Dept. of Truly Brilliant Drunken Feats

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On two separate occasions in the 1950s, New Yorker Thomas Fitzpatrick departed from a bar whose hospitality he was enjoying, drove out to New Jersey, “obtained” a small plane, flew it back to Manhattan, and landed it in front of the bar in question.

The first time, it was to win a bet. The second time, two years later, was because someone didn’t believe he’d done it the first time.

This man is a truly an American hero.

Save the Sounds!

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Tragically, these sounds may go extinct.

Also, if you turn on too many of them, your officemates may have strong feelings about your own survival. Exercise caution.

Listen up, cause you can’t say nothin’ / you shut me down with the push of your button

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Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with complete dismay that I point out that SABOTAGE is now twenty years old.

Never has a video been so perfect, but where is the cast now?

  • Vic Colfari made his debut as Bobby, the Rookie. After a series of failed pilots, Colfari became a household figure in Canada as the spokesman for Viva Queso, a chain of tex-mex restaurants based in Calgary.

  • Fred Kelly’s only role is his turn as Bunny, and we’re all richer for it. Kelly, an undrafted free agent, used his “Sabotage” fame to gain a tryout with the Kansas City Chiefs, where he played until 1999. Today, Kelly is semi-retired, and coaches high school football in his small Nebraska hometown.

  • Nathan Wind’s star turn as Cochese sent him into the acting stratosphere with almost unprecedented speed. A year before “Sabotage,” Wind was waiting tables in a Tulsa Applebee’s; a year after, he was the toast of the town at Cannes based on his cast-against-type appearance in Quentin Tarantino’s 1995 remake of “Duck Soup.” Wind splits his time between Los Angeles, his Wyoming ranch (tellingly named “Sabotage Acres,” we’re told), and a villa near Lake Como.

  • Sir Stewart Wallace, he of mustache, safari jacket, and briefcase, remains an enigma. Few realize that he wore his own clothes for the shoot, but knowing what we know now about his occasional intelligence work, it makes sense. Wallace gave no interviews in the scrum of press surrounding “Sabotage,” and quickly became almost impossible to pin down. There are stories of him surfacing at random fan events, conventions or festivals, in disguise so as not to disrupt them, but none have been confirmed, and virtually nothing is known of his personal life.

    His last public appearance was two years ago, in the spring, at the opening of a Zen retreat near Palmetto, Florida. He has not been seen since, and his representation claims ignorance.

    Regardless of his whereabouts, we wish Wallace the best. All of us miss him very, very much.

Brilliant Legal Letters, Past and Present

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Yesterday, this delightful example of the form crossed my desk; I think my favorite quote is “So like your client, the facts of the claim won’t quite fly,” but you should read the whole thing despite the gross hosting site and admittedly-douchey defendant. Being an asshole doesn’t mean you’re always wrong (thank god).

Sure, it’s not up there with the Cleveland Browns letter, but it’s a solid effort.

When I showed this to Senior Heathen legal correspondent Triple-F, he was greatly amused, but complained that HE never gets to write such letters. How soon he forgets! Just over a decade ago (!), he had occasion to ghost a delightful bit of legal correspondence after the band for his first wedding (summer, 2002) didn’t show, and yours truly called them out on the web site for the affair. The band took exception to this bit of truth (and the fact that Googling their name led directly to it; go me!), and sent me the following bit of ill-advised (and grammatically challenged) saber rattling when they discovered the site a year and a half later (winter, 2004):

Hello,

My name is D___ and I am the contact person for [band name].

The reason we did not show up for the wedding you are referring to is because A___, of _____ Entertainment, did not inform [band] of the engagement.

We did not receive a contract or no from of agreement for the engagement prior to the date.

Further more, what you are doing, and I am aware of others who have done the same, is slander and I am asking you to either print the truth or retract all of your statement concerning this event from your website.

Our attorneys are informed of your actions, along with others, and we are in the process of dealing with these issues on a one-by-one basis.

This is notice to you from [band name].

And now, Triple-F’s brilliant reply:

D____

I’m sorry you’re unhappy with the events documented on the wedding site. Unfortunately, since the site documents the events of July 13, 2002, accurately, we will not be making the changes you have requested.

