Author: bobg

Jim Taylor

John Edwards has been getting vocal lately about Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. empire (which includes Fox News), urging Congressional Democrats to block its acquisition of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, and chiding the other Democratic presidential hopefuls for accepting News Corp. donations.

Today the New York Post (a Murdoch newspaper) wrote,

John Edwards, who yesterday demanded Democratic candidates return any campaign donations from Rupert Murdoch and News Corp., himself earned at least $800,000 for a book published by one of the media mogul’s companies.

(It’s under the headline, “Edwards in a biz hate & $witch” for extra we-report-you-decide journalistic impartiality.)

The Post would have its readers equate cash donated by News Corp. in support of a political campaign with cash earned in a retail venture.

The screed continues,

The campaign didn’t respond to a question from The Post about whether it was hypocritical for Edwards to take money from News Corp. while calling for other candidates not to.

I’ll respond: Edwards took money from the purchasers of his book, not from News Corp. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, did take News Corp. money. (Disclaimer: I endorse John Edwards for president, but I am not endorsed by him or his campaign and do not speak for them.)

Let’s say this distinction is lost on you. What would be an honorable thing for Edwards to do with the disputed cash? Give it to charity?

Edwards claimed $333,334 in royalties from last year’s release of the book, according to media accounts. The campaign said last night that those funds were part of the advance.

He says he gave that amount to charity, which would also provide tax benefits for Edwards.

The cynical Post can make even the honorable thing have the taint of hypocrisy. A ham-handed attack like this belongs in a Hollywood movie from the ’40s, not in real life. But I guess we should expect no less from News Corp. journalists, the remains of whose souls are at this very moment dribbling down the chin of a cackling and engorged Rupert Murdoch.

Don’t stop believin’

Last September I wrote:

I routinely exchange pleasantries with a checkout clerk named Lora at my local supermarket. We ask after each other’s families, she watches my kids grow up, etc. On one visit she mentions that she used to be a flight attendant — furloughed after 9/11, natch — and hopes to be one again.

Her only hopes for getting a decent flight-attendant job based in the Bay Area were with United, which wasn’t hiring, and Virgin America, which wasn’t even flying, though they’re now just days away from beginning regular operations. Having not seen her at the supermarket for many weeks, I asked after her — and learned she landed the Virgin America job. Way to go, Lora! Good luck and clear skies.

Weight insurgency in its last throes

One month ago I wrote:

I can confidently report for those considering a failed attempt to lose weight that there is nothing better for that than combining the aftermath of your mom’s death with caring for two small children and one extremely elderly dog, plus a long daily commute and a consulting gig on the side.

To that list I can now add “breaking a rib” and “putting said elderly dog to sleep.”

(Did I really say 2007 was going to be a good year? Maybe only in the sense of, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Or maybe the continued amazingness of our kids is bleeding the karma out of everything around them, which I’m willing to endure indefinitely.)

So I am again moving the goalpost: the target of 150 pounds is now scheduled for the first of July, 2008.

Putty in her hands

That didn’t take long: I finished all 759 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in barely five days.

It’s no spoiler to say that the book deals with some pretty heavy themes, as indeed the climax of a seven-part epic must. The action must rise and the emotional stakes must become almost too much to bear. The author, J.K. Rowling, does not disappoint. There is loss and sorrow and despair and other things too, both good and bad, and Rowling played me like a fiddle. All this week, my mood was good when Harry Potter was safe or happy, but miserable the majority of the time as the themes in the story had me dwelling on Alex, my mom, and various other well-loved things in my life that are ending, such as our sons’ attendance at the wonderfully offbeat preschool Little Arrows. Even finishing the audiobook of Moby-Dick, which I wasn’t particularly enjoying other than as an intellectual appreciation for its place in the annals of literature, was made more poignant by the feelings Rowling was making me have.

It is a further testament to Rowling’s mysteriously begotten powers that finally reaching the end of Harry’s story after spending most of a decade with him did not also fill me with a feeling of loss, but of fulfillment.

