious injuries, broken bones, hospital stays, and astronomical medical bills; the claimant from the other vehicle had some knee pain and a surgical recommendation for an ACL repair. Predictably, there was not enough money to go around as the insured had $50,000.00 in aggregate liability limits (considerably more than most people but woefully insufficient to fully compensate any of the claimants for their injuries). The carrier in our case conducted an investigation, reviewed the accident report, interviewed the participants, sent correspondence to all the parties, and considered who was at fault. They hired defense counsel for their insured, kept the insured informed, and scheduled a mediation where they attempted to settle all of the claims within the $50,000.00 limit.

The single claimant (with the least serious injuries) walked away from mediation without a settlement and pursued her claim against the insured. She ultimate received a judgment against the insured approaching $90,000.00. The other three claimants allowed the insurance company to retain a few thousand dollars from the 50k to try and settle with the one claimant who would not settle at mediation. This is where the greatest problem in a Farinas style bad faith case arises, how do you prove what occurred at mediation, specifically, that an offer and attempt to settle all the claims actually took place. Florida Courts like those in many states have been loathe to invade any mediation privilege (an earlier statute in Florida only kept mediation which was conducted during litigation confidential); so an insurer is seemingly without recourse to prove that reasonable attmepts to settle all claims took place at a mediation. As the insurer did in our case, all of the correspondence prior to mediation and afterwards should indicate that it is the purpose of the mediation to settle "all of the claims." This is also the province of a "bad faith expert" who can explain the purpose of the mediation as well as the reasonableness standard for investigation and communication with the client. The jury must/should conclude that the insurer would not have invited the claimant to the mediation if they did not intend to settle with the individual. A jury of laypeople unfamiliar with the process may not take that step.

In our case, all three claimants who did settle had sent demands stating that they would pursue bad faith damages if the carrier did not tender its limits by a date certain. The carrier was able to then arrange the mediation before that date passed. The majority of the jury did not understand the complexity of the Farinas fact pattern. Additionally, despite diligent questioning during voir dire, two jurors revealed after the trial that two others would never side with the carrier regardless of the facts. We ended with a hung jury after hours of deliberation and an instruction in response to juror questions that they should look at the "totality" of the circumstances. I should also note that this case did not involve an assignment of rights to file the suit from the insured to the claimant/judgment creditor which would have increased the risks involved by allowing the Plaintiff to collect attorney's fees in the event of a verdict in their favor. From the defense perspective I consider it a win based on the two predisposed jurors and we came away with some important lessons.

There is a great advantage in the third party format because of the jurors inability to negotiate the value of the claim among themselves, it's an up or down vote.
Time must be taken to explain to the jurors the limitations of a carrier when investigating the claim, i.e., they cna only get records a claimant is willing to provide them and whether an investigation is reasonable or not can be determined by the end result for the insured. (Nobody argued that the exposure for the insured wasn't appropriately reduced by the settlements).
A hung jury may be the best possible result at any bad faith trial.

Wassup 2008

2008-10-27T15:25:00.001-04:00

Missed these guys, let's all start answering our phones this way, again.

Biden knows what the Veep does...

2008-10-26T21:36:00.001-04:00

Sign that kid up...

The Sidewalk to Nowhere, McCain Supporters in Bethlehem, PA

2008-10-26T21:11:00.001-04:00

How are all these folks going to react if Obama wins?

Sarah Palin On 'Pyramid'

2008-10-17T13:36:00.001-04:00

The G8 Summit....Pass

Columbus Day

2008-10-13T07:30:00.007-04:00

My office was open on Columbus Day this year, I think it was open last year as well. I can't help but think of this holiday as past its prime. Many states and countries have alternative versions of the holiday at this point and I'd like Florida or the whole country to follow suit. Columbus is like many things, the more you know about it, the less enticing it becomes.

Columbus, or one of his sailors to be more precise, saw an island in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Instead of buying some straw hats and going home, Columbus had the motivation to make a second trip and reached Cuba and the island of Hispaniola, where the Santa Maria ran aground. He had failed in his attempt to reach Asia and the gold Spain was hoping India would provide. He believed when he died that Cuba was a promontory of Asia because he failed to circumnavigate the island. He had met some very nice indigenous people and his relationship with them is really the entire problem with Columbus Day. Aside from making them all sick with disease which had not yet been introduced in the New World, he slaughtered them. The Arawaks and other native people were viewed as potential new Christians and slaves, the inquisition in Spain had vanquished or murdered all Jews and Moors from Spain and those policies rang true across the Atlantic. There are numerous texts which identify the horrors tribal people suffered at the hands of Columbus's crew and the first colonists. Those brutal acts are sufficient to taint Columbus in such a way that we should change the way he is celebrated.

First a little history about Columbus Day here at home. The first Columbus Day was in 1792 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Columbus's landing, they celebrated again on the 400th anniversary in 1892. Italian-Americans started celebrating in 1866 (Columbus was Genoese), but the holiday didn't gain in popularity until a lawyer, the son of Genoese immigrants who settled in California, popularized the holiday. They started celebrating in San Francisco in 1869. The lawyer moved to Colorado where the first statewide Columbus Day celebration was held in 1907. Denver, which has the longest running Columbus Day parade, has seen the parade protested by Native American groups for the last two decades. The Knights of Columbus got FDR and Congress to make October 12th, Columbus Day, a Federal holiday in 1934. Since 1971 it's been the second Monday in October. Most businesses are open, mine was.

In light of the gruesome treatment of the natives at the hands of colonists, many locales have altered their observance of the holiday. Berkley, California has changed the day to Indigenous People's Day, they have a pow wow. There is no Columbus Day in Hawaii, some Hawaiians have advocated a Discoverer's Day to include James Cook, but neither holiday is recognized by the state government. Even though State offices are open, there are still protests in Hawaii of any discoverer's holiday with some advocating an Indigenous People Day instead. It's not a holiday in Nevada, and in South Dakota it is a state holiday, Native American Day. In the Virgin Islands they call it Puerto Rico - Virgin Islands Friendship Day, when were they not friends. In Virginia, Columbus Day coincides with Yorktown Victory Day which celebrates, well you can figure it out.

In Latin America, Dia de la Raza is celebrated and it's largely scene as antithesis to Columbus Day and is primarily a way to celebrate the resistance to colonization and the indigenous peoples. Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez, has actually changed the name of their holiday to the Day of Indigenous Resistance. In 2004, activists toppled a statue of Columbus in Caracas. Chavez supporters compared the toppling of the statue to removing the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

Children are fed myths about Columbus because history is not often pretty. They will not teach in elementary schools that Columbus's first thought upon meeting tribal men and women was that they could be easily subjugated as slaves and that some were immediately transported with Columbus back to Spain, many dying en route. When history has been sweetened and edited for so long that it becomes our reality, the most stalwart people describe any more accurate retelling as revisionist. Teaching history the way it happened is not revisionist, it's a lesson in humility and regret because we should all know the roots of our good fortune and come to terms when the roots are distasteful.

Scroll down and play the video to hear how Columbus discovered Ohio. Also Columbus made it into Dickipedia.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Alexithymia, on the grand scale...,What happens in Carrabelle, Florida...

2008-10-11T15:03:00.005-04:00

The image is Narcissus by Caravaggio.

I've had some conversations in this political season, usually with my wife about our shared opinions but also with people who don't see things the way I do and I've come to some medical conclusions. More specifically, psychiatric conclusions. Republicans are diseased, they have a very specific disorder.

I am making one big assumption as the basis when I conclude that the Republicans are sick, i.e., nobody actually believes that supply side economics helps poor people. The con of "trickle down" economics has been disproved to the detriment of our nation's majority yet again. I appreciate the optimism of it, "if rich people get more money, they'll do the right thing with it." Unfortunately the premises are wrong, when wealthy people get more wealth, it doesn't ever make its way to the homeless guy loitering by the McDonald's downtown. Additionally, government is not an inefficient delivery mechanism for help. In fact, from an economic standpoint, taxation and spending is the only way to ensure that funds are consistently recycled and spent in an economy that relies on the citizen to spend, not save. We all remember how Bush II advised us to fight back against Al Qaeda, I rushed to my neighborhood Target, well one of my neighborhood Targets.