You seem to be laboring under a number of misconceptions regarding this situation. I’ve spoken with the [wedding site] “legal department” — you may recall that both the groom and the father of the bride are attorneys — and they’ve provided me with a few points you may wish to consider.

First, even if there were a cause of action here — which there is not — it would be libel, not slander.

Second, even if you had a case for libel — which you do not — the statue of limitations for libel as set in the Mississippi Code is one (1) year from the date of publication. The post-wedding changes to the site went up the week after the wedding, i.e. during the summer of 2002. July 2002 was 18 months ago.

Third, even if it were libel and the clock hadn’t run out, truth is an absolute defense to libel action. Absolutely nothing said on the site regarding [booking agent] or [band] is untrue. I was there, as were several hundred other people (many of them also members of the Mississippi Bar). There is therefore no shortage of witnesses willing to testify under oath to the fact that [band] did not show up.

Fourth — perhaps best of all — the contract for the performance at this wedding at the Country Club of Jackson on July 13, 2002, was signed by one D______ [i.e., the author of the above complaint mail]. The groom and father-of-the-bride still have said contract, which sort of makes it hard for you to maintain that you knew nothing of the obligation.

Fifth, as a direct result of that contract, you and [booker] have already been sued in this matter, and the liquidated damages, as provided in the contract written by the band’s management for failure to perform, have been paid (in September, 2002, if my records are accurate). The father of the bride handled this suit, and you corresponded with him during that time frame.

Sixth, if you wish to pursue this matter any further, we will not only request sanctions under Rule 11 of the Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure but will also request sanctions under Mississippi Code Annotated sec. 11-55-1 et seq. (Litigation Accountability Act), damages for malicious prosecution, abuse of process and defamation.

If any of this is unclear, I’ll be happy to put you in touch with [Triple F] (the groom and, as I mentioned above, an attorney in Jackson). He will reiterate all the points contained herein, I’m sure, since I consulted with him before writing this reply. In the future, we suggest that you remember that the best way to avoid bad publicity is to meet your contractual obligations in the first place.

Fortunately, Triple-F had a much better replacement wedding last year. Everyone showed up. It was awesome. ;)

“In the darkness of the room / your mother calls you by your true name…”

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Or, a few thoughts on how we spent Tuesday night:

  • A month or so ago, when we were at the Woodlands for Arcade Fire, we were among the oldest people present not chaperoning children. This was clearly NOT the case with Bruce.

  • Bruce Springsteen is sixty fucking four years old, and has lost ZERO steps. He remains a trim — if tiny — densely packed distillation of live performer charisma. He played for a curfew-defying 3+ hours; it’s said online that this tour has supporting acts in some venues, but the bullshit rules at the Woodlands left no room for one. He started before 8, and didn’t finish until after 11. You damn sure get your money’s worth, that’s for certain.

  • It is apparently a thing for the crowd to play a little “stump the band” game with Bruce via signage. Several times I saw him point and grab a sign, thrilling a pit member, before launching into a song almost certainly already on the playlist — but this game got truly fun a few times when the request tickled him enough to take a flyer on some deep cut. The first instance was “One Step Up,” from 1988’s Tunnel of Love; the sign noted that, apparently, he hasn’t played it with the full E Street Band since that year, so of course CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

    The later, better example was when he pulled two young Hispanic brothers up onstage, complete with their sign to the effect of “I busted my brother out of school to sing NO SURRENDER with the Boss!” Bruce obliged, and shared the mic with them for the duration of the song. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen at a concert. (Confidentially to Triple-F, it’s a level of “cool older brother at a concert” mojo that my late-1990s stunts cannot begin to match; sorry, dude).

  • One reason we ponied up the stupid amount of money required for decent seats at a Springsteen show this time around was the addition of Tom Morello on guitar. Little Steven’s busy in Norway, as I mentioned back in March, and the swap really adds some much-needed modernity to Bruce’s live sound. Morello is a goddamn wizard, and is a real pleasure to watch play — and what he gives to “The Ghost of Tom Joad” cannot be overestimated. Track of the night, IMO.