Now, back to my RSS feeds…

Tuile-rula-rula

After finishing the free audiobook of Huck Finn recently (which was outstanding — better, I daresay, than trying to read Mark Twain’s written renditions of all those Southern dialects myself), I started on the Librivox audiobook of Moby-Dick. It’s no less dense than the first time I attempted it, but the reader, Stewart Wills, does a yeoman’s job of predigesting for me its turgid penetralia.

Here’s the weird part: as I’ve remarked previously, both Huck Finn and Slaughterhouse-Five, which I was reading contemporaneously, mention a French place name I’d never heard before: Tuileries. Today I heard it again in Moby-Dick! (Chapter 104, to be precise.) What are the odds?

Here’s another interesting connection: both Moby-Dick and Slaughterhouse-Five are hyphenated titles, and they both have subtitles (“The Whale” and “The Children’s Crusade,” respectively).

Well, it’s a little interesting.

Over the wall

Just in time to concentrate my pop culture obsession on the new Harry Potter book, which arrives from Amazon tomorrow — er, later today — a few minutes ago I finished watching season one of Prison Break on DVD. It was outstanding. It’s the story of Michael Scofield, a respectable white-collar professional who gets himself thrown into the same prison where his ne’er-do-well brother is on death row. Scofield has come prepared with an intricate plan to help them both escape and save his brother’s life.

A few interesting things about this show:

  • Scofield’s prisoner number, 94941, was my ZIP code for 10 years.
  • Scofield holds up a bank in order to get arrested and imprisoned. Although this scene is set in Chicago, the exterior shot of the bank he robs is of the distinctive-looking Ridgewood Savings Bank in Forest Hills, New York, where I had a passbook account in elementary school.
  • This was the final viewing recommendation made to me by my mom after a lifetime full of them. When she first started watching it, beginning with the pilot episode, it was mainly for the hunky Wentworth Miller, who plays Scofield. I thought the premise, which she described to me, was too far-fetched, but as the season unfolded she continued to rave about it and finally piqued my interest. She was right, and as I neared the climax of season one, the discs couldn’t come from Netflix fast enough.

Signing off

Amazon will be delivering my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Saturday. But leaked copies are already floating around the Internet, and according to today’s headlines, spoilers are proliferating online. Having recently run up against another big spoiler despite my best efforts to avoid it, I am going to make an even better effort this time: I’m going to stay off the Web until I’ve read book 7.

I don’t expect abstaining from the Web to be as easy as abstaining from cable TV has been, so when that book comes on Saturday I’m going to read my little heart out.

And when I’ve finished the book and I’m back online you may be sure I won’t spoil it for anyone else.

Now to aim my wand at my web browser… “Expelliarmus!”

Ten like Ken

As this blog approaches its first anniversary, the proportion of posts regarding blogging inspiration Ken Jennings has dwindled considerably, which is as it should be, of course. But I’m still a regular reader of his and could not let this latest coincidence go unremarked: just a few days before our beloved — and incredibly aged — dog Alex went to her reward, Ken wrote about his own dog’s age.

For those keeping track, this is ten points of similarity between me and Ken which, if we were talking about fingerprints, is almost good enough for a conviction.

The Out on a Whim

I finally got my Honda Fit, the Out on a Whim.

It wasn’t easy to find one; in the end, I needed the help of Cartelligent, whose superior service I recommend very highly. At the time I engaged them, my Cartelligent agent, the wonderful Leigh Taylor, informed me (credibly) that there were a total of four Honda Fits in the state of California matching my modest criteria (trim level “Sport,” manual transmission). I picked one and they negotiated a price for me, handled most of the paperwork, and transported it to their office in nearby Sausalito, where I took delivery from Leigh a few weeks ago. To top it all off, they found a buyer for the Nimble Imp, my nine-year-old Honda Civic, at about three times the price I expected it to command.

The Nimble Imp, a red 1998 Honda Civic DX hatchback, was the first purchase I made with Amazon.com money after they bought the Internet Movie Database.