If there is one truth about government and public administration it is that it spends what it gets. The simple reason behind that is self preservation. The government committee that doesn't come back in its second year to say it needs more funds to get the job done having spent its allotment, whatever the job is, clearly is not considering its own survival. This is the shortcoming of any public administration and also why it's hard to find an honest politician, but it does not work any less effectively to bolster our economy. Government spending is still spending. I've digressed.

So assuming there are no Republicans out there who actually believe in the trickle down farce, what would explain any one's inclination to support Republican policies and the agenda that has become the red state mantra? Alexithymia, sort of, and elements of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Shock and disbelief, how can this be, an entire voting block needs therapy? Yes, intensive psychotherapy, actually, we all do.

Alexithymia, comes from Greek words meaning "without words for emotions," it's actually a personality trait, not a disorder, in individuals who have a difficult time expressing emotions. It is also connected to their ability to sense emotions in the people around them and is directly related to an individual's ability to empathize with others. That lack of empathy is an element of Narcissism that threatens to disconnect people from each other in a very real and permanent way. Do you see where I'm going with this. We live in a disjointed society. People in Waukesha, Wisconsin have increasingly less in common with people in Manhattan, which makes absolutely zero sense in the era of mass communication. But it's not just geographic rural vs. urban lack of empathy, it's across financial, religious, and racial strata as well. I don't mean to intimate that this is a one way street, city dwellers can't empathize with farmers either, we all exhibit this nasty little personality trait because even as we learn more about each other, we become more and more divided. Those divisions then contribute to the lack of empathy we feel for each other. It is circular and it's a problem.

I'm not sure who said it first or if it's just a bastardization of Gandhi's quote about how a nation treats its animals but, shouldn't we be judged as a nation by how we treat the poorest among us. Those last two words color the issue, "among us." The poorest are largely not "among us." We all become callous when the scandal of American poverty is out of view, let alone the poverty of Africa with it's shocking qualities. The separation from those neediest people allow the richest to exhibit their base lack of empathy, maybe disguise it behind economic policy, but essentially admit out loud, "I already pay enough, I don't care." Is it any wonder that in the states where population density is the lowest, you hear the most fervent opposition to the expansion of civil rights. If your only exposure to a homosexual is the guy from What Not To Wear (one of my wife's favorites), it's no wonder you can't bring yourself to support gay marriage. Gay out of sight, gay out of mind. Poor out of sight, poor out of mind. I've never seen your school with the old books and leaky roof, then I am perfectly happy to keep funding schools the way we do now.

I was in Carrabelle for work a few weeks ago. Carrabelle is in the panhandle, directly south of Tallahassee. It is hard to get to and does not have any citified trappings. Though it does have some great eats and a packed marina with an attached motel. There is a stop sign and local claim to fame, "The World's Smallest Police Station."

In Carrabelle, the people look the same and generally all work the same type of job. Many of the people there are employed by the Department of Corrections. There is nothing wrong with any of that. What is wrong is the inevitable disconnect and lack of empathy they might feel for someone who needs it because the issues are too foreign for their sympathy. Rich versus poor, rural versus urban, there is no end in sight.

On the ballot in Florida, as in some other states, is another of those inartfully named "marriage protection amendments." It is Amendment 2 on the ballot. It will likely pass because prejudices are easy to exhibit when you have the privacy of a polling booth. It will also pass because small segments of the population who are disadvantaged will be victims of the barriers between them and the rest of society forever without external intervention, i.e., the courts. Gay people will never have numbers enough to win a vote on a marriage protection amendment, and as long as most people live where they don't have to interact with homosexuals they'll never have the empathy either. I've digressed again. We know it is not a one way street, city mouse lacks empathy for country mouse just as much. How many urbanites favor farm subsidies? Why can't the city understand the religious backbone and practical economics of the country. The empathy shortage flows in both directions.

The point is... we need to empathize, if we don't we are only the introspective self-admirers contributing to the divisive culture we have today. We should all strive to be as different as we can from the youth trying to kiss his reflection in Caravaggio's painting. If you live in Florida, please vote No on Amendment 2.

More Racism at a Palin Rally in PA

2008-10-09T19:16:00.000-04:00

He is not even being tricked into revealing his racism by a Borat-like foreign correspondent. Vote McCain and risk being associated with this guy.

Best Hypocrisy Ever

2008-09-06T19:04:00.001-04:00

Fox News Told to F,, off at DNC

2008-08-25T17:49:00.001-04:00

Yes, "F" Fox News

CNN: No Credit for Creationism

2008-08-25T17:36:00.001-04:00

Someone pinch me, should I move to California?

Danni's Grad Speech

2008-07-10T09:47:00.001-04:00

I am so proud of my sister/cousin...

Why I Would Move To Canada (if McCain is elected)

2008-07-10T00:59:00.005-04:00

Reasons:

1. My faith in the American people would be so definitively undermined, I could not look my fellow citizens in the eye without being driven crazy by the burning question, "Which one did they vote for?"

2. Undoubtedly the rich get richer politics of the Republicans will plunge us further and further into volatile recession, making the only reasonable choice a move to a country where the currency is more stable even if less valuable.

3. I will be too upset at the prospect of diminishing rather than expanding civil rights that I will move simply to avoid being confronted with those realities on a daily basis.

4. I may be deported, considering Mc Cain newly discovered intolerance for those born elsewhere. I can't actually be deported but maybe I'd leave out of solidarity with those who are.

5. Change of scenery.

Thoughts crossing my mind as I upload my music for my new iPod.

2008-07-05T00:16:00.010-04:00

1. This is going to take a really long time.

2. Why did I like Billy Joel so much in Junior High?

3. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is not a country album, I don't care what iTunes says.

4. I swear I am missing a ton of CD's, who has them and which are they.

5. I'm enjoying the way some of these cd's are bringing back specific events for me, all those Monday nights at Loung Ax and Beat Kitchen, the Arad music festival in 1997, and Amy's Farm in 1991.

6. Why won't the computer read my copy of The Inevitable Squirrel Nut Zippers.

7. What do I do about the bootlegs?

8. Richie Havens looked exactly the same in I'm Not There as he did in 1969.

9. I really had a ton of Billy Joel discs. They're not going on my iPod.

10. iTunes really has the genres screwed up.

11. Holy crap, I still have a long way to go.

Who gets left behind?

2008-07-01T22:00:00.006-04:00

The picture is of a frozen baby mammoth, it died over 10,000 years ago and has nothing to do with this post. What I wanted to write about is the ever expanding chasm between those of my friends with children (the great majority) and those without (the dwindling few) (the left behind) (the ones not in bed at 8 PM on Friday night).

At some point an initial step was taken and everyone paired off. Some are now pairing off for a second time but for the most part everyone has taken that initial step. If they did not, we can chalk it up to luck, or rather a lack of it depending on your situation. Because when it comes down to it, there are a few people for everyone, (except for me, there is only one person for me and I married her, I hope she is reading this).

Isn't it incredible how well preserved that mammoth is, really amazing isn't it.

So those that have not paired off for whichever reason, generally find each other and have fun, some rejoin that group after a tragedy or realizing they should not have paired off in the first place. Those few are usually temporary members of the singles club until they pair off again.
Some couples then move on to the business of offspring, multiple offspring being the norm, and some couples do not. Some couples cannot, not everyone chooses or has the ability to spend tens of thousands on fertility treatments. The next time you ask a married couple when they are going to have a baby, keep in mind they may have been crying about the subject for months. Regardless, the inclination to be fruitful and multiply is a strong one, but... is it a considerate one? The disdain for SUV's and the drive to recycle is a growing trend, but why are those snide comments about Hummers not also directed to the Nutters, or the Duggars. What will leave a larger carbon footprint, a Hummer or 18 kids? I'm willing to bet it's the kids in a landslide, a landslide created by global warming.