  • Returning to Joad, it was both predictable and disappointing that much of the crowd sat for this barnburner of a track; it’s not one they know (the live version is a performance of the re-recorded track from High Hopes, not of the original version from 1995 album of the same name). Of course, a mob of rich baby boomers in the Woodlands probably wouldn’t take too kindly to the overtly leftist ideas in the song even if they were following the lyrics (notwithstanding the “ARM THE HOMELESS” slogan on Morello’s guitar, there were no verbal politics from the stage outside of Bruce’s lyrics). They did, at least, come to their feet for Morello’s solo.

  • I don’t think she had a sign, but Bruce DID fish a woman out of the pit for “Dancing in the Dark.” The woman, clearly middle aged, is probably only a little bit older than that chick from the iconic video is now.

  • By the way, watch that video. Bruce’s youth — it was 1984, a full thirty years ago — will just SLAY you.

  • If you think three decades is a long time, this’ll kill you: he noted that the first time they played Houston was FORTY years ago, in 1974.

  • You know “Because the Night” because of Patti Smith, probably, but it was actually co-written by Bruce. Knowing that, as you now do, you must be faced with the same question I have: Why in the FUCK did milquetoast meek Natalie Merchant think she could cover it?

  • Of course Bruce brings on Joe Ely. Of course he does. I just wish they’d sung something other than covers of songs designed for the geriatric set; it’s not like Ely’s own songbook isn’t full of more interesting options than “Lucille” and “Great Balls of Fire.”

  • More disappointing was how much time Bruce gave to “Shout” towards the end, when I was getting antsy for “Thunder Road.” Really? Obviously, Bruce is not my monkey, but what I said about the covers with Ely goes double for this nursing home track that was tired when Born to Run was released. (Obviously, though, the overwhelmingly older crowd loved it, so I guess he knows his audience.)

  • He did, thankfully, finish out the night with a spare, acoustic, solo take on “Thunder Road,” which was a fine way to go out, but I can’t help but wish for a higher-energy take.

Now: let’s hope we can go at least a year without driving back out to the Synthetic Suburbs.

Life in the Future

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I got one of those “reminder” mails from LinkedIn today, telling me to congratulate a few folks on work anniversaries.

The first reminder in this email, though, was wrong on a scale not ordinarily seen.

  • First, I know that today is not MV’s sixth anniversary at $company, because he helped found that company in 1997.
  • Second, I know that today is not his anniversary there because he left that company over two years ago.
  • Third, I know that today is not his anniversary there because he’s been dead since September of 2012.

But good try, LinkedIn. Good try.

More on the loss of network neutrality

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Seriously, read this.

Without network neutrality, Tumblr could cut a deal with your ISP — let’s say it’s Comcast — and its blogs would load really quickly while that home server blog might take minutes to load pictures. It might not even load at all. You can see why people in the freedom-of-speech obsessed United States might not be happy with chucking network neutrality. It privileges some speech over others, based on financial resources.

And more:

This is the first step toward a world where corporate monopolies on content start affecting not just what you can see and read online — but also how you gain access to it. The signal will be out there, but your ISP just won’t deliver it to you.

An internet without network neutrality will look a lot like television does now. You’ll depend entirely on your cable company to get broadcasts, and they will only deliver their handpicked channels in their cable packages. There will probably be a little room for the web equivalent of public access television, but it will be so underfunded and slow to load that almost nobody will see it.

It used to be that when a show couldn’t make it on broadcast television, we would watch it online. That’s how amazing stuff like Dr. Horrible made it into the world. But without net neutrality, we lose that option too. If a company doesn’t have the money or legal acumen to get its content included in ISP packages, you will never see its programming. You’ll never have those shows; you’ll never have those apps; and you’ll never know what you’re missing.

Call your congresspeople. Make noise. This is a big deal.

How We Are Fucked: The End of Net Neutrality

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The milquetoast, lapdog FCC has decided against network neutrality, and we’re all going to suffer for it. Read Tim Wu’s excellent analysis for more, but do NOT overlook that the person doing a big chunk of the fucking us right now lives at 1600 Pennsylvania; Obama campaigned on neutrality, and has completely failed to deliver.

From Wu’s piece in the New Yorker:

In 2007, at a public forum at Coe College, in Iowa, Presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked about net neutrality. Specifically, “Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to reinstate net neutrality as the law of the land? And would you pledge to only appoint F.C.C. commissioners that support open Internet principles like net neutrality?”