It replaced the Compelling Notion, a red 1994 Saturn SC2, which was my first new car.

That came after the Uffish Thought, the gold 1984 Toyota Corolla hatchback in which Alex and I crossed America.

Before that was the Fine Young Chap, a blue 1984 Toyota Corolla sedan. It was named for a comment made about me by the father of my friend Drue, and it was totaled in a four-car collision on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn (about which more in a future blog post).

That followed the storied Plate-O-Shrimp, a yellow 1977 VW Rabbit, my first college car, memorialized here.

During the few months before college I had the Beta Epsilon, a white 1974 Pontiac Le Mans, a gift from my dad’s fiancée, now my stepmother. It was named in loving memory of…

…the Brief Encounter, my first car, a green 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, given to me on extended loan by my friend Joelle, who bought it for herself without knowing how to drive, on the condition that I place myself at her disposal for transportation errands, which I was only too glad to do. It was smelly, it was rusty, it was moldy, and it was missing its gas pedal (you had to press your foot on the bare push-rod), but as Jack Sparrow points out, “It’s not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that’s what a ship needs, but what a ship is… is freedom.”

Alex the dog, 1988 – 2007

In the spring of 1989, Andrea and I had just moved in together, and her dog Alex, still a rambunctious puppy, was a terror. She chewed through books and shoes by the dozens, and even the carpet of the apartment we rented. She refused to be housebroken. She routinely escaped into the perilous streets of Pittsburgh. She filled Andrea’s car with barf and pee. She barked her head off day and night. Our occasional sincere attempts to integrate her more fully into our lives usually ended with her sinking her needle-like puppy teeth into the skin of my hands.

Andrea, who had adopted Alex on an ill-advised whim and whose lifestyle at the time did not equip her properly to care for a puppy, had already once given Alex away in exasperation, to the shelter where she’d first adopted her. She repented of that decision within just a couple of hours and together we returned there to re-adopt Alex. Now, a few months later, it was I who’d had enough and persuaded Andrea that Alex would be happier in a more rural setting, where she could run and dig and bark to her heart’s content. We found an animal shelter in Washington County, about an hour’s drive away, where we took Alex and left her to be adopted by more suitable dog owners.

We wept silently all the way back to Pittsburgh. The several days that followed were unbearably quiet and empty without Alex’s maddening antics. On the fifth day, Andrea happened into a conversation at work with someone who knew the animal-shelter business, and who informed Andrea to her horror that shelters destroy animals who fail to be adopted, typically after a week.

A feather would have been enough to give us the push we needed to change our minds about Alex; this news was a shove. At once we were on our way back to Washington County and a joyful reunion with Alex, whom we adopted for a third time. We promised to be better dog parents and never to leave her again.

We kept our promise in spades. Obedience school finally taught us how to interact with Alex the right way and, before long, the rambunctious terror was gone, replaced with a full-fledged member of the family. By our caring for her and being cared for by her in return, Alex taught us how to be a family, a set of lessons and values that serve us right down to the present day.

There followed eighteen more years of amazing adventures and travels, love and play, worry and relief, loyalty and companionship. She reached an age that astonished the staff of her vet’s office. But a decline that began in earnest about a year ago finally reached a point where we judged her discomfort was almost continual, and her remaining capacity for joy almost all gone.

This afternoon, Andrea and I cradled Alex in our laps on our front lawn as her doctor made her first and final house call. We all wept, the doctor too, as Alex saw and heard her last. What she heard: declarations of love and praise, heartfelt assurances and farewells. What she saw: the faces she has loved best her whole life, smiling through tears, in the shade of a leafy green tree under a blue summer sky.

In nineteen years there has never been a time that Alex didn’t know exactly what was going on, and she never permitted so much as a toenail to be clipped without letting us know how she felt about it. Alex spent her last hour in a reverie of affection, happier than we’d seen her in a long time, and went calmly and at peace. Would that it could be as easy for the heartsick survivors.