So we know having a multitude of children (or any children), isn't good for the environment, do we really care. Is it even a question of ethics or morals. Traditionally and at least in my mind ethics were taught in a classroom setting as a code regarding how human beings treat each other and act with regard to their human relationships. I don't think the scope is that narrow. I think most people would agree that whether or not we treat animals cruelly is an ethical concern. Can't we then extend the idea to our environment. The mistreatment of our planet is an ethical concern by extrapolation. So...

Is it unethical to have children? Why would we expect the dwindling resources of our planet to sustain a limitless population, when we know we are already in trouble. Well we probably shouldn't. I know you want a big family but we should probably stop making so many babies at the same time we stop making so many Ford Excursions, etc. I'm clearly just echoing other people's ideas on the subject but we should all stop to think about whether it's just bad for the environment to have kids, or because it's bad for the environment, is it just plain wrong.

Hilarious

2008-06-30T01:12:00.001-04:00

I love this dog.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Creationists Pollute Young Minds at Museum on Nightline

2008-06-28T19:51:00.001-04:00

This is what we're up against...

Religulous (2008) Trailer

2008-06-23T11:43:00.001-04:00

Looking forward to this...

Seven Words

2008-06-23T09:37:00.001-04:00

So sad.

Cake and Crisps

2008-06-17T21:55:00.017-04:00

Play Along:

Knock, Knock

(Who's There?)

Smell Mop

(--------------)

It's actually not my joke, Antonia told it on the fantastic show Top Chef which just wrapped up its 4th season on Bravo.

My wife is addicted to several reality television shows. Jon and Kate plus 8, What Not To Wear, Top Chef (which is very good), Mystery Diagnosis, that show with Gene Simmons , and the inspiration for the joke retelling above, You Are What You Eat. You Are What You Eat is one of a crop of reality shows that airs on BBC America. Other shows of note include Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares ( episode "The Walnut Tree" seems to be on a 24 hour loop), How Clean Is Your House, Last Restaurant Standing, My Big Breasts and Me and the nation specific makeover craze Britain's Worst Teeth. When it comes to reality television, the British do it right.

Back to the knock, knock, joke. On the aforementioned You Are What You Eat, a nutritionist, Gillian McKeith, shows people the crap they eat and then turns them into healthful sprites who outlive those tortoises that live a very long time. That is unless they fall off the wagon, or should I say, ice cream truck. The show starts off effectively every week with the, "surprise, we've been secretly taping you and recording everything you ate this past week." They then astonish the viewer and shame the participant by displaying on one long table, everything that person ate during the course of the week. The volume is usually frightening but the inevitable fish and chips usually look pretty good. And then the unthinkable happens, Ms. McKeith demands that her fallen angels defecate into Tupperware which she then smells and rubs between her fingers. She is so scientific about it, "Oh Nigel, you're barely chewing your food," "My god that is the most putrid smelling poo I have ever whiffed;" you half expect her to taste it and describe its mouth feel. Worse yet she makes all the participants smell and feel it as well.
As if the long table of fried food wasn't embarrassing enough.

The show proceeds with drastic changes in diet, negative reactions to tofu and claims of feeling more healthful. It ends with the necessary hugs and the before and after underwear photos . The self help shows have a formula that works. I just thought it was important to inform everyone that there is a show on television which makes people smell and feel their own poop. If you have a DVR, use it, you will not be disappointed.

In other TV news, injustice in our universe hit an all time high as the TBS sitcom My Boys was brought back for another season. The sitcom equivalent of a dead baby joke makes me pine for Misguided (great show recently cancelled),

and, John McCain knows how to be creepy.

Also, The Amazing Race is awesome.

Insurance Bad Faith in Florida, A Simple Understanding

2008-06-17T12:05:00.003-04:00

The creator of the Pringles can has died. Actually he died a few months ago without much fanfare. By far the best part is where they placed his ashes, insert horrible joke about new Pringles flavor here. Soylent Green is people. With that out of the way I thought I would give everyone an insurance primer regarding a carrier's duties to its customers. This is not legal advice and you should in no way rely on this or sue me if you think I am wrong.

By way of background, we have essentially two kinds of insurance coverage in this universe, first party coverages and third party coverages. First party coverages encompass situations when you are making a claim against your own carrier for damages. In the auto insurance context, this would encompass your collision coverage, uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, and no-fault coverage. It might be simpler to think of home owner's coverage as being primarily first party, e.g., a pipe leaks and destroys your house, you make a claim against your own policy to repair the damage. The essence of the first party situation is that there is no one else involved, just you making a claim against your own insurance carrier.

Third party coverage is simply liability coverage, it is the insurance purchased to pay claims against you that could be brought by third parties for accidental harm you cause. In the automobile context, if you have 100k of bodily injury coverage, your insurance company would pay up to 100k of injuries you caused to third parties arising from your use of an auto. The great value of third party coverage is the defense usually embodied in the coverage. Even if you maintained only a $10,000.00 bodily injury auto policy (the minimum), if you were sued by a third party for negligence involving your insured auto, your insurance carrier would be responsible for the attorney's fees and expenses involved in the defense of your case. Those expenses could easily exceed the actual amount of your liability policy within a few months of litigation.

One quirk, the dreaded "wasting" policy. Usually reserved for professional malpractice policies, the wasting policy wastes away with each defense cost. In these policies, the total amount of coverage is applied to defense costs and liability payments creating an unavoidable conflict for defense counsel hired by an insurance carrier. Imagine reducing the funds your client has available to settle a claim each time you speak or write to that client. It's a bad idea, but it persists.

So what is insurance bad faith as it applies to both first and third party situations. Generally, insurance bad faith occurs when an insurance carrier fails to treat its policy holder with the same consideration it would bestow on its own corporate executives. This is obviously a very general standard and usually whether or not bad faith has occurred is a question of fact for a jury to decide. However, there are some factual scenarios where the Florida courts and legislature have provided some guidance. I'll deal first with the third part party context.

Imagine that you cause a car accident seriously injuring another individual. Also imagine that like most individuals in the state, you only maintain 10k in bodily injury insurance coverage. What are your insurance company's responsibilities? They have an affirmative responsibility to protect you from a judgment in excess of your 10k policy limits, i.e., they have to try and settle the case on your behalf. They may not be successful but as soon as they are notified of the accident they must begin steps to protect the policy holder's interests. The injured party may demand that you contribute funds, that you provide proof that you cannot contribute to a settlement in excess of your limits, they may demand that you sit in front of a court reporter to answer questions about your assets, they may demand that you stand on one leg, hop up and down and sing O' Canada; they can demand whatever they like, what is important is that insurance carrier communicates all of the demands to you in a timely manner providing you with every opportunity to settle the claim.

Bad faith arises in the third party context when your carrier fails to actively attempt to protect you from a judgment in excess of your policy limits. The simplest example would be a situation where you accidentally kill someone with your car, your insurance carrier then receives a letter saying that the estate of the deceased is willing to settle their claim for your 10k policy limits at which point your insurance company does anything except send them a check for 10k. Thirty days go by, the estate files a lawsuit against you and the resulting judgment is 1 million dollars. Clearly, the carrier should have settled the case, clearly they acted in bad faith by not settling the claim when the opportunity arose, and clearly a potential bad faith claim exists for the 990k not covered by the 10k bodily injury policy.

If you have not figured it out, a necessary precursor to bad faith in the third party setting is the determination of value for the underlying case in excess of the policy limit, e.g., the million dollar judgment in the previous paragraph. In the first party setting a judgment in excess of limits is unnecessary but the legislature has provided insurers with a procedure by which they can avoid charges of bad faith, the civil remedy notice. When jerked around in the first party context, let's say your home owner's carrier will not pay for damage an appraisal umpire has said they owe, you have only one option if you intend to file a bad faith suit. You must file a Civil Remedy Notice with the State of Florida's Department of Financial Services, the Notice must indicate which statutory provisions you think your carrier is violating. After the notice is received by the carrier and accepted by the state, the carrier then has sixty days to resolve the dispute. They can do that by simply paying what is owed under the policy. If they make the appropriate payment within sixty days of the civil remedy notice, there cannot be a bad faith claim.