“The answer is yes,” Obama replied. “I am a strong supporter of net neutrality.” Explaining, he said, “What you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you’re getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different Web sites…. And that I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet—which is that there is this incredible equality there.”

If reports in the Wall Street Journal are correct, Obama’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Thomas Wheeler, has proposed a new rule that is an explicit and blatant violation of this promise. In fact, it permits and encourages exactly what Obama warned against: broadband carriers acting as gatekeepers and charging Web sites a payola payment to reach customers through a “fast lane.”

Also, don’t get taken in by the language being used. As Marco points out, the whole discussion of “fast lanes” frames the issue incorrectly. They’re not going to build anything new, and haven’t for years (US customers pay more for broadband, and get lower speeds, than virtually anywhere else in the industrialized world). Your connection isn’t going to get better. This is all about carriers being able to charge providers again for traffic that’s already been paid for — and you can bet your ass it’ll also eventually include blocking or slowing traffic that competes with offerings of their own. This is why we hear so much about NetFlix in these conversations: it’s a direct competitor to Comcast and AT&T and Verizon, all of which would prefer you continue to pay through the nose for traditional cable packages and avoid these newfangled “Internet shows.”

This is what happens, too, in a political environment where any regulation is treated as creeping socialism by the know-nothing right. The noise chamber effect prevents just and proper things from taking hold.

Well, glad THAT’s settled

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Turns out, if you’re a US citizen, and you get murdered in a drone strike, the courts will not give your surviving family any relief.

So much for checks and balances.

I supposed it’s at least nominally good news that another judge has insisted that the Administration actually disclose the legal doctrine they’re using to justify this behavior, which up to now had been “classified,” which is a position best described as Orwellian.

Turns out…

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…the US isn’t much of a democracy anymore, at least not by the metrics that matter, according to a new study.

“[T]he preferences of economic elites,” conclude Princeton’s Martin Gilens and Northwestern’s Benjamin I. Page, who work with the nonprofit Scholars Strategy Network, “have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.”

So, yay?

Rancor, ignorance, and. . . power

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The House of Representatives Committee on Science is Turning Into A National Embarrassment.

Leading the charge was Texas congressman Randy Weber:

Several members, for example, appeared to be trying to mock rather than engage Holdren on climate change. “I may want to get your cellphone number, Dr. Holdren,” said Representative Randy Weber (R–TX), “because, if we go through another few cycles of global warming and cooling, I may need to ask you when I should buy my long coat on sale.”

Weber, a freshman from the Galveston area, began his interrogation by asking Holdren whether “when you guys do your research, you start with a scientific postulate or theory and work forward from that? Is that right?” Holdren gamely played along, explaining that “it depends on the type of science, but the notion of posing a hypothesis and then trying to determine whether it is right is one of the tried and true approaches in science, yes.”

But Weber’s question was really just a setup for his concluding statement. “I just don’t know how you all prove those theories going back 50 or 100,000 or even millions of years,” Weber said.

Another excellent intersection of “fire” and “awesome”

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A Reuben’s tube is an apparatus used to demonstrate standing waves in physics; it’s akin to the gas lighter in your fireplace, but with sound added. At certain frequencies, the flames will vary according to the standing wave produced in the tube.

Things get exponentially more awesome if you make a 2-D tube, and apply more interesting music. At the link, the vid is cued to the music, but it’s really worth watching the whole thing.

But was the 150 FUN?

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Exhibit A: GoPro footage from a teammate edited down to 2:38; look for me at about 1:05, as we roll into Austin in a giant group.

“We ride bikes. We drink beer.”

Dept. of Absurd Overreaction

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So a dude peed in a reservoir in Portland, and in response they’re going to drain 38 million gallons of water and refill it.

It’s an outdoor reservoir. There are obviously purification steps between it and the taps of the good people of Portlandia. How much bird shit do you think goes in it on any given day?

(Via Schneier, whom you oughta be reading every day anyway.)

How we are fucked, part one million

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Corporations are becoming increasingly aggressive about forcing anyone dealing with them in even the slightest way to agree, even accidentally, to binding arbitration in the event of a dispute instead of the court system. This is because arbitration almost always finds in favor of corporations, naturally.

Apparently, you can now get trapped in such a clause by simply “liking” something on Facebook.