Of course, there are wrinkles, complexities in both the third party and first party context which raise questions about what constitutes insurance bad faith. We cannot address them all but two issues in the third party scenario arise often and have received some guidance from the courts. First, what is the appropriate course of action when there are multiple claims being made, the total value of which would exceed your policy limits. Though there is no clear practice for a carrier to avoid bad faith allegations in the multiple claimant situation, there is an indication that in Florida one claim cannot be paid diminishing the total funds available for other claims, if that first payment is not in the insured's best interests. Inevitably a court would decide if a carrier's actions in the multiple claimant framework were reasonable attempts to protect their insured. (It should be noted that several other states allow insurance carriers to settle claims on a first come, first serve basis).

The second scenario to consider involves multiple insureds rather than claimants. Often there are multiple insureds liable for a loss, e.g., the owner of a car and the driver. It's conceivable that an injured party might accept a settlement for one insured but refuse to release the other. Florida courts have approved of insurance companies obtaining releases for some insureds while leaving others without funds under the policy to settle, but, the circumstances must show that there were no other viable options to settle the claim(s) against all of the insureds.

The mandate for an insurance carrier in the third party context is clear, protect as many insureds as possible from excess judgments.

Hope you enjoyed this boring introduction to first and third party insurance bad faith, stay tuned for the primer on reinsurance. I can feel you shivering with anticipation.

Wife/Cousin; Sister/Cousin or How We Are All Related

2008-06-17T10:06:00.003-04:00

Get the joke in the picture? It's actually my family tree. My father-in-law/step third cousin once removed was actually the first to tip me off. On my first trip to my wife's home in Odessa (Florida), her father casually asked me my last name. I told him the distinctive and unusual last name of Hungarian origin and he responded in peculiar fashion, "Really, (Hungarian last name), like the (Hungarian last name)'s from Nicaragua." I was slightly surprised but not entirely taken aback because our family had achieved some notoriety in small circles (a Canadian librarian later wrote a book which featured some information about a long dead relative named Laszlo). There is no (Hungarian last name, "HLN"), from Nicaragua that I am not related to in some way. The Jewish community of the country had always been and remains, small.

I return to the initial meeting with my wife's father.

After replying that yes, I am one of the HLN's, he promptly revealed that as a teenager he had spent time on a certain "finca" owned by Julio HLN, my great uncle, and that...wait for it...we were all related. He was chuckling, my wife then girlfriend, was not. My wife's grandfather had sent my father-in-law to Nicaragua to learn Spanish and while there he stayed with family, his family and my family.

This is how it goes. My wife's paternal, paternal great grandfather, i.e., my father-in-law's paternal grandfather was a widow. At some point, he decided to remarry. He already had children but desired companionship. Like many people, he sought his companionship from familiar environs. For him, familiar environs meant the people from the same small Hungarian village of Jews that had since dispersed into diaspora from diaspora. While he was in Michigan, he knew the HLN's in Managua and sent for and married Lillian, sister of my paternal grandfather, Morris. We are one family. There is no blood between my wife and I, at least not within the last four generations, but it was always funny to think that my great aunt was my wife's grandfather's stepmother. Had my great aunt actually been my wife's great grandmother, then my wife and I would be third cousins, not exactly a genetic time bomb. In fact just being of European Jewish descent presents far more genetic concerns.

While my wife's grandfather was living I enjoyed hearing him tell stories about the nefarious deeds of my Nicaraguan family. I am slightly dubious that my paternal uncles' remember what a good swimmer my father-in-law was during his visit more than forty years ago though they swear up and down they remember his visit and always refer to him by his nickname.

My wife and I would have been married even if we were third cousins, I would have been game if we were even closer. Apparently cousin love is no big deal. For an understanding of your relationship to others in your extended family, plus an explanation of what it means when someone is "once removed," click this link. For the record, I knew my wife for seven years before we knew our families were intertwined, that "small world" thing can really blow you away sometimes.

Counting people with a drum

2008-06-16T01:03:00.001-04:00

I thought this was worth the three minutes it takes to view.

Open Letter to My Sister/Cousin's Friends

2008-06-09T21:48:00.009-04:00

Dear Allison and Allison's Boyfriend:

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you. I don't believe for a second that you honestly mistook the oven for a toilet, that is not a mistake drunk people make. The mistake is that you thought it was funny.

You actually thought to yourself, "this is going to be a funny prank," which unfortunately means that not only are you inconsiderate horrible guests (that should know better than to ever call again), but you are also stupid. So stupid, so moronic that when you arrived at your host's home at 4:30 AM you decided it would be funny to urinate in her oven. My sister/cousin (another story about how we are related may follow) is a nice young girl, not some dude who left you an upper decker that you have a running prankfest with, she is a sweet girl who on occasion actually used her oven. She is sweet and you are jerks.

Did you even acknowledge the violation? Only when prompted. And then your meager apologies were short shrift as you made no attempts to clean the mess and left town without even the slightest, "hey, I think my boyfriend may have pissed in your oven last night." You just left her to discover the urine when she turned the oven on and filled her apartment with the alkaline smell of ignoramus piss. We hate you. You are not friends of ours.

I hope you have equally inconsiderate friends that get drunk and drop a deuce on your carpet. If you were actually sorry, you would replace the oven recognizing that no person should have to eat from a pee oven regardless of whether it is actually harmful or unsanitary. So step up and replace the oven, or make your boyfriend buy one. Damn it, do the right thing. My two year old knows you don't pee in the oven. You suck. Plus you should replace her sheets and blow up mattress. Screw you for treating her apartment like an hourly motel.

Pork and Beans

2008-05-26T00:49:00.001-04:00

Weezer is awesome, Chocolate Rain guy will not die.

White Wilderness

2008-05-24T21:27:00.003-04:00

This is the video referenced in the post below, see post below for complete explanation regarding lemmings, ants and Walt Disney.

Ants, The New Lemmings

2008-05-21T17:09:00.023-04:00

Rasberry ants are the new lemmings. Not exactly, Rasberry ants are the new image of lemmings. This may take a little explaining, so let us take this one step at a time. There is an invasive species of ant destroying electronics in Texas. Despite any hope of mine that the ants will take refuge in Diebold voting machines in the especially red districts, this is a serious problem. The ants are an invasive species, which causes potentially huge threats to our own native species. Invasive species need not be animate either, we have a problem in Florida with typical dune vegetation disappearing (and with it the animal life that feeds on it) because of the invasive Australian Pine. Any trip to Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Hobe Sound, Florida is enough to make you realize how much damage a species can do when it ends up someplace it does not belong. Unlike the Australian Pine, which Floridians planted in the 1800's to stabilize irrigation, the Rasberry ant is thought to be a stowaway from a cargo ship, a little evolutionary joke with nature not accounting for modern mass transit.

Though invasive species are obviously a problem regardless of their individual propensities, there is one aspect of the Rasberry Ant which should make this invasive species part of our vernacular. They regularly follow each other to death by electrocution. Though their teeth, jaws, pincers or whatever ants have, are not strong enough to cut wire, they are strong enough to expose wire and when they encounter a live current, they die and release a pheromone that attracts other ants to the same location creating a build-up of dead ants inside your computer. That's right, they like to nest inside electrical equipment. How little sense does it make that the pheromone released when this ant dies, attracts other ants to the same location, I'd be interested in the evolutionary construct which causes this though it's probably something as simple as the necessity to defend their territory, which is why they like to live in electrical equipment in the first place (one way in, easy to defend).

What does this have to do with Lemmings? There is a common myth about lemmings which we are all familiar with, they jump off of cliffs to kill themselves like a scene from the new M. Night Shyamalan movie. They do not actually commit mass suicide, like many rodents, lemmings disperse when food becomes scarce due to population density in a frantic race for a new home. Nothing stops them, they swim, they climb, and in Norway, they jump into the sea and continue to swim until they drown. Not the brightest animals but they are just doing what evolution has programmed them to do.

In furtherance of the mass suicide myth, Disney, yes Disney, threw lemmings off of a cliff for their movie White Wilderness. The faked scenes from the movie are in the blog post above. All of this bullshit has led us to the point I would like to make. Let's stop calling mindless followers "lemmings", it's at least less appropriate then calling them Rasberry Ants, whose headlong plunge to death because of pheromones is far more akin to suicide then the lemmings search for food. Let us all vow to never describe people as lemmings again, and when someone asks what a Rasberry Ant is, take the opportunity to lecture them about invasive species.

Southwest, the gift that keeps on giving, an objective review of new boarding procedures.

2007-11-28T21:57:00.016-05:00

My commute has ended, my wife and I have found a family to rent our home in suburban Lutz, we then rented a home with purple carpet in Plantation only 20 minutes from my office. It is wonderful. Periodic updates will follow, for now, an ode to the airline which made the last two years of my life a fiscal reality.

Oh Southwest, thou art more affordable than driving; more punctual (usually) than my family; and more profitable thanks to hedging against higher oil prices in the 1990's. Now you allow me, the traveler, to remain comfortably seated until it is time to board. "So," you say, "why should this matter," "hasn't it always been this way?" Everyone who has flown Southwest during the past decade knows about the line-up. I know this is a little late considering that Southwest changed their boarding policies many moons ago, but I still see people completely confounded by the process. It is not that complex but I often overhear complaints with regard to the confusion felt by those incapable of following instructions. The complaints regarding the new boarding process fall into three categories. They describe themselves as follows:

1. I am an idiot who is far too stupid to grasp the idea that I have been assigned a letter and a number and will be expected to stand in numerical order, nor can I be expected to listen when the gate agent explains over and over again to stand underneath the sign which encompasses the number on my boarding pass.

2. I am angry that arriving 2 hours before my flight and standing on line for an hour does not guarantee that I will be seated in the first aisle seat at the very front of the plane, and I am angry that people who have paid more for their ticket (Business Select) and people who fly 32 one way flights a year (A-Listers) will be entitled to the first 20 boarding spots, regardless of when they check in. It is unheard of that frequent customers and people who spend money on more expensive tickets should receive some special treatment.

and, 3. I hate change, despite obvious progress.

My own opinion regarding anyone unhappy with the changes in the boarding process is that they are stupid and likely to be Republican. Any perks I had with Southwest will likely disappear now that my regular Monday and Thurday flights are a memory, but I will not complain about my late boarding status, rather I will be thankful for not standing in line. Another change is that parents traveling with kids can't pre-board (but will board between the A and B groups unless they have an A pass in which case they board in their appropriate numeric position).

P.S. Did everyone see Chris Matthews berate this right wing tool.

Tim Hardaway hates the gays...

2007-02-15T15:00:00.000-05:00

This may seem a little outdated, it is my first post in about ten months. Yet here I sit, newly rededicated to this blog with a bold mandate to blog weekly. The mandate provided by my inner sense of justice and desire for change inspired by the greatest of all corporations and their ingenious boarding system which allows me to stay on my ass for an additional 30-60 minutes while I commute back and forth between Ft. Lauderdale and Tampa. I've digressed. More on why I am always passenger #16 later, perhaps tomorrow.
One more digression, the man who invented Gatorade died today. It's sad when anyone dies but the lawyer in me can't help but wonder what idiot cut the deal that has garnered the University of Florida only $110 million in royalties since 1973 when Gatorade holds the lion's share of a $7.5 billion dollar a year industry. Seems like UF should get more, maybe that's just the homer in me talking.
On to the subject of this post,
You may be saying, "Moe, this Hardaway is a gay basher stuff is old news." I agree, but how often do we lose sight of a story without examining its ramifications.
Oh Timmy, I was a big fan of yours. The alley oops to Zo', the killer crossover (the first), the three-pointers without the slightest ball rotation, you were the man in Miami. We knew you weren't at your best, the injuries never plagued you in Golden State with Spree and Mullin spreading the floor. But you were tough for us when we needed you. All those Eastern conference playoff games against the Knicks kept us enthralled. We chuckled with you as Jeff Van Gundy hung precariously to the the tree trunk that is Alonzo Mourning's left leg while you pulled at Oak's right arm.
But you had to open your mouth. Even Dan Lebatard (horrible Miami sports writer I refer to as "Lebastard"), let you know you were out of line. Now you have apologized. The fact that John Amaechi is such a well-spoken intelligent guy made you look more foolish than the everyday homophobic jackass. I'm okay with that.
Let's look what has happened in the months since Hardaway's admission of hatred for all that is gay.

The hypocrisy of the NBA has been exposed and those opposed to gay marriage are called what they are, Hardaways (sorry Penny, Lil' Penny). Players and coaches alike have been chastised by the league for the blurting an array of comments from bad jokes (Phil Jackson's attempt at stand-up) to slurs (numerous players have made anti-gay comments).

If the NBA is going to chastise its players and coaches for making comments, the league may want to consider something stiffer for the owners of the Seattle Supersonics who spent over a million dollars to fund an anti-gay marriage group. How can you be against gay marriage and not be against gay people as a whole.

At least one other gay sports figure has come out since Mr. Amaechi's disclosure. Kyle Hawkins, club lax coach, was dismissed after coming out on a web site. After reading several articles on the subject, it's clear that Hawkins was a bit of a disciplinarian especially when you consider that lax was a club sport at the University of Missouri with each player paying about $2,000 each year to play on the team. The questions around his termination echo the underlying problem when discussing homosexuality in sports. If there wasn't such rampant homophobia and hatred of gays in sports we wouldn't even have to ask why Hawkins was fired. Instead, we are left to wonder whether his players were unhappy with their record or their coach's sexuality.

Let's be honest with ourselves, why don't some folks want gay people to get married? I know, the bible, they choose to be gay, marriage is a religious institution...blah, blah, blah, bullshit. Since when is marriage a religious institution. Can't you get married at a courthouse, didn't Captain Stubing preside over some nuptials. I'm pretty sure marriage is a legal institution but not necessarily a religious one. Maybe some folks who are against gay marriage also disapprove of atheist marriage.
It is a very black and white issue for me. Either you think that gay Americans are entitled to the same rights and benefits as the rest of us, or you hate gay people (privately or Hardaway style). If you don't care, so be it. You recognize what most of us recognize, allowing homosexuals to marry, divorce and receive marriage benefits will not change anything about your life.
Except that it might affirm that being gay is a valid acceptable way to be. Something I believe most of us already know.
One more note on the subject of homosexuality in sports: I want to like Tony Dungy but am beginning to despise everyone who lends credence to their own hatred of homosexuals by couching it in terms of their religious beliefs. It's akin to the, "I was just following orders,"defense which doesn't fly with anyone anymore, does it?

Tancredo wasn't at the Super Bowl

2007-02-14T12:02:00.000-05:00

I previously wrote an entry about my dislike for Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo.

Dave Barry, whose Herald Hunt is alot of fun, wrote a funny article bashing Tancredo. It's slightly better than mine. Here's the link:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/16563709.htm

Standing online with the E-list...

2007-01-20T21:45:00.000-05:00

As I previously wrote, I love Southwest Airlines, (see first post ever). I still dutifully stand in line every Monday morning and Thursday hoping for an aisle seat near the front of the plane. This past Thursday night while waiting to board my trip home I was starstruck. Two "famous" people got off the Southwest plane in Ft. Lauderdale. Go ahead and guess who I saw. Fine, I'll tell you. Rachel and Veronica from MTV's Real World/ Road Rules/ Gauntlet/ Duel/ Octagon of Doom/ Bitchfest/ Slapfight. I thought I recognized Rachel and then when I saw her with Veronica (pic) my "celebrity" sighting was confirmed. Rachel is shorter than I expected. Veronica is as short as she looks on television.

I didn't say anything or ask for any autographs recalling how my wife had tossed the autograph of The Amazing Race 2's Danny I had worked so hard to procure. Instead, I sat back and reflected on the appeal of Southwest Airlines and my own political leanings. SWA has no first class, there is no business class. The earlier you make your reservation, the cheaper your ticket is. The earlier you check-in (during the 24 hour period before your flight) , the greater the likelihood of obtaining the seat of your choice (possibly between Rachel and Veronica, we all remember the shower scene with Abe). Southwest is the people's plane. They keep it nice because you cannot fly if you smell or are too drunk, they also make you buy an extra seat if you're so fat that you spill into the seat next to you. I know this because I've seen all of these scenarios on Airline.

I guess I'm just happy to see that people like Veronica and Rachel are not too good to fly on Southwest. None of us are. I was also pleased to learn that Rachel and Veronica are traveling the lecture circuit. When I saw them, they were returning from St. Louis where they had just delivered a speech about body image. I'm not sure why they're qualified but apparently there is some pressure from MTV for the people on these shows to be skinny.

In all, this is just another tribute to SWA and their recruitment of E-list celebrities to make me feel like I'm flying a full-cost carrier. Kudos SWA. I now have only one complaint. Please make a ruling on the following certified query:

"When sitting in a row of seats near the 'A' line starting funnel are you
considered to be 'on line,' or, must one be standing 'on line.'
Furthermore, may someone use baggage to hold a place anywhere 'on line.'

On several occasions I have seen grown suited men approach fisticuffs at 7:00 AM Monday morning when a gentleman thinks he is approaching the end of the line, only to have a seated aggressor remark that the line includes his row of seats. I have never seen an SWA employee intervene in this type of struggle. Occasionally I have seen them say that someone could not leave their bag in line but I think it had more to do with the seated person's proximity to their carry-on than any kind of line etiquette. And I suppose that's what it comes down to really, we need a standard etiquette for the SWA boarding line. Here is my one and only suggestion and the simplistic reasoning behind it.

From this day forward, no person shall be deemed "in line," whether it be
A, B, or the dreaded middle seat C, without standing in their place "in
line."

Simple and to the point. If you want to be first and stand there for forty minutes, go ahead. If you would rather sit and relax, so be it. Feel confident that your "A" pass guarantees you an aisle or window. I base this rule on the truism that in no other situation can a healthy adult (preboarders have their own rules) sit somewhere near a line and retain the benefits of standing in said line, e.g., the grocery store or the post office or Disneyworld or The Wiener's Circle. I love The Wiener's Circle (don't order anything with cheese). All I ask is that we get an edict from on high. Someone at SWA needs to step up before a commuter gets hurt in the lawlessness of gate 32. Can a friend hold your place "in line?" When is it appropriate to throw a punch? If you see the same people every Monday, should you say something like, "Don't I see you every Monday?" We could all use another friend. Which reminds me, if you actually did harbor dreams of being between Veronica and Rachel, they are looking for a new friend.

Sorry it took so long to post.

Review of Volver with Interpolation

2007-01-17T19:34:00.000-05:00

My wife and I saw "Volver" a couple of weeks ago. The Spaniards we saw it with said the subtitles did not afford us some of the foreshadowing that they picked up. We liked it anyway, even without the foreshadowing. It had its inconsistencies but it was enjoyable and I am not the kind of person that analyzes things in a fine tooth comb sort of way. I never assume standoffish rude people are really just shy, I just think they are rude. I like broad strokes. For my wife, the movie contained her two least favorite plot elements, (Caution : Spoiler) incest and adultery. This has really limited our choices in books and movies that we can enjoy together. For one, I'm a big John Irving fan, and it's just a fact that even the romantic comedies she enjoys so much often have less than faithful characters. She generally makes an exception for movies with Diane Keaton. I've digressed.

Volver is the story of three generations of Spanish women trying to cope with poverty, and the poor choices they made for men in their lives. The important male characters are dead for most of the movie and the only other male parts are peripheral. It's a movie totally driven by five female characters and the acting is really very good. Penelope Cruz is really the most beautiful actress in the world. I think that's a good sign that my tastes have matured. I used to think Eliza Dushku was the hottest, but I'm in my thirties now so it seems less appropriate to like someone associated with "Bring it On." Again, I digressed.

The bottom line is that this is a very good movie about women dealing with horrible personal histories, and Penelope Cruz is really very beautiful. The biggest problem might be that Penelope Cruz is too attractive to look like the poor character she portrayed. In the end everyone is happy but scarred for life by the nasty things men have done to them.

Interpolation regarding Penelope Cruz's Backside

Apparently it wasn't big enough. At least her director thought it wasn't big enough to play an ass of a woman who had experienced childbirth.

Almodovar told reporters at the Toronto Film Festival that the booty was integral to Cruz's role. "The arse is very important," he said. "I wanted a fake bottom like Dustin Hoffman had in Tootsie ... Having a generous ass made her look close to the ground. These are important decisions to make because once you have the physical part, you can work on the spiritual part."

Cruz apparently became attached to her new backside and felt strange giving it up.

End interpolation.

In summary, we liked the movie. I would probably not see it again. Penelope Cruz is very attractive and there are better reviews of this movie everywhere which you can read with a simple Google search. I would only ask one question of moviegoers: Is the movie really that good, or are we so excited about a movie that focuses on women and their communication that we give extra credit to the movie for being novel and important. My own opinion is that there is probably some extra credit given, but it's also deserved.

A Note on the Competitive Nature of Law School

2007-01-08T14:34:00.000-05:00

I am decidedly not competitive when it comes to academic enterprises. I have never derived any satisfaction from a grade. It isn't that I believe grades are arbitrary, they rarely are arbitrary. I just don't get off on it. I especially don't get off on knowing I got a better grade than someone else.
Some people do.

I chose a law school where the bulk of the population had been working for a couple of years. I figured that anyone who placed a great deal of value in academic achievement would have that instinct destroyed by two years (or more) in the work force. There was still a small contingent of "gunners." Gunners have their hand raised to answer rhetorical questions. They research the cases in the textbook to become familiar with each case's procedural history. They impress themselves and nobody else.

A friend from law school is about to start teaching a class at our alma mater and he relayed a tidbit to me. On December 25 he received an e-mail from a student who was registered to be in his seminar during the spring semester. The student wanted to know if there was any reading he could do in advance of the seminar. My friend, the teacher, hated gunners passionately during our legal education and the unknowing questioner had tainted himself irreparably. My friend, the teacher, undoubtedly thought, "What kind of competitive prick is e-mailing me on Christmas to get some worthless perceived edge over another student?"

I think, "How sad that this undoubtedly awkward social outcast has nothing better to do during winter break than to try and get some worthless perceived edge over another student."

I imagine that this is the student who asks other students what grades they got, which journal has accepted them, what their LSAT score was, and which firms have called them back. This is the student who opens his grades in front of the other students and gloats, failing to realize that those other students don't care what he/she got in Contracts and that their excitement and subsequent call to their parents reveals a level of immaturity that attracts the scorn of everyone else, including my friend, the teacher.

There is no negative ramification for being the gunner. They will be as successful for those first few years after graduation as anyone else. But they are secretly hated. In study group, the gunner's name is mentioned and resounding boos drown out the name until it is never spoken again.

Go Gators!!!

2007-01-07T18:41:00.000-05:00

As a Florida Gator, husband of a Florida Gator and father of a future Florida Gator, I hope we give the rest of America and Ohio State fans everywhere a nice serving of humble pie and a shitburger. Lets all root for the Gators tonight ( by " all, " I mean the two other people who read this blog ).

UPDATE: Florida kicked the crap out of OSU and is now the first college team to hold the National Basketball and Football Championships simultaneously.

My throat is a little horsey...

2006-12-20T22:14:00.000-05:00

A man walks up to a horse and says,

" Why the long face?"

A few years ago my wife and I went to Mackinac Island, (pronounced Makinaw Eye-lund), for a wedding of some good friends. It was a great long weekend in the middle of the summer. Our friends were to be wed at the Grand Hotel , a resort on the island with a famous long porch where they sell very pricey lemonade served by black people wearing white gloves. A Christopher Reeves/Jane Seymour movie , Somewhere In Time, was filmed there and every year, fans of the movie attend a convention on the island. My wife has just reminded me that Kathy Griffin refers to Jane Seymour as, "the most romantic woman in the world." As far as I know, S.I.T. is an Oscar nominated time-travel romance involving self-hypnosis. I have digressed.

The island is no easy place to get to, it involves flying to Detroit, then a small flight (or long drive) to Pelliston, a shuttle to Mackinac City where the final ferry leg escorts you across the channel to Mackinac Island: home of fudge, horses, and expensive lodging. It really is pleasant, there are no motor vehicles allowed on the island so the modes of transportation are limited to horse, horse and buggy, bicycles and walking. We sampled each mode and enjoyed the fantastic security of knowing you can cross the street without worrying about angry drivers, even if you do have to worry about horse droppings. Once accustomed to the smell of horse manure, Mackinac is a very relaxing place to spend a weekend. There is also no need to lock your rental bike because the ferry operators will not allow you to leave with a bike that has been marked by the rental companies. It is, at its best, an old-timey family paradise.

There were some unpleasant hiccoughs over the weekend. First, I was unaware of our room's unair-conditioned nature which prompted the first installment of my nighttime "no cuddling/touching rule." (The second installment came at the Hotel Continental in Barcelona, now and forever referred to as the Hotel Crapinental. The web site of the Crapinental says the rooms have A/C, that is a post-2003 development).

No A/C is an inexcusable blunder, but not embarrassing. The next error was embarrassing. I made a terrible (if you ask my wife) assumption regarding proper attire for the wedding. I must now mention that the groom had a famous last name. I assumed that his lineage would require nothing less than a black tie or at the least black tie optional affair. I then looked at the invitation and was reminded that it was a Sunday afternoon affair with most men in sport coats and women in light summer dresses. My wife wore a sequined gown alongside my cummerbund. The heat became an unexpected problem as the beautiful ancient chapel where the long catholic service was held was also unair-conditioned. I saw one friend mouth to his spouse, "Why is he wearing a tux?" I now know that those most established families feel no need to dress up and show people how wealthy they are, the understatement of it all is more revealing. The millionaire next door looks only slightly different from the millionaire at the end of the 1000 yard winding driveway.

In the end, the jacket and cummerbund came off so only my wife felt overdressed. She had a great time anyway. We both did.

One other comment about Mackinac: our flight from Pelliston to Detroit left too early for us to take the ferry off the island. We had to arrange for a small plane to meet us at the airport (an outhouse in the middle of a field) which then took us to Pelliston. It was the sort of plane where you have to climb on the wing to get in and we really enjoyed that little flight. Inexplicably, my wife is now, several years later, very frightened to be in small aircraft, or large aircraft. The horse and buggy, after several water and carrot breaks, delivered us to the airport/locked outhouse where the small plane landed a few minutes later. The cheery pilot loaded us and one other couple into the plane and we were on our way home to Miami. Miami, where you would never leave your bike on the street but where everyone is spared the scent of horse manure.

Why I don't like you, Representative Tom Tancredo, R-Colorado

2006-12-18T19:47:00.000-05:00

Nobody is jealous of you. You think other people don't like you because you're cute or well-respected and they are just jealous. You are dead wrong, Mr. Chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. You are not handsome. In fact, in some pictures your right eye is noticeably higher than your left. Also, you think we should shoot people committing drug crimes. You are a right wing lunatic dressed in the ill fitting sport coat of a former educator.

Now you have done it. I was willing to forgive the fact that you are a xenophobic radical, but now you have crossed the line. You called Miami a third-world country. Hell hath no fury like angry Cubans who are upset for the wrong reasons. Must I remind you of a little boy, now 12 year old man, named Elian. Cubans will rally to defeat you. They will all move to Colorado's 6th District, that big rectangle southwest of Denver, and for the first time in their lives, they will vote Democrat. All because they think you insulted them. Way to go Tom,dumbass.

If you meant to imply that the middle class is disappearing in Miami and we are left with only the richest and poorest, well, I could sympathize with that. But that's not what you meant. You're a Republican, you don't care about a vanishing middle class. You were just being a prick, insinuating that somehow, because Miami is an international city, the business hub of Central and South America, where Spanish and Creole mix with English, where immigrant populations form vibrant communities the same way they have done throughout our history; somehow because of all that, Miami is a Third World city. You didn't even know there was such a moniker as "Fourth World. "

The fact that you implied that Miami is like a place without basic utilities like running water, a lawless place without economic development, is doubly troublesome. It's not just the people of Miami you insulted, you also revealed yourself to be an idiot, oblivious to horrible conditions around the world where blinding poverty is so pervasive, outdated idiots like yourself won't even include those unfortunate populations as part of our "First" world, you relegate them to the "Third." Maybe that's why you're so excited about the fence to keep them out.

You might also want to remember that there are people other than Christians living here in South Florida when you publish your childish, "I told you so." In summary, you are a prick. Another blog by one of your own constituents puts you in perspective for us all. You can always move when the Cubans start showing up in Littleton.

Worst Show Ever

2006-12-12T22:46:00.000-05:00

"My Boys" is a new show on TBS and it is very, very bad. It follows the daily life of a young woman who is the Chicago Cubs beat writer for a major Chicago newspaper. All her friends are men and it ruins her love life. The problems with the show are too numerous to list here so I'll only mention two. First, it is not believable that this twenty something attractive woman has this job reserved for alcoholic men without families because they spend 100 days a year traveling and another 100 days a year at the ballpark. Assuming I can suspend disbelief long enough to believe this person has the job she has, there is a second great flaw which makes the show, currently, one of the three worst on television.

The flaw and most annoying aspect are constant voice overs comparing the lead character's situation to a common baseball truism. For example, the guy she likes who gets along well with her but doesn't get along with her friends is a "cancer in the clubhouse." Need I say more. If this show lasts one more episode I will be in absolute shock. It won't be the first time.

Good Morning Miami was on the air for 2 seasons (although it was canceled midway through the second). In all, 31 episodes were aired and each time my wife and were stricken with disbelief. The trend continues as The War At Home punishes anyone who tunes into Fox after The Family Guy. What happened to Michael Rapaport? He went from edgy movie star, to sporadically funny Friends co-star, to Boston Public, to whiny homophobic idiotic caricature of an American father. I hope he's getting a big payday because his career may be over. How do these shows get on the air and stay on the air when shows I enjoy never last, e.g., Arrested Development.

I am patiently waiting for the next season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and this week's episode of The Office.

The Difference in Publix

2006-12-08T13:25:00.001-05:00

There are a few noticeable differences between the Publix in South Beach and the one we frequent near our new home in Central Florida. Some things are the same. The products, for the most part, are the same. The rotisserie chickens taste the same and the deli is stocked with the same cured meats. The uniforms are also the same, though the people in them are obviously different; speaking English being the most obvious difference in the employees. I cannot find halvah at our new central Florida Publix.

The one thing our new Publix has that the old one did not is a turnstile of books devoted to Christianity where you pull your number at the delicatessen. That red device where you pull the green tab with your number on it is perched atop a cornucopia of Christian books for every Christian problem: Forgiving your husband after he's cheated, Preaching to those who aren't interested, Introducing Christ into every aspect of your baby's life, and How to prove God exists. There are also the obligatory Christian children's books, e.g., Jesus and Me.

I honestly don't have a problem with selling the books, that's not my issue. If there is a market for it, then by all means, stock the shelves. I just find the placement funny. The books are at the deli line like they are some sort of impulse purchase. While you wait for the deli worker to slice your half pound of Boar's Head sun-dried tomato and rosemary ham, (one of my faves), maybe you'll grab a copy of, "Get Real: Making Core Christian Beliefs Relevant to Teenagers." Putting these books on the deli line (albeit a markedly slower deli line than the South Beach Publix) makes them the equivalent of the Weekly World News, Snickers, and Altoids you might grab on your way through the checkout line. As I said before, I don't have a problem with that, if they sell, they sell, but shouldn't someone else have a problem. What is the impetus behind it anyway. I know Publix is a Christian company, but are they evangelizing on the deli line. If they are, why not put the books in South Beach also, isn't it hypocritical to only save people outside Miami. Maybe they decided those high heeled women and tight shirted men in South Beach aren't worth saving. I know I'm overreacting, I dislike all the reminders that we live in a Christian country.

Every year at this time I'm shocked at the right wing talk radio and Fox "News" efforts to convince us that there is a war on Christmas. The idea that our overwhelming majority, Christians, are somehow being persecuted is laughable but I know there is someone in Kansas who believes it as strongly as they believe evolution is liberal propaganda and part of the gay agenda to turn everyone into a drug crazed lunatic. I find all this "War on Christmas" crap particularly offensive considering how many troops are in harm's way right now. Someone should tell Bush to redeploy our troops to the war on Christmas. Don't we already have a base on the North Pole.

In My House...Baby Mexican Hat Dance

2006-12-05T14:36:00.000-05:00

In my house, the ten month old rules the roost. Where I used to enjoy the piece of mind of knowing I'm better at Wheel of Fortune than every Wheel of Fortune contestant ever (going all the way back to the days of the $150.00 ceramic dalmatian), the living room is now the baby's domain, and the baby likes to listen to Justin Roberts in the evening while he eats his dinner. My big TV, so big that Pat Sajak's face-lift scars show up, becomes wasted, as I am banished to another room or forced into indentured service to the baby. Washing his bottles, running his bath, sterilizing his pacifiers and powerless to complain (which you can tell is my nature) because the baby doesn't care and my wife has been doing it twice as much, three times as often, and seems absolutely fine with the fact that in the space of a millisecond we ceded power to someone that constantly tries to stick his hands in his own poo during a diaper change.

We are both waiting for the day when we can look back and say, "Wasn't that cute", or "That was so funny." About a month ago our neighborhood lost power. As we laid down in the darkened living room, the coolest room without A/C, the baby seemed content in his exersaucer (if you have no idea what an exersaucer is) trying to put each of its small toys in his toothless mouth. We both stepped into the kitchen for a few minutes, we had grilled the soon to be spoiled chicken breasts and when we caught view of the exersaucer something was different. The baby was laughing, not the usual innocent laugh but a sadistic, "I am dancing in my own shit," chuckle, that turned the mood from a resigned melancholy because of the power outage to a hyperalert analytical fever trying to figure out how to clean both the baby and the exersaucer without covering the entire house in diarrhea as the baby flailed his crap covered feet. As we stood there, synapses firing, the baby smiled his widest toothless smile and skated and sloshed through the mess, threatening to send it careening over the side of the saucer and into the tiny cracks between the planks of our wood floor.

Our strategy was simple and effective, the baby was only covered in poo from the waste down, we lifted him halfway so he was standing on the harness. We wiped him down and I ran with him extended at arm's length into the shower where we both were rinsed of all fecal material. We then turned our attention to the sullied baby containment device. We detached the harness, brilliantly constructed of machine washable poly-blend, and rinsed it in our laundry room/garage utility sink, before placing it all alone in a superhot cycle through the washing machine. Any house with a baby should have such a sink. A sink appropriate to functions that you would not want to accomplish in the same sink where you prepare food or brush teeth. The exersaucer was then lifted, carefully, to that same glorious sink where it was part by part scrubbed and washed with Clorox and an old toothbrush. My wife and I jokingly threw jabs at each other about who had changed the last diaper but no diaper is made to handle the half gallon of diarrhea that every 8 month old produces at least once.

We now have two exersaucers. The baby is outgrowing them and they'll probably become hand-me-downs soon. I honestly cannot remember which one was covered in shit. Somebody's going to have a previously soiled exersaucer.

Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel, I made you...

2006-11-30T13:48:00.000-05:00

Chanukah was really no great shakes in my house. The Christmas parallel for gift giving in most Jewish homes was more akin to April 1st at my house. An eight day long prank of destroyed expectations. This will no doubt sound whiny and childish and I do recognize that I lived the good life compared to many, but one Chanukah in particular has left a scar as deep as my father's belly button, (he was very fat, 62 in. waist, R.I.P.).

My father had reappeared in my life at the time, 1983, and I was nine years old. The Atari 2600 had been on the market for a while and I wanted one. It was promised to me for Chanukah. My excitement could not be contained, it would be the first year I did not receive eight plastic toy cars or eight aluminum toy cars or some combination of plastic and aluminum toy cars. My mother was a teacher and some years I got a regift of a present some student had given my mother. I was the only little boy in Miami wearing Charlie perfume.

As Chanukah approached I perfected my skills. My neighbor in the apartment complex, Matthew, already had the Atari and we played "Combat" until our small hands were blistered. My recollection is that I kicked his ass repeatedly. I was shocked to see my dad pick me up at the JCC one afternoon. I went there after school everyday until my mother finished work and was not accustomed to my Dad pulling up in our rust colored Chevy Citation. I was actually nervous to get into the car with him because my parents had been separated on and off for as long as I could remember. I got in and he told me that my Chanukah present was at home. I was bursting. The word Atari must have been spoken a dozen times on the way home, but there would be no Pac-Man that night. I came home to the Odyssey.

The Odyssey was no fun. Really no fun. It was less video game, more typewriter. The games were versions of Hangman, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong called Cryptogram, PickAxe Pete, and KC Munchkin, respectively. Picture the fun, you leave the room while I type a word into the Odyssey, you return and I watch as body parts form on the noose as you guess, x then w then, oh you got it, "ODYSSEY SUCKS ASS." The S's gave it away.

I should have been petulant but I wasn't. My obese absent father had likely done his best. Without the Odyssey I never would have experienced the hours of entertainment my mother provided as we drove from toy store to toy store seeking out a purveyor that had heard of the Odyssey and actually sold it's small plastic cartridges.

It could have been colecovision, or intellivision but I had the Odyssey and it was sufficient until the keyboard stopped working.

Southwest, ButterBurger

2006-11-29T23:33:00.000-05:00

I fly Southwest at least twice a week because I commute to work. I love Southwest. I did not intend for this first post to be an advertisement, but I love Southwest. Without Southwest, my wife and I could not afford for me to commute and have the nice job I have. I love their easy website and cheap fares and the fact that if I do need to call them, a person answers the phone. I do not like how people sitting in the aisle use their bag to hold their place in the "A" line. I do not like singing flight attendants. I do like printing my own "A" boarding pass. I enjoy free drink coupons.

I didn't think I was capable of affection for a brand (other than food/restaurant brands) but I don't know what I'd do without Southwest.

Food/Restaurant Brands I love:

Sabra Classic Style Hummus
MammaMary's Pizza Crusts
Joya Chocolate Covered Halvah
Planters Nut-ritious Nut Mix
Dannon Light n' Fit Carb & Sugar Control Strawberry Yogurt
Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets

Philly's Best's Philly Cheese Steak (Chicago, on Belmont near the red line)
Pita Hut's Shawarma Pita (Miami Beach, on 41st Street)
Tim Horton's Maple Glazed Donuts (Locations across Canada)
Culver's ButterBurger (Locations across the Midwest, I personally can only vouch for Wisconsin and Minnesota Culver